According to the input from the government of Ukraine, the country by Order of the Cabinet Ministers of January 23, 2019 has “established the legal framework for creating cultural spaces and specific creative clusters to be used to meet public cultural needs, to realize cultural rights, and to promote economic growth of communities.” The Committee on Culture of the World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) is a global platform of cities, organizations and networks, which for years has analyzed and discussed policies on the role of culture in sustainable development, including the role of, and conflicts over, public space. In their input to the UN Special Rapporteur, the network wrote41: “There are close links between cultural rights and public spaces, as public spaces provide one of the foremost contexts in which the particularly collective dimension of the right to take part in cultural life can be exercised, and where forms of cultural interaction can be fostered (see e.g. Culture 21 Actions, Commitment 7, g). Restrictions to the free, universal use of public space can by contrast become major impediments to the exercise of cultural rights. In addition to physical and virtual public spaces as the setting where cultural rights can be tangibly exercised, it is also important to recognize that public spaces (particularly physical places) may have a symbolic value, and as such they require safeguarding and formal recognition (Culture 21 Actions, 7, h).” PUBLIC SPACES IN POST-SOCIALIST COUNTRIES There are two common issues in almost all post-socialist countries. Modernist public spaces that served as cultural and public places in the past (cinemas, culture houses, concert halls, etc.) are regularly subjected to destruction and degradation, while new developers are actively clearing out the old vernacular quarters – places of identity for local communities. Both processes result in the traumatic loss of urban, collective, and family memory. While in the case of the degradation of modernist buildings, the loss of the existing practices of cultural consumption is visible, the loss of vernacular and pre-Soviet architecture results in the rough intrusion of city authorities and developers into the natural process of urban development and memory formation. These issues lead both to the artificially induced amnesia of cities and the proliferation of large commercial and business centres emerging as a symbol of capitalist power and excluding any commercially free social exchanges in urban spaces. These processes have seriously affected the public urban areas in many cities in recent years (Tbilisi, Yerevan, Kyiv, etc.) and often became the subject of struggle by local activists. Source: Tigran Amiryan, CSN Lab (Armenia). In a previous chapter, we looked at the various definitions of cultural sustainability. United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) argue that there is a link between cultural sustainability and public space: “The connection between cultural participation and other dimensions of sustainable development and human rights becomes particularly visible at the local level, in cities and 41 34 https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/CulturalRights/Call/61_UCL_culture.pdf