| Abstract [eng] |
30 years after the Independence and 96 % of Lithuanian people in the five major cities are living in apartment-buildings, while more than 60 % of all Lithuanian population overall are residing in houses built during Modernist planning period. “Airy visions of towers rising out of vast expanses of grass and greenery” borrowed from Le Corbusier theory, proved to be flawed due to a lack of humanity (over-scaled, unidentifiable urban elements, ignorance to natural human life-cycle, psychology and social needs) and fragmented urban structure (segregation of different functions and physical separation of urban elements, such as neighbourhoods and districts), by everyday usage of Modernist urban neighbourhoods. Fast, but low-quality constructions of Soviet period, accompanied with a lack of sophistication and consciousness in later urban planning, and overall national politics of a young independent country after the fall of Soviet Union, stopped Modernist urban neighbourhoods from further development. Urban developers and citizens preferred downtowns or even suburbs, while neglecting these vast middle zones. This master thesis analyses possibilities of urban developments in these neighbourhoods that would ensure attractiveness of these urban element to nowadays citizens and that would impact them with long-term self-evolution. New Urbanism evolved as a direct contraposition to Modernist urban planning, appreciating traditional urban living style and suggesting essential principles of urban development oriented to a human. Urban networks, on the other hand, recognize city as a multi-layered system of social, cultural and economic facets, intertwined together in a physical space. These two concepts together are able to convey a fundamental ideological perception, systematisation and complexity for spatial urban solutions, thus, are chosen as leading theories for problem solving. This thesis consists of three main parts: the theoretical and the empirical researches, and the experimental design project. The theoretical part analyses problems of Modernist planning, tries to deconstruct the city to its primal elements and looks for urban design tools in literature and relevant cases, finishing the research with the hypothetical model of a liveable urban neighbourhood. The empirical part takes advantage from Sociotope mapping and various Space syntax methods, while looking for the answers, what are the values and flaws of the particular urban places, and why some of these places are liked, while other are forgotten by the residing people. The empirical research is concluded with the conceptual model of the revitalisation of Modernist urban neighbourhoods. The experimental project suggests the design strategy and tools for reaching the objective of the thesis, and presents their practical application in the urban fabric. Finally, the project is validated by application of the patterns by Ch. Alexander et al. that were selected in the theoretical research as the practical tools, ensuring the vitality of an urban neighbourhood, and by repeatedly modelled Space syntax analyses for pedestrian movement in the re-developed urban area. Both of these approaches of the evaluation confirm that that the project is successful, as the re-developed area of the Modernist urban neighbourhood gains the complexity of overlaid urban networks and becomes a well-reachable place of pedestrian attraction. |
