Title: Modernization of Public Spaces in Lithuanian Cities
Abstract: published sources as statistical reports of Lithuanian Soviet Republic from 1985 till 1989, press publications in professional and popular journasl and newspapers as "Statyba ir architektūra", "Vakarinės naujienos", "Kauno tiesa", "Tiesa", etc.; a big number of data for analysis of usage of public spaces in both visual and textual form as official Soviet time photos from private collections and state archives, informal photos made by professionals but unpublished because of Soviet censorship, informal photos made by private people; etc.The second research stage and chapter analyses transformations of public spaces in post-soviet period with the focus on interaction and confrontation between modernistic urbanism and traditional urbanism while looking at it from the perspective of urban planning and design practice supported by theoretical insights of Krier, Choya, Mumford, Gooldhorn, Vanagas and others.The third chapter presents the results of investigation of the uses and users of public spaces based on the visual information collected during the firsts stage of investigation and some additional information on public space usage in post-soviet time from world wide web and social networks.The presented research employs content analysis methodology, modified according to sociotop method, which is effectively used by urban planners for mapping of informal usage of public spaces.The analysis was conducted at three time sections: 1939, 1990 and 2016.Data on Kaunas was mapped using GIS technologies and, in this way, created a background for further steps of the research.The fourth chapter is based on contemporary sociological approach and, while employing the above mentioned sociotope method, makes indepth analysis of the everyday space usage in three smaller areas of Kaunas -two modernistic microrayons' and one area in Kaunas downtown, which was affected significantly by land property cancellation during the Soviet era and some Soviet modernistic period developments inside traditional urban blocks.The results give a fuller view on public space usage in the areas where collected pictures presented not enough data.Chapter five represents a view on transformations of urban space as social-spatial network while using Space Syntax angular segment analysis approach and combining syntactic models with the results of content analysis and sociotope mapping in GIS environment.The novelty of this part is grounded by a quite successful attempt to address multimodality of the investigated urban networks which is extremely actual for the investigated period: the first public transport lines appeared before WW2, and they were significantly expanded till 1990 and personal car usage increased intensity since 1960.Additional validation of the syntactic models was made with independent data on allocation of various enterprises, which indirectly are related to street culture as well, and artificial intelligence program.The sixth chapter focus on some weak points of segment angular space syntax analysis -an attempt to look at a city form from a perspective of its cognition is made there.The original normalized model of cityscape social-spatial readability was created for this purpose.It allowed to look at the modernistic urbanism in a Brigita Tranavičiūtė 1 Historical Review of Modernization of Three Lithuanian Cities in 1918-1990 1.1 Urban Development of Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda in The Interwar Period (1918-1940)The process of urban development of Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda in the interwar period was different in each of these towns due to distinct political, economic and cultural situations, which resulted in unique nature of each process and its consequences for Lithuanian history.On 16 February 1918, the state of Lithuania was restored.However, Lithuania soon lost its capital Vilnius, and from 1919 Kaunas became, temporarily -as believed at that time, a new Lithuanian capital.Klaipėda was returned to Lithuania after the Klaipėda revolt of 1923.As a matter of fact, the situation in the three cities had significantly evolved on the eve of II World War.In March 1939, Lithuania lost Klaipėda, whereas after signing the Soviet -Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty concluded between the Soviet Union and Lithuania on 10 October 1939, Lithuania acquired a portion of Vilnius Region including Lithuania's historical capital Vilnius, but in exchange was forced to admit Soviet military troops into its territory.1Different prehistoric times of each of the three cities made the interwar historic research follow different paths; however, the biggest part of the research concentrates on historic interwar Kaunas and its modernism architecture.The research of modernism architecture in the interwar Kaunas show the development of the architectural and urban tendencies, and problems in evaluating architectural heritage, which is most commonly analysed questions by art historians.In this research the interwar architecture modernism is usually treated as a remarkable phenomenon characterised by features common to modernism architecture and unique national traits.One of the most comprehensive researches of the interwar modernism architecture in Lithuania was published by a group of authors in a monograph "Lithuanian interwar architectural heritage: harmony of material and 8