Paper short abstract:

The paper intends to explore and analyze the public response to the recent ‘handled down’ project of renovation of Kontraktova Square in Kyiv, that exploits abstract historic forms and images from the global network, thus offering a kind of national memory enforcement strategy alienated from the local memory and tradition.

Paper long abstract:

Cities in transition is a challenging topic for scholars who aim at re-conceptualizing the role and relationships between "cities", "civic tradition" and "transformation of public spaces" as specific complex of narrative, spatial or visual strategies. Since 1991, Kyiv experiences drastic metamorphoses in ascending from administrative center to metropolis/capital-city. It is here, that global, national and local identity meet, overlap and stay in conflict. Kyiv provides a perfect site to analyze how "the invention of tradition" or attempts to create a kind of overlapping 'national ideology' confronts "urban memory" or identity of its citizens. But does 'the scene of the civic' necessarily need to become the scene of conflict?

In my presentation I intend to analyze the public response to the recent official project of renovation of Kontraktova Square (a rather weird mix of abstract historic forms, consumerist ideology and images from the global network.) This public response could be regarded as a claiming a right to the city - a public campaign that culminated in presenting alternative projects of public spaces in Kontraktova.

Analyzing the alternative projects I'll try to focus on the following questions: In which ways the 'global', the 'national' and the 'local' are to be represented/translated/articulated in urban form? Is it possible to think of new articulations of 'place' (town square as a paradigm public space) transgressing the opposition of trans-national - local? Is a notion of 'community resilience' applicable in this case? How local could be placed within the broader mega-networks of cultural or social belonging?