The subject of the present doctoral dissertation is urban space, composed of interconnected buildings and open spaces, addressing the demands and needs of the inhabitants – citizens living, working, and spending their leisure time in the area. The dissertation is focused on urban planning processes – based on the concept of sustainable development – creating urban spaces (by building, demolishing, extending, densifying, renovating, recycling). It researches a new approach to the urban planning process in the form of urban recycling as the most appropriate cyclical process for adapting urban spaces to new technologies, promoting participation, and mitigating urban sprawl through recycling of existing buildings and spaces. The present text introduces and confirms the hypothesis that modern urbanization should be re-directed towards recycling of existing urban space with the emphasis on intertwined subjects of urban density, mobility and accessibility, mixed uses and green areas on the human scale. The recycling model of urban planning, and clearly defined relationships between density, mobility and accessibility, mixed uses and green areas, allow for a comprehensive and continuously flexible management of spatial development processes. Urban recycling is a new model of urban planning based on sustainable principles, especially conservation of natural resources such as natural environment and materials, and recyling of urban space with its areas and surrounding buildings. Especially the latter has, in the course of research and evaluation of the case study of Murska Sobota, proven to be a rather neglected subject whose further development could offer a new approach to urban planning.
|