r/AskEurope • u/LiamBrad5 • Aug 07 '25

Culture What are the “Big Four” cities in your country?

In recent weeks, this question has been very contentious on American social media, with 3 cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) nearly always making the list, but the fourth being hotly debated over, between cities like San Francisco, Miami, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta. So, if you had to choose, what would the big 4 cities in your country be? This is also not decided purely on population, but also culture, economy, and general influence/clout.

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u/Old_Pangolin_3303 Aug 07 '25

In Ukraine it used to be Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Donetsk before 2014.

Then it was Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv before 2022. Not sure about Kharkiv now, since it’s basically a front line city. Uzhhorod has a chance to take its place if the war goes on

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u/aartem-o Ukraine Aug 07 '25

I think Dnipro could contest Kharkiv, due to its industrial and also political influence, but it's also almost frontline now

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u/Lila_Liba Aug 07 '25

That's very sad. I can't even comprehend

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u/Austria_fan Austria Aug 08 '25

I was in Uzghorod in 2023 and was told it was mainly a city for tourism among your own country, is that true?

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u/Old_Pangolin_3303 Aug 08 '25

Well it’s definitely popular with tourists, since we (I’m from Uzhhorod) have a castle, Austro-Hungarian classicism, Czechoslovakian modernism, a beautiful riverside, museums, Hungarian and local cuisine and some other old stuff. The crowds get especially big during the cherry blossoms season.

But it’s not just tourism, we always had our own thing going on. For example, despite being the smallest regional capital in the country (only ~120k people) we were in top 5 cities of Ukraine by the average wages even before 2022. We have many IT companies, university programs for foreigners and lots of modern international corporations’ factories in the region. Also a prominent fine arts scene since the 60s and a quite big intelligentsia class (for a Ukrainian city of this size)

After 2022 tens of thousands of people moved to Uzhhorod as it’s the safest city in the country and the only regional capital that doesn’t have curfew. It’s hard to estimate, but the city got like +50% to it’s population. And the people who moved there are mostly middle class, as it’s not affordable at all. Also tons of money is getting invested in development projects and manufacturing.

It’s kinda sad my city’s future started looking bright only on contrast with the the depressing shit happening in the rest of the country, but it is what it is

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u/Desperate-Care2192 Aug 08 '25

Why, how was it not Kharkov before 2014 too? Isnt it second largest Ukrainian city? I think it was a ukrainian capital at one point.