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The Image of the City
The classic work on the evaluation of city form.
What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion -- imageability -- and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion -- imageability -- and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
About the author
Kevin Lynch
16 books86 followersKevin Andrew Lynch was an American urban planner and author. His most influential books include The Image of the City (1960) and What Time is This Place? (1972).
Lynch studied at Yale University, Taliesin (studio) under Frank Lloyd Wright, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and received a Bachelor's degree in city planning from MIT in 1947.[1] He worked in Greensboro, NC as an urban planner but was recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin. He began lecturing at MIT the following year, became an assistant professor in 1949, was tenured as an associate professor in 1955, and became a full professor in 1963.
Lynch provided seminal contributions to the field of city planning through empirical research on how individuals perceive and navigate the urban landscape. His books explore the presence of time and history in the urban environment, how urban environments affect children, and how to harness human perception of the physical form of cities and regions as the conceptual basis for good urban design.
Parallel to his academic work, Lynch practiced planning and urban design in partnership with Stephen Carr, with whom he founded Carr Lynch Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lynch died at his summer home in Martha's Vineyard in 1984.
Lynch studied at Yale University, Taliesin (studio) under Frank Lloyd Wright, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and received a Bachelor's degree in city planning from MIT in 1947.[1] He worked in Greensboro, NC as an urban planner but was recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin. He began lecturing at MIT the following year, became an assistant professor in 1949, was tenured as an associate professor in 1955, and became a full professor in 1963.
Lynch provided seminal contributions to the field of city planning through empirical research on how individuals perceive and navigate the urban landscape. His books explore the presence of time and history in the urban environment, how urban environments affect children, and how to harness human perception of the physical form of cities and regions as the conceptual basis for good urban design.
Parallel to his academic work, Lynch practiced planning and urban design in partnership with Stephen Carr, with whom he founded Carr Lynch Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lynch died at his summer home in Martha's Vineyard in 1984.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews
August 16, 2023
I have always been perplexed, given our fine architectural and design schools, by the pervasive dullness and banality of urban America. In Lynch I've discovered a like-minded friend: "Not one American city larger than a village is of consistently fine quality, although a few towns have some pleasant fragments. It is hardly surprising, then, that most Americans have little idea of what it can mean to live in such an environment.... they are hardly aware of the potential value of harmonious surroundings, a world which they may have briefly glimpsed only as tourists or as escaped vacationers. They can have little sense of what a setting can mean in terms of daily delight, or as a continuous anchor for their lives, or as an extension of the meaningfulness and richness of the world." Unfortunately, Lynch's call for reforming the visual quality of the American urban environment -- the book was published in 1960 -- has fallen on deaf ears. The mind-numbing and soul-crushing corporation rules the roost; profit trumps livability; and the self-satisfied Orwellian world of the mid-level manager (drive-thru Starbucks twice daily!) dominates ideas about beauty. Why do people seek virtual communities and fake 'friends' online? Because we have disordered or destroyed the legible environment of a city designed for humans. This should probably come as no surprise in a society that values expediency over thoughtful design, cheap tat over quality (one reason all of our garments are now made in China!), and 'business administration' over the Humanities.
My personal rant aside, Lynch analyzes the urban landscape according to identity, structure, and meaning and argues for a reshaping of our cities. His arguments are lucid and still relevant - perhaps even more so considering the trend, especially among young professionals, of returning to the city for a more enriched life. This book is about how humans interact with their urban landscape, and how a totality of structures creates meaning. It is more about urban design than architecture per se. The American cities, Boston, Jersey City, and LA serve as case studies. If only the designers of Boston City Hall would have listened to what Lynch had to say here. (for a great ripping of that building, check out James Kunstler's TED talk about how bad Bad Architecture destroys the public fabric: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard...)
My personal rant aside, Lynch analyzes the urban landscape according to identity, structure, and meaning and argues for a reshaping of our cities. His arguments are lucid and still relevant - perhaps even more so considering the trend, especially among young professionals, of returning to the city for a more enriched life. This book is about how humans interact with their urban landscape, and how a totality of structures creates meaning. It is more about urban design than architecture per se. The American cities, Boston, Jersey City, and LA serve as case studies. If only the designers of Boston City Hall would have listened to what Lynch had to say here. (for a great ripping of that building, check out James Kunstler's TED talk about how bad Bad Architecture destroys the public fabric: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard...)
April 20, 2011
Image of the City is a seminal book to the field of urban design. In it, Lynch introduces a framework for analyzing the city in terms of five inter-related components: paths, landmarks, nodes, edges, and districts.
Lynch's study, involving Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles, although conclusive, is fairly open-ended and its findings result from open-ended field research as well as interviews.
Urban designers and environmental graphic designers today use Lynch's strategies when devising wayfinding systems or making sense of places. Gygory Kepes was involved in this book as well.
It includes a number of very simple and effective small diagrams which perfectly demonstrate the concept discussed. It also includes the maps of Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles derived from research and developed thought the framework.
The book does suffer from a cloak of tediousness, which at times makes it a monotonous read, but the several pages which discuss these key concepts are very much worth the trouble.
Lynch's study, involving Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles, although conclusive, is fairly open-ended and its findings result from open-ended field research as well as interviews.
Urban designers and environmental graphic designers today use Lynch's strategies when devising wayfinding systems or making sense of places. Gygory Kepes was involved in this book as well.
It includes a number of very simple and effective small diagrams which perfectly demonstrate the concept discussed. It also includes the maps of Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles derived from research and developed thought the framework.
The book does suffer from a cloak of tediousness, which at times makes it a monotonous read, but the several pages which discuss these key concepts are very much worth the trouble.
November 6, 2016
Kevin Lynch -- he's been on my list of folks to read forever on architecture and cities and space, and with reason as The Image of the City is rather brilliant. He writes:
I love this nod to the overwhelming -- and mostly pleasurable -- nature of the city, the ways it works in both space and time, and like Lofland, Whyte, Cullen, Gehl and others, he is clearly writing as someone with an appreciation for city life. It is a life that is in many ways collectively constructed:
In The Image of the City, Lynch's focus is primarily looking at what he calls the 'legibility' of the cityscape -- how we read cities and how understanding that can help us (re)build better cities. Why is legibility key?
I love this quote even more...
This is not to go against the many authors who write about the unknown, Lynch emphasises that this not to deny the value of labyrinth or surprise, but under two larger conditions -- where there is no danger of losing basic
Another important qualification, the power of human beings to shape the urban environment:
So to understand how this all works, he book tries to get at the ways people understand and read cities, the
I love maps, and so found this a fascinating way to examine people's relationships to the urban form, splitting it into useful divisions to be examined:
Above all in understanding legibility is this:
Venice again, but I think this is definitely how a city works best, and this imageablity is the center of his study of Boston, LA and Jersey City. What follows is a really interesting way of mapping out perceptions of the city through surveys and interviews. The maps are brilliant:
To read more...
Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. City design is therefore a temporal art... At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surrounding, the sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences. (1)
I love this nod to the overwhelming -- and mostly pleasurable -- nature of the city, the ways it works in both space and time, and like Lofland, Whyte, Cullen, Gehl and others, he is clearly writing as someone with an appreciation for city life. It is a life that is in many ways collectively constructed:
Not only is the city an object which is perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of widely diverse class and character, but it is the product of many builders who are consonantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own... No wonder, then, that the art of shaping cities is an art quite separate from architecture or music or literature. (2)
In The Image of the City, Lynch's focus is primarily looking at what he calls the 'legibility' of the cityscape -- how we read cities and how understanding that can help us (re)build better cities. Why is legibility key?
