a project from Marco Casagrande:
Journal of Urban Technology, Special Issue: Urban Acupuncture – Routledge
“Finnish architect Marco Casagrande developed Urban Acupuncture as an urban environmentalism theory during work with an illegal settlement in Taipei, Taiwan, named Treasure Hill. Casagrande noted that the area was full of human energy, but through government interventions, the energy had been turned negative and had to be redirected towards construction: “like turning over the compost that has been the smelly part of the farm just to become the most fertile top soil. I was careful to manipulate these hidden energy flows and the small elements that I introduced to Treasure Hill can be compared to the needles in acupuncture. I call this urban acupuncture.”
More about the project here: http://thirdgenerationcity.pbworks.com/f/urban% 20acupuncture.pdf.
Full article here: Social Media Use as Urban Acupuncture for Empowering Socially Challenged Communities
By Jörn Messeter
This paper explores potential roles of social media in community empower- ment, based on a study of a non-profit NGO in a socially challenged suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. In particular, it focuses on the relation between online and offline be- havior, and how the use of social media can counteract negative influences in the commu- nity, e.g., drug abuse and gangsterism. Interviews with staff and participants reveal that using social media in a socially challenged community results in different social media use and different connections between online and offline activities than earlier social-media research reported.. These differences may inform design and social innovation for disrup- tive interaction to address negative influences, such as drugs and gangsterism, in socially challenged communities.