Before the Holocaust, Jews were the largest or second largest ethnic group in Lviv (Lemberg), Chernivtsi (Czernowitz, ČCernivci), and Chisinau (Kishinev), having a significant role in all fields of daily city life. These traditionally multi-ethnic cities, today belonging to Ukraine or Moldova, were included in the Soviet Union from Poland or Romania after World War II. The present city environment still strongly reflects the Jews and other vanished population groups. What about the future? This is a challenge for urban planning and preservation policy.
About the Speaker: Bo Larsson is an architect and associate professor (docent) of urban planning at Lund University in Sweden where he leads a research project at the Center for European Studies devoted to the memory of vanished population groups in today’s East- and Central European urban environments, “Memory treatment and urban planning in Lviv, Černivci, ChiČinČu and Wrocław.” He has been a lecturer at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen and has also worked for the European Commission.
