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paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks
The MA Architecture + Urbanism course is the Manchester School of Architecture's
taught postgraduate course which conducts research into how global cultural and
economic forces influence contemporary cities. The design, functioning and future of
urban situations is explored in written, drawn and modelled work which builds on the
legacy of twentieth century urban theory and is directed towards the development of
sustainable cities.
MANUFACTURING UTOPIA MA A+U Symposium 1 May 2014
MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE YEAR BOOK 2013
M O N D AY , 1 7 D E C E M B E R 2012
Kevin Lynch: The Image of the City (1960)
Discussed by Zhouzhi Yu Kevin Lynch, who was an American urban planner, graduated from
Yale University and MIT. As one of scholars who introduced the field of psychology into city
research, he wrote the book The Image of the City in 1960. It is the most influential book of the
research. The image of three cities - Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles- are descried with
two methods which are the sketch map and descriptions. After the investigation and analysis,
Lynch put forward some ideas about the concept of public image, and discussed some
questions such as the image of the city, its elements and urban morphology. In the first chapter,
the book develops some of the basic ideas and then introduces the visual quality of the
American city by studying the mental image of a city as held by its citizens. The author intended
to assert that legibility is vital in the urban setting, to analyse it in some detail and show how the
concept might be used in rebuilding cities in that period of the 1960s. Not only that, Lynch also
concluded that the image of a given reality may vary significantly between different observers.
Although each individual creates and feels his own image, there seems to be considerable
agreement among members of the same group. Hence the results of various observers could
be used to analyse the city. Considering that method, since the emphasis was on the physical
environment as the independent variable, this study looked for physical qualities which related
to the attributes of identity and structure in the mental image, because an urban environment's
image may be analysed into three components: identity, structure and meaning. Lynch made an
example to show that the city of Venice might be such a highly imageable environment. The
following chapters consider the analyses of the three cities of Boston, Jersey City and Los
Angeles for urban design, on the basis of which Lynch gave five elements of urban image.
There are paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks respectively. Paths are the streets,
sidewalks, trails and other channels in which people travel. In Lynch’s view, these parts of the
city are the routes along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moves.
People usually observe the city while moving through it, and along these paths the other
environmental elements are arranged and related. Observers could witness paths easily in the
city but usually ignore another element, edges, which are not used or considered as paths by
the observer. Lynch concluded that edges should be perceived boundaries such as walls,
buildings, and shorelines; they are lateral references rather than coordinate axes. Such edges
may be barriers, more or less penetrable, which close one region off from another; or they may
be seams, lines along which two regions are related and joined together. These edge elements,
although probably not as dominant as paths, are for many people important organizing features,
particularly in the role of holding together generalized areas, as in the outline of a city by water
or a wall. Actually, edges are often paths as well. Where this was so and where the ordinary
observer was not shut off from moving on the path, then circulation seemed to be the dominant
image. The element was usually pictured as a path, reinforced by boundary characteristics.
Edges may also, like paths, have directional qualities. Furthermore, both paths and edges are
shape districts, the third element. Districts are relatively large sections of the city distinguished
by some identity or character. Observers mentally enter the medium-to-large sections in the city
and conceive of the space as a two-dimensional extent. Therefore concepts of size may depend
in part on how well a structure can be grasped. It seems to depend not only upon the individual
but also upon the given city.
When observers put themselves into the districts and grasp the structure, the nodes would be
the first attraction. The reason is that nodes are focal points and intersections. In Lynch’s view,
on one hand, they may be simply concentrations, which gain their importance from being the
condensation of some use or physical character, as a street-corner hangout or an enclosed
square. On the other hand, some of these concentration nodes are also the focus and epitome
of a district, over which their influence radiates and of which they stand as a symbol. They may
be called cores. Many nodes, of course, are engaged in the nature of both junctions and
concentrations. Nodes are the strategic foci into which the observer can enter, typically either
junctions of paths, or concentrations of some characteristic. Indeed, when conceiving the
environment at a national or international level, then the whole city itself may become a node.
For example, the subway stations, strung along their invisible path system, are strategic junction
nodes. And major railroad stations are almost always important city nodes, although their
importance may be declining. Nodes may be both junctions and concentrations, as is Jersey
City’s Journal Square, which was an important bus and automobile transfer and was also a
concentration of shopping. A strong physical form is not absolutely essential to the recognition
of a node. The last one of the elements is landmarks. Landmarks are another type of point
reference, but in this case the observers do not enter within them, they are external. The point
references are simple physical elements which may vary widely in scale, such as building, sign,
store or mountain. They may be within the city or at such a distance that for all practical
purposes they symbolize a constant direction. Some landmarks are distant ones, typically seen
from many angles and distance ones, over the tops of smaller elements, and used as radial
references. Other landmarks are primarily local, being visible only in restricted localities and
from certain approaches. Furthermore, spatial prominence can establish elements as landmarks
in either of two ways: by making the element visible from many locations, or by setting up a local
contrast with nearby elements. Location at a junction involving path decisions strengthens a
landmark. They are frequently used clues of identity and even of structure, and seem to be
increasingly relied upon as a journey becomes more and more familiar. All five elements
introduce how the image of the city expressed itself, then Lynch continued to develop his theory
and researched city form. He took Florence as a single further example. It is obvious that 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. In conclusion,
the sight of the cities may be commonplace but still give a special pleasure in terms of the five
elements. On the basis of these in-depth analyses, Lynch summarises that there is a new scale.
