Blog by Myroslav Kosheliuk, Consultant of the Council of Europe Program “Strengthening Good Democratic Governance and Resilience in Ukraine”
Every time I start writing something about post-war development, I ask myself the question: is it relevant now, while the war is still ongoing? My answer is yes. The enemy’s goal is not only to destroy Ukraine physically, but to deprive us of the ability to think about its future. We must not give in to this. In the end, when the time comes, we have to understand what we will do then – and in some ways not the way we did before. And perhaps we should start doing something differently right now.
One such topic that is worth talking about today and where we have not been successful before is the development of Ukrainian agglomerations. It has become almost an axiom in the world that agglomerations – or, as they are more commonly called in other countries, metropolises – are the engines of economic development. Here, we are 10-20-30 years behind our Western European neighbors. We have not yet managed to regulate their functioning at the legislative level, and the associations of local governments of the Kyiv and Lviv agglomerations are currently taking only the first steps towards establishing cooperation.
Meanwhile, experts say that agglomerations will play a crucial role in pulling the Ukrainian economy forward in the future. So there is no doubt that we need to work on our mistakes. But this issue is also relevant right now.
Many of our regions and communities have suffered and need support. This requires resources. Who else but the more capable communities should create them? The obvious solution is to take the “surplus” from some and redistribute it to others. However, if we want to have a larger “surplus” for such redistribution, shouldn’t at least part of the “surplus” be left there (or returned to the place where it can be used to create even more added value)? In fact, to stimulate agglomerations and the so-called growth pole regions.
It is important to emphasize that this is not an “either/or” question. We need to find a balance here, so that we have both. But, unfortunately, we avoid saying directly that regional policy should not only pull up the weaker ones but also stimulate the development of the stronger ones, because without the latter, there will be no former. And if we do, it’s more at the level of declarations than at the level of designing specific tools for this purpose. And this is one of the reasons why we are still lagging behind in the development of agglomerations. The recent discussions on whether to withdraw the reverse from more capable communities are indicative in this sense. This is not a purely technical issue, it is about the balance of our regional policy goals, which is missing.
From this point of view, it is worth taking a closer look at how metropolitan policies are structured in EU countries, especially in post-socialist ones. Analysts studying their experience note that they faced and still face problems very similar to those we are facing on the agglomeration path. The willingness to cooperate between municipalities is far from universal. There is a widespread prejudice that a larger city will dominate or even absorb smaller municipalities. It is not entirely clear how to fit such functional associations into the classic administrative-territorial structure of “municipality – sub-regional level – region” and how to establish their effective interaction without fear of someone taking away someone else’s powers. In these countries, the issue of the functioning of metropolitan areas also often remains unresolved or not fully regulated at the legislative level. Again, there are ongoing discussions about whether it is fair to incentivize the stronger ones if there are weaker and more vulnerable territories.
All of these problems were also discussed by representatives of the Brno Metropolis, the second largest city in the Czech Republic, which representatives of the communities that are members of the Lviv Agglomeration Association, with the support of the Council of Europe Program “Strengthening Good Democratic Governance and Resilience in Ukraine”, recently had the opportunity to visit.
Moreover, in their case, there are problems that have been mostly solved in our country. The basic level of municipalities in the Czech Republic is very fragmented – there are more than 6,000 of them in a country of 10 million. We had such fragmentation before the amalgamation of communities. Therefore, there are 184 communities in the Brno Metropolitan Region. In the Lviv agglomeration, which is approximately the same size, there are 18 communities, 10 of which have already amalgamated into an association. For Czech colleagues, this Ukrainian experience was interesting because they do not even have such a soft “formalization”. Municipalities in the metropolis interact without formal agreements, although they have an advisory political platform that determines the strategic development of the metropolis with the participation of representatives of the city of Brno, small communities, regional authorities, scientific institutions, the public sector, and business. At the same time, there is no district level in the Czech Republic, although municipalities can form voluntary associations (similar to our inter-municipal agreements) to solve specific problems and identify municipalities authorized to represent their common interests, including at the metropolitan level.
It is worth emphasizing that despite all the common and specific problems we have with each other, our Czech colleagues do not question the expediency of agglomeration cooperation in principle and are successfully developing it even in this extremely mild form.
Let’s take the example of their integrated transport mobility, which covers the entire metropolis. It is based on a network of suburban rail and other public transportation, with routes that go beyond the city limits. Plus a system of interceptor parking lots at the entrances to the city, where you can leave your car and take a tram or bus. You will see something similar in almost every European metropolis.
