AESTHETICS OF URBAN SPACE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN IN A HISTORIC CITY

The article deals with the correlation of two approaches to the problem of aesthetics of the city: ontology and phenomenology of its space and design of urban environment. These approaches differ in content and tasks, which is especially significant in relation to cities with historical and cultural destiny. The aesthetic image of the city has an ontological basis in the architectural and landscape structure of space, as well as the axiological basis of the city's belonging to the process of its historical and cultural development. The tasks of the environmental and design approaches are determined by the actual creative purposefulness of aesthetic co-organization of all aspects of the environment surrounding a person. One of the main tasks of urban design is to make the process of urbanization a sustainable project, allowing professional implementation of the unity of functional and aesthetic qualities of the urban environment in the daily public and private life of man. The main difference between the described approaches is that the first one is reflexive and retroactive, while the second one is actual and creative-transformative. The task of the first one is to preserve and reveal the potentials of perception of the historically formed architectural and landscape image of the city. The second is aimed at overcoming the historical and psychological distance between history and modernity, culture and everyday life. The article compares different positions of theoretical strategies and practical tactics of treating the aesthetics of the city, critically evaluates the substitution of the content of the spatial approach by the environmental one, and identifies the directions of their productive interaction.