US State Department, German Marshall Fund want to rebuild sustainable Ukrainian cities.

The U.S. State Department and the German Marshall Fund (GMF) introduced the Ukraine Cities Partnership (UCP) for Sustainable Urban Recovery on March 6, according to a State Department announcement. This public-private initiative will assist in redesigning and rebuilding up to three Ukrainian cities, with a focus on sustainability and resilience.

The damage to Ukrainian cities caused by Russia's war will cost an estimated £486 billion in reconstruction, according to a February report from the World Bank. The damage is concentrated in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Kyiv oblasts. According to the press release, the State Department and GMF will bring together experts and funders from the private sector, NGOs, and universities to collaborate on the Ukraine Cities Partnership.

The UCP will actively participate and collaborate with the Ukrainian government, the EU, multilateral development banks, and bilateral donors. Its aim is to assist the recipient cities in securing the necessary resources for their reconstruction. The announcement did not specify which three cities the project would assist.

The UCP is set to officially launch in Berlin in June, at the Ukraine Recovery Conference, and the project has a three-year timeline.

Ukraine wants to make reconstruction transparent. Will it work? Inside a bare apartment littered with concrete blocks and slabs of plywood, construction site manager Serhiy Yerokhin points to a large balcony overlooking the treetops of Irpin, a suburb outside of Kyiv occupied and heavily damaged during the first month of Russia's full-scale invasion.

Almost two...