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Nataliia Otrishchenko

CENTER FOR URBAN HISTORY (UKRAINE)

Natalia Otrishchenko is a research fellow at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. She studied sociology at the Berea College, graduated from the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, and obtained PhD from the Institute of Sociology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Her teaching experience includes block-seminar at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and, tutoring and coordinating the Urban Summer Schools “Visions and Experiences”.

Abstract

Architects and the Visions of Urban Development
in Late Soviet Lviv 

NATALIIA OTRISHCHENKO

The Lviv branch of Dipromist obtained the possibility to establish a master plan of the city: it was an important move toward decentralization and the recognition of the expertise of the local architectural milieu. The technical and economic foundation of the master plan was developed during the early 1980s, and ten years passed since the completion of all calculations before the master plan was approved by the Lviv City Council in 1993 – planning ideas and practices from the late-socialist period were grounded in an independent state and became a foundation for the local urban development for the next decades. This paper follows the story of this master plan and the community of urban professionals who were involved in its development. A focus is put on the ways of assembling territory, authority, and rights, as well as how urban expertise was acquired under the conditions of constant negotiations between the state and local authorities, between centers and peripheries, between different communities in the city. Through the example of the master plan, this paper aims to start a broader discussion on the production of knowledge about the city in late (and post-) Soviet Lviv and its role in the struggle for political and economic capital.

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