A good environmental image gives its possessor an important sense of emotional security. He can establish an harmonious relationships between himself and the outside world...(4)
I love this quote even more...
a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience. Although life is far from impossible in the visual chaos of the modern city, the same daily action could take on new meaning if carried out in a more vivid setting. (5)
This is not to go against the many authors who write about the unknown, Lynch emphasises that this not to deny the value of labyrinth or surprise, but under two larger conditions -- where there is no danger of losing basic
orientation, of never coming out. The surprise must occur in an over-all framework; the confusions must be small regions in a visible whole.... Complete chaos without hint of connection is never pleasurable. (6)
Another important qualification, the power of human beings to shape the urban environment:
The observer himself should play an active role in perceiving the world and have a creative part in developing his image. He should have the power to change that image to fit changing needs... what we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuous further development. (6)
So to understand how this all works, he book tries to get at the ways people understand and read cities, the
'public images,' the common mental pictures carried around by large numbers of a city's inhabitants... (7)
I love maps, and so found this a fascinating way to examine people's relationships to the urban form, splitting it into useful divisions to be examined:
The mental maps that are shared of streets and landmarks. These are analyzed in terms of identity (its recognition as a separable entity), structure (the spatial or pattern relation of the object to the observer and other objects) and meaning (for the observer, whether practical or emotional). (8)
Above all in understanding legibility is this:
imageability: that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. It is that shape, color, or arrangement which facilitates the making of vividly identified, powerfully structured, highly useful mental images of the environment. (9)
A highly imageable (apparent, legible, or visible) city in this peculiar sense would seem well formed, distinct, remarkable; it would invite the eye and the ear to greater attention and participation. The sensuous grasp upon such surroundings would not merely be simplified, but also extended and deepened. Such a city would be one that could be apprehended over time as a pattern of high continuity with many distinctive parts clearly interconnected. The perceptive and familiar observer could absorb new sensuous impacts without disruption in his basic image, and each new impact would touch upon many previous elements. He would be well oriented, and he could move easily. He would be highly aware of his environment. The city of Venice might be an example of such a highly imageable environment. (10)
Venice again, but I think this is definitely how a city works best, and this imageablity is the center of his study of Boston, LA and Jersey City. What follows is a really interesting way of mapping out perceptions of the city through surveys and interviews. The maps are brilliant:
To read more...
June 13, 2011
The Image of the City by Kevin lynch was first released in 1960 and is a core text for anyone with an interest in Town Planning, Urban Design or the like. Lynch offers a study that considers the way in which cities are perceived and introduces a methodology for research into the field. The correct use of technical terms and repeated examples of the general language associated with the study of urban design is of great use to its intended audience.
In the opening chapters, the author introduces technical detail, the five elements of the urban image are distinguished, and their qualities and interrelations discussed at length. He states how “the five elements - path, edge, district, node and landmark - must be considered simply as convenient empirical categories, within and around which it has been possible to group a mass of information. To the extent that they are useful, they will act as building blocks for the designer.”
Next, the reader is offered three case studies, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles, for each in turn, Lynch applies his techniques. Appropriate diagrams to display how the five elements are a) perceived by the public and b) accurately mapped, are presented for comparison.
In parts I got a bit bogged with the detail. Not being familiar with the cities, I found myself skimming some of the results pages as he lists the names of many individual roads, bridges, suburbs etc it was all a bit abstract without a big map of the city to hand but the overriding points being made were of interest.
This book is peppered with thoughtful insights into the different ways one can view the city, for example “The function of a good visual environment may not be simply to facilitate routine trips, nor to support meanings and feelings already possessed. Quite as important may be its role as a guide and stimulus for new exploration. In a complex society, there are many interrelations to be mastered. In a democracy, we deplore isolation, extol individual development, hope for ever widening communication between groups. If an environment has a strong visible framework and highly characteristic parts, then exploration of new areas is both easier and more inviting. If strategic links in communication (such as museums and libraries or meeting places) are clearly set forth, then those who might otherwise neglect them may be tempted to enter.”
Overall I enjoyed re-reading this book in depth but had to take it in small chunks to keep the concentration going. Coming at it a few years after studying the topic I have been reminded of how interesting some of the wider questions and challenges are. At one point Lynch concludes that “We need an environment which is not simply well organised, but poetic and symbolic as well. It should speak of the individuals and their complex society, of their aspirations and their historical tradition, of the natural setting and of the complicated functions and movements of the city world.”
...food for thought indeed.
In the opening chapters, the author introduces technical detail, the five elements of the urban image are distinguished, and their qualities and interrelations discussed at length. He states how “the five elements - path, edge, district, node and landmark - must be considered simply as convenient empirical categories, within and around which it has been possible to group a mass of information. To the extent that they are useful, they will act as building blocks for the designer.”
Next, the reader is offered three case studies, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles, for each in turn, Lynch applies his techniques. Appropriate diagrams to display how the five elements are a) perceived by the public and b) accurately mapped, are presented for comparison.
In parts I got a bit bogged with the detail. Not being familiar with the cities, I found myself skimming some of the results pages as he lists the names of many individual roads, bridges, suburbs etc it was all a bit abstract without a big map of the city to hand but the overriding points being made were of interest.
This book is peppered with thoughtful insights into the different ways one can view the city, for example “The function of a good visual environment may not be simply to facilitate routine trips, nor to support meanings and feelings already possessed. Quite as important may be its role as a guide and stimulus for new exploration. In a complex society, there are many interrelations to be mastered. In a democracy, we deplore isolation, extol individual development, hope for ever widening communication between groups. If an environment has a strong visible framework and highly characteristic parts, then exploration of new areas is both easier and more inviting. If strategic links in communication (such as museums and libraries or meeting places) are clearly set forth, then those who might otherwise neglect them may be tempted to enter.”
Overall I enjoyed re-reading this book in depth but had to take it in small chunks to keep the concentration going. Coming at it a few years after studying the topic I have been reminded of how interesting some of the wider questions and challenges are. At one point Lynch concludes that “We need an environment which is not simply well organised, but poetic and symbolic as well. It should speak of the individuals and their complex society, of their aspirations and their historical tradition, of the natural setting and of the complicated functions and movements of the city world.”
...food for thought indeed.
July 26, 2017
This is a really intriguing project, particularly as it was published almost 60 years ago, in 1960. I can't speak for Jersey City or LA, the other two cities examined, but Boston has changed dramatically in some ways, but stayed remarkably the same in others. Interesting to learn Copley Square was in 1960 already a marriage of the new (skyscrapers like John Hancock) and the old (central library, the church, etc.). And that the Christian Science building was, as now, distinctive for being an incredibly clean plaza in a grungy, smudged old city. On the other hand, Jordan-Filene is now called something else, and Scolley Square, once a hugely identifiable Boston area, was totally razed and now is wiped off the map entirely. Also, the pictures of Boston lol. It looks like a suburb in 1960.
Generally this book just presents a really cool way of thinking about the urban environment. How we interact with our home cities, how we think of them and identify them, how their familiarity and distinctiveness (or lack thereof) emotionally affects us. The author interviewed residents from each of the three cities, asked them to describe their concept of their city, had them draw maps with landmarks, roads, intersections, etc. that were distinctive in their city, then analyzed the results to find some cool results- which areas were fuzzy and what features about them made them vanish in the hive mind's urban self-concept.
Like the fact that, to Bostonians, many of the landmarks are bottomless. TRUE. I have no idea what Faneuil Hall looks like at its base, but I know perfectly well how it looks in the skyline. Many of Boston's buildings have this "floating quality" to me as well. They are our castles in the sky.
Highly recommend for anyone who has lived in Boston, Jersey City, or LA, or for people curious about urban planning ideas, or anyone who enjoys thinking about the way we affect our environment and it affects us right back.
Generally this book just presents a really cool way of thinking about the urban environment. How we interact with our home cities, how we think of them and identify them, how their familiarity and distinctiveness (or lack thereof) emotionally affects us. The author interviewed residents from each of the three cities, asked them to describe their concept of their city, had them draw maps with landmarks, roads, intersections, etc. that were distinctive in their city, then analyzed the results to find some cool results- which areas were fuzzy and what features about them made them vanish in the hive mind's urban self-concept.
Like the fact that, to Bostonians, many of the landmarks are bottomless. TRUE. I have no idea what Faneuil Hall looks like at its base, but I know perfectly well how it looks in the skyline. Many of Boston's buildings have this "floating quality" to me as well. They are our castles in the sky.
Highly recommend for anyone who has lived in Boston, Jersey City, or LA, or for people curious about urban planning ideas, or anyone who enjoys thinking about the way we affect our environment and it affects us right back.
September 21, 2016
If you want to frame a shed, you do not need to spend weeks hand-hewing lumber out of an oak from your backyard. You can, but you're probably better off getting lumber from the local lumber yard.
The Image of the City deals primarily with the idea and creation of mental maps, which was probably a novel idea in 1960. And although it's regarded as a fundamental and influential text in urban planning, this was not a worthwhile read for me.