But what about ours? Before the war, talks about projects like City Express remained just that, talks. The railroad and municipalities continue to argue about who should compensate for privileged transportation and to what extent in areas where there are still suburban trains. Any public transport route with a final stop outside the community is considered a suburban route, and by law, their planning must be carried out by regional administrations. This means that communities simply do not have the right to organize joint routes on their own. The result is endless lines of cars entering any major city in the morning and leaving in the evening. The alternative is minibuses, which are popularly nicknamed “farshrutkas” (complain #marshrutka#, minibus in Ukraine – EDITOR) Let’s take the example of their integrated transport mobility, which covers the entire metropolis. It is based on a network of suburban rail and other public transportation, with routes that go beyond the city limits. Plus a system of interceptor parking lots at the entrances to the city, where you can leave your car and take a tram or bus. You will see something similar in almost every European metropolis.
But what about ours? Before the war, talks about projects like City Express remained just that, talks. The railroad and municipalities continue to argue about who should compensate for privileged transportation and to what extent in areas where there are still suburban trains. Any public transport route with a final stop outside the community is considered a suburban route, and by law, their planning must be carried out by regional administrations. This means that communities simply do not have the right to organize joint routes on their own. The result is endless lines of cars entering any major city in the morning and leaving in the evening. The alternative is minibuses.
All this is not just a matter of comfort. Statistics show that for 80% of metropolitan areas, establishing transport links is a priority. Why? Because the transportation scheme “sews” them together and ultimately forms a single labor market, which is the basis of their economic success. By the way, it is the so-called “commuting” – the percentage of the working population that commutes to work in the central city of a metropolis every day (essentially an economic criterion) – that is the basis for defining metropolitan boundaries in the EU.
The Czech metropolis has not only large projects, but also many smaller ones in the areas of ecology, education, innovation, etc. What does the research show? The effectiveness of joint projects is 25% higher, and that of joint business projects is 40% higher. This is also a hint for us on how to use today’s limited resources more efficiently.
What helped them establish metropolitan cooperation? Yes, these are European funds that support such joint projects, the so-called integrated territorial investments. Their share of the total funding from the European Structural Funds is small – only 8% of what the respective country receives from the European Regional Development Fund. But this is the incentive that has moved the situation forward.
We currently have rather limited access to European funds, but we can build a similar mechanism in our regional policy. Yes, there are issues that we have to postpone for later. But we need to invest in the development of logistics, the creation of industrial parks with proper communications, and the stimulation of innovation – these and similar things should be invested in now, perhaps by allocating a certain percentage to the State Regional Development Fund, which will begin to revive next year. The difference between us and our colleagues is that in our attempts to legislate the functioning of agglomerations, we are more focused on what form of governance should be built in them, while our European colleagues are focused on how to launch the process of cooperation, leaving the question of form open at times.
It is worth paying attention to the word “integrated” in the title of this instrument. Our neighbors in the EU have realized for at least several decades that functional ties between neighboring municipalities are developing faster than their administrative boundaries are changing. Residents from neighboring cities, villages or towns do not always work where they live. Communities are connected by roads and transportation routes, shared water supply and sewage networks. Ultimately, the environmental impact of our activities extends far beyond the boundaries of a single community. We can also talk about administrative, educational, medical, cultural, social services and much more. That is why the EU speaks of the so-called functional urban areas – municipalities linked by mutual influences. Agglomerations are one of their types, but integrated investments are directed not only at them, but also at smaller such functional associations.
The lack of ability to think beyond the boundaries of cities or individual communities (and to stimulate inter-municipal cooperation) is felt even now, when we talk about rebuilding our cities, seemingly on the principle of “build back better.” And this is another reason why we are lagging behind in the development of agglomerations.
Another important point is that our Czech colleagues are proud of their integrated strategy, Metropolis Brno 2020+. The practice of developing such strategies is the third factor that should be emphasized. “There is a top-down incentive in the form of an available resource, and a bottom-up incentive from metropolitan areas, a vision of how to use it effectively. The so-called place-based approach means that stimulating the development of agglomerations cannot be the same for everyone, but should be based on an individual approach, taking into account their preferences and needs, and the communities within them should be actively involved in identifying and implementing priority projects.
There are shortcomings in each of these three points – the introduction of tools to stimulate the development of agglomerations based on an understanding of their important role in economic development, focusing on the principles of an integrated approach, and activating the role of communities in the development and implementation of regional development projects. At the same time, there are examples in the EU countries that we can look up to. Is it relevant now? My answer is yes. It is clear that we will not launch such mechanisms at full capacity now. But in order to solve current problems more effectively and not to waste time later, they need to be piloted now.
