General Characteristic of the Dissertation Topicality of the problem At the beginning of the 21st century when cities are taking over important geopolitical power leverages from states, new spaces for economic competition are being created. In this way not only new accesses to local cultural resources are opened, but possibilities to use them at a global level are increasing as well. What is the importance of cultural functions here? They determine that transnational companies with a progressive and creative thinking refuse cheaper workforce, significantly lower prices for real estate and choose the environment that is more expensive, however, more tolerant. Cities that are not able to offer an adequate variety of services, entertainments and comfort for this new social class sign their death sentence and the competition is won by locations which attract creative and talented people. Cities that are able to attract progressive, modern-technology oriented industries ensure such quality of institutional environment, without which a modern post-industrial society cannot be imagined. Institutional environment also conditions the quality of social and physical environment, meanwhile its improvement is described as the key objective of the policy of post-industrial urban culture. Hence, at strategic cultural policy planning and management level in the Western Europe as well as North America, Australia and other countries a solution of urban issues is emphasised by employing cultural functions encompassing three links of the city’s spatial structure – physical, social and institutional. The planning of cultural functions does not mean only the nurturance of old towns or the setting up of traditional cultural facilities (theatres, museums, libraries). In addition to all of it, cultural functions are also directed to the preservation and development of a certain cultural infrastructure – cafes, art galleries, walkways, parks and squares – as well as to the creation of new niches for economic activities. In other words, to a complex of factors, the dissemination field of which is the city’s spatial structure and the result – urban realm, the area aimed at inspiring internal needs of citizens. Aim and tasks of the work For at least four decades urban planners and culturologists have been examining new conditions for urban development, which Fredric Jameson called the cultural turn. This phenomenon is related not only to physical changes in the urban structure, but to changes in the spatial organisation as well. In the space of the cultural turn a cultural gap between the West and the East is disappearing, network society emerging, creative economy formed. Urban development processes lay in the epicentre of this phenomenon, especially those that are based on various regeneration programmes, which pay great attention to the formation of public spaces, development of creative industries, security and use of recreational resources and cultural heritage. However, experiences of the USA and other countries of Western Europe or post-soviet countries are rather different in this field. Even though the post-soviet experience may be considered to be a certain identity of Lithuanian urban planning, methodological principles of this work are based on the Western urban tradition. The main objective of the work is: To assess the importance of cultural functions for the city’s spatial structure (A) and urban development processes (B). The tasks set for the achievement of the objective are as follows: * To formulate and methodologically reason a conception of cultural functions taking into account new conditions of urban development; * To identify a system of nominal values and, given it, to determine sectors of the city’s cultural potential; * To examine the most typical forms of expression of cultural functions and development examples abroad and to present concrete models that could be applied in the practice of urban planning in Lithuania. * To define principles of the development of cultural functions in the city’s spatial structure, formulate measurements of the urban-cultural framework. Research object In a broad sense, the work analyses physical, institutional and social environment with spatial character, displaying itself as a whole of artefacts possessing a certain cultural code, which covers the environment created by the humanity as well as the natural environment transformed (culturalised) by it. In an objective sense, the research object of the dissertation is cultural functions of Lithuanian and foreign cities and types of their operation and expression in the city’s spatial structure. That is: * Systems of the city’s spatial structure or their individual elements, which were able to preserve their features during the development period; * Elements of the city’s spatial structure, which can serve as a basis for the recreation of a whole of microstructure (of historical suburb, urban complex, etc.) and which emerged as power symbols of certain historical (period, style) or social (religious, ethnical or other society’s) cultural phenomena or survived as certain representations of those systems; * The elements or their system somehow related to the third basic sphere of social time encompassing creative work, relaxation and partially entertainments. Methodology of research The work used a complex system of methods, the basis of which consists of two links of methodical principles: traditional and interdisciplinary. The first link includes empirical, statistical, logical and comparative methods of research; the second one – monadological and morphotectonical principles formulated and reasoned by the author of the work. * Empirical principle is based on a consistent field observation of cities being carried out since the winter of 1996. The experience accumulated by the author within 12 years proved to be beneficial for the dissertation: the author has visited more than 130 cities (the size of which exceeds the population of 50 thousand with little exceptions), 33 countries, 3 continents. The foundation of the empirical principle is a field research of Cultural potential of Vilnius City (2007). It is supplemented by the Analysis of a morphological link of the upper terrace of Vilnius Naujamiestis and Old town (2006) and the Research of the urban structure of the nucleus of Klaipėda City (1999, 2007). * The empirical researches were supplemented by the information received by the statistical principle. This principle was applied when collecting data on companies of cultural industries of cities in different countries, size of the working sector, cultural objects, and trends of their turnover. When collecting this information, studies, researches, databases accessible via the Internet of countries of the Western Europe and USA were employed. * The comparative principle helped to identify general trends in the development of cultural functions, their dependence on the economic situation in the country as well as institutional and social environment. When comparing various characteristics of cultural objects, it was attempted to take into consideration cities’ arrangement and cultural context. * The logical principle is a backbone of traditional methodical principles, i.e. of the first methodical link of the work. Given it, a link of interdisciplinary methodical principles was also formulated and principles composing it were distinguished: * The basis of the monadological principle is the evaluation of the urban structure by divisibility / integrity criteria, which relate G. W. Leibniz’s synthetic conception of monads and Manuel Castells’s social conception of timeless time. Integrity is described inductively – moving from a fragment to the whole, meanwhile divisibility is identified by moving from the whole to a fragment, i.e. deductively; * The morphotectonical principle is based on a base of urban morphostructure. The latter is seen as a geographical tectonic system with a spatial character identified by using morphotectonical complexes and urbantectonical fractures. This work is characterised by the interdisciplinary approach. It is another feature of a period of the cultural turn, without which the key fields of modern science as well as urban planning cannot go. Another important aspect of the work is related to the author’s personal experience: it was almost impossible to ignore 16 years of working in different areas of creative industries (architecture, design, publishing, literature, and music). Scientific novelty A conception of novelty is used complementary in the dissertation – concepts of old and new are used in the text as the concepts complementing each other. As far back as the 1960s Jane Jacobs stated that “new requires old”, meanwhile the apologist of creative economy Richard Florida paraphrased and applied this idea for the later period: “new ideas require old buildings”. When analysing the dissemination area of cultural functions, several things cannot be left unnoticed: the economic logic of postfordism is impossible without the commodification of the past (displaying itself in different projections – communist, medieval, punk culture, etc.), which is turning into a permanent accumulative capital “here and now” consisting of a massive use of cultural codes, signs and phenomena. On the other hand, the idea of the cultural turn itself gives a quantitative sense to the establishment of new conditions for urban development. In such context this work is new as: * A synthesis of a functionalist planning tradition adapted to planned economy and planning school of the Western urban culture adjusted under the conditions of market economy; * A filling of a vacuum in Lithuanian experience in urban cultural planning; * The introduction of new conceptions (urbantectonical fractures, morphotectonical complexes) into Lithuanian urban discourse. The importance of the first aspect lays in