How four Ukrainian cities are seeking their future during the war

On the eve of the fifth year of full-scale war, four Ukrainian cities have taken on what seems like an impossible task — to determine their economic future in conditions where no one knows when and how this conflict will end. Zhytomyr, Bucha, Slavutych and Khmelnytskyi have joined a programme unique to Ukraine called “Mission-Oriented Economy” as part of the Mayors for Economic Growth (M4EG) facility, which is funded by the European Union and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme.

After each session, participants traditionally gather for coffee. In the hotel halls, where work is underway with four teams from the programme’s target cities, there is a buzz of conversation — some people are laughing, others are intently leafing through notes on flipcharts. The break is the perfect time to ask the programme facilitators, Oleksandr and Olesia, about their thoughts on the programme itself, the work done so far, and the future that awaits the cities in the coming years.

Mission is more important than comfort

Explaining the essence of the programme, Oleksandr narrowed his definition to a project that brings together a diverse group of city residents — representatives of government, business, and civil society — and provides them with a working methodology for planning the future. He adds that the real goal is deeper: to help cities see themselves as a holistic system and begin making changes they determine to be priorities.

“As a good friend of my jokes: if your strategy says, ‘We are a convenient city to live in,’ that’s the beginning of the end,” says Oleksandr. In his opinion, the logic behind these words is simple and ruthless: if a community defines itself only as a convenient place to live, it will always ‘lose.’ It will be more convenient in the regional centre, even better in Kyiv, and ideal in Warsaw. Next will be Paris, New York, and so on. And all residents will continue to move on in search of a better ‘city to live in.’

“A city should give its residents a reason to stay, creating a sense of happiness in that place. This means that there must be something interesting for people there,” Oleksandr emphasises. That is why the programme seeks to help communities find not just an economic strategy, but an economic benchmark that will form the basis for the city’s unique identity.

There have been cases when a city was essentially reinvented — it used to be one thing but became something completely different. A good example is St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. In the 1950s, it was a declining industrial city, polluted and overburdened by heavy industry. Then a mayor came along who declared that the city would become an intellectual centre. He began actively developing the local university and inviting new people to the city. As a result, the city changed by about 70%: half of the residents left, and others arrived. 

Today, St. Petersburg, Florida, is no longer an industrial centre and has taken on a new image — that of an intellectual hub. This proves that the future of a city is not a random set of events where someone gets excited about something and starts implementing an idea. It is always a conscious, well-thought-out and complex task that requires significant intellectual effort and resources.

The path from chaos to system

Work with cities within the Mission-Oriented Economy programme began in autumn 2025 with in-depth research. Teams analyzed the demographic situation, the state of the economy, and specific areas of development. They then underwent theoretical training and several sessions on what a city is as a system. 

According to Oleksandr, the problem with Ukrainian reality is that no one looks at the city as a whole: the authorities often see it as an electorate, businesses see it as consumer segments, and residents see it as a set of services and jobs.

“Next, we conducted community listening,” continues Olesia, the programme facilitator, describing the work done by the cities. “This is, in fact, a tool that allowed the teams to communicate with various stakeholders (participants in processes that are key to the city’s development — ed.), representatives of the community, to determine what exactly concerns them and what problems or barriers exist in the city’s development.”

Community Listening was followed by a stage of sense-making — an analysis of what is already happening in the community and the initiatives being implemented. This allowed the parties to avoid duplicating steps already taken and to move forward and develop new solutions. The third stage was foresight — forecasting possible drivers of the economy and envisioning the future. Participants even dreamed about how they see their community in 50 years.

Two days to find the way

The culmination was a bootcamp — intensive two-day sessions at the end of November. “We thought that all the processes we had gone through were difficult, but the bootcamp showed that a lot of information had been gathered that needed to be processed, systematised and brought together into a single whole,” says Olesia.

Over these two days, the teams developed what the programme methodology refers to as a “community portfolio.” This is not a conventional text document outlining a strategy, but rather a high-level systemic understanding: the city’s mission, key development positions, specific interventions — experiments that can be implemented with limited resources to test whether the chosen logic works.

