Dnipropetrovsk is Ukraine’s fourth largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located southeast of Ukraine’s capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central part of the country. Dnipropetrovsk is the administrative centre of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Within the Dnipropetrovsk Metropolitan area the population is about 1,360,000 people. A vital industrial centre of Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk was one of the key centres of the nuclear, arms, and space industries of the Soviet Union. In particular, it is home to the Yuzhmash, a major space and ballistic missile design bureau and manufacturer. Because of its military industry, Dnipropetrovsk was a closed city until the 1990s. Dnipropetrovsk is a powerhouse of Ukraine’s business and politics as the native city for many country’s top-importance figures.
The area the city is built on is mainly devoid of hills and other geographical features. Being mainly flat, the land is easy to use, which explains why the city has been able to grow to such a great extent over the past 200 years. Whilst most residential, commercial, and industrial districts of the city are along the less marshy south bank of the river, some residential, commercial, and industrial areas have developed on the previously less-hospitable northern bank. Nowadays both the north and south banks play home to a range of industrial enterprises and manufacturing plants. The airport is located about 15 km (9.32 mi) south-easterly of the city.
To this day the city is characterised by its mix of architectural styles, with much of the city’s centre consisting of pre-revolutionary buildings in a variety of styles, stalinist buildings and constructivist architecture, whilst residential districts are, more often than not, made up of aesthetically simple, technically outdated mid-rise and high-rise housing stock from the Soviet era. Despite this, the city does have a large number of ‘private sectors’ were the tradition of building and maintaining individual detached housing has continued to this day. Since the independence of Ukraine in 1991 and the economic development that followed, a number of large commercial and business centres have been built in the city’s outskirts. The city has a variety of theatres (plus an Opera) and museums of interest to tourists. There are also several parks, restaurants and beaches.
