How will the urban planning “reform” affect cultural heritage?
A year has passed since parliament supported in the second reading the scandalous bill No. 5655 on urban planning reform, created in the interests of developers. Exactly a year has passed since the president neither vetoed it nor responded to the petition, under which a record number of citizens’ votes were collected within remarkably short timeframes at the time.
Despite our international partners drawing red lines— the European Parliament emphasized that the president should not sign this initiative, and the European Commission criticized this “reform” in a report— the leader of the Servant of the People party, along with the Ministry’s team, continues to implement the nonexistent law. Yesterday, ZN.UA published a 232-page Cabinet resolution, which is a clone of the unsigned bill No. 5655. The issue at stake involves billions for future post-war recovery. Therefore, the lobbyist team sees the goal and disregards any obstacles, including the Constitution.
ut 5655 is a mine not only for Ukraine’s future recovery. State policy regarding the preservation of cultural heritage must also respond to new challenges arising during the war. This is why ZN.UA decided to explore how the urban planning “reform,” which is currently in limbo, affects the preservation of cultural heritage. Unfortunately, new shadowy aspects have emerged.
The “useful” sluggishness of the ministry
Cultural heritage includes not only monuments but also everything else that constitutes cultural value, such as the traditional character of the environment with its historic buildings. Previously, builders had to obtain permits from the relevant authorities, which, after verifying whether construction would cause harm, issued permits or not. Their work was not always smooth, as is typical everywhere, and they operated properly only under community pressure, but there was at least some protection of cultural heritage.
Everything began to change in 2011 when the Law of Ukraine “On Regulation of Urban Planning Activities” was introduced. It diminished the role of such bodies.
Indeed, the draft law No. 5655 simplifies such rules for developers altogether. Essentially, they are given an indulgence. They can do whatever they want, albeit with minor fines. But for large-scale construction, these are always manageable costs — you pay and no one stops you.
As expected, the leading author of the draft law does not see such risks.
The Ministry of Culture emphasized to the civic initiative “Holka” that they did not support the urban planning “reform” from the very beginning, and here’s why:
The remarks on the legislative initiative from the Ministry of Culture and the proposal to create a working group to refine the bill were essentially ignored. And now, the Ministry of Culture emphasizes that it sees attempts to implement the intended “reform” from the new Ministry of Infrastructure, headed by Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.
In reality, to protect cultural heritage, one must understand its boundaries. And here we face a catastrophic situation. For example, the state has not even developed usage regulations for the buffer zone of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Historical Center of Lviv”. The same situation exists in Kyiv, where the entire center is an archaeological site—Yaroslav’s City, Vladimir’s City. All of this is designated as municipal land, and the city council can distribute it. One of the most notorious scandals was the attempt to build a shopping mall where streets from the time of Kievan Rus were discovered—on Postal Square.
Alexander Misyura facebook.com/Museumonthepostalsquare
Such boundaries and landmarks should have been entered into the electronic system—they should have been included in the State Land Cadastre. Then it would have been easy to automate the verification of the legality of construction. And this should have been done by January 1, 2023, according to the transitional provisions of one of the previous reforms—the Law No. 1423-IX on deregulation of land relations.
But the government failed to do so—all the objects are still not there, even though the end of the year is near. The thing is that to accomplish this, serious funding is needed, which would have to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada. It could even amount to several billion hryvnias because, among other things, it involves the development of hundreds of thousands of land management projects and cadastral surveys of each landmark building. Just a week ago, by the way, the Ministry of Culture announced plans to receive around 250 million hryvnias for monument preservation from casinos.
But the problems won’t be limited to cultural heritage. The same applies to objects of natural reserve funds. For example, it took seven years to implement the presidential decree on expanding the Golosiivsky National Park at the expense of the Bilichansky Forest. Only after the state allocated funds for a specific object and activists monitored every step of marking the border in nature, this object appeared on the cadastral map. And there are many objects of the natural reserve fund, just like cultural heritage objects, that are not in the electronic system, and they remain invisible for permitting purposes.
Next to the aforementioned Golosiivsky National Park, there is another important cultural heritage site—Kitaevo. In fact, it was supposed to have national significance status: here, Tripolye ceramics and dwellings from the times of Kyivan Rus with clay stoves were found, and so on. The struggle to preserve this site has been going on for almost 20 years because the deputies of the Kyiv City Council planned to build more high-rises and shopping malls here.
