In cooperation with three universities in Berlin, Cottbus and Lübeck, the Chair of Urban Planning at the RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau is supporting digital teaching on topics relating to the reconstruction of Ukrainian cities and urban development. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is funding the project with over 200,000 euros as part of an immediate action program. A new digital platform will be used to provide corresponding courses. In addition, Ukrainian students and academics in need will be supported with scholarships and experts will be involved.
In 2017, Ukraine translated the goals of the EU's Leipzig Charter 2020 into its own decentralized planning system with the White Paper on Urban Development. Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is not only directed against an independent and democratic Ukraine, but also against the goals of the EU Leipzig Charter: the European city as a place of democracy, pluralism, rationalism, subsidiarity, orientation towards the common good, as well as public space as a place of exchange, free residence and protest.
These topics will be explored in greater depth in the new teaching formats in order to enable sustainable reconstruction in freedom. The specially developed digital learning platform is intended to help maintain and network teaching at Ukrainian universities and to deepen it thematically in relation to the reconstruction of destroyed cities.
The project has also awarded several scholarships to Ukrainian students, doctoral candidates and lecturers who are in economic need due to the consequences of the war and internal displacement. Ukrainian researchers are also actively involved in the work.
Courses and colloquia are regularly offered to involve the Ukrainian partner universities. Partner universities in Ukraine are the National Polytechnic University of Lviv, the National Yuri Fedkovych University of Chernivtsi, the Kyiv National University of Building Construction Architecture, the University of Poltava and the University of Odessa.
The digital learning platform is being developed in cooperation with Professor Dr. Silke Weidner, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Professor Frank Schwartze, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, and Professor Christoph Wessling, Berlin University of Technology. All four professors involved have already conducted workshops with the partner universities in recent years and were involved in the reorganization of the planning system in Ukraine.