ECTP-CEU continues to grow – in every respect – Part 1
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Fig. 1 Map of the current distribution of ECTP-CEU full and corresponding members across the Council of Europe member countries. Source: own elaboration; base map is a modified version of Wikimedia’s map “European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation members”
During the past two months, from mid-October to mid-December (the time of writing), many things have happened regarding the ECTP-CEU. It is certainly not necessary to spend many words from this column to mention that on 25th November has been published the Call for Projects for the 14th Biennale of Towns and Town Planners; Urbanistica Informazioni and INU are already intensively reporting about this event, which will take place from Monday 22nd to Wednesday 24th April 2024 in Naples at the Faculty of Architecture. Please refer to its specific website for details[1]. The day before, on Sunday at the same venue, the ECTP-CEU will hold its General Assembly where, alongside the delegates, also the member organisations’ presidents will be invited, as at every Spring General Assembly.
The activities that must be highlighted — also because in the next months there will be more interesting news — regard the three new members admitted to the ECTP-CEU on 5th November, the Autumn General Assembly in Gdańsk, Poland, the changeover between the two presidents, the 12th Young Planners Workshop and of course the second edition of the Gdańsk Conference of Spatial Planning, where the ECTP-CEU was invited to play an important role this year too. Finally, the DBA focus group ‘Rebuilding Ukraine’ has started its activities and two interesting presidential visits have been made to Romania and Spain.
New members
The ECTP-CEU is a continental organisation. In 1985 it has been established as the successor of the European Communities’ professional liaison committee for town planners and was therefore limited to the then-called EC member countries which at that time were only ten. Only one year later, the seven founding members expanded to ten, also including Spain and Portugal, which were meanwhile admitted to the EC on 1st January 1986. From that moment onwards both, the EC — called EU since 1992 — and the ECTP-CEU continued to grow, and with the new statutes of 2008[2] its geographical reference was changed too, from the European Union to the Council of Europe, that is from at that time 27 countries (the UK was still in the EU while Croatia not yet) to 47 (Russia has been excluded from the Council of Europe in 2022). From 2008 to 2021, when the current Executive Committee entered office, there has been an additional net grows of 4 full members (from 19 to 23), 2 corresponding members (from 5 to 7), plus 3 so-called partnership members. The current Executive Committee is strongly committed to further expand the number of member countries to get as close as possible to the goal of covering all 46 current Council of Europe member countries. During its first two years, at every General Assembly at least one new member has been admitted: in Spring 2022 one new corresponding member from Ukraine (Zvidsy Urban Agency); in Autumn 2022 one new full member from Poland (TUP – Society of Polish Town Planners); in Spring 2023 one new full member from Bulgaria (SUB – Union of Urbanists in Bulgaria, see UI 212 for a detailed report) and now in Autumn 2023 one new full member from Ukraine (ASP – Association of Spatial Planners) and two new corresponding members from Italy (DIST Turin) and Georgia (SUDA – Spatial and Urban Development Agency). In this moment, the ECTP-CEU has a total of 26 full and 10 corresponding members, plus 4 partnership members[3], and talks for at least one new full and one new corresponding member are already underway. The map in Figure 1 shows the current distribution of full and corresponding members, highlighting the cities with universities who are corresponding members. The map also shows those countries where over the years the ECTP-CEU unfortunately has lost members.
War against Ukraine
Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine, started on 24th February 2022, represents an event which till then was simply unimaginable. Several parts of Europe, as well as Ukraine itself, had already experienced various regionally limited wars after the geo-political changes of 1989, but this war against Ukraine strikes at the core of our most important values. First and foremost, the common European rules of peaceful coexistence, even between systems with different orientations. Second, it completely undermines the concept of democracy, participation and local self-government, which are values common to the Council of Europe member countries and core values of the community of European spatial planners, as set out in several charters, manifestos and other documents produced by the ECTP-CEU.
Immediately in March 2022 the ECTP-CEU sought contacts to Ukrainian colleagues to try to understand how we, as the spatial planners’ continental umbrella organisation, can become helpful for their needs. A series of contacts to practitioners, most of them young professionals working in the field of spatial planning, could be established very soon, mainly with the help of single planners belonging to our network. The list of contacts also included some international experts with long-standing professional experience in Ukraine.
Starting from the very first meetings we had, two goals were defined that we would be attempted. First, setting up a European planning expertise platform, where planners from Ukraine can contact planners from other European countries to contract them for the huge amount of planning activity that would become necessary. Second, promoting also in Ukraine the spatial planner profession as an independent and distinct profession and, as a first action, establishing a national planners’ association.
Setting up the expertise exchange platform is a complex task that needs to be funded. Beyond an initial activity as volunteers, a more professional involvement of planners must of course be honoured with remuneration. As the possible main interlocutor, we first addressed the European Union, according to its commitment to supporting Ukraine in every respect. From our discussions with some of the EU bodies, however, we have learned that there is still little awareness about the importance of spatial planning, especially at this time, in order to be prepared in time for the actual rebuilding activities. Besides the EU, the ECTP-CEU is now also part of the Davos Baukultur Alliance (DBA), which is linked to the World Economic Forum (WEF), with leading positions in two of its four focus groups. We appreciate that this too is an excellent opportunity to bring forward our work in supporting spatial planning for post-war recovery in Ukraine. A first meeting of its Rebuilding Ukraine focus group took place recently, on 24th November.
