Urbicide in Ukraine: Analysis of Environmental Destruction – Challenges, Strategies, and International Cooperation (Part 1)

This article presents the findings of an international research collaboration involving Lviv Polytechnic University (Ukraine), Kielce University of Technology (Poland) and Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada). The research analyses the destruction of the housing environment and the multidimensional consequences of the war in Ukraine. The analyses integrated disparate scientific discussions into a unified research subject and employed novel empirical data from first-hand accounts of witnesses and observers of the war in Kyiv, Kherson, Irpin and Lviv, thereby shedding new light on previously unpublished aspects and consequences of the conflict. The objective of the research was to monitor the situation in areas of active escalation on an ongoing basis, to identify indicators related to urban and demographic dimensions, and to analyse the process of complete destruction of urban organisms together with the communities living in them. The results demonstrate a clear pattern of strategic paralysis in urban structures, the collapse of civilised forms of urban life, a humanitarian catastrophe, the exhaustion of demographic potential and growing socio-economic and geopolitical challenges. The article concludes with an outline of the subsequent phase of the research, which aims to integrate contemporary technologies and methodologies and establish a foundation of prospective projects to develop a unified vision of sustainable architecture and new urbanisation as a guarantor of life stability.