Images: ma-arch.com.ua
Problems arise not only with land plots but also with buildings already under protection. For example, in Kyiv, there is the Museum of Prominent Figures. They won’t touch it, of course, but the protective zone of this monument has not been included in the master plan. And now a developer has received permission to erect a building nearby, posing a threat to the museum’s existence — the building is old, there’s a risk of groundwater flooding, and the walls may not withstand it.
If we talk about land, valuable not only for Kyivans but also for the entire state, such as the streets of Kyivan Rus at Poshtova, it will simply become municipal land. Therefore, developers will be able to relatively easily obtain it for construction. So, the State GeoCadastre will divide plots with archaeological sites as ordinary lands.
In such moments, state interests should be protected by the prosecutor’s office. But if the developer manages to dig and remove the soil layer where archaeological finds may be, then there is no object for law enforcement to protect. Then, it will be necessary to initiate criminal proceedings and investigate who was supposed to but failed to input information into the electronic system. However, the situation with preserving cultural heritage cannot be rectified.
Despite this, the Unified State Electronic Construction System, which is one of Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s pride and joy, is supposed to automatically block attempts to obtain permits that violate monument protection requirements. However, it doesn’t block them because it has nowhere to look up these monument protection requirements. Therefore, the role of the “unbribable computer” is manually performed by officials. Judging by the results, they’re doing poorly in the “not taking bribes” aspect of this role.
The “strategic” contribution of bill No. 5655
The “reform” supported by lawmakers a year ago simply cancels this provision, currently allowed by law, for the computer to automatically block permit issuance in case of such violations of legislation. To prevent officials from taking bribes, this right is transferred from them to experts selected by the developer.
Meanwhile, automatic legality checks remain, but only checks, not decision-making. The computer detects violations, and then the expert hired by the developer manually concludes why the computer is wrong. Then it’s simple: the computer “automatically” registers the right to construction, in which it itself identified violations.
Developers are not only eased in obtaining construction permits. Currently, if a permit for illegal construction is obtained through a corruption scheme, it’s sufficient to establish the fact of violations during the check, and then it can be revoked. According to Shuliak’s project, the new construction permit is an indulgence for violating the law. It can only be revoked if the developer violates the approved project.
So, if the developer of the Osokorky eco-park does not violate his project and does everything as planned, he will be fine, and no one will stop him from building further, even though it’s an object of the water fund.
Instead of stopping illegal construction, Bill No. 5655 decided to simply fine the designer and experts. It’s important to note that the first requirement in NACP’s remarks was precisely to provide for the possibility of revoking a permit for illegal construction in case of violations. But they didn’t fulfill it, even though both the head of NACP and the main author of the bill promised that everything would be taken into account.
Currently, the Committee on State Building and Local Self-Government is working on the Urban Planning Code. A working group is in operation. The chair of this group, Anna Bondar, a member of parliament from “Servant of the People,” announced that the issue of preserving cultural heritage will be developed by a separate subgroup because it requires careful study.
One of the key issues that legislators need to address concerns the electronic system, into which all restrictions must first be entered before permits are issued. And it is not necessary to do this immediately for all objects throughout the country – it can be done first in one region, then in another, gradually covering the entire territory of the country. After all, the volumes are truly colossal, and significant budgets are needed for this.
…It is worth reminding that the government is currently launching “eMemorial” – the State Register of Immovable Monuments of Ukraine. The Ministry of Culture is working jointly with the Ministry of Reconstruction on this. The register is scheduled to be accessible to all citizens from January 1, 2024. The government informed ZN.UA that they are actively seeking funds for the implementation of key project tasks and are engaging international technical assistance. According to preliminary estimates by the ministry, the implementation of such a program for historical cities will require no less than $2.5 million.
The Ministry of Culture assures that “eMemorial” will prevent chaotic construction in historical areas of cities, including during post-war reconstruction. However, with the planned implementation, it cannot become the State Register. Legislation on decommunization and combating the imperial past, as well as the protection of cultural heritage, has not been taken into account here.
Specially for “Mirror of the Week“
