War and the city: Lessons from urbicide in Ukraine

Abstract

This article explores urbicide during Europe’s largest ongoing war of the 21st century. Urbicide in Ukraine is not just another story in a long list of well-covered destroyed cities; it has new manifestations and needs to be rethought. Despite the variety of forms and concepts associated with urbicide, it has some common features such as non-selective ness, simultaneous destruction of symbolic and mundane, ordinary places, both physical structures and values, is aimed at ‘killing’ the heterogeneous urbanity for its own sake, and even being carefully planned causes reconfiguration of urban spaces in unexpected ways. The article has three focuses; it concentrates on the extent and causes of direct ur bicide in Ukraine, the relation of urban life under occupation and indirect urbicide, and narratives of (non)return to occupied cities. All these foci are united by the main purpose of the study to understand the urbicide caused by the warfare and global geopolitical changes that are ‘exploding’ (in a literal and relative sense) in Ukraine’s cities. This re search is based on the analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews, thematic analysis, as well as mapping of warfare and urbicide in Ukraine.