The type and the style, although fine for the time, didn't work for me. Sure thee can readeth Middle English if 't be true thee very much wanteth to,but yond gen'rally wastes too much time if you are simply looking for information. This is written in an overly-formal, 1950s academic style which is downright painful to translate most of the time, and it's set in a type is so unusually small that it looks like a mass market paperback was printed in the middle of a full sized page. When combined, these two factors were literally nap-inducing.
The biggest problem with the book is that to be of any use, it requires a working knowledge of pre-Big Dig Boston. As someone who can still somewhat mentally traverse some of the areas that have long since been demolished, the effort outweighed the benefit.
These were probably amazing ideas in their time, but you're better off reading something else. These ideas will show up in other urban planning books, and they'll be more easily digestible. You don't need to spend the day hand-hewing wooden pegs when nail guns are readily available. Well, maybe someone doest, but not thee.
The Image of the City deals primarily with the idea and creation of mental maps, which was probably a novel idea in 1960. And although it's regarded as a fundamental and influential text in urban planning, this was not a worthwhile read for me.
The type and the style, although fine for the time, didn't work for me. Sure thee can readeth Middle English if 't be true thee very much wanteth to,but yond gen'rally wastes too much time if you are simply looking for information. This is written in an overly-formal, 1950s academic style which is downright painful to translate most of the time, and it's set in a type is so unusually small that it looks like a mass market paperback was printed in the middle of a full sized page. When combined, these two factors were literally nap-inducing.
The biggest problem with the book is that to be of any use, it requires a working knowledge of pre-Big Dig Boston. As someone who can still somewhat mentally traverse some of the areas that have long since been demolished, the effort outweighed the benefit.
These were probably amazing ideas in their time, but you're better off reading something else. These ideas will show up in other urban planning books, and they'll be more easily digestible. You don't need to spend the day hand-hewing wooden pegs when nail guns are readily available. Well, maybe someone doest, but not thee.
October 20, 2020
Admittedly, this book got a bit more technical than a book like that of Jane Jacobs, although both have practical implications for city planning and urban studies. Using the examples of Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles (with some Manhattan and Chicago interspersed), the author explores how various physical design aspects create memorable cities. This is given based on a context that cities are constantly changing and evolving, and also the question is raised (and briefly discussed) as to how this should apply to broader, metropolitan areas.
Overall, an interesting and thought provoking read, albeit dense for somebody with no formal urban planning background.
Overall, an interesting and thought provoking read, albeit dense for somebody with no formal urban planning background.
April 9, 2012
The author makes a case for the image of the city (how it looks), is it relevant, and does it play a part in one's perception and way-finding abilities. Yes it does matter so that parts of a city can be related to the whole of the city, so that users can easily and happily find their way, and so that the quality of life in cities can be improved. I really like the author's approach to diagramming each city. I only wish I would have read this as a first year architecture student instead of a recent graduate.
February 4, 2009
This is considered the bible of urban design texts, but frankly I think it is lacking. Lynch examines various aspects of cities - nodes, paths, edges, etc - drawing upon extensive research he performed in the 1950s. If you haven't been to the places he writes about, Boston, Jersey City, San Fran, it can be difficult to fully understand what he is referring to. Surely someone could produce an updated version of this to reflect the design challenges of today's cities.
August 13, 2009
Even though it is an old text (1960), and the most 'academic' in its scope, I found this book to be the more interesting of the set. Maybe because it answered some of the issues I have been preoccupied with, regarding the urban reality of Athens. The concepts of legibility and the value of empiricism over theory, in talking about a city & its architecture helps explain why, for example, Omonia square will always be a site of 'chaos', despite efforts to 'humanize' the location.
September 22, 2011
Good book, a classic, it has some useful information, especially if you're interested in town planning but I found it really tiring to read, i could hardly stay focused in about half the book, my eyes grew tired because the letters are tiny and I was counting the pages left until the end of the book all the time! I didn't enjoy reading this at all, I just hope someone had told me what the important bits are so I could skip all the rest!!
January 30, 2016
Helpful for building one's own theories based on city imageability !
*Precious*
*Precious*
September 9, 2017
Interesting research study and methodology concludes that strong visual form not only makes a city more livable but also improves quality of life. Suck it, Jersey City.
April 4, 2021
Thoughtful commentary on American architecture written in a dull and tedious way.
March 22, 2017
Lynch provides clear analysis of the cognitive maps formed by inhabitants of his selected US cities. This seminal book has influenced so much of what I'm reading so it's useful to return to the source material.
Read
April 28, 2022I Am in Eskew.
December 9, 2023
did i won two comps bcs of this? yes i did!! live love laugh urbanism and population density
February 1, 2023
‘All the majesty of a city landscape... All the concrete dreams in my mind’s eye...’
Kevin Lynch’s compact, dense book–a classic text of urban theory–is a mixed read. Perhaps aptly (considering its subject), it combines moments of startling lucidity and sludges of tedium, its prose drifting from genuine apotheotic insight to the banally descriptive and patently self-evident (‘The essential characteristic of a viable landmark... is its singularity, its contrast with its context and background’: duh!).
The book’s central thesis–that city design is best when it is ‘legible’ and renders sharp, navigable images in the mind’s eye of its users–is sometimes compelling and at other times reeks of a bourgeois, quasi-obsessive distaste for mess. It might also tend towards a Corbusierian high modernism, although Lynch is careful to valorise not the modern planned city but Old World forms, whose asymmetries would surely be more likely to elude rather than to aid navigation...
Much of Lynch’s main argument appears to rely on the accessibility of cities to the casual user: the tourist, the commuter, the motorist, the newly arrived. Yet true-blooded, ideological pedestrians do not need their cities to be reduced to a lowest common denominator, to the kinds of cities which adorn children’s playmats and picture books; they relish wandering qua itself, not simply as a means to an end. The same is true of landscapes: clean, empty panoramas and undisturbed horizons are nice, sure, but so too are dense, forbidding pagan forests. Whilst Lynch recognises the passing pleasure of the labyrinthine, he nevertheless maintains that getting truly lost is a primal horror to be avoided at all costs. Here, it is interesting to compare Lynch’s understanding of how to experience the city–written as it is in the abstract mode of twentieth-century urban and architectural theory, which seems to desire cleanly order above all else–to the melancholic approaches of the psychogeographers. (Not that this way of thinking is entirely alien to Lynch, dealing as he does in the ways in which cityscapes exist as palimpsests of historical change.) For Situationist-inspired urban walkers such as Will Self, getting lost in the city is precisely the point: it is a radical act which reveals the reality of our capital-mediated spaces. A tidy, neatly-constituted city form hides this reality from us, it numbs us to it.
In accordance with his approach, Lynch instead prioritises thin, surface-level memories of cityscapes: the memories of people who travel through or over cities, rather than inside or within them. Yet, just on a logical level, is it not the case that one’s relationship with the city is in fact intensified when complex navigation is made necessary, rather than the city fading into a kind of bored middle distance? To take an extreme example, Kowloon Walled City was utterly impregnable to outsiders yet was rendered navigable by its inhabitants precisely due to necessity and danger. Surely the ‘group image’ of such forbidding places is therefore more, rather than less, vivid in the minds of its denizens? Of course, this is not to say that cities should not be liveable, accessible, communal spaces. They should; I for one do not want to live in Kowloon, real or cyberpunk. It is simply an observation of the potential issues with Lynch’s call for navigability as the criterion above all else of successful urban design. (For a better alternative to Lynch here, one thinks of Mike Davis’s brilliant work.)
Other, more specific claims in the book’s theory of city images are, again, of variable persuasion, which is natural considering the author’s reliance on ideal types (when, for instance, is a ‘node’ not also a ‘landmark’, and vice versa?). The monomaniacal focus on the optical aspects of city navigation is also slightly wanting: what about the stench of the city, the feel of the city? Imageability is certainly significant, but it is only one part of a wider sensual engagement. Further, in an age of hyper-stimulation, do we even still want cities to so prioritise the visual? Of course, thousands of pages of scholarship have been written on the veracity of Lynch’s theory; these are the simple, uninformed impressions of a first encounter.
