Miasto w mieście

Autorzy podejmują próbę przedstawienia problematyki projektowania przestrzeni zurbanizowanej pod kątem jej dostępności osobom starszyrn i niepełnosprawnym na przykładzie rniasta - "zrnarłych " -nekropolii jako odpowiednika miasta "żywych ".

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The "city of the living" -metropolis and the "city of the dead" - necropolis are two historical spatial structures coexisting within a limited area and interconnected in various aspects. They are also structures characterised by a certain degree of autonomy and their own spatial organisation, which is confirmed by numerous examples of urbanized areas. They form a single living urban organism structure of the city, built according to the ideas of social and spatial order, which should be characterised by uniformity, finiteness, consistency of connec- tions as well as accessibility to all its users, irrespective of the level of their disability. " In cities everybody is in a hurry, everybody rushes to do what they need, faster and faster. " it is a very true and accurate comment It is true not only about the world of the "living", but also about "cities of the dead" that is ne- cropolises. The cemetery is then rightly called a "city in the city", "the city of the dead" with numerous and analogous problems to these of "the city of the living". The pace of life, technological progress and development of civilisation re- sult in the growing number of disabled people. Therefore we more and more of- ten notice the needs of this social group and we make efforts to make it possible for these people to be active and independent participants of the social life. We should pay special attention to satisfying emotional or spiritual needs of every man connected with burial (right to participate in the funeral, right to visit the grave) as well as the material needs, understood as accessibility of all city areas -including necropolises -to disabled people. All actions eliminating both material° limitations (architectural and func- tional barriers) and non-material ones (attitudes) are to be a form of active reha- bilitation of the disabled people and giving them a chance for a come back to the society. In practice it means applying the knowledge of the science called "Er- gonomics", very often forgotten by architects, urban designers, cemetery man- agers, specialists in different fields and other social groups. In the opinion of town sociologists " A cemetery is always ( ...) a keystone of three social groups: those who have passed away, those who are alive and those who will be born." Thus it is a unique intergenerational relation, based on tradition and, what is very important, on the attitude of the world of the living to the world of the dead, reflecting the cultural level of the society. We must remember that the space around the man is "continually formed and changed by human activity, which creates new, important structures by building villages, towns, houses, creating landscapes" and that human activity influences the form and functions of cemeteries as counterparts of the "cities of the living".