Elements of a City

by Mary Frances Higuchi

Five elements help us to see the environmental image of a city. The elements generally overlap and don't exist in isolation. As Kevin Lynch points out, "Districts are structured with nodes, defined by edges, penetrated by paths, and sprinkled with landmarks." (The Image of the City. Kevin Lynch. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the President and Fellows of Harvard College. 1960. 23rd printing, 1994. Pages 48-49.)

PATHS - channel for movement (i.e., streets, sidewalks, railroads, canals, transit lines) People observe the city while moving through it.

NODES - points, junctions, a crossing, convergence of paths (i.e., break-points of transportation - railroad stop or highway to city street; plaza, commercial corner; hang-out) People enter the city at strategic points, or they head toward a spot.

EDGES - boundaries between two phases (i.e., shores, walls, barriers) Edges close one region from another. Or, they could be lines that hold related regions together.

DISTRICT - territory with a function (i.e., park, residential area) Districts are the sections of the city.

LANDMARK - reference point (i.e., natural feature, monument, statue) Landmarks become identifiable if they stand out and are different from their surroundings.

Lynch's most famous work, The Image of the City published in 1960, is the result of a five-year study on how users perceive and organize spatial information as they navigate through cities. Using three disparate 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 andenvironmental psychology. 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. Lynch died at his summer home in Martha's Vineyard in 1984.

. 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) Lynchs 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 peoples '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 (gittike 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 Atatrk 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 (gbek) 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.

History and Built Environment I A. Lecture Notes Vocabulary of Urban Form1. 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) Lynchs 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 peoples '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 (gittike 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 Atatrk 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 (gbek) 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