Beyond the theoretical core of the book, the extensive, granular descriptions of American cities (Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles) are difficult for the unfamiliar reader to follow. Fortunately for Lynch, on a meta-level this sense of confusion actually enhances the book’s proposition (with, more famously, Jane Jacobs) that the modern American city is, to put it mildly, an utter hellscape. (To European observers, the demand from many American youths for ‘walkable cities’ is a tragic one, like calling for ‘drinkable water’.) Beyond the theoretical passages, the book's most lasting sections (or most ‘visible’, to use Lynch’s idiom) are to be found in Appendix A, where, typical of the wary scholar, the author hides his more interesting, less analytically neat ideas. There, Lynch explores the anthropology of orientation and it is the most enjoyable (if least original) part of the entire book. It also seems slightly to undermine (or at least complicate) his main argument, showing as it does the vastly diverse ways that human beings experience navigation. It is also, in contrast to the dry tone of the main text, genuinely moving, showing as it does how human beings are able to fill even the smallest and most mundane spaces with dense networks of meaning.
A stimulating read, if not entirely persuasive.
Kevin Lynch’s compact, dense book–a classic text of urban theory–is a mixed read. Perhaps aptly (considering its subject), it combines moments of startling lucidity and sludges of tedium, its prose drifting from genuine apotheotic insight to the banally descriptive and patently self-evident (‘The essential characteristic of a viable landmark... is its singularity, its contrast with its context and background’: duh!).
The book’s central thesis–that city design is best when it is ‘legible’ and renders sharp, navigable images in the mind’s eye of its users–is sometimes compelling and at other times reeks of a bourgeois, quasi-obsessive distaste for mess. It might also tend towards a Corbusierian high modernism, although Lynch is careful to valorise not the modern planned city but Old World forms, whose asymmetries would surely be more likely to elude rather than to aid navigation...
Much of Lynch’s main argument appears to rely on the accessibility of cities to the casual user: the tourist, the commuter, the motorist, the newly arrived. Yet true-blooded, ideological pedestrians do not need their cities to be reduced to a lowest common denominator, to the kinds of cities which adorn children’s playmats and picture books; they relish wandering qua itself, not simply as a means to an end. The same is true of landscapes: clean, empty panoramas and undisturbed horizons are nice, sure, but so too are dense, forbidding pagan forests. Whilst Lynch recognises the passing pleasure of the labyrinthine, he nevertheless maintains that getting truly lost is a primal horror to be avoided at all costs. Here, it is interesting to compare Lynch’s understanding of how to experience the city–written as it is in the abstract mode of twentieth-century urban and architectural theory, which seems to desire cleanly order above all else–to the melancholic approaches of the psychogeographers. (Not that this way of thinking is entirely alien to Lynch, dealing as he does in the ways in which cityscapes exist as palimpsests of historical change.) For Situationist-inspired urban walkers such as Will Self, getting lost in the city is precisely the point: it is a radical act which reveals the reality of our capital-mediated spaces. A tidy, neatly-constituted city form hides this reality from us, it numbs us to it.
In accordance with his approach, Lynch instead prioritises thin, surface-level memories of cityscapes: the memories of people who travel through or over cities, rather than inside or within them. Yet, just on a logical level, is it not the case that one’s relationship with the city is in fact intensified when complex navigation is made necessary, rather than the city fading into a kind of bored middle distance? To take an extreme example, Kowloon Walled City was utterly impregnable to outsiders yet was rendered navigable by its inhabitants precisely due to necessity and danger. Surely the ‘group image’ of such forbidding places is therefore more, rather than less, vivid in the minds of its denizens? Of course, this is not to say that cities should not be liveable, accessible, communal spaces. They should; I for one do not want to live in Kowloon, real or cyberpunk. It is simply an observation of the potential issues with Lynch’s call for navigability as the criterion above all else of successful urban design. (For a better alternative to Lynch here, one thinks of Mike Davis’s brilliant work.)
Other, more specific claims in the book’s theory of city images are, again, of variable persuasion, which is natural considering the author’s reliance on ideal types (when, for instance, is a ‘node’ not also a ‘landmark’, and vice versa?). The monomaniacal focus on the optical aspects of city navigation is also slightly wanting: what about the stench of the city, the feel of the city? Imageability is certainly significant, but it is only one part of a wider sensual engagement. Further, in an age of hyper-stimulation, do we even still want cities to so prioritise the visual? Of course, thousands of pages of scholarship have been written on the veracity of Lynch’s theory; these are the simple, uninformed impressions of a first encounter.
Beyond the theoretical core of the book, the extensive, granular descriptions of American cities (Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles) are difficult for the unfamiliar reader to follow. Fortunately for Lynch, on a meta-level this sense of confusion actually enhances the book’s proposition (with, more famously, Jane Jacobs) that the modern American city is, to put it mildly, an utter hellscape. (To European observers, the demand from many American youths for ‘walkable cities’ is a tragic one, like calling for ‘drinkable water’.) Beyond the theoretical passages, the book's most lasting sections (or most ‘visible’, to use Lynch’s idiom) are to be found in Appendix A, where, typical of the wary scholar, the author hides his more interesting, less analytically neat ideas. There, Lynch explores the anthropology of orientation and it is the most enjoyable (if least original) part of the entire book. It also seems slightly to undermine (or at least complicate) his main argument, showing as it does the vastly diverse ways that human beings experience navigation. It is also, in contrast to the dry tone of the main text, genuinely moving, showing as it does how human beings are able to fill even the smallest and most mundane spaces with dense networks of meaning.
A stimulating read, if not entirely persuasive.
Shelved as 'dnf'
March 8, 2022lol, the language in this book is so over the top. It's got that pretentious 1960s feel and I can't deal.
There are probably some really interesting points in here but I think this book will put me in a coma.
Like here, here is just a random paragraph. "The first chapter pointed out the special nature of city perception and concluded that the art of urban design must therefore be essentially different from the other arts. The vividness and coherence of the environmental image was singled out as being a crucial condition for the enjoyment and use of the city."
Bruh. Put away the thesaurus.
There are probably some really interesting points in here but I think this book will put me in a coma.
Like here, here is just a random paragraph. "The first chapter pointed out the special nature of city perception and concluded that the art of urban design must therefore be essentially different from the other arts. The vividness and coherence of the environmental image was singled out as being a crucial condition for the enjoyment and use of the city."
Bruh. Put away the thesaurus.
Read
September 13, 2008The problems of planning have rarely been put together so succinctly. Rather than promoting grand "modernist" plans for revamping cityspace, Lynch promotes a far more modest approach, favoring legibility, utility, and humanity. Calling up the examples of Boston, Jersey City, and LA (all circa 1960), Lynch provides us with a tactical approach to both the psychogeography of our cities and the ways to reclaim space.
February 27, 2017
1) "Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. City design is therefore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other temporal arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across. It is seen in all lights and all weathers."
2) "The image of a given physical reality may occasionally shift its type with different circumstances of viewing. Thus an exprssway may be a path for the driver, and edge for the pedestrian. Or a central area may be a district when a city is organized on a medium scale, and a node when the entire metropolitan area is considered. But the categories seem to have stability for a given observer when he is operating at a given level.
None of the element types isolated above exist in isolation in the real case. Districts are structured with nodes, defined by edges, penetrated by paths, and sprinkled with landmarks. Elements regularly overlap and pierce one another. If this analysis begins with the differentiation of the data into categories, it must end with their reintegration into the whole image."
3) "As connections multiplied, the structure tended to become rigid, parts were firmly interconnected in all dimensions; and any distortions became built in. The possessor of such a map can move much more freely, and can interconnect new points at will. As the density of the image builds up, it begins to take on the characteristics of a total field, in which interaction is possible in any direction and at any distance."
4) "We have the opportunity of forming our new city world into an imageable landscape: visible, coherent, and clear. It will require a new attitude on the part of the city dweller, and a physical reshaping of his domain into forms which entrance the eye, which organize themselves from level to level in time and space, which can stand as symbols for urban life. The present study yields some clues in this respect.
Most objects which we are accustomed to call beautiful, such as a painting or a tree, are single-purpose things, in which, through long development or the impress of one will, there is an intimate, visible linkage from fine detail to total structure. A city is a multi-purpose, shifting organization, a tent for many functions, raised by many hands and with relative speed. Complete specialization, final meshing, is improbable and undesirable. The form must be somewhat noncommittal, plastic to the purposes and perceptions of its citizens."
5) "These clues for urban design can be summarized in another way, since there are common themes that run through the whole set: the repeated references to certain general physical characteristics. These are the categories of direct interest in design, since they describe qualities that a designer may operate upon. They might be summarized as follows:
1. Singularity or figure-background clarity: sharpness of boundary; closure; contrast of surface, form, intensity, complexity, size, use, spatial location.