The form of a city or a metropolis will not exhibit some gigantic and stratified order. Moving
elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the
stationary physical parts. The image is the result of a two-way process between observers and
observed, in which the external physical shape upon which a designer can operate plays a
major role. That is the reason that the methods of field reconnaissance and sample interviews
for imageability were developed.
http://www.angelfire.com/ar/corei/hbe1/lynch1.htm
History and Built Environment I
A. L E C T U R E N O T E S –V O C AB U L AR Y O F U R B AN F O R M -
1. Kevin Lynch, Neo- Empricism and Reaction to Modernism
In 1960s and 70s, as a reaction to destructive impacts of Modernism on American cities and
urban life Kevin Lynch, Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander and some others tried to make the
city legible once again. To them this could be done by restoring the social and symbolic function
of the street and other public spaces. They criticized the loss of human dimension on modern
cities. Thus their works derived from the view of city dweller. Among others Lynch saw the city
as text and to “read” it he used scientific inquiry and empirical (see footnotes) methods.
(interviews and questionnaires) Lynch’s way of “reading” the city is followed by Appleyard, Thiel
and some others afterward. (Community participation, advocacy planning, non-elitists)
Lynch is chiefly concerned with “The Image of the Environment”. He says, “Every citizen has
had long associations with some part of the city, and his image is soaked in memories and
meanings.” He also concerned with how we locate ourselves within the city, how we find our
way around. To know where we are within the city, therefore, we have to build up a workable
image of each part. Each of these images will comprise;
· our recognition of its “individuality or oneness” within the city as a whole,
· our recognition of its spatial or pattern relationships to other parts of the city,
· its practical meaning for each of us (both practical and emotional)
2. Reading Cities: “The Image of The City”
One of the first coherent analyzers of the urban scene in empirical terms is “The Image
of the City” (1960) In “The Image of the City”, Lynch gives an account of a research project,
carried out in three American cities. (Los Angeles, Boston and Jersey City with comparisons to
Florence and Venice) The project resulted in the evolution of the concept of legibility
depending on the people’s 'mental maps'
Before Lynch the concept of legibility have proved invaluable as an analytic and design
tool. The Image of the City helped give rise to a new science of human perception and behavior
in the city. For urban designers, however, it is Lynch's innovative use of graphic notation to link
quite abstract ideas of urban structure with the human perceptual experience liberating them
from the previous strictness of the physical masterplan.
3. Legibility
Legibility is a term used to describe the ease with which people can understand the
layout of a place. By making questionnaire surveys, Lynch defined a method of analyzing
legibility based on five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. He defined
these as follows:
Paths: familiar routes followed- (1st Kordon) "are the channels along which the observer
customarily, occasionally, or potentially moves. They may be streets, walkways, transit lines,
canals, railroads .."These are the major and minor routes of circulation that people use to move
out. A city has a network of major routes and a neighborhood network of minor routes.
Districts- areas with perceived internal homogeneity(Kemeralti District) "are medium-to-large
sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent, which the observer mentally
enters ‘inside of,’ and which are recognizable as having some common identifying character" A
city is composed of component neighborhoods or districts; (its center, midtown, its in-town
residential areas, organized industrial areas, trainyards, suburbs, college campuses etc.)
Sometime they are districts in form and extent- like Kemeralti District.
Edges- dividing lines between districts- (Izmir Bay) "are the linear elements not used or
considered as paths by the observer. They are boundaries between two phases, linear breaks
in continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, walls ... " The termination of a district
is its edge. Some districts have no edges at all but gradually taper off (gittikçe incelen) and
blend into (karismak) another district. When two districts are joined at one edge they form a
seam. (dikis yeri)
Landmarks- point of reference- (Clock Tower, Hilton) "are another type of point-reference, but
in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather
simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain". The prominent visual features
of the city are its landmarks. Some landmarks are very large and seen at great distances, like
Hilton Hotel in Alsancak. Some landmarks are very small (e.g. a tree within an urban square)
and can only be seen close up, like a street clock at Konak Plaza, or Atatürk Statue on
Cumhuriyet Square. Landmarks are an important element of urban form because they help
people to orient themselves in the city and help identify an area.
Nodes- centres of attraction that you can enter<- (Konak Square) "are points, the strategic
spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are intensive foci to and from which
he is traveling. They may be primary junctions, places of a break in transportation, a crossing or
convergence of paths, moments of shift from one structure to another. Or the nodes may be
simply concentrations, which gain their importance from being the condensation of some use or
physical character, as a street-corner hangout or an enclosed square ... " A node is a center of
activity. Actually it is a type of landmark but is distinguished from a landmark by virtue of its
active function. Where a landmark is a distinct visual object, a node is a distinct hub (göbek) of
activity.
