CITY ABOUT CITY: THE FORMATION OF URBAN IMAGES IN MODERN UKRAINE (LVIV, DNIPRO AND KYIV EXAMPLES)

Abstract

The study of the formation of mutual images of cities today is an urgent problem in Urban Studies. Cities are constantly changing, a certain historical memory is being formed, views are changing and new stereotypes are emerging. Such transformations have become especially noticeable in Ukraine between the cities of the East and the West. Constant contradictions, the problems of electoral sympathies and diff erent histories, even today, undoubtedly infl uence mentality and the construction of stereotypes in the urban environment. The concern of the article is the creation of the urban space of modern large cities of Ukraine, clarifying the factors that are essential for this, in the end – identifying what is common and diff erent in this process, which will allow us for a more substantive consideration of the regional differences that are now commonly understood, and how the Revolution of Dignity aff ected the change in these views. The topic is revealed on the example of three cities located in diff erent regions of Ukraine – Lviv and Dnipro, as well as the images of these cities among residents of the capital – Kyiv. These cities have little experience of joint state life, which undoubtedly aff ects their specifi cs as part of independent Ukraine. Lviv – for a long time was in the composition of diff erent states (the Halychyna–Volyn principality, the Rzeczpospolita Polska, the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian empires, the Second Polish Republic, the USSR).These stages of historical events remained in the urban environment of Lviv through the prism of various signs: culture, language, population, religion, politics. Dnipro, in turn, for a long time was part of the Russian Empire, then the USSR, it gave impetus to the formation of urban space in the style of «Russian city», «Soviet person». Kyiv is the so-called periphery between cities, whose history is closely intertwined with both the Russian Empire and the Rzeczpospolita Polska, and then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the transfer to Kyiv of the capital of the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the city that survived the Revolution of Dignity. Based on the questionnaire survey, the article traces whether the attitude of city residents to each other after the events of Maidan and the Revolution has changed, and how modern history aff ects the creation of the image of a city.