Olena Shuliak, the Construction Sector Head at BRDO, announced that at the Conference “Spatial Planning. How will cities develop?”. She also noted that this was a good result, but that was not enough. All valid urban planning documents should be publicly available.
“As of today, Vinnytsia, Volyn, Rivne, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions added 100% of data to the single state web resource pmap.minregion.gov.ua/. But Khmelnytsky, Chernivtsi, Crimea and Lviv regions still have not find time to enter the information, so there is still something to work on,” Olena Shuliak stressed.
Also, Olena Shuliak noted that 24 regions of Ukraine and Kyiv were operating on the single state web resource pmap.minregion.gov.ua/, 370 resource users were registered and data on urban planning documentation for 20 thousand administrative and territorial units were added.
During the event, two discussion panels were held: “Interests and problems of communities in spatial planning” and “Prospects for the development of topography, land management and urban planning for spatial planning”, during which the live cases, when the availability or absence of spatial planning influenced the development of communities and cities, were discussed together with the best specialists.
For example, they talked about the revival and development of regional airports. In particular, the Uzhgorod airport, which can not fully function due to the fact that the surrounding land plots were allocated for residential and commercial buildings. The spatial planning of the Kyiv region was discussed as well. In particular, it is a case when in one of the villages of the region, namely the Buzova village, ATO soldiers got land plots, which are in fact hard to develop because they were allocated contrary to the project of the belt road around Kyiv.
“A year ago, we launched a portal allowing to monitor such things. It should be noted that the Kyiv region is more active now and has already added 78% of data. But there is still something to work on,” Olena Shuliak summed up.
“Today, investors want to deal with predictable and simple rules. And the PMAP web resource, on which there are available urban planning documents in free access, will help you. This is a unique project, thanks to which the community, businesses and authorities will be able to find the necessary information here and now,” the BRDO Head Oleksiy Honcharuk said.
The Deputy Head of the Embassy of the Netherlands Maaike van Koldam noted:
“The pMAP Open Spatial Planning Project, implemented by BRDO experts, is a step forward, a step towards the use of smart data. And we are very glad that the data on urban planning documentation become publicly available step by step and can be used by anyone,” Mrs Maaike van Koldam said.
Dmytro Zhyvytsky noted that the Open Spatial Planning should be divided into two parts: spatial planning and open spatial planning.
“In Sumy region, we face the lack of modern district planning schemes and general plans every day, because the existing ones simply do not reflect the actual situation. The territorial planning is a problem of local self-governments and it should be resolved,” Dmytro Zhyvytsky, Head of Sumy Regional State Administration apparatus, said. “The next step should be publicity. We faced with a problem when the state provided funding for outpatient clinics, but unfortunately, we couldn’t plan everything wisely due
to the lack of updated urban planning documents, and, as a result, the medical reform began to slow down, and the decentralization reform also slowed down. That is why the Sumy region was a PMAP pilot project and filled the PMAP portal with 100% of outdated information both for citizens and potential investors.”
The secretary of the Poltava city council Oleksandr Shamota told about the experience of Poltava:
“In Poltava region, there is a huge number of requests for access to urban planning documentation. The closed Soviet past has its effect, but the situation is changing. We strive to be open so that every citizen can receive any information, including the one on urban planning documents, publish everything in any communication channels and draw attention to the problem. It works. And the PMAP portal helps us with this,” the secretary of the Poltava city council Oleksandr Shamota said.
Irina Ozimoto spoke about the foreign experience of the United States and European countries.
“When studying the experience of foreign countries, first of all I drew attention to the flexibility of site plans, the openness and accessibility of spatial planning and land development. Accordingly, they can easily get to each city in the country. Even small cities have a well-developed infrastructure, including airports, ranging from small-regional to large international hubs. There is still much progress to be made in Ukraine, but I hope that Ukraine will reach a high level step by step, and spatial planning will become standard practice, on which the future of cities and communities is based.”
For information:
The pMAP Open Spatial Planning Project is implemented by the BRDO Office with the technical assistance of the MATRA project and with the support of the Ministry of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities of Ukraine. The project is aimed at facilitating the search and access to urban planning documentation in Ukraine through the single state web resource http://pmap.minregion.gov.ua/