CHAPTER TWO

URBAN ACUPUNCTURE

Acupuncture means a Chinese medicine Originating in China more than 2,500 years ago, and involves inserting long, extremely thin needles into specific points along the body to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Acupuncturists believe that energy—called qi—circulates through the body and that pain or illness results when this energy is blocked from moving along specific pathways, called meridians (Wikipedia, 2011).

It realized that also functioning based on the numerous energy flows circulating within the as the systems. Public parks, transportation, pedestrian movements and waterways are most prominent visible systems which are being circulating within the city and make sure the city functioning. The city problems are arising where the fractures on the circulating systems. Then, there is a necessitate to be needled in those places to remove the energy blockages as acupuncture medicine does in human body.

2.1 Intervention Strategy

According to the British architect and critic K..Framton, the Barcelona urbanist Manuela de Sola Morales has coined the term urban acupuncture. K. Framton describes Sola Morales acupuncture concept as small intervention strategy. It was formulated during the Barcelona revitalization in 1980’s when the city discarded the General Metropolitan Plan after Franco dictatorship. The proposal was to renovate the city through small urban projects. The focus was on small public spaces in the neighborhood and in the city that needed to be redone. (Nelson, n.d). In the article ‘Public spaces in Barcelona 1980-2000’, Benarch Nuria (2004) has described the catalytic concept as:

“...this urban intervention was 'metastatic, strategic, for reconstruction, and mainly \ supported by the design of public spaces, since they are most immediately effective to achieve these goals'. They are metastatic because 'a series of actions can be the focus of regeneration for the surroundings;* strategic, since 'in order that metastasis can be effective, the initial 'infection ’ has to be applied to the nerve center of the neighborhood,

5 of the city, of the metropolis,' andfor reconstruction, because ‘to build in what is already built, to improve what already exists, to transform, to modify, to rehabilitate, to re­ signify, to underline or to create identities are the clearest and most important objectives.” ( Nuria 2004, p. 155)

Sola Marcels has used the urban acupuncture as a metaphor for intervening in an urban fabric in such a way that this intervention has a catalytic effect, meaning that it has a high level of pertinence to the contiguous urban fabric and the evolving historic fabric.4 (Caferin, 2008).

In Sri Lanakan context, most of the cities were evolved historically and have contemporary urban forms without much inputs of and design. Numerous defects and problems could be seen in those cities without attempt to solve them. Intervening strategy facilitates that a critical designer can perform his or her best at a single meridian point in such a way to release the tension and to engender new energy flows within the situation, not only in terms of specific site but also with regard to future developments emanating from the site in ways which cannot be foreseen. (Framton, 2003 ,p. 76)

2.2 “Urban acupuncture” by Jaime Lerner

Jaime Lerner, the three-time former mayor of , Brazil, a city best known for its innovative approaches to , is calling for what he terms ‘hirban acupuncture” to bring revitalization and sustainability to the world’s metropolitan areas. Lerner said that tackling urban problems at appropriate “pressure points” can cause positive ripple effects throughout entire communities. Further he that even the poorest cities can boost their standards of living by using techniques like bus rapid transit (BRT), designing multiuse buildings, and encouraging residents to live closer to their workplaces. Although many cities spend decades building underground rail systems or other costly long-term projects, “Every city can improve its quality of life in 3 to 4 years,” Lerner asserted.

Lerner says it is vital that communities seek to adopt urban designs that do not separate the places residents live from where they work, play, and shop. Instead, all these elements should be

6 present in the same area, so people are not as dependent on cars to live their daily lives. Lemer also encourages greater efforts to turn chronic urban problems into innovative solutions. Curitiba, for example, converted an old landfill into the Open University for the Environment, a school that provides to citizens and policymakers at Iittle-to-no cost. “In the city, there is no frog that can’t be turned into a prince,” Lemer says.

‘So in the city, you have to work fast. Planning takes time. And I am proposing urban acupuncture. That means me, with some focal ideas to help the normal process of planning...(lame Lemer sings of the city’, 2007 March)

Jaime Lemer further asserts, according to the veiy principles of acupuncture, these lines of action must be simple, produce an immediate effect, at reasonable cost and applicable to any situation to facilitate the daily life of citizens as well as to cope with urgent needs, be it in the heart of cities or in peripheral areas. These principles express the difficulty to conceive city utopias and, in the action for the city, they look for something completely different from the past because they imply near and present perspectives. In order to better clarify the concept, Lemer explains (...) the city is hit, but of it, it benefits all the Country. Sting the park with a needle and of it benefits the whole metropolis.

2.3 Urban acupuncture as an environmentalism theory

The internet site Nation Master (n.d) quotes that Finnish professor has formulated urban acupuncture as an environmentalism theory. In his concept, he describes cities as a complex organism where the energy flows are determined by the citizen’s actions and urban development. ‘Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with the collective psyche of the city...Urban acupuncture can be applied to an existing city through art. The true in the urban context is urban acupuncture...Urban acupuncture is turning the urban compost to fruitful top-soil.’ (Casagrandre, 2009-02-09)

7 From the several manipulations of the terms of urban acupuncture Casagranade’s theory of Urban acupuncture varies from others and compromised all matters which had been talked earlier by other Authors. 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 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).

Figure 2.1: Picture illustrates the Physical appearance of a collective Psyche of a .

Source: (Casagrandre, 2009-02-09)

Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with the collective psyche of the city. The collective psyche is reflected through collective conscious which is striving towards the absolute, the real reality. The theory of the urban acupuncture celebrates the possibility of a light-weight touch with a total impact. Total is a fragment of the absolute. Through urban acupuncture the absolute finds a way to reflect in the city.

Urban acupuncture is ruining the industrial surface of the built human environment. Ruin is when man-made has become part of nature. 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.

8 As the city reflects control and strength the urban acupuncture has to be weak in order to break the machine. In its direction towards the truth the weak and weak art is the sister of theology and philosophy, but faster: weak art meets the absolute immediately; it is free from the philosophical discussion or the theological belief. Weak architecture is art. Art don't need to believe and don't need to discuss - it cannot help being itself. There is no excuse for art, art reflects the absolute.

The collective mind generates the social drama that keeps the city alive. People are ruining their build human environment by being themselves. The third generation city is the ruin of the industrial city. The third generation city is part of nature. Urban acupuncture is aiming to the third generation city.

Urban acupuncture can be applied to an existing city through art. The true environmental art in the urban context is urban acupuncture. Architecture is environmental art. Urban planning is the process of ruining the city. Weak artist and weak architect is a design-shaman interpreting what the bigger shared mind is transmitting. The complexities of the city are either working to support life or against nature. The idea of the industrial city is to be autonomous from nature. This autonomity is the source of pollution. Pollution is real, it is part of nature - city is not real. What is real is valuable: what is not real is not valuable. Urban acupuncture connects the public to the real reality through small scale interventions. Nothing is taken away and nothing heavy is added to the city organism, but the present state of being is realized as part of the process of rottening and being ruined. Ruin is not a product, it is a process. City must be compost.

2.4 A philosophy of approach

Urban acupuncture is neither a discipline, nor a project technique, but a philosophy of approach to a few territorial and societal problems. It is seen from various viewpoints as a possible answer to the requirements of the bettering of the urban environment. By nature it does not contrast with urban planning in the traditional sense, as it is the latter that governs the territory, as well as having the shared necessity of adjusting planning instruments to the times. But urban planning is a process that, even at its best, cannot produce immediate change; by its very own nature it requires extremely complex decisional processes and long time frames. Urban acupuncture, is spawned by the necessity to achieve sensitive effects in shorter time periods with respect to 9 planning, and operates principally within structured contexts. If we consider that city structures, especially in European cities, are extremely defined, the operating possibilities of planning within these consolidated environments are extremely reduced, except perhaps on some occasions offered by the demission of huge industrial sites or areas destined to outdated infrastructures. It is now common opinion that no administration can lead operations of radical territorial transformation any more, so the route to follow is tied more and more to re-enhancing the existing environment. As such, it is not by chance that the efficacy of planning instruments moves from quantity to quality, to the total number of characteristics that an urban environment must offer, both at a local level and at broader level. Environmental quality becomes an essential element in the competition between urban systems.

