Urban Acupuncture

The idea of "Urban Acupuncture" is introduced by Jaime Lerner. His idea of urban acupuncture give sparks to us, especially urban planners, architects, perhaps artists. He is one of the most influential urban leaders of our time, from being an architect, to an urbanist and then become a mayor of Brazil. His futuristic glass-tube BRT stations in Curitiba sparked a transport revolution, becoming a new symbol for the Brazilian city today. The system wasn't an instant success after the opening of the first line in 1974, however it gradually worked its way into the livelihoods of residents. Thus, he has demonstrated that such a small-scale intervention could start to improve quality of life of citizen from day to day.

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Thinking of introducing Urban Acupuncture into Malaysia, as an architect, there is a need for urgent regeneration to turned the conventional urban planning in Malaysia. Looking at what architect Jaime Lerner did,  "instead of widening avenues, he created a pedestrian mall in the city center. And rather than turning frequently flooding arroyos into concrete drainage canals, he dammed the small streams to create parks, which would close during floods. But his most memorable contribution came in his ideas for the city’s bus network."[1]

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His idea on how to cure ugly part of cities with urban acupuncture has definitely draw my attention. Buildings and public spaces in Malaysia can be turned into parks, event spaces. Clogged streets can be designated as temporary pedestrian malls, pop-up parks. Perhaps he once described a city like a family portrait, "You may not like the nose of your uncle but you don't tear up the whole family photo". As an architect, we just need to make those uglier parts of our cities more attractive and beautiful. We can't tear them apart. 

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Small but beautiful.

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Remembering that he described urban structure as a real turtle in one of his public talk, he highlighted that urban structure resembles live and work just like the structure of a turtle. However, we tend to often slice the turtle shell into half, similar to when we used to separate neighborhoods by a lot of highways. We really need to wake up and stop making our own architect's dream. What a beautiful city really needs is actually very simple, a seamless connection for community to move around in between different districts, as simple as we try not to cut a turtle into halves and let the turtle live and work in one place. So, learn from Jaime Lerner, and we can make our cities more beautiful.

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"Cities Are the Solution to Climate Change" - Jaime Lerner [2]