IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/urbpla/v11y2026a11600.html

Resilience as Community Capacity in a City Under Existential Threat: The Case of Slavutych, Ukraine

Author

Listed:
  • Olena Kononenko

    (Georg‐Simmel‐Center for Urban Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany / Department of Economic and Social Geography, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine)

  • Talja Blokland

    (Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany)

  • Olena Dronova

    (Institute of Geography, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine)

Abstract

Community resilience helps cities recover from disasters. We understand community resilience as the capacity of residents to practice community in flexible ways that preserve identities, while adapting to post‐disaster realities. This capacity can depend on many factors. Our article explores how practices to share and ritualize memory may contribute to a local self‐understanding of resilient agency, through the case of Slavutych, Ukraine. We trace Slavutych’s self‐understanding as heroic from the closure of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2000 to the blockade and partial Russian occupation in Spring 2022, drawing on semi‐structured interviews, a survey, and observations. We argue that resilience may, as in the case of Slavutych, draw on collective memory‐making, which enhances a sense of place and shapes territorial identity through notions of endurance, practices of care, and heroic solidarity.

Suggested Citation

  • Olena Kononenko & Talja Blokland & Olena Dronova, 2026. "Resilience as Community Capacity in a City Under Existential Threat: The Case of Slavutych, Ukraine," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v11:y:2026:a:11600
    DOI: 10.17645/up.11600
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/11600
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/up.11600?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v11:y:2026:a:11600. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.