2. Form Simplicity: clarity and simplicity of visible form in the geometrical sense, limitation of parts (as in the clarity of a grid system, a rectangle, a dome).
3. Continuity: continuance of edge or surface; nearness of parts; repetition of rhythmic interval; similarity, analogy, or harmony of surface, form, or use.
4. Dominance: dominance of one part over others by means of size, intensity, or interest, resulting in the reading of the whole as a principle feature with an associated cluster.
5. Clarity of Joint: high visibility of joints and seams; clear relation and interconnection.
6. Directional Differentiation: asymmetries, gradients, and radial references which differentiate one end from another; or one side from another.
7. Visual Scope: qualities which increase the range and penetration of vision, either actually or symbolically.
8. Motion Awareness: the qualities which make visible to the observer, through both the visual and kinesthetic senses, his own actual or potential motion.
9. Time Series: series which are sensed over time, including simple item-by-item linkages, where one element is simply knitted into the two elements before and behind it, and also series which are truly structured in time and thus melodic in nature.
10. Names and Meanings: non-physical characteristics which may enhance the imageability of an element."
2) "The image of a given physical reality may occasionally shift its type with different circumstances of viewing. Thus an exprssway may be a path for the driver, and edge for the pedestrian. Or a central area may be a district when a city is organized on a medium scale, and a node when the entire metropolitan area is considered. But the categories seem to have stability for a given observer when he is operating at a given level.
None of the element types isolated above exist in isolation in the real case. Districts are structured with nodes, defined by edges, penetrated by paths, and sprinkled with landmarks. Elements regularly overlap and pierce one another. If this analysis begins with the differentiation of the data into categories, it must end with their reintegration into the whole image."
3) "As connections multiplied, the structure tended to become rigid, parts were firmly interconnected in all dimensions; and any distortions became built in. The possessor of such a map can move much more freely, and can interconnect new points at will. As the density of the image builds up, it begins to take on the characteristics of a total field, in which interaction is possible in any direction and at any distance."
4) "We have the opportunity of forming our new city world into an imageable landscape: visible, coherent, and clear. It will require a new attitude on the part of the city dweller, and a physical reshaping of his domain into forms which entrance the eye, which organize themselves from level to level in time and space, which can stand as symbols for urban life. The present study yields some clues in this respect.
Most objects which we are accustomed to call beautiful, such as a painting or a tree, are single-purpose things, in which, through long development or the impress of one will, there is an intimate, visible linkage from fine detail to total structure. A city is a multi-purpose, shifting organization, a tent for many functions, raised by many hands and with relative speed. Complete specialization, final meshing, is improbable and undesirable. The form must be somewhat noncommittal, plastic to the purposes and perceptions of its citizens."
5) "These clues for urban design can be summarized in another way, since there are common themes that run through the whole set: the repeated references to certain general physical characteristics. These are the categories of direct interest in design, since they describe qualities that a designer may operate upon. They might be summarized as follows:
1. Singularity or figure-background clarity: sharpness of boundary; closure; contrast of surface, form, intensity, complexity, size, use, spatial location.
2. Form Simplicity: clarity and simplicity of visible form in the geometrical sense, limitation of parts (as in the clarity of a grid system, a rectangle, a dome).
3. Continuity: continuance of edge or surface; nearness of parts; repetition of rhythmic interval; similarity, analogy, or harmony of surface, form, or use.
4. Dominance: dominance of one part over others by means of size, intensity, or interest, resulting in the reading of the whole as a principle feature with an associated cluster.
5. Clarity of Joint: high visibility of joints and seams; clear relation and interconnection.
6. Directional Differentiation: asymmetries, gradients, and radial references which differentiate one end from another; or one side from another.
7. Visual Scope: qualities which increase the range and penetration of vision, either actually or symbolically.
8. Motion Awareness: the qualities which make visible to the observer, through both the visual and kinesthetic senses, his own actual or potential motion.
9. Time Series: series which are sensed over time, including simple item-by-item linkages, where one element is simply knitted into the two elements before and behind it, and also series which are truly structured in time and thus melodic in nature.
10. Names and Meanings: non-physical characteristics which may enhance the imageability of an element."
November 4, 2023
Mostly about Boston, with Jersey City and Los Angeles used as the primary foils, The Image of the City attempts to define the "imageability" of a city — how its distinct morphological features of paths, edges, nodes, districts, landmarks come together to create a coherently pleasing urban effect. The methodology consists of Lynch's walks through the city to identify these morphological features, combined with informant interviews with apparently white middle-class dwellers, who express their class and ethnic prejudices sotto voce.
This method results in an implied but never quite explicitly stated set of normativities that Lynch expresses through a (nearly comical) midcentury masculinist rhetorical celebration of strength, firmness, force, clarity, stability, etc., and conversant anxiety and even terror in the face of what he and his informants perceive as formlessness, ambiguity, weakness, interiority, etc. In a sense, therefore this might be read as a work of urbanist existentialism: what seems to drive Lynch's concerns is whether or not the city is alienating (though he does not use this term), especially to white middle class denizens. What Lynch calls for is an urbanism that offers "a sense of place" in the form of a "coherent environmental image" (118)— the ability, that is, for urban dweller to construct or reconstruct in his mind and memory an articulated ensemble of the space he is passing through, such that he can exhibit agency by mapping and remapping his trajectories and mobilities within the urban fabric. He expresses horror at moments where the urban infrastructure leads to "disorientation," as for example when a driver swoops off a freeway into the urban core, or when a long curved road leaves the walker or driver unable to orient himself cardinally. A city, says Lynch, is "for us both splendid and terrifying": "were it legible, truly visible, then fear and confusion might be replaced with delight in the richness and power of the scene." (121)
What is curious about this set-up is that Lynch rightly says at the start of the book that the city with the greatest imageability in the world is Venice: indeed, what everyone remarks upon in Venice is how striking it is visually from every angle. But this seems at odd with his normative view of the ideal modern city, for what else is the experience of Venice than one of continuous disorientation? Indeed, is not the delight of Venice precisely in its labyrinthine warrens and sudden openings, its entirely unmodernized modalities of conveyance and navigation?
This method results in an implied but never quite explicitly stated set of normativities that Lynch expresses through a (nearly comical) midcentury masculinist rhetorical celebration of strength, firmness, force, clarity, stability, etc., and conversant anxiety and even terror in the face of what he and his informants perceive as formlessness, ambiguity, weakness, interiority, etc. In a sense, therefore this might be read as a work of urbanist existentialism: what seems to drive Lynch's concerns is whether or not the city is alienating (though he does not use this term), especially to white middle class denizens. What Lynch calls for is an urbanism that offers "a sense of place" in the form of a "coherent environmental image" (118)— the ability, that is, for urban dweller to construct or reconstruct in his mind and memory an articulated ensemble of the space he is passing through, such that he can exhibit agency by mapping and remapping his trajectories and mobilities within the urban fabric. He expresses horror at moments where the urban infrastructure leads to "disorientation," as for example when a driver swoops off a freeway into the urban core, or when a long curved road leaves the walker or driver unable to orient himself cardinally. A city, says Lynch, is "for us both splendid and terrifying": "were it legible, truly visible, then fear and confusion might be replaced with delight in the richness and power of the scene." (121)
What is curious about this set-up is that Lynch rightly says at the start of the book that the city with the greatest imageability in the world is Venice: indeed, what everyone remarks upon in Venice is how striking it is visually from every angle. But this seems at odd with his normative view of the ideal modern city, for what else is the experience of Venice than one of continuous disorientation? Indeed, is not the delight of Venice precisely in its labyrinthine warrens and sudden openings, its entirely unmodernized modalities of conveyance and navigation?
