“The Image of the City” is a book written in 1960 by Kevin Lynch after a five-year study of three cities in the United States of America that is; Boston, Los Angeles, and Jersey City. The book gives detail on how the residents of the city internalize the information about the city and utilize it to create mental maps that help them to navigate the city. According to lynch, people process the layout of the city using five basic elements as follows: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. I selected this book because it can be helpful when moving around a new city. Cities are big and complicated; the buildings are looking the same and it is easy for a person to get lost. So when you read the book, it gives you an idea of how you can easily remember the city so that during the visit to the city, a person can look out for the most significant things to help him remember for the next time. As a foreigner, it will be hard to move around the city and I needed something to help me move around reading this book was helpful in helping me move around the city without getting lost. The book is relevant in fields such as architecture and urbanism. When it is time to learn about discovering urbanism, ‘the Image of the City’ is the book to read. Kevin Lynch was an urban planner, writer, and scholar who was born in 1918 in the city of Chicago, Illinois in the U.S. Over the course of his career, Lynch earned several awards including the Rexford G. Tugwell Award which he won in 1984. Lynch was an alumnus of the Massachusetts institute of technology where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in city planning in 1947. His main interest during his career included urban planning, urban form, and environmental psychology. During his career, lynch was most notable for writing the books “Time is This Place”, “The Image of The City” and “A Theory of Good Urban Form” although the image of the city is the most renowned. The author played a big role in urban planning by providing important ideas that are used in the field such as mental mapping, imageability, and way-finding. Kevin lynch worked at MIT teaching site planning and urban design while practicing the two professionally for most of his life (Adrade, 2005). As stated earlier, Lynch’s book has discussed five main elements which include: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. The book has been divided into five main chapters that in one way or another discuss the five elements. In the first chapter, the book discusses the image of the environment where he briefly describes legibility, building the image of the city, imageability and structure, and identity. In the second chapter, he provides an overview of three cities that include Jersey City, Boston, and Los Angeles. In the same chapter, the author discusses the common themes that are present in the three cities. In the third chapter, the book is telling about the city's image and its elements. The five elements are stated and discussed in this chapter. Then the author talks about how these elements interrelate with one another. Also, the author talks about the shifting image and the image quality (Lynch, 1960). The fourth chapter is written to include how paths are designed, the qualities of form, the sense of the city as a whole, and the form of a metropolitan city and explains the whole process of design. Finally, the last chapter discusses a new scale that can be used to travel in the city. This book is one of the biggest works that Lynch has done in his life and includes some of his biggest ideas. For example, it is in this book that the issue of imageability is first deeply discussed in urban planning. In addition, the book provides important insight into mental mapping and introduces how a new scale can easily be used when finding ways in a big scary city. It is important to remember and give credit to the author for coining the words imageability and wayfinding (Lynch, 1960). Lynch told that when people are trying to understand the layout of their cities, they try to learn the consistency and predictability of the ways around them. By creating a pattern of the consistency and predictability of the city, the people form mental maps using the five elements that include paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. First Lynch describes that paths form a good part of the city for wayfinding. Paths include; streets, trial, sidewalks, railroads, canals, and any other channel that people use when walking around or what they use when traveling. He explains that paths are arranging space and movement between structures. He says that when people observe the city when they travel through it, they arrange the environmental elements and create an interrelation between them (Lynch, 1960). The second elements are edges which include boundaries between two phases and linear breaks. The linear breaks include railroad cuts, walls, edges, development, and shores. He affirms that edges can either be real or perceived by the person trying to create the mental map. He explains that edges can be lateral references rather than coordinated axes. Thirdly, the author discusses districts. He says that districts are medium to large parts of the city that are said to contain two-dimensional extents where the walker goes into. The districts are said to have common factors that can be used to describe them. He explains that as much as districts have internal characteristics that make it easier to remember them, they can also be used for exterior references if they can be seen from the outside (Lynch, 1960). The fourth elements are nodes. Nodes are large areas that the person can enter, and focus on the point he is coming from or going to. They can include junctions, a crossing or convergence of paths, where transportation is breaking, and moments of shift from this structure to another. Basically, nodes give the traveler multiple perspectives of the city, districts, or neighborhoods. In some situations, nodes can be a condensation of the use or physical character like a street corner, where people hang out, or an enclosed place where people meet. Nodes are similar to districts in that, they both serve as intensive foci for the people that is; they are dividing centers (Lynch, 1960). Finally, the author speaks of landmarks. Landmarks are a point of reference where the observer cannot go inside them. They are only external features. They are defined as physical objects such as signs, buildings, mountains, or stores. Landmarks can be in a city or outside such that they symbolize a particular direction. Landmarks away from the city may include isolated towers, great hills, and golden domes. The author explains that the sun can also be used as a landmark; he says that a mobile point like the sun follows a slow and regular motion and therefore can be used to state a direction (Lynch, 1960). The author provides an urban planner with five basic elements that must be included in an urban town. When planning a city or any other metropolitan town, the five elements must be included thus making the book an important addition to the urban planning studio. The book is a must-have for anyone involved in urbanism and planning. A city without nodes, districts, landmarks, paths, and edges is very confusing to both city residents and travelers. The book further provides ten important design qualities of a city that can be used in an urban planning studio. The concept of the five elements can be analyzed and used in the designing exercise so as to ease the process of creating a mental map and imageability. By doing so, pedestrians, city residents, and other occupants of the city can easily access the city without getting lost. The ten design qualities include singularity (can be used to draw attention by providing sharp contrasts between the five elements), continuity (as a whole, the individual elements should be understandable), simplicity (forms in a city should be easily conceivable geometric shapes), dominance (some elements should stand out over the others), directional differentiation (forms should be asymmetrical to help in detecting direction), clarity of joint (provide strategic boundaries and intersections), visual scope (provides an area where a general large picture of the city can be taken), time series (should provide designs that can be experienced over time), motion awareness (the traveler must be informed of their own speed) and finally names and meanings whereby non-physical attributes that exaggerate design features are included in a city. The book is an important addition to the teamwork in the urban planning studio because it gives us information on how best to create a city. Basically, the book gives us instructions on how to plan a metropolitan city that is beneficial to all involved parties without disturbing anyone.
References:
Adrade, Leonardo. (2005). “Lynch Kevin”. In Cave, Roger E. Encyclopedia of The City. Routledge: 297- 298
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Lynch, Kevin. (1960). The Image Of The City. The MIT Press.
