You asked me how it works in America. Now it's my turn to ask: what's happening where you are?

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This book rests on two things that go out of date: a database of Ukraine's 72 metropolitan areas and 100 American councils of governments, and the answers of colleagues who know the ground. You can keep both current. I read everything, and I answer what I can.

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What I'm missing

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1. Kryvyi Rih: did a fifth hromada, Zelenodolska, sign the memorandum of May 2026? The city and the regional investment agency named four; one member's own announcement named five.

2. Odesa, and every metropolitan area where nothing has started: has anything been signed since April 2025?

3. A water, heat, or transport system that serves more than one hromada, in any metropolitan area other than the four that have organized. I found none documented.

4. A survey that asked the people of a city's belt about their ties to the city. I know of none.

5. Ukrainian studies of agglomerations that I did not find in three literature searches.

6. For American councils of governments: your dues and your operating budget. Eleven of the hundred publish books that let me compare the two, and I would like to widen that.

7. What became of the communities the USAID HOVERLA program worked with after it was ended in 2025. I found no evaluation.

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What else to send

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• A change on the ground: a memorandum signed, an association formed, a member joined or left, a strategy adopted, a joint project or a joint purchase begun.

• A document: a charter, a memorandum, a strategy, a council decision, a budget.

• A number: an association's budget, its dues, its staff.

• A correction: a fact, a name, a term. Once the book is out, corrections get a page of their own.

• A publication I should read, or one of your own.

• A question. What mayors and hromada heads ask shapes what I write next.

• An offer: to review, to translate, to teach with the book, to twin a European or American region with a Ukrainian one, to join the research with Ukrainian universities, or to improve the Ukrainian pages of this site when they go up. They will be machine-drafted, and they will say so.

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​How to send it