Sumy City Council and Cedos signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on 27 February. According to the Memorandum, the parties will jointly develop an Integrated Development Concept for the Sumy Territorial Hromada.

The document was signed by Artem Kobzar, Secretary of the City Council, his advisors Iryna Dіadenko and Vitalii Zhylenko, specialists from the Department of Resource Payments, which was involved in the preparatory work, and the Department of Strategic Development of the city, and by Ivan Verbytskyi, Cedos Director.

“Together we will do a great job. We planned to work in this direction and allocate funding even before the full-scale invasion. Since we are currently facing budgetary problems, it is gratifying that the relevant work will be carried out with grant funds. Thank you for your help,” said Artem Kobzar, Secretary of the City Council.

A special working group and an expert team will work on the strategic document. The consortium of organisations will include the participatory planning bureau Cité, the architectural bureau PSEL and the Cedos think tank. It is also planned to involve residents of the hromada. The document will be based on the Development Strategy of the Sumy Hromada and will cover all key areas of hromada activities.

“We are glad to have the opportunity to work with Sumy. This document is, in fact, a strategy for the hromada, which consists of various components: from urban planning to healthcare, relatively speaking. We are engaging 10 different experts who, together with a working group from the hromada, will analyse these areas and synchronise them for the tactical, medium and strategic future. All the results will be put on the hromada map, so you will see what will be located where“, said expert Vadym Denysenko.

Vitalii Zhylenko drew attention to the importance of involving housing and communal service providers and the city’s infrastructure department in the work on the Concept so that the document takes into account the network component. Iryna Dyadenko stressed the need for such a document for hromada development: “This is a great project. Such issues are in demand now. The hromada wants to see certain land plots and has visions for them, but we cannot direct them because there is no relevant document.”

The work on the Integrated Development Concept is expected to be completed by November so that it can be used as a basis for the 2025 budget. Andrii Kryvtsov, head of the Architecture and Urban Planning Department of the Resource Payments Department, noted that in the future, this document will become a design task for the development of urban planning documentation, the Comprehensive Spatial Development Plan, with amendments to the Master Plan.