September 18, 2022
The author brings the sensibility of the artist to the question of urban perception and design (city planning), going well beyond the wayfaring needed to find "a shorthand physical symbol for the city" (p.128) that people live in, work in, or visit. As the author puts it, the city can/should be "an environment which is not simply well-organized, but poetic and symbolic as well." (chp. V. "A New Scale", p.119) Repeatedly, Lynch suggests that a city could be compared to musical piece (chp. I, p.1, first paragraph; chp IV. "City Form," p.99, pp.107-8; etc.). However, he concedes that "An art of city design will have to wait upon an informed and critical audience." (chp. IV. "City Form", penultimate paragraph, p.117)
Whatever conclusions he draws, based on qualitative research explained in both the early chapters and in the appendices (namely, "field reconnaissance" and "sample interviews" in three American cities, compared to a few European ones, such as Venice, Florence, Rome, Athens, Paris, and London), are not so much technical, as aesthetic. How has this book been received by professional city planners? A major sign of just how LITTLE influence the book had is the destruction of one of the neighborhoods the author goes out of his way to describe and defend, in downtown Boston, which instead was paved over with brutalist architecture. See especially the Appendix, with a lengthy discussion of the problems of Scollay Square, Boston, in the historic core of the city, but demolished two years after publication of the above title, in the name of progress. Lynch took care to detail this node or district because it had a "sense of place," maybe it could even be said to have had an Old World charm, something reminiscent of London; he argued that "the Square needs visual identity to match its functional importance" (appendix, p.180). Undoubtedly, he was dismayed to see it destroyed, for the sake of a soul-less government-type rebuild.
before and after pics: 
February 9, 2021
Hay varias cosas que decir acerca de este documento.
1.-Carencia mayúscula de información gráfica
La reedición de GG no es un libro barato, oscila entre los 25 y los 26 dls, pero tristemente por este precio sólo se nos presenta un escueto contenido de información gráfica y una carencia de mapas que logren ejemplificar visualmente la teoría y problemática que está exponiendo el autor. Por el costo antes mencionado el lector esperaría poder tener los mapas (de los años 50) anexados en la obra, de esta manera el precio sí sería el correcto.
2.- Obviedades
Lynch utiliza en todo momento lenguaje técnico para exponer premisas que resultan obvias y que cualquier citadino podría deducir individualmente (aunque no esté relacionado con el urbanismo o arquitectura).
3.- Desde mi punto de vista, la verdadera información valiosa en encuentra en los capítulos 3 y 4, así como en el apéndice A.
4.- Urbanismo como arte
Es bien sabido que las bellas artes, como hermanas que tienen a la expresión humana en común, deben de complementarse, es por lo anterior que me parece exagerada la proposición que hace Lynch con respecto al urbanismo al ubicarlo como un "arte" completamente separada de las demás, inclusive hasta de la propia arquitectura; consecuentemente, pero aunado a lo anterior, resulta interesante que Lynch compare a los remates urbanísticos con el contrapunto musical.
5.-Obsolescencia
El capítulo 2 y el Apéndice C resultan casi obsoletos pues las ciudades evaluadas han evolucionado y crecido drásticamente en las siete décadas que separan la actualidad con la obra. Uno de los muchos ejemplos de es este cambio es el enfoque que el autor pone el conflictivo (y actualmente desaparecido) Scollay Square en Boston.
6.- No presenta una solución real
El libro solamente se dedica a teorizar soluciones pero realmente no se resuelve ningún problema urbanístico en la obra. Es triste leer en una de sus páginas que "esta posibilidad [refiriéndose a el diseño correcto del paisaje urbano] es sumamente especulativa y no se nos ocurre ningún ejemplo concreto o satisfactorio".
7.- Me parece que los profesores de las facultades de arquitectura caen en el ad verecundiam cuando recomiendan este libro.
1.-Carencia mayúscula de información gráfica
La reedición de GG no es un libro barato, oscila entre los 25 y los 26 dls, pero tristemente por este precio sólo se nos presenta un escueto contenido de información gráfica y una carencia de mapas que logren ejemplificar visualmente la teoría y problemática que está exponiendo el autor. Por el costo antes mencionado el lector esperaría poder tener los mapas (de los años 50) anexados en la obra, de esta manera el precio sí sería el correcto.
2.- Obviedades
Lynch utiliza en todo momento lenguaje técnico para exponer premisas que resultan obvias y que cualquier citadino podría deducir individualmente (aunque no esté relacionado con el urbanismo o arquitectura).
3.- Desde mi punto de vista, la verdadera información valiosa en encuentra en los capítulos 3 y 4, así como en el apéndice A.
4.- Urbanismo como arte
Es bien sabido que las bellas artes, como hermanas que tienen a la expresión humana en común, deben de complementarse, es por lo anterior que me parece exagerada la proposición que hace Lynch con respecto al urbanismo al ubicarlo como un "arte" completamente separada de las demás, inclusive hasta de la propia arquitectura; consecuentemente, pero aunado a lo anterior, resulta interesante que Lynch compare a los remates urbanísticos con el contrapunto musical.
5.-Obsolescencia
El capítulo 2 y el Apéndice C resultan casi obsoletos pues las ciudades evaluadas han evolucionado y crecido drásticamente en las siete décadas que separan la actualidad con la obra. Uno de los muchos ejemplos de es este cambio es el enfoque que el autor pone el conflictivo (y actualmente desaparecido) Scollay Square en Boston.
6.- No presenta una solución real
El libro solamente se dedica a teorizar soluciones pero realmente no se resuelve ningún problema urbanístico en la obra. Es triste leer en una de sus páginas que "esta posibilidad [refiriéndose a el diseño correcto del paisaje urbano] es sumamente especulativa y no se nos ocurre ningún ejemplo concreto o satisfactorio".
7.- Me parece que los profesores de las facultades de arquitectura caen en el ad verecundiam cuando recomiendan este libro.
December 26, 2020
"The creation of the environmental image is a two-way process between observer and observed. What he sees is based on exterior form, but how he interprets and organizes this, and how he directs his attention, in its turn affects what he sees. The human organism is highly adaptable and flexible, and different groups may have widely different images of the same outer reality."
"The feeling and value of an imageable environment are well summed up in Proust's moving description (in "Du Cote de chez Swann") of the church steeple in Combray, where he spent many childhood summers. Not only does this piece of landscape symbolize and locate the town, but it enters deeply into every daily activity, and remains in his mind as an apparition for which he still searches in later life; 'It was always to the steeple that one must return, always it which dominated everything else, summing up the houses with an unexpected pinnacle.' "
"Above all, if the environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with his own meanings and connections. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and unmistakable."
"In such a whole, paths would expose and prepare for the districts, and link together the various nodes. The nodes would joint and mark off the paths, while the edges would bound off the districts, and the landmarks would indicate their cores. It is the total orchestration of these units which would knit together a dense and vivid image, and sustain it over areas of metropolitan scale."
"It is important to maintain some great common forms: strong nodes, key paths, or widespread regional homogeneities. But within this large framework, there should be a certain plasticity, a richness of possible structures and clues, so that the individual observer can construct his own image: communicable, safe, and sufficient, but also supple and integrated with his own needs."
"At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences."
"A landscape whose every rock tells a story may make difficult the creation of fresh stories. Although this may not seem to be a critical issue in our present urban chaos, yet it indicates that what we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuous further development."
"Suzanne Langer sets the problem in her capsule definition of architecture: 'It is the total environment made visible.' "
"The feeling and value of an imageable environment are well summed up in Proust's moving description (in "Du Cote de chez Swann") of the church steeple in Combray, where he spent many childhood summers. Not only does this piece of landscape symbolize and locate the town, but it enters deeply into every daily activity, and remains in his mind as an apparition for which he still searches in later life; 'It was always to the steeple that one must return, always it which dominated everything else, summing up the houses with an unexpected pinnacle.' "
"Above all, if the environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with his own meanings and connections. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and unmistakable."
"In such a whole, paths would expose and prepare for the districts, and link together the various nodes. The nodes would joint and mark off the paths, while the edges would bound off the districts, and the landmarks would indicate their cores. It is the total orchestration of these units which would knit together a dense and vivid image, and sustain it over areas of metropolitan scale."
"It is important to maintain some great common forms: strong nodes, key paths, or widespread regional homogeneities. But within this large framework, there should be a certain plasticity, a richness of possible structures and clues, so that the individual observer can construct his own image: communicable, safe, and sufficient, but also supple and integrated with his own needs."
"At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its surroundings, the sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences."
"A landscape whose every rock tells a story may make difficult the creation of fresh stories. Although this may not seem to be a critical issue in our present urban chaos, yet it indicates that what we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuous further development."
