The Image of the City

Shiho Asada The Image of the City MA Information Design Kevin Lynch, 1960 University of Reading Overview First writen in October 2014 The Image of the City is a book about urban information and revised in October 2015 design, writen by Kevin Lynch, 1960. This book is known as the irst literature which deines the modern usage of wayinding. According to Lynch, wayinding is a ‘consistent use and organisation of deinite sensory cues from the external environment’. This deinition has afected many city planners and wayinding designers until today. The Image of the City is a result of Lynch’s ive-year research on how people perceive a city. Mental maps, simple sketches of maps drawn from memory of urban areas had been used for his research (Fig. 1). He collected mental maps from citizens for revealing the geographical and social problems of the cities that people faced. Lynch mentions that The Image of the City explains ‘the look of cities, and whether this look is of any importance, and whether it can be changed’. Also, Lynch highlights ‘giving visual form to the city is a special kind of design problem’. The research was conducted in three diferent cities in the usa (Boston, Los Angels and Jersey City) for examining this new Figure 1. Lynch's mental map of Boston based on ield work and interviews Lynch, The Image of the City 1 problem, suggesting a method to form the visual image of the city and ofering the principles of city design. According to Lynch, there are ive elements (Fig. 7 – 8) that help people to form mental maps and make users understood their surroundings in consistent and predictable ways. The ive elements are: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. He suggests that urban designers should analyse these elements and built wayinding which navigates people smoothly and helps people to create images of the city. What is ‘image of the city’? An image of the city is a mental image of an environment which is held by the citizens. Constructing the image of the city takes long spans of time because it is vast, and varies on diferent occasions and with diferent people. Also, it is seen in all the conditions of lights and weathers. In addition to the environmental conditions, the citizens themselves and their activities play important roles in the image of the city as well as the stationary physical parts of the city, such as buildings and roads. Each citizen observes the city and surroundings including him/herself and other participants. Thus, it can be said that the image of the city is the composite of everyone’s observations and sense. How people build mental image of the city? The image of the city is an outcome of interaction between an observer and his/her environment (Fig. 2). There are three situations of making coherent images: when a mental picture of an object has developed identity and organisation through Figure 2. Interacting process between an observer and an environment Giving distinctions and relations Selecting and organising information Geting familiarity with the environment Adapting to the environment 2 long familiarity; when a new object is identiied because of a correspondence with a stereotype already constructed by the observer; when a new object has strong structure or identity such as remarkable physical features and suggests their paterns. Those coherent images tend to be similar in the same groups observers who are in homogeneous classes of age, sex, culture, occupation, temperament, or familiarity. Therefore, city planners should study about the groups of citizens and the images they might have. What are the essential qualities of the city image? • Legibility A legible city can be recognised visually with symbols. Its districts or landmarks or pathways should be identiied and grouped into one patern easily. The legibility of cityscape is the most important property in urban city planning because nobody has any mystic ‘instinct’ of wayinding. Instead of it, people can use lots kinds of cues such as the visual sensations of colour, shape, motion or polarization of light; and other senses such as smell, sound, touch, kinesthesia or sense of gravity. In order to navigate people, wayinding devices should be ofered to pedestrians: maps, street numbers, route signs and bus placards (Fig. 3). Those wayinding devices can produce a vivid, integrated and sharp image of the city. Good environmental image may keep people’s emotion stable and enhance the potential depth and intensity of people’s experience. Figure 3. Legible London, the pedestrian wayinding system of London has totems and maps. The symbols are coherent, and built everywhere in London from street to underground stations. Applied Information Group, Yellow Book: A Prototype Wayfinding System for London. 3 • Structure, identity and meaning (Visibility) The city image may be analysed into three components: identity (Fig. 4), structure (Fig. 5) and meaning (Fig. 6). Identity is a strong feature that can be identiied easily because of its distinction from others. Structure is a spatial or patern relationship between the object and the observer. Meaning is a kind of emotional inluence on the observer from the object. If those three features of the image of the city are distinctive, the visibility of the city can be more understandable. Figure 4. London has a strong identity which can be recognised by people around the world. Identity htp://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/ archive/03051/london_2423609b_3051158a. jpg F I N S B U RY Figure 5. Applied Wayinding have igured out the structure of London with the common names of areas of London. Those familiar names can help pedestrians quickly connect one place to another and build the knowledge for mental mapping. Structure B LO O M S B U RY FITZROVIA CLERKENWELL A L D E R S G AT E HOLBORN M A RY L E BO N E M O O R G AT E S T PA U L’ S SOHO COVENT GARDEN FENCHURCH M AY F A I R Applied Information Group, Yellow Book: A Prototype Wayfinding System for London. ST JAMES’S G R E E N PA R K SOUTHBANK BANKSIDE BOROUGH WAT E R LO O S O U T H WA R K LAMBETH VICTORIA NEWINGTON KENNINGTON PIMILICO VA U X H A L L Figure 6. People can ind their own meaning and interesting points from the features of the city. Applied Information Group, Yellow Book: A Prototype Wayfinding System for London. 4 Meaning • Imageability Legibility + Visibility=Imageability (Public Image) Imageability is a concept of a combination of legibility and visibility. It is a physical feature that relate to the atributes of identity and structure in the mental image. In an imaginable city, there may be a clear structure which people can understand easily. For improving the imageability of the city, the city planners should enhance the legibility of its image by using symbolic devices, for instance, a map with symbolic diagrams or a set of writen instructions. To improve the imageability of the city means strengthening the public image of the city. The elements of the city Paths: The channels which the people pass by E.g. Streets, walkways, transit lines, canals, railroads Edges: The liner elements which are not used or considered as paths E.g. Shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, walls Districts: The medium-to-large sections of the city E.g. Housing/market/building/shopping area Nodes: The points, the strategic spots in a city which people can enter E.g. Stations, parks, plazas, shopping malls Landmarks The point references which can be recognised from long distance E.g. Towers, halls, libraries, churches Figure 7. Illustrations of the city elements Lynch, The Image of the City 5 Figure 8. Lynch had analysed the elements of the cities of the USA, and this igure is an analysed map of Los Angels. He allocated symbols and colours for each element. Lynch, The Image of the City How should information designers deal with city design? In conclusion, the designers who deal with urban planning should study the people’s perception and the structure of the city, and improve the legibility and imageability of the city. In terms of information design, the designers should design clear and suicient wayinding for navigating people smoothly. It can make lows of the traic and the pedestrians beter and improve the public image of the city. As Lynch insists, if urban design and the citizens interact each other well, the city will bring more enjoyable daily lives to everyone. 6 Bibliography Lynch, Kevin. 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 7