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6th out of 50 books
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The Image of the City
by
Kevin Lynch
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 tothe city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of LosAngeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion--imageability--andshows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebui
...morePaperback, 202 pages
Published
June 15th 1960
by MIT Press (MA)
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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...more
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...more
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 ...more
In the opening chapters, the author ...more
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A gorilla thinks in terms of power/ not-power; the world is an association of powers, but the gorilla’s life is pure life and its satisfaction. Singularities are obsessed with death, even in the prolongation of their lives because life is re-represented into its images and properties, and not what it is in itself as a self-structuring force. Power is a social concept. Force is the intensity of continual life.
A multitude, modeled from relating singularities, is a formed and fabricated ...more
A multitude, modeled from relating singularities, is a formed and fabricated ...more
I really like this. I kinda read the middle third, seems to be based on various types of surveys of people in different cities and trying to make sense of how people make sense of the city, and how they navigate the space in real time and in their heads, specifically tying this to attempts at controlling/planning/designing these environments and suggestions (though very measured) for future work in this respect. Nice to read alongside Jane Jacobs (published around the same time).
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.
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.
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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!!
I enjoyed the concepts of imageability, and the need for open ended order. Both concepts relate nicely to methods for organizing information and knowledge. As are the concepts of legibility or 'wayfinding.'
I love the way the author describes how the built environment can create a setting for "meaningfulness and richness in our lives."
How natural it is to extend the metaphor to describe our interior spaces, our concepts of home, and ourselves.
I love the way the author describes how the built environment can create a setting for "meaningfulness and richness in our lives."
How natural it is to extend the metaphor to describe our interior spaces, our concepts of home, and ourselves.
This book has its limitations (most significantly, its privileging of physical form in how people make sense of cities), but Lynch is speculative rather than deterministically prescriptive about how his ideas might translate into urban design. It's a pleasure to read, though I associate it with a certain pointless mapping exercise from my urban studies undergrad years.
Cities are a quintessentially human invention. Other animals live in large groups, but only humans insist on changing their environment so thoroughly. Lynch explores the basic elements we install and form in our cities from a sociological and psychological of view. This was an interesting and illuminating read.
An American planning classic, Lynch's analytical method is no less relevant today than it was when the book was written nearly a half-century ago. For people who care not only about location but also about place, this is an excellent and approachable introduction to the concept of city planning.
This book put forth some really interesting ideas. It really makes you look at how you experience the city. I picked up a lot of insights on how we pay attention when travelling through the city which was really interesting. It would probably be more worthwile if I had a more extensive knowledge of downtown Boston, Jersey City, and LA, from the 1950's.
An excellent book, giving readers an interesting way to look at the different elements of a city. His methods, though not without their flaws, have given urban planners and others in the field of the built environment an important foundation in urban theory.
read, and reading again. . . . I hope I find what I am looking for this time. I remember it is a really good way to organize thinking about urban space.
Read in Architecture School. Ignited my own critical thinking of how we create cities & how this dictates there use for better or worse.
A good book for landscape architects, it gives a great vision to designing and city analysis...
Kevin Lynch's "Image of the City" is everything I feared Jane Jacobs' "Death and Life of Great American Cities" was going to be like before I read it: dry, textbook-like prose, charts, graphs, maps which ultimately say nothing. The book also seems to make reference to neighborhoods and intersections quite casually, as if the reader is supposed to be familiar with the three cities used for the study. Those being: 1950's Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City. As informed as this...more
Diogo
added it
The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch (1960)
"...image development is a two-way process between observer and observed, it is possible to strengthen the image either by symbolic devices, by the retraining of the perceiver, or by reshaping one's surroundings." -p.11
"Boston... both vivid in form and full of locational difficulties. Jersey City was chosen for its apparent formlessness, for what seemed, on first observation, to be its extremely low order of imageability. Los Angeles... a new city, of an utterly differ...more
"Boston... both vivid in form and full of locational difficulties. Jersey City was chosen for its apparent formlessness, for what seemed, on first observation, to be its extremely low order of imageability. Los Angeles... a new city, of an utterly differ...more
Andreas Brændhaugen
added it
Visionary treatment of the experience of cities.
One day I think I'll understand this one better.
cities
What an interesting topic: finding out what are the elements of people's mental image of a city. The concepts, terminology and framework are very interesting. The methodology is very interesting. I like that he discusses lessons learned as they developed the methodology. I just struggled with the writing - I thought it could have been more clear. It was a hard book to get through. I would rather take a class on the same material.
The book is very important in the history of the study of urban space, but reading it now, it serves more as a historical document than anything new or groundbreaking. Written in the 1960s, it lays out the terms and the ways of visualizing cities and the way people interact with their mental image of a place. The analysis of the mental maps people have of Boston, Jersey City and L.A. is very interesting, but becomes tedious.
The 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.
This is detailed commentary on what makes a city a memorable place, highlighting features of the Boston landscape. I identified with the sections that pinpointed what gives cities like Boston their sense of place, but overall, I found this was mostly an academic and unispiring read.
anthropological/sociological look at the importance of creating image-able cities. defines a purpose for the built environment beyond looking pretty.
touches on the idea of two parts of creating an image: the physical element being read and the conception of the reader.
touches on the idea of two parts of creating an image: the physical element being read and the conception of the reader.
One of architecture's "classic" publications. Its ideas are still dealt with even today ( more than 50 years after it was first published). It tackles the "image" credibility and aspect of the city as an architecture as a whole.
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