Back to last year’s events, in May 2022 ECTP-CEU’s activities led to admitting a private ‘urban agency’ — so their self-styled qualification — based in Kyiv as a first corresponding member from Ukraine. Their name is Zvidsy. We appreciated their innovative and interdisciplinary approach to planning which was much based on the most recent paradigms in planning, such as sustainability, inclusiveness and nature-based solutions rather than a simple ‘where-and-how-it-was’ reconstruction, which was strongly opposed and negatively labelled as Soviet-style city building. One month later, we had the opportunity to meet these and other people from Ukraine at the World Urban Forum (WUF) in Katowice, Poland, where several sessions dealt with post-war rebuilding.
Association of Spatial Planners – Urbanists’ Council
During the summer months, the Ukrainian National Union of Architects (NSAU) started preparing an organisational structure for spatial planners. According to the current national regulations, only specialised practitioners who are NSAU members are allowed to draw and sign spatial plans. So, it was a logical consequence that a first national spatial planners’ organisation came out of the NSAU. This step has been taken on 21st July 2022 with the creation of the Association of Spatial Planners – Urbanists’ Council of the NSAU (ASP-UC), a nation-wide internal structure within the NSAU, but with decision-making autonomy and the idea in mind to go beyond the NSAU in the future to include professional planners with other educational backgrounds.
Autumn 2022 was characterised for Ukrainian spatial planners by the discussion about a bill on urban planning reform. On 13th December, the bill has been approved as law No. 5655 by a widely criticised transversal and narrow majority of only two members of the parliament. Several organisations, such as the Union of Ukrainian Cities, the NSAU and of course also our colleagues of the newly established ASP-UC, immediately opposed the new law. Besides complaints about the lack of information during the weeks of drafting the final version of the bill, they state that law 5655 strengthens the role of developers who can now to some extent ‘buy’ their institutional positions and exercise control over themselves. At the same time, regional and municipal self-government in spatial planning is re-centralised after a virtuous process of decentralisation had been started through several pre-war reforms. A risk of high-level corruption was seen too[4]. President Zelenskyy has been invited from many sides not to ratify law 5655. The most important invitation was addressed by the European Parliament in its resolution of 15th June 2023 which “calls President Zelenskyy not to sign draft law 5655 on urban development activity”[5]. The ECTP-CEU had previously sent a note to the ASP-UC stressing the values of democracy, participation and local self-government in spatial planning.
From that point onwards, the contacts with the ASP-UC have intensified gradually, and in Spring 2023 they expressed the wish to become a member of the ECTP-CEU, which was of course received with great enthusiasm. In July, the formal membership application was received and discussed by ECTP-CEU’s Executive Committee. The application met all the formal criteria for becoming a full member which are relatively strict, as they include for instance a clear statement to work towards a distinct spatial planners’ profession if this goal is not yet reached in the country were the applicant organisation operates. A full-member organisation must also fulfil the requirement of actually or potentially representing the countries’ spatial planners. During its meeting of 18th July, the Executive Committee recommended unanimously to the General Assembly — the sovereign body to deliberate about the admission of new members and that would be held on 5th November in Gdańsk, Poland — to vote for admission of the ASP-UC as the 26th full member of the ECTP-CEU. In Gdańsk, the association’s deputy chair, Lidiia Chyzhevska, connected online, illustrated the current situation of spatial planners in Ukraine as well as the context in which the ASP-UC was established and is currently operating. ECTP-CEU’s delegates had also the opportunity to address questions and have talks in person with ASP-UC’s contact person Daryna Pivchuk. It was a very emotional moment during the assembly’s works, since admission of a Ukrainian organisation of spatial planners — which has been formally granted by unanimous vote — had been a declared goal just one and a half year earlier and nobody at that time could have imagined that it would be achieved so soon.
As a closing word about Ukraine and the Ukrainian spatial planners, it must be noticed that the Ukrainian parliament has established a public working group on drafting a new Building Code whose first meeting tool place on 1st June 2023, and where our colleagues of the ASP-UC are of course key players. On 18th December, the 26th meeting of the working group was held. The meetings are partially in person and partially online, while all meetings are recorded and made available through YouTube. By the way: to date, after more than one year, President Zelenskyy has not yet ratified law 5655.
Note
- https://www.ectpceu-inubiennalenaples.com.
- The 2006 amendments to the Internal Regulations had already changed the geographical reference to the Council of Europe, but at that time in discordance with the Statutes. In addition, even earlier, upon decision of the 2002 Autumn General Assembly, several corresponding members based in non-EU countries were exceptionally admitted as full members.
- IFLA-Europe is formally a new partnership member since 2023 after signing a memorandum of understanding that had already been prepared under the previous Executive Committee.
- See article ‘Urban Planning Reform Ukrainian-Style: What’s Behind the Controversy’ on Kyiv Post, 15th December 2022, https://www.kyivpost.com/post/5767. See also article ‘Analysis of the draft law 5655 in the version of December 9, 2022’ on Naši Hroši, 16th December 2022, https://nashigroshi.org/2022/12/16/analysis-of-the-draft-law-5655-in-the-version-of-december-9-2022.
- ‘Sustainable reconstruction and integration of Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic community’, 2023/2739(RSP), item 17, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2023-0247_EN.pdf.
