N.Zagora, D. Šamić
Intervention methods: focus on urban acupuncture
When analysing public spaces and public life in contemporary cities, we can see that grand urban schemes by visionary politicians and urban planners have become a thing of the past. Cities can instead be regarded as complex living organisms that require efficient new strategies to pursue their issues in situ and in real-time, and to respond flexibly to the dynamic economic and political cycles of contemporary society. Many urban scholars and experts give prominence to small-scale interventions, which can generate a large-scale impact on an urban environment. This is particularly appropriate in small cities (with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants) such as Sarajevo, which has physical limitations in terms of its topography and existing urban fabric. Alongside these limitations, however, such multifaceted urban contexts extend possibilities. Previous discussions have led to the identification of urban voids as potential focal points for the regeneration of wider urban areas. The following section will present an overview and genesis of the formal, informal and collaborative methodological approaches to urban regeneration in contemporary practice. Our objective is to uncover the modes and techniques that will facilitate the reinvention of Sarajevo’s urban voids. Most urban regeneration projects target neglected, underused areas that deteriorate a city’s image and liveability, and generally result from changes to urban growth and productivity patterns (The World Bank, 2015). Depending on budget and scale, urban regeneration projects can be performed from the top down by the public sector, or from the bottom up by the community or the private sector, and can use various programmes, scopes and techniques. Some of the most successful recent projects have been based on a collaborative approach, bringing together the public, private and community sectors. 180
