Thesis Director: Professor Elena Cogato Lanza, Laboratory of Urbanism
Start date: April 2023
Defense date (expected): April 2027
Grant: EPFLglobaLeaders
Abstract
The proposed project focuses on studying the territorial governance and planning viewed in the context of crisis. Based on the empirical setting of urbanisation in Ukraine, the project will specifically investigate the effects of territorial regulations associated with “decentralisation”, expressed in the decision-making and planning process at a local level and introduced in the context of multiple crises, linked to the ongoing war, on territorial resilience.
The investigation derives from two case studies of territories characterised by the recent administrative merger of core cities with their productive hinterland and embedded into diverging emergency and long-term planning scenarios linked to the war-related crises, thus allowing to situate and review the interaction between decentralisation-oriented and risk-induced discourses in planning. The study will provide a more profound understanding of the potency of territorial resilience applied to territorial governance and spatial planning based on a qualitative understanding of territory and the emergence of regulations that govern land use and production of the built environment within it. It will also contribute to a general debate on the increased agency of municipalities and metropolitan areas in generating territorial resilience.
Keywords: #territory #resilience #territorial regulations #decentralisation #metropolisation #spatial planning #local governance #Ukraine