Traditions and innovations in the structure of the center of the historic city
Authors: Skoryk L. 
Published: April 2019

The article examines the main ways of resolving permanent contradictions between the historical features of the center of a large city and the modern needs of society in the process of urban modernization, taking into account the particular complexity of the problem of reconstructing their central parts. The town-planning substance of the city center, which was formed over the centuries, has outstanding architectural and historical advantages, the need to preserve and multiply them has ceased to be the subject of discussion; today it is recognized as an act of special social, cultural, aesthetic and moral significance. At the same time, intensive urban growth, the evolution of society and its needs, involves the development and transformation of the whole system of cultural and public services of the city, the highest level of which is a city center, capable of It is the center of the city that has a concentrated imagination of the unusualness, much needed for city residents, too uniform in the processes of technological progress. With undoubted merits aimed at raising the civilizational level, these processes are inseparable from the threat of erasing individual traits and various spheres of life and human activity. This fact underlies emotionally – an aesthetic phenomenon, as today is the pronounced gravitation of the inhabitants of anonymous areas of cities to the uniqueness of historical urban environment in one way or another stored in the historical centers of large urban integrating various parts of the urban structure into a holistic urban formations. The connection of times in the process of city development should ensure the continuity of the path from historical experience to the realization of existing needs and from it to the notions of the future, which gives grounds for determining promising goals already in the present reality. Ensuring the continuity of the path of historical development of the city while preserving the integrity and individuality of its image requires the development of characteristic methods of its formation that simultaneously meet modern requirements. The relationship between the categories of traditions and innovation determines continuity as the main condition for the progressive movement in the development of cultural values, and is primarily in architecture and town-building art, forming the environment of the existence of a number of generations and epochs, thereby imparting a concrete existential expression to the problem of continuity. The problems of «old and new» in the structure of the central parts of historical cities require a comprehensive solution of the main tasks:

analysis of the interdependence of the functional and planning categories of the urban center structure and the characteristic manifestations of functional planning solutions of different time periods;

to reveal the basic principles of co-position-spatial interaction of the elements of the city center system on the basis of factors affecting the character of the spatial organization of the microstructures of the center in the process of their historical development;

definitions of the main directions of the volumetric-plastic harmonization of the existing and new development on the basis of an analysis of the methods of architectonic revalorization and modern interpretation of the characteristic features of the historical architectural substance in accordance with the general informative background of the environment.