Oleksandr emphasises the importance of this point: “At the end, the participants, the UNDP team, and representatives of the cities I work with — Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr — were pleasantly exhausted. It was a strategy session — precisely the process when people from different backgrounds and contexts try to jointly see the city as a holistic system.”

The results varied across cities, but in some cases, they were united by common aspirations. For example, both cities that Olesia works with — Bucha and Slavutych — strive to be ‘green’ through clean energy, with energy efficiency and energy independence as the focus of their work.

System thinking is the key

The real innovation of the Mission-Driven Economy programme lies in its approach to working with cities. Oleksandr explains the difference between traditional approaches and what the programme offers as follows: “Within the programme, we try to think systemically rather than linearly. You think linearly when you try to build, you know, sequences of logical connections: if we do this, then this will happen.

The problem with the linear approach is that it does not work with living organisms, which cities and communities are. This is not a rule, but often everything breaks down at the second or third step. The systemic approach, or what we call the portfolio approach within the programme, works differently: you make assumptions, put forward hypotheses, and test them through experiments.”

In this case, you can draw an analogy with a perennial garden, where you do not limit yourself to a clear plan, where each plant has a pre-determined place, but instead experiment you plant something, see how it takes root, how it interacts with other plants. If it grows, you care for it and harvest the fruit. If it doesn’t grow, you dig it up and plant something new.

“We are gradually trying to move away from the old planning method, the so-called ‘waterfall’ method, where there is a large task that is simply broken down into subtasks and each of them is worked on in turn. We are moving towards a different approach — flexible planning. In IT, it is called Agile,” adds Oleksandr.

War as a window of opportunity

The boldest thesis voiced by both facilitators is that now, during the war, is the best time for such changes. Olesia explains this in practical terms: “The programme’s methodology was developed precisely so that communities could plan in a state of uncertainty, when we don’t know what the future holds. We don’t stop living — we carry on. And to move forward, we need to plan one way or another.”

Oleksandr sees a broader social context in this moment and, when asked whether planning during wartime is a futile endeavour, responds: “On the contrary! I believe a unique window of opportunity is now opening. There is a prejudice in Ukrainian society that the mission of the city should be determined by the authorities — central or local. But the fact is that these authorities are currently preoccupied with the war. Due to constant administrative stress, they cannot ensure better governance. Therefore, right now, city residents have a chance to take their destiny and the future of the city into their own hands — to find a different model of governance, where not only the authorities but also other stakeholders participate in creating the future of the city,” Oleksandr emphasises.

What next?

Soon, communities will move to the portfolio activation stage and implement one or two of the planned initiatives.

However, the real success of the programme lies not in these first steps, but in whether the new approach to planning will take root. “There is a well-known phrase: ‘Strategy is nothing, strategizing is everything’. In other words, it is not so much the first strategy that is created that is important, but the regular process of reviewing and improving it,” Oleksandr concludes.

He hopes that cities have embraced the ‘culture of regular strategizing’ and will continue to do so regardless of support from the EU and UNDP. After all, they are developing the city not for international donors, but for themselves. The main thing is not to stop receiving feedback from the system and not to return to the post-Soviet ‘square’ approach, where the authorities determine everything and residents do not participate.

Olesya concludes her narrative on an optimistic note: “I think that all of us together, the communities and the programme, have stepped out of our comfort zone and are looking for something new, especially in these unstable times. It so happens that this is both new and unfamiliar, and it overlaps with our Ukrainian reality. So yes, it’s difficult, but at the same time very interesting. And I hope that these efforts will be effective.”

Four Ukrainian cities — different in scale, history, and challenges — are doing what seems impossible and, some would say, impractical amid war: planning their future. But this is not a set of wishes or declarations — it is a living process of experimentation, learning, and adaptation.

The M4EG Initiative was launched by the European Union in 2017, and it has been continuously funded by the EU since then. Since 2021, the initiative has been managed by UNDP, in close cooperation with the EU, local authorities and various partners.