"Suzanne Langer sets the problem in her capsule definition of architecture: 'It is the total environment made visible.' "
July 8, 2016
Kevin Lynch is concerned not so much with the actual physical substance of the city but rather with the image that that substance conveys. Our ideas of a city, he says, are mixed with memories and meanings. In this sense, his thinking is not unlike that of David Kolb in *Sprawling Places*, which argues suburbs need to be seen as areas of greater complexity than they typically are via the memories and meanings attached to locales. Rather than mourn chain stores taking over an area, we can see them as having connections to the local. In a sense, this is true. One landmark that I think of in Victoria, British Columbia, is McDonald's. Why? It's two stories and features a huge chandelier. Probably, it was something grander at one time, but it has become a McDonald's--and a grand one at that. I remember eating at it one night with my friend Mike and a fascinating but troubled gal he liked named Diane. Or take the city of my birth, Pasadena. There, I remember well a string of fast-food restaurants along North Lake Avenue (eating at them; working at one; walking to/by them with my friend Tim, who lived closeby). They're nothing special, and yet they've been there from my birth to the present day, longer than many other truly "local" venues. They are landmarks of their own, even if not cherished and loved in the same way. Their very endurance has aided in their becoming part of my image of the city.
Lynch focuses, however, on downtown cores--and most specifically of three cities: Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles. The purpose of looking at our image of the city is to see how we might better plan and build cities as we move forward. What do people remember? How do they organize their viewpoints? How do they structure the city in their heads so that they can move around it?
Boston is chosen because of its age and historicity. It offers people many, many landmarks. And indeed, Lynch finds that people have a relatively easy time placing several districts within downtown. Still, there are portions of the area studied that remain amorphous in most people's views, largely centered around larger highways that cut off foot traffic. The relative irregularity of the streets, however, also means that people have difficulty "shaping" areas like the Boston Commons.
Jersey city is chosen because of its seeming disrepair. It's a town on the way to somewhere else--either New York City or Newark. And the views local people have of the city seem to confirm this. Nothing much stands out. There are not many landmarks, many places on must see--other than perhaps looking across the river to the skyline of New York City. People organize their city by street names and shopping districts that they visit regularly.
Los Angeles is something of a go-between. It is chosen because of its newness. It features more landmarks than Jersey City but less historicity. People's views of it are somewhat amorphous but slightly more definite than that of Jersey City. People organize the city by street names. Still, they do recall Pershing Square and a few other landmarks, that they can place. Interestingly, people's views of the city are more detailed in where they live, grow blurry in midrange areas (transit), and have slightly more detail downtown where they work (but not as much as where they live). Los Angeles, in other words, offers a specificity of view on the hyperlocal and on the macro but little on the midrange that connects the two.
Lynch shows differing views with maps--photos of an area, professionally created maps of an area, and maps based on people's memories and views of an area. The latter are interesting to compare with the professionally rendered insofar as certain areas disappear.
The next chapter focuses on five elements that go in to people's created images, or maps, of a city: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Each of these play a role in how people organize their views. Travel along a path might render more detail there with other items organized around it--and so on for each element. Interestingly, landmarks occasionally might be "baseless"--that is, they form part of the skyline but people really don't know what their base looks like, what their function is, or where exactly they are. Folks forge maps in different ways--along paths and radiating out, from basic grids with items placed on them, with edges (e.g., Boston's waterfront) with the interior slowly filled in, as adjacent regions that are filled in and connected, or from one small place and filled outward from there. The best images are put together with both a hierarchy and a continuity, but rarely do both elements come together.
Since we are constantly organizing our view of the city, good city planning should facilitate this organizing process, Lynch says. Hence, paths should lead toward some sort of destination; landmarks should be singular or, if smaller, bunched to create a sort of landmark destination; districts should be visually distinct from one another with clear edges; nodes should link districts. In all, the features of the city should be marked by the following characteristics: singularity, simplicity of form, continuity, dominance, clarity of joint, directional differentiation, visual scope, motion awareness, time series, and names and meanings. Difficulties arise, however, because people do not always enter a city or a path from the same direction. Hence, you can't just have a path with one climax, for someone might enter at the climax and then the other direction lacks for a destination. There must be a kind of melody or rhythm.
Lynch, thus, lays out three possible general organizations for the city: hierarchical (subdistricts within districts, all united around a singular node or landmark); two-sided dominance (hill on one side, ocean on the other--destinations at both ends); and temporal pattern or sequence (spaced areas of dominance at intervening points along a path).
Hence, in an ideal city, all parts conjoin to the whole image. Paths lead to districts, which are centered around landmarks, bounded by edges, and linked by nodes, which in turn "mark off" paths.
A conclusion denotes the importance of considering the city's image as a whole when planning, most especially in the suburbs, where attention to the whole is rarely given. Three appendices discuss images of cities in history (landmarks play a large role, and the more barren the landscape, the more adept locals become at reading their environment); the survey techniques for the research; and a microstudy of images of Boston's Beacon Hill and Scollay Square (the latter, though being a node, lacking visual signposts to make it stand out as a place).
Lynch focuses, however, on downtown cores--and most specifically of three cities: Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles. The purpose of looking at our image of the city is to see how we might better plan and build cities as we move forward. What do people remember? How do they organize their viewpoints? How do they structure the city in their heads so that they can move around it?
Boston is chosen because of its age and historicity. It offers people many, many landmarks. And indeed, Lynch finds that people have a relatively easy time placing several districts within downtown. Still, there are portions of the area studied that remain amorphous in most people's views, largely centered around larger highways that cut off foot traffic. The relative irregularity of the streets, however, also means that people have difficulty "shaping" areas like the Boston Commons.
Jersey city is chosen because of its seeming disrepair. It's a town on the way to somewhere else--either New York City or Newark. And the views local people have of the city seem to confirm this. Nothing much stands out. There are not many landmarks, many places on must see--other than perhaps looking across the river to the skyline of New York City. People organize their city by street names and shopping districts that they visit regularly.
Los Angeles is something of a go-between. It is chosen because of its newness. It features more landmarks than Jersey City but less historicity. People's views of it are somewhat amorphous but slightly more definite than that of Jersey City. People organize the city by street names. Still, they do recall Pershing Square and a few other landmarks, that they can place. Interestingly, people's views of the city are more detailed in where they live, grow blurry in midrange areas (transit), and have slightly more detail downtown where they work (but not as much as where they live). Los Angeles, in other words, offers a specificity of view on the hyperlocal and on the macro but little on the midrange that connects the two.
Lynch shows differing views with maps--photos of an area, professionally created maps of an area, and maps based on people's memories and views of an area. The latter are interesting to compare with the professionally rendered insofar as certain areas disappear.
The next chapter focuses on five elements that go in to people's created images, or maps, of a city: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Each of these play a role in how people organize their views. Travel along a path might render more detail there with other items organized around it--and so on for each element. Interestingly, landmarks occasionally might be "baseless"--that is, they form part of the skyline but people really don't know what their base looks like, what their function is, or where exactly they are. Folks forge maps in different ways--along paths and radiating out, from basic grids with items placed on them, with edges (e.g., Boston's waterfront) with the interior slowly filled in, as adjacent regions that are filled in and connected, or from one small place and filled outward from there. The best images are put together with both a hierarchy and a continuity, but rarely do both elements come together.
Since we are constantly organizing our view of the city, good city planning should facilitate this organizing process, Lynch says. Hence, paths should lead toward some sort of destination; landmarks should be singular or, if smaller, bunched to create a sort of landmark destination; districts should be visually distinct from one another with clear edges; nodes should link districts. In all, the features of the city should be marked by the following characteristics: singularity, simplicity of form, continuity, dominance, clarity of joint, directional differentiation, visual scope, motion awareness, time series, and names and meanings. Difficulties arise, however, because people do not always enter a city or a path from the same direction. Hence, you can't just have a path with one climax, for someone might enter at the climax and then the other direction lacks for a destination. There must be a kind of melody or rhythm.
Lynch, thus, lays out three possible general organizations for the city: hierarchical (subdistricts within districts, all united around a singular node or landmark); two-sided dominance (hill on one side, ocean on the other--destinations at both ends); and temporal pattern or sequence (spaced areas of dominance at intervening points along a path).
Hence, in an ideal city, all parts conjoin to the whole image. Paths lead to districts, which are centered around landmarks, bounded by edges, and linked by nodes, which in turn "mark off" paths.
A conclusion denotes the importance of considering the city's image as a whole when planning, most especially in the suburbs, where attention to the whole is rarely given. Three appendices discuss images of cities in history (landmarks play a large role, and the more barren the landscape, the more adept locals become at reading their environment); the survey techniques for the research; and a microstudy of images of Boston's Beacon Hill and Scollay Square (the latter, though being a node, lacking visual signposts to make it stand out as a place).
