Recovery Architecture: How Ukrainian Communities become a reconstruction engine
The online lecture of Vladyslav Rashkovan, Deputy Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, held at the Community Recovery Academy, has become a powerful manifesto on the ways of reviving Ukraine after the war. The expert clearly outlined that recovery is not just a technical task for infrastructure reconstruction, but a complex socio-economic process of revival of the country on a fundamentally new basis.
The peculiarity of the event was an extremely high interactivity - after the main presentation began a lively discussion, where each participant had a unique opportunity to ask the speaker directly. Representatives of different communities, municipal managers, experts and interested students were able to get expert explanations and hear details directly from the IMF leading specialist.
Rashkovan emphaze that the scale of recovery has been measured not for years, but for decades, and the direct responsibility for it lies in Ukrainian society. The key thesis of the lecture - only the Ukrainians themselves can rebuild their state by turning destruction into an opportunity for systematic modernization.
The peculiarity of the presented model of recovery is a decentralized approach. Instead of the traditional model, the IMF expert called for focus on the regions where every city will have its own strategy and recovery leader. The World Bank has previously estimated the need to rebuild $ 500 billion, but stressed that money is only a tool, and most importantly, systematic and institutional capacity.
An important message was the thesis about the complexity of recovery. It is not only physical reconstruction, but also restoration of social tissue, psychological support, creation of a barrier environment and European standards of life. Vladyslav Rashkovan emphasized that reconstruction is a chance to build a country where anyone can realize their potential, regardless of physical abilities or social status.
The lecture also affected the geopolitical dimension of recovery. Ukraine is regarded as a strategic partner of Europe, an important transit hub on security and energy. But for this, the country should prove not only to accept assistance, but also to dispose of it effectively, demonstrating transparency and institutional maturity.
The uniqueness of the presented vision is its human-centricity. Recovery is not abstract numbers of investment, but specific community stories that are united by overcoming challenges. Each destroyed city is regarded as a space of new opportunities, where you can not just reproduce the lost, but create a qualitatively new environment.
The final chords of the lecture were optimistic: despite all the difficulties, Ukrainian communities have a unique chance to turn destruction into a powerful impulse for development. The key message is to be active, not to wait for external help, but now to form an architecture of your own revival.
The Community Restoration Academy, founded by the Association Ukrainian Cities and NGO Mariupol.Rebortn, aims to prepare municipal managers for the recovery period. The project is implemented with the support of the UK government under the UK International Development and the International Republican Institute (IRI UKRAINE) in partnership with Metinvest and SCM. The educational partners of the project are Metinvest Polytechnic, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
