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CUS History

The current CUS first emerged as a research center at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA) in October 2015, when its creation was supported by the Academic Council of NaUKMA. Active activity began in 2016.

The project of the Center from the very beginning was supported by the Representation of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ukraine, and to this day the Foundation is the main strategic partner of the CUC.

Since its inception, the main directions of the Center’s work have been and remain:

  • research and analytics (own research, presentations and professional discussions, research seminars, etc.);
  • education (urban studies courses, summer schools, workshops and seminars);
  • publications (in particular, the issue of the almanac Urban Studies);
  • public program (public lectures, open discussions on the development of the city and its current issues, discussions).

A separate and top priority for the Center was the development and launch of the Master’s Program in Urban Studies and Spatial Planning.
However, this ambitious goal did not meet with active support from the university administration and could not be implemented within NaUKMA. Therefore, at the end of 2018, CUS (and its strategic partner – the G. Böll Foundation) decided to terminate cooperation with NaUKMA, after which, in 2019, the Naukma Central Executive Committee was reformatted into a public organization “Center for Urban Studies”.

A new stage of work and a new round of institutional development motivated the Center’s team to find new partners, and one of them was the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture (KNUCA). In the summer of 2019, the CUC and KNUCA signed a memorandum of cooperation, which provides for the development and launch of a Master’s program in urban planning at the Faculty of Urban Spatial Planning in 2021.