Having identified these elements Lynch describes the skeletal elements of city form. To
build a broader vocabulary upon this basic framework we must consider other natural and man-
made urban form determinants.
https://bcamarsharchi525.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/lynchs-five-elements/
Lynch’s Five Elements
Posted on March 5, 2013 by brookecamarsh
During the lecture Dr Mirko Guaralda presented the work of renowned town planner and
urban designer Kevin Lynch and his book The Image of the City, 1960. This part of the
lecture really interest me as I am doing Town Planning as my 2nd major and I am familiar
with Lynch’s five elements: Paths, Edges, Districts, Nodes and Landmarks. Lynch argues
that people in urban situations orient themselves by means of mental maps. A clear mental
map of the urban environment is needed to counter the always -looming fear of
disorientation. Lynch proposes that these mental maps consist of five elements:
Paths: The streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel. Lynch
noted that paths were often the predominant elements in people’s image with the othe r
elements being arranged and related along paths.
Edges: May be barriers, more or less penetrable, which close one region off from another,
or they may be seams, lines along which two regions are related and joined together.
Districts: Areas characterized by common characteristics, these are the medium to large
areas, which observers mentally enter ‘inside of’ and/or have some common identifying
character. Distinctive physical characteristics might include ‘thematic continuities’, such as
texture, space, form, detail, symbol and building.
Nodes: The strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the
intensive foci and from which the person is travelling.
Landmarks: Landmark’s key physical characteristics was singularity some aspect that is
unique or memorable in the context. Some landmarks – towers, spires, hills are distant and
are typically seen from many angles and from distance, over the top of smaller elements.
Other landmarks – sculptures, signs and trees are primarily local being visible only in
restricted localities and from certain approaches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_A._Lynch
Kevin Andrew Lynch (January 7, 1918 – April 25, 1984) was an American urban planner and
author. He is known for his work on the perceptual form of urban environments and was an early
proponent of mental mapping. His most influential books include The Image of the City (1960), a
seminal work on the perceptual form of urban environments, and What Time is This Place?
(1972), which theorizes how the physical environment captures and refigures temporal
processes.
A student of architect Frank Lloyd Wright before training in city planning, Lynch spent his
academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teaching there from 1948 to 1978.
He practiced site planning and urban design professionally with Carr/Lynch Associates, later
known as Carr, Lynch, and Sandell.
Early life and education[edit]
Lynch was born as the youngest child of an Irish American family on January 7, 1918.[1] He was
raised in the Hazel Avenue neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago.[2] After graduating from
the Francis Parker School in 1935, Lynch matriculated at Yale University intending to study
architecture.[3] Finding its pedagogy too conservative, he left to study under Frank Lloyd Wright
at Taliesin in Wisconsin.[4] Lynch later stated that Wright was a great influence, but disagreed
with his individualistic social philosophy.[5] Leaving Wright after a year and a half, he enrolled at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York to study engineering in 1939, but did not complete
the program and went to work for Chicago architect Paul Schweikher. In 1941, Lynch married
Anne Borders, a fellow graduate of the Parker School.[6]
Three weeks after his wedding, Lynch was drafted into the Army Corps of Engineers, serving in
the Philippines and Japan through 1944.[7] After the war, he completed his undergraduate
education at MIT and received a Bachelor's degree in City Planning in 1947.[8]
Academic career[edit]
After graduation, Lynch began work in Greensboro, North Carolina as an urban planner but was
soon recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin. He began lecturing at MIT the following year,
becoming an assistant professor in 1949, a tenured associate professor in 1955, and a full
professor in 1963.[8]
In 1954, after receiving a grant from the Ford Foundation to study urban form in Italy, Lynch
and his MIT teaching colleague Gyorgy Kepes were awarded a grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation to study perceptions of the urban environment and urban form.[n 1] Lynch and Kepes'
research was published in 1960 as Lynch's book The Image of the City.[9] In 1970, Lynch
received funding from UNESCO to study the use of cities by young people in urban areas of
Salta, Melbourne, Toluca, and Krakow, a project summarized in his book Growing Up in Cities
(1977).[10]
Lynch provided seminal contributions to the field of city planning through empirical research on
how individuals perceive and navigate the urban landscape.[11] 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.
T H E I M A G E O F T H E C I T Y [E D I T ]
Lynch's most famous work, The Image of the City (1960), is the result of a five-year study on
how observers take in information of the city. Using three American cities as examples (Boston,
Jersey City and Los Angeles), Lynch reported that users understood their surroundings in
consistent and predictable ways, forming mental maps with five elements:
paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel;
edges, perceived boundaries such as walls, buildings, and shorelines;
districts, relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or character;
nodes, focal points, intersections or loci;
landmarks, readily identifiable objects which serve as external reference points.
In the same book, Lynch also coined the words "imageability" and "wayfinding". Image of the
City has had important and durable influence in the fields of urban planning and environmental
psychology.