- Energy Management as a First Step towards Integrated Urban Planning in Ukrainian Cities    408 kb by    Schwaiger, Baerbel | baerbel.schwaiger@giz.de    Short Outline Starting with energy management, retrofitting of soviet housing can be a first step to integrated urban planning. Abstract Ukraine is undergoing a lot of various ups and downs – orange revolution, gas and financial crises etc. The national political system is weak and cities are struggling with low financial support and lack of urban planning. They are either almost shrinking or fast growth is dictated by developers – and infrastructure planning is far behind. Existing building stock and infrastructure systems are outdated, regulation frameworks hardly exist and corruption is everywhere. Driven by the financial crises and rising gas prices many cities understand, that they are left alone by the national government and start to look for solutions on their own. Budgets are scarce. Strategic decisions are necessary where to spend the money. Ukrainian cities need an integrated urban development approach especially for the existing housing stock and related infrastructure systems. The cannot afford to finance the retrofitting of housing which is not needed or built oversized infrastructure with high running costs. To keep the existing soviet housing stock in shape is necessary as otherwise there will be no living space for the population with medium and low income – the rapid new developments in cities like Kyiv, Odessa and Donetsk are only affordable for higher income groups. Energy saving is on top of the agenda. This was the starting point for a German-Ukrainian cooperation project. In 2008 four pilot cities start to draft the first energy plans focussing on the building sector. While establishing energy management in cities city departments are doing first steps in the direction of a new decentralized planning and management culture. Meanwhile they are developing the more interdisciplinary sustainable energy action plans in the framework of the European Covenant of Mayors. The next step will be the integration of spatial development issues. The final goal will be an integrated urban development approach to make decisions which quarters should be retrofitted and get renewed heating supply and how to manage the urban changes. Keywords integrated urban planning, energy management, large scale soviet housing stocks Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2012: Fast Forward: Planning in a (hyper) dynamic urban context   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper