Essay On Urban Acupuncture

Acupuncture as an Urban Medication

Cities have been perceived as a living organism from different urban designers, architects and planners. From Chinese medicine, Acupuncture is a treatment which stimulates specific points of the human body to relieve stress. In the same sense, “Urban Acupuncture” intends to relieve stress in cities. Casagrande, who is a Finnish Architect, says that urban acupuncture is an urban design tool where punctual interventions lead to the creation of sustainable development (Nora Prins, 2013).

“Manuel De Sola Morales, Spanish architect and designer, states that the location of the sensitive point is the first step in the strategic treatment of the urban skin” (Nora Prins, 2013). One should look deep into urban fabric and distinguish simple situations that give importance to the community and the ones that do not. They could be done in public spaces responding to the needs of the users to seek the correct intervention (Nora Prins, 2013). “The skin of the city has to be observed with the attention of

According to Jaime Lerner, who is an architect, urban planner and a politician, cities has suffered from modernist, dehumanizing urban development: vast freeways , high rise building masses , not pedestrian scale. Such as the case of the city of Beijing-China- which has lost its image of “the sea of bicycles”, “the city of people” because of high rise towers and vast highways (Lerner, 2014).

Talking about the city of Byblos-Lebanon- citizens and foreigners admire its historical and cultural richness, which is mainly found in the old center of Byblos-toward the coast, in the old souk, in the Archeological site. This is because of the highway linking the city of Beirut to Tripoli cutting Byblos into two areas the old versus the new urban extension acting as a sensory barrier for pedestrians. This leads to a necessity of a puncture in the area to create continuity in the urban