| Abstract [eng] |
The concept of urban acupuncture or city‘s acupuncture is social-ecological urban theory which connects modern environment shaping methods and an alternative Chinese treatment method – acupuncture. „This theory is based on the idea that city is a live organism that might be revitalised by the little targeted architecture or landscape architecture solutions in precisely selected locations of the urban fabric“, (Daugėlaitė, 2019a). „This concept suggests small scale catalytic interventions for solving the long-standing social or ecological problems or to change wider urban contexts (Walker, 2015)“, (Gražulevičiūtė-Vileniškė, Vitkuvienė, Daugėlaitė, 2018). This concept can be best applied to historical parts of the cities – the areas distinguished by high density and richness of urban value, the places where entirety of urban values is preserved. The challenges of planning modern, dynamic and fast-growing cities are becoming more and more complex, their population is constantly growing. It is planned that by the 2020 more than 80 percent of world‘s population will live in urban areas (Vancutsem, 2009). The newest scientific research shows the importance of natural areas for human health and well-being (Daugėlaitė, 2019a). Unfortunately, the natural areas of the cities often fall outside one‘s everyday-life environment. The concept of urban acupuncture seeks to create a healthy city, to „heal“ its „ill“ places. The modern concept of a healthy city covers not only human health and sustainable urban development, but also economic, social and cultural vitality of the city. Therefore, „a city with many intertwined visible and invisible networks, co-existing communities and ecosystems is often treated not as a finite human creation, but also as a living organism that is alive and changing according to the laws that are often not noticed at a first glance“ (Gražulevičiūtė-Vileniškė, Vitkuvienė, Daugėlaitė, 2018). This work examines how the concept of urban acupuncture can be applied to the formation of the city's historical parts and looks for ways to incorporate natural elements into the everyday-life urban environment in accordance with the principles of urban acupuncture. |
