Urban Acupuncture is an urban environmentalism theory which combines urban design with traditional Chinese medical theory of acupuncture.[1] This strategy views cities as living, breathing organisms and pinpoints areas in need of repair. Sustainable projects, then, serve as needles that revitalize the whole by healing the parts.[2]
Traced to Finnish architect and social theorist Marco Casagrande, this school of thought eschews massive urban renewal projects in favour a of more localised and community approach that in an era of constrained budgets and limited resources, this pinpointed approach could democratically and cheaply offer a respite to urban dwellers.[3] Casagrande views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design Casagrande is developing methods of punctual manipulation of the urban energy flows in order to create an ecologically sustainable urban development towards the so-called 3rd Generation City (post industrial city). The theory is developed in the Tamkang University of Taiwan[4] and at independent multidisciplinary research center Ruin Academy. Casagrande describes urban acupuncture as:
[a] cross-over architectural manipulation of the collective sensuous intellect of a city. City is viewed as multi-dimensional sensitive energy-organism, a living environment. Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with this nature.[5] and Sensitivity to understand the energy flows of the collective chi beneath the visual city and reacting on the hot-spots of this chi. Architecture is in the position to produce the acupuncture needles for the urban chi.[6] and A weed will root into the smallest crack in the asphalt and eventually break the city. Urban acupuncture is the weed and the acupuncture point is the crack. The possibility of the impact is total, connecting human nature as part of nature. The theory opens the door for uncontrolled creativity and freedom. Each citizen is enabled to join the creative process, feel free to use city space for any purpose and develop his environment according to his will. [7]
Urban Acupuncture bears some similaries to the new urbanist concept of Tactical Urbanism. The idea focuses on local resources rather than capital-intensive municipal programs and promotes the idea of citizens installing and caring for interventions. These small changes, proponents claim, will boost community morale and catalyze revitalization.[8] Boiled down to a simple statement, “urban acupuncture” means focusing on small, subtle, bottom-up interventions that harness and direct community energy in positive ways to heal urban blight and improve the cityscape. It’s meant as an alternative to large, top-down, mega-interventions that typically require heavy investments of municipal funds (which many cities at the moment simply don’t have) and the navigation of yards of bureaucratic red tape.[9]
Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, suggests urban acupuncture as the future solution for contemporary urban issues; by focusing on very narrow pressure points in cities, we can initiate positive ripple effects for the greater society. Urban acupuncture reclaims the ownership of land to the public and emphasizes the importance of community development through small interventions in design of cities.[10]It involves pinpointed interventions that can be accomplished quickly to release energy and create a positive ripple effect.[11] He described in 2007:
I believe that some medicinal “magic” can and should be applied to cities, as many are sick and some nearly terminal. As with the medicine needed in the interaction between doctor and patient, in urban planning it is also necessary to make the city react; to poke an area in such a way that it is able to help heal, improve, and create positive chain reactions. It is indispensable in revitalizing interventions to make the organism work in a different way.[12]
Taiwanese architect and academic Ti-Nan Chi is looking with Micro Urbanism at the vulnerable and insignificant side of contemporary cities around the world identified as micro-zones, points for recovery in which micro-projects have been carefully proposed to involve the public on different levels, aiming to resolve conflicts among property owners, villagers, and the general public. [13]
American artist Gordon Matta-Clark is credited with developing a system for identifying pockets of disrepair in the built environment—the first step in the framework of urban acupuncture.[14]
In ecological restoration of industrial cities Urban Acupuncture can take form as spontaneous and often illegal urban farms and community gardens punctuating the more mechanical city and tuning it towards a more sustainable co-existence with the natural environment.[15] Urban Acupuncture areas can receive, treat and recycle the waste from the surrounding city acting as eco-valleys within the urban fabric. In River Urbanism the Urban Acupuncture areas can include underground stormwater reservoirs and act as flood relief for the surrounding city as a sponge and they can act as biological filters purifying water originated from polluted rivers.[16] Urban acupuncture is a point by point manipulation of the urban energy to create a sustainable town or city, which Marco Casagrande has dubbed '3rd Generation Cities'. [17]
Contents |