2.5 Urban Acupuncture create a System

In urban centres, the only possible intervention is through pointed operations, or networks of points, by trying to create a system, through small seams and interventions of substitution. The process of city regeneration passes through the recovery of those that Ignasi de Sola- Morales calls terrain vague, areas without clear boundaries, without current use, vague and of difficult understanding on the part of the citizens, that usually constitute a tear in the urban fabric. But they are also available areas, full of expectations, with strong urban memory, potentially unique, the space of the possible, of the future. In recent excerpts, the author speaks of city acupuncture through which the point which constitutes the intervention, induces an improvement which is not directly governable. According to the author, catalytic procedures on a small scale are possible in relatively short time frames, and are able to obtain the greatest impact on the environment in the immediate vicinity

2.6 Town Planning Approach

Rem Koolhaas, in turn, invokes a town planning approach that will not be based on order and omnipotence, but that will be the representation of uncertainty, it will not take care of organizing objects more or less permanently, but will irrigate territories with potential, not stable configurations, but creating fields of possibility.

10 2.7 Installation Art In an area of fluid identities, mobile lifestyle and undefined relationships, installations are island of refuge. They allow us to connect with the world through materials, providing the empirical reality that our society craves....Installation is an art of connections, which is experienced as a whole. The unity of the components is greater than sum of parts.

2.8 Acupuncture points and Meridians “Points7"waypoints7 "acupuncture points” exist in time and space. They operate relationally and reactively, and induce radiating effects with minimal gestures. Thereby, they create networks of characteristic energy levels with catalytic effects on the urban fabric. Primarily of a commercial nature, they are located in the programmatic field between production and consumption.

2.8.1 A Neural Network Model to Develop Urban Acupuncture

A self-organizing algorithm based on GNG3D model to the problem of determining those points at which specific actions must be taken.

• Case of a real city in Elche (Spain).

• This is a soft approach, which takes care of the context,

• Whose purpose is to drive the development rather than to control it. The urban acupuncture wishes to maintain this energy of the city, and use potentials and

• Renewals instead of moving things heavily and it is all about punching the proper project to the right place. Strategic points to act on can be connection points for different flows: water, transport, people.

11 STEP I - Identify the Nodes Identify each of the blocks of houses or buildings with a node in the mesh and perform a triangulation process with these nodes, obtaining a two-dimensional grid made up of planar triangles. This initial mesh has 367 vertices or nodes (houses) and 950 edges.(Fig ...)

Figure2,2: Downtown of the city (Elche, cVl A , Spain)

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’ ’ Urban acupuncture approach proposes to ; y ^ act specific projects in a selection of .• ; f'VT v.* W * P0*nts f°r transformation network in :<• / j. C[ . t : 2 the historical center of city of Elche ’>*: i S © TAasm . V, 1 - V:yM tk m i> • W:;X li' V; >V 1^1 -r. £ «' ^ Source: Springer-Verlag Berlin

>. , V Heidelberg 2010 * : r > ; q& v . .W m cl

STEP II - Identify the HOT Points (Nodes) Determine a set of positions in the urban area in which to place some basic points on which to develop actions following the model of urban acupuncture. Run the self-organizing algorithm starting from two nodes (or neurons) and stopping when the 30 nodes are created. Obtain a simplified mesh with 30 nodes (It could be determined according the context) and, which are more important points of the urban mesh.

Figur2.3: Positions of the nodes after running the self-organizing algorithm

Source: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

; STEP III - Reconstruction of the final mesh

We have a distribution of new nodes or hot points where we could implement urban acupuncture. ! It is important to note that each of these nodes represents a hub or a hot point in the network, that is, represents more than a simple node in a mesh.

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This model could be used to identify the hot points for other systems such as park network, pedestrian network and water network.

:■ 13 2.8.2 Identification of Final Acupuncture points

Figure 2.5: The way to identify the Urban Acupuncture Points

Historical Evolution System

Infrastructure system Identifying the “Acupunctural Freeway System points” using A Neutral Network Railway System Model Public Transport System Pedestrian Movement System

Multifaceted System Greenery System > Identify the “Urban meridians” Public Parks of the city Coastal Green Green Patches

Identifying the “Acupunctural points” to be needled System Public and Private Spaces Commercial and Residential Uses

Source: Author

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