ساره منذر عبد الحمزة بني سعد

City centres face many social and environmental challenges, such as environmental pollution, narrowing or lacking green spaces, low urban quality of life and loss of vitality. These challenges have brought calls for sustainable development. The strategy of urban acupuncture has emerged as a model and approach for developing third-generation cities. It combines the principles of urban design with the traditional medical theory of acupuncture: catalytic and energy-intensive interventions in the urban fabric regulate so-called "energy flows" (environmental, social, cultural and informational) within the city. The strategy transforms the scope of acupuncture into the larger urban context, as needles refresh the whole patient’s body through the healing of parts. Our research problem is the lack of a comprehensive knowledge of the mechanisms of acupuncture theory and its benefits in the context of city centres. To address the research problem, we built a comprehensive theoretical framework for the concept of acupuncture and the levels of intervention in general. We propose an acupuncture theory for revitalizing city centres in particular, which we then test and apply in a part of the historical Rusafa Center in Baghdad City.

The research derives its significance from the importance of the subject of architectural criticism, and what it reflects on the reality of contemporary architecture and local identity in the Arab region in light of the changing political and economic ideas. From this point of view, the research problem can be summarized as: The extent of the comprehensiveness of previous studies of the relationship of bias to architectural criticism and determining its characteristics and types as a mechanism of criticism in contemporary Arab architecture. To address the research problem, the goal of the research was determined by building a theoretical framework to understand how to release critical judgments within the concept of bias, and to access the mechanisms that measure criticism in contemporary Arab architecture based on the research hypothesis that states: The intellectual features in architectural criticism are determined through a set of characteristics and concepts associated with the concept of bias.

The virtual reality of cities is the current historical period of urban progress and a kind of interconnected co-activity between innovative virtual elements, elements of the city and its urban parts according to the affected relationships of social, financial, cultural, spatial, political and local features. Where contemporary concepts of virtual reality were presented by the philosophical corps without clarifying their role comprehensively in the urban development processes of cities, so the research aimed to determine the roles of the ideas of the virtual world and the virtual city in the work of both specialists and decision makers, and the urban development processes of traditional and historical cities, where the research information methodology compares theoretical architectural and urban models to intersect with the basic concepts related to the virtual city, the research reached multi-level roles in terms of impact and degrees of complexity, which contribute to an innovative reproduction of urban development processes.

Contemporary critical proposals and works focused on investing the visual image to convey the desired meanings and connotations as purposeful messages to society. Many studies dealt with the concept of image and visual culture in architecture without focusing on these two concepts and their relationship to aesthetic taste in general and the impact of this on architectural critical practices in particular in a way that broadens the knowledge base about the critical and architectural inspirational and creative possibilities. So, the research is directed towards finding and defining the real relationship between these concepts to seek to understand and present their multiple aspects and expand their theoretical knowledge base. This research aims to define the general framework of the image culture and then focus on studying the culture of the contemporary visual image and its relationship to the aesthetic taste, which are directly related to the contemporary critical movement, and to determine the nature of the dynamic relations between them, to reach a theoretical framework that represents the foundations and rules affecting the enrichment of aesthetic taste and enriching its messages by clarifying the elements of the image, its expressive and aesthetic value, and how to read it, in addition, to clarify the extent to which the aesthetic taste of society is affected by the components of the architectural image, and finding general frameworks for the role of the image in enriching the critical practice in the context of society, with presenting the conclusions and recommendations.

The centers of cities and historical quarter are exposed to a severe threat to the values of the physical and legal urban environment as a result of the value deterioration and the emergence, emergence and spread of new values on the intellectual and urban context, which generates the loss of the urban environment for its spatio-temporal continuity, flexibility, adaptation and continuity, and thus urban obsolescence, Hence the problem of the research in “the lack of comprehensiveness of studies on the phenomenon of urban obsolescence and its impact on the decline in the values of the quality of the built environment in historical quarters”, and accordingly the goal of the research was determined in “building a theoretical framework for the phenomenon of urban obsolescence and exploring the impact of this phenomenon on the quality of the built environment of historical quarters”, The research assumes the multiplicity and varying levels of urban obsolescence in the historical quarters, which affects the quality of the assets of these quarters. The research aims to provide this knowledge by adopting the descriptive analytical approach for a number of urban studies to reach the identification of the main vocabulary related to the phenomenon of urban obsolescence and to extract the most important definitions and causes. This is reflected in the quality levels of urban assets in them.

The sacred sites considered as explicit spiritual and architectural symbols, enhance the memory of what society holds of history, culture and the nature of his relationship with the sacred, which contribute to enhancing the privacy of the city through what is achieved from the meanings interact with human directly affect the city properties of architectural and urban features on different material and spiritual level. Basically, the research began by searching about the sacred concept in various fields down to discuss studies and proposals that dealwith the holy sites and the content of the types and characteristics and spiritual values, so the research set his field in :( the importance of the holy sites and their effect on the city).obviously, each city hasmany factors affecting on its diverse spiritual and material values which are shows clearly inthe Particularity of the City, so the research went to study the city's particularity and put the research problem as represented by: (there is a lack of a clear vision in the impact of the holy sites on the particularity of the city), and then move on to see the analyzing ofsome distinguished citieswhich have a lot of sacred sites.Where the search addressed the research problem to the main hypothesis represented as: (influence of the holy sites on the particularity of the city shows through physical dimension). For the purpose of verifying the validity of the assumptions a group of holy sites in the holy city of Najaf that carry spiritual properties were selected and it has been tested by a questionnaire that was distributed to the intentional samples. The research found that the holy sites and have a role in the p​a​r​t​i​c​u​l​a​r​i​t​y​