Urbanizational Trends and Impulses in The Housing Consruction of Ukraine

Abstract

In recent decades, Ukraine has undergone large socio-political transformations, which have also been reflected in the urbanization processes. The war in the East of Ukraine caused equally important internal and external migration of the population. There was also a change of business locations from the eastern regions to the central (capital) and western (Lviv as a regional center). Economic fluctuations are causing stagnation and booms in the construction industry. With the growth of GDP, Ukrainians traditionally invest excess revenues in real estate. An analysis of the dynamics of housing construction in Ukraine has shown that the Kiev region ranks first place of the housing construction area that put into operation by 2016 (3398.8 thousand square meters), while the Lviv region ranks second with an index of 859.2 thousand sq.m. The main construction is concentrated in the cities-centers of the regions, which have a metropolitan character. There is also a rapid reactivation of the suburban segment, which is explained not only by the outcome from the recession, but also by the fact that demand in the primary housing market is still concentrated in low-cost and small-sized apartments. In the remaining regions, this indicator is much lower - in Odessa 575.9 thousand square meters and in Ivano-Frankivsk 480.8 thousand square meters, and further this indicator reaches only 10-20% relative to the leaders. In the unchanged boundaries conditions of the city, the basic concept is an “urban concentration”. For each city, the issue of new urban density is to find a balance between further concentration of the city’s development, and the preservation of unbuilt territories. The practice of building, for example, of acutely deficient in the housing market habitation during the last decade, shows rather a developer example of the intensification of the usage of territories. Today, 234 residential complexes are registered in Lviv, and there are 360 residential complexes in Kyiv with a separate allocated area, formed by a group of dwelling houses and adjoining territories, or a multi-sectional building and an adjoining site. In order to understand the magnitude of the density index, we note that for multi-apartment buildings of more than 9 floors the normative density indicator in Ukraine, which provides comfort of living and functional and communicative filling, is 142 people / ha. It should be noted that in a Vienna, which is one of the most comfortable cities for life according to the consulting organization MERCER, a similar average statistical indicator of density for 2016 is 176 people/ha. Thus, today in Ukraine one can observe the search for forms of development of a compact city, which takes place by modernizing and consolidating of the cities which are territorially outstreched and developed during the period of socialism.