Urban water bodies as the basis for functioning of public spaces

Abstract

Recently, housing construction in cities has been carried out at a high rate. Increasingly, urban abandoned and flooded depressive spaces near water bodies (often rivers), which were previously used as industrial facilities or temporarily used, are becoming the sphere of architectural and landscape transformations. The restoration of such territories helps to improve the quality of urban space and improve its ecological properties. Correct development of territories near rivers and various water bodies has a great health-improving effect on the urban environment, improves its natural and climatic conditions. In addition, social and economic factors play an important role in this process, since such transformed territories and territories adjacent to them significantly increase investment attractiveness. This paper examines modern approaches to the development of urban public spaces, based on the formation of architectural environments that ensure the relationship of urban development with water bodies and adjacent territories. The paper notes that water bodies are not only an important component of the natural-ecological framework, but are also the basis for the framework of urban-planning natural-technogenic systems as a whole. And the creation of a continuous urban fabric is impossible without the organization of a ‘water’ line of development, provision of compositional, functional and communication interconnection of open urban and water spaces, which is actively being introduced today in architectural and urban planning practice. The paper examines the role of water bodies in the ecological system of the city, as well as in its structure as a whole. The aim of the study is to identify the features of the formation of a public urban space, to determine the patterns of its development, to identify criteria that reflect the nature, scale and features of the impact of urbanization on a water body. Some principles of revitalization of coastal areas, as well as the creation of a system of publicly accessible, compositionally expressive spaces are considered. The principles of space transformation aimed at the formation of a holistic image of the city, as well as the impact of such a spatial arrangement of urban and water bodies on the safety and quality of the urban environment are considered.