Planners Book Club — December 2007

The Image of the City

The Image of the City was the December 2007 selection of APA's Planners Book Club.

Kevin Lynch was an urban design pioneer. His seminal work, The Image of the City, conveys precepts as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.

Gary Hack, dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and a former colleague of Kevin Lynch, suggests the following questions to get your discussion of The Image of the City started:

In Chapter I, Lynch argues that "an environmental image may be analyzed into three components: identity, structure and meaning." Identity and structure are often what urban designers and planners work on — encouraging buildings that are like others, filling the gaps in the pattern of blocks so that they read as coherent wholes, etc. The process of acquiring meaning, however, is more complex. What are some ways that places can be made more meaningful?

Chapter III describes Lynch's five essential elements of the city pattern: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. There is a certain platonic logic to them, representing lines, areas, and points. Do you imagine that these are an exclusive set of categories, or could others be added? For example, how does one think about seams between neighborhoods that aren't paths (such as a natural recreation area) or areas that are undifferentiated fields of opportunities? While Lynch's categories were based on studies of quite different cities — Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles — is it useful to tailor the ways of describing each of your cities?

In describing the qualities of strong districts, Lynch writes, "District names also help to give identity to districts even when the thematic unit does not establish a striking contrast with other parts of the city..." Realtors are accustomed to inventing new names for districts of the city where they hope to shift the connotations of the area. How important is naming as opposed to altering the physical character of an area in creating a sense of identity?

Much has changed in Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles in the 50 years since Lynch did his field studies. If you were to repeat the studies today, what elements of the image of the cities would you expect to remain constant, and what do you predict would change?

In an era with many aids to wayfinding in cities — sophisticated signage, Mapquest direction aids, GPS systems in cars, etc. — does legibility remain an important objective in the design of cities?

More about The Image of the City