August 5, 2020
Thought this was a quite interesting and sophisticated way to look at how we conceive of cities in our minds. Lynch lays out what imageability is and why it matters, then through case studies of Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles, explores the 5 elements that make up the image of the city: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. The strength of these elements, their interactions, and their synthesis into a total image help determine whether a city is comprehensible and navigable.
I feel like I’ve been disappointed in the past with architecture & urban design books that take their big idea and apply it without much nuance, so I appreciated Lynch’s recognition of the shortcomings of urban design (where over-specificity leads to rigidity & monotony) and his own method (e.g., his field work was based on interviewees of a fairly homogenous class background). I do wonder how well these ideas would work in the design of urban areas – the imageability model seems promising as a descriptive tool for how we understand of cities, and the book identifies issues associated with a lack of imageability, but I’m not convinced that a city designed for maximal imageability according to Lynch’s model would be the most livable place. But Lynch doesn’t claim that an imageable is an easy thing to achieve, nor that the theory is fully developed as presented here, so hard to criticize him too much on that point.
For all the interesting ideas, the book itself is a bit of a slog – I kept putting this aside in favor of breezier reads. The writing is pretty dry, and I found it difficult to draw lessons from the Jersey City and LA case studies without knowing the cities involved; if I weren’t familiar with Boston, it might have been hard to grasp the ideas altogether. Probably wouldn’t recommend this book to others as readily as I’d recommend Jane Jacobs, but glad I’ve read it.
I feel like I’ve been disappointed in the past with architecture & urban design books that take their big idea and apply it without much nuance, so I appreciated Lynch’s recognition of the shortcomings of urban design (where over-specificity leads to rigidity & monotony) and his own method (e.g., his field work was based on interviewees of a fairly homogenous class background). I do wonder how well these ideas would work in the design of urban areas – the imageability model seems promising as a descriptive tool for how we understand of cities, and the book identifies issues associated with a lack of imageability, but I’m not convinced that a city designed for maximal imageability according to Lynch’s model would be the most livable place. But Lynch doesn’t claim that an imageable is an easy thing to achieve, nor that the theory is fully developed as presented here, so hard to criticize him too much on that point.
For all the interesting ideas, the book itself is a bit of a slog – I kept putting this aside in favor of breezier reads. The writing is pretty dry, and I found it difficult to draw lessons from the Jersey City and LA case studies without knowing the cities involved; if I weren’t familiar with Boston, it might have been hard to grasp the ideas altogether. Probably wouldn’t recommend this book to others as readily as I’d recommend Jane Jacobs, but glad I’ve read it.
February 8, 2023
This was a tough one. I feel like having watched a movie, which I know is good and I can see has many layers to it, but something isn't gelling in my head so it does not reach the heights it was aiming for.
I am reminded of "small is beautiful" by E. F. Schumacher which, like "the image of the city" is meant to be a break the mold in a gentle way method. Kevin Lynch is not setting out to rock your world but he is aiming at doing things a bit better. The tone is one of gentle suggestion rather then bombastic "this is how it's done" built arround field research and surveys in LA, Jersey city and Boston, Kevin Lynch is aiming at making American cities better and more liveable by presenting the reader with, for the time, novel human approaches.
Breaking a city down to paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks and how these are interpreted by different people, how they impact and relate to onanother forming one holistic city. At the same time the book is a bit of lament on the nature of American cities as compared to Venice and Florence. Kevin Lynch adores these Italian cities and goes out of his way via each aspect to compare the American cities with these two Italian ones. What it boils down too, he wants to make American cities more liveable, more pleseant and more harmonious whole. He is clearly sorrowful over describing Jersy city as lacking a true city center or being reduced to a place close to New York.
As I said, I wasn't fully engaged with it, maybe because of the style of writing? Maybe because I am not as familiar as of yet with the lingo? I was told this is a classic in the field of urban planning and so I am curious to find references to it in future books I read on the subject, might be coming back to this if I do.
I am reminded of "small is beautiful" by E. F. Schumacher which, like "the image of the city" is meant to be a break the mold in a gentle way method. Kevin Lynch is not setting out to rock your world but he is aiming at doing things a bit better. The tone is one of gentle suggestion rather then bombastic "this is how it's done" built arround field research and surveys in LA, Jersey city and Boston, Kevin Lynch is aiming at making American cities better and more liveable by presenting the reader with, for the time, novel human approaches.
Breaking a city down to paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks and how these are interpreted by different people, how they impact and relate to onanother forming one holistic city. At the same time the book is a bit of lament on the nature of American cities as compared to Venice and Florence. Kevin Lynch adores these Italian cities and goes out of his way via each aspect to compare the American cities with these two Italian ones. What it boils down too, he wants to make American cities more liveable, more pleseant and more harmonious whole. He is clearly sorrowful over describing Jersy city as lacking a true city center or being reduced to a place close to New York.
As I said, I wasn't fully engaged with it, maybe because of the style of writing? Maybe because I am not as familiar as of yet with the lingo? I was told this is a classic in the field of urban planning and so I am curious to find references to it in future books I read on the subject, might be coming back to this if I do.
November 3, 2017
"Moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts. We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with the other participants. Most often, our perception of the city is not sustained, but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other concerns. Nearly every sense is in operation, and the images is the composite of them all." (2)
"Another [Jersey City] woman spoke of driving over to a small park on a Sunday, so that she could sit in the car and look at it." (32)
"Rather than a single comprehensive image for the entire environment, there seemed to be sets of images, which more or less overlapped and interrelated." (85)
"To heighten the imageability of the urban environment is to facilitate its visual identification and structuring. The elements isolated above -- the paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and regions -- are the building blocks in the process of making firm, differentiated structures at the urban scale." (95)
"The citizen shifts his place of residence more frequently today than ever before, from area to area, from city to city. Good imageability in his environment would allow him to feel quickly at home in new surroundings. Gradual organization through long experience can less and less be relied upon. The city environment is itself changing rapidly, as techniques and functions shift. These changes are often disturbing to the citizen emotionally, and tend to disorganize his perceptual image." (111-2)
"Another [Jersey City] woman spoke of driving over to a small park on a Sunday, so that she could sit in the car and look at it." (32)
"Rather than a single comprehensive image for the entire environment, there seemed to be sets of images, which more or less overlapped and interrelated." (85)
"To heighten the imageability of the urban environment is to facilitate its visual identification and structuring. The elements isolated above -- the paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and regions -- are the building blocks in the process of making firm, differentiated structures at the urban scale." (95)
"The citizen shifts his place of residence more frequently today than ever before, from area to area, from city to city. Good imageability in his environment would allow him to feel quickly at home in new surroundings. Gradual organization through long experience can less and less be relied upon. The city environment is itself changing rapidly, as techniques and functions shift. These changes are often disturbing to the citizen emotionally, and tend to disorganize his perceptual image." (111-2)
August 16, 2022
In highschool my friends labeled me a "geographical idiot" because I had a tendency to get lost whenever I try to find my own way around the city. I reasoned that I didn't go out much as a kid so naturally I hadn't mastered public transportation. Then I started getting better (thank you, Google Maps) but I still found it hard to make a mental map of places I've been to numerous times. It wasn't until later on that I realized that, although I may be in the lower average on the scale of wayfinding talent, it's not entirely my fault.
Metro Manila is a patchwork at best, a product of implementing a new urban development framework every six years (as a new president gets elected). Private housing intersects business areas intersects public roads intersects other private edifices, and the resulting hodgepodge makes it hard for the average city dweller to find their way around without the aid of external tools or a well-traveled neighbor offering commuting advice.
I knew this, in an abstract way, before I read this book, but Lynch's terminologies helped me articulate that better. This book was written before urban planning was even a proper field and you can see how his concepts have influenced what came thereafter.
A further summary with a brief review: https://kahell.notion.site/The-Image-...
Metro Manila is a patchwork at best, a product of implementing a new urban development framework every six years (as a new president gets elected). Private housing intersects business areas intersects public roads intersects other private edifices, and the resulting hodgepodge makes it hard for the average city dweller to find their way around without the aid of external tools or a well-traveled neighbor offering commuting advice.
I knew this, in an abstract way, before I read this book, but Lynch's terminologies helped me articulate that better. This book was written before urban planning was even a proper field and you can see how his concepts have influenced what came thereafter.
A further summary with a brief review: https://kahell.notion.site/The-Image-...
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