Citizen Participation

Citizens’ involvement in the processes of urban renewal is essential to the success of rehabilitation measures and their sustainability. The project therefore encourages residents to become actively engaged in the renovation and conservation of historical buildings, objects and open spaces in Lviv’s historical districts.

• Citizens’ forums: Proposals and initiatives are presented and citizens are asked for their opinions and suggestions. Citizens’ forums can be concerned with proposals in particular neighbourhoods, or be more far reaching, for example, the large-scale civic forum which was a crucial component in the formulation of the Integrated Development Concept for Lviv.
• Project pilot measures: Owners and residents are directly involved in pilot restorations of historical building elements, such as doors, windows, entrance halls, stairs and stairways, facades, balconies, etc. These measures could not be implemented without the owners’ and residents’ close cooperation and participation.
• Programmes for semi-public open spaces: The project’s programme for the refurbishment of often misused and sometimes derelict inner courtyards of historical buildings is primarily oriented to the requirements of the buildings’ residents, whose ideas and agreement on the design of a refurbished courtyard is essential to its acceptance.
• Promotion of Apartment Owners’ Associations the project encourages residents and owners of apartments to form associations in order that they become responsible for more than just their own apartments, but the upkeep of all the parts of the building they live in.
• Citizen initiatives: the project provides technical and financial support to citizens’ initiatives. For example, the restoration of the statue of Mercury, which dominates the skyline in a central district of Lviv, was the result of a public initiative. The work, which was carried out in cooperation with the Department of Restoration at the Polytechnic University of Lviv, was co-funded by the project and supervised by the project’s stonemasonry expert.
• Public open spaces: The public open spaces in Lviv’s historical old town are critical to the living conditions and wellbeing of its inhabitants. Among the measures the project undertakes to rehabilitate rundown public spaces in Lviv, it co-organized two international design competitions for the revitalization of pubic spaces in the historical inner city. In order to understand the concerns of local residents, well-advertised meetings were organized in which residents were asked what they liked and disliked about the spaces and what suggestions they had to improve them.