KEVIN LYNCH

GROUP-7

Pournima Barhate
Sayali Naik
Sneha Sarode
Ramya Sharma
Nikita Wadgave

1. Biography
2. Kevin Lynch - Works
3. The Image of the City
4. The elements of cognitive images of the cities 5
principles - Understanding Neighborhoods
Through Mental Mapping (mapping method)
5. Design Principles for Wayfinding
6. The View From the Road
7. Good City Form
8. Quotes - Kevin Lynch


1.Biography


Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984 Martha's
Vineyard, Massachusetts) was an American urban planner and author.
His most influential books include The Image of the City (1960)
and What Time is This Place? (1972).

Lynch studied at Yale University, Taliesin (studio) under Frank Lloyd
Wright, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and received a Bachelor's
degree in city planning from MIT in 1947.He worked in Greensboro, NC
as an urban planner but was recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin.
He began lecturing at MIT the following year, became an assistant
professor in 1949, was tenured as an associate professor in 1955, and
became a full professor in 1963.


Lynch provided seminal contributions to the field of city planning
through empirical research on how individuals perceive and navigate
the urban landscape.

His books explore the presence of time and history in an 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. Lynch died at his
summer home in Martha's Vineyard in 1984.
At Yale University with Frank Lloyd Wright
The Image of the City (1960)

Site Planning Lynch Kevin and Hack Gary

The View from the Road (1964)

What Time is this Place?

Managing the Sense of a Region

Good City Form

Wasting Away (with contributions by Michael Southworth,
editor)
2. Summary of the book The Image of the City

The Image of the City (1960)
Lynch's most famous work, The Image of the City , is the result of a five-year
study on how observers take in information of the city
His main contribution was to provide empirical research on city planning,
studying how individuals perceive and navigate the urban landscape.

It also explores the presence of time and history in the urban
environment, and therefore how these external factors affect people.

The first straightforward approach to the city, taken by how every
individual is looking at it, which includes, sense aesthetical experience
through space and time.
An urban system can therefore be either perceived as stable or in constant
change, which is the most noticeable effect of external factors affecting any
environment.

On this concern, Lynch states that, unlike Architecture, Urbanism is in
constant change: today, fifty years later, this issue could be regarded and
discussed with further attention, as architecture, too, is subject to external
factors and different perceptions, scale, but mostly a cultural aspect.
Lynchs aim is to understand the relation between environmental
images and urban life, at the basis of urban design principles; he
therefore brings up an analysis of three different towns, putting into
practice a research method whose successfulness is tested through
the results of the analysis itself.
The research focused on Boston, Jersey City and
LosAngeles. As explained, the method undertaken concentrated on
two phases, consisting firstly in office-based interviews, where the
sample citizens were also required to draw up a map in order to make
a rapid description of the city. The second phase consisted in a
systematic examination of the environmental image evoked by
trained observers .
This is how, through surveys and research, Boston appears to be
perceived only as one-sided, Jersey City is described as a formless
place on the edge of something else and Los Angeles, despite being
well structured, seems as faceless as Jersey City, delivering a sense of
confusion.
Lynch focuses on four main concepts correlated to a wise urban
planning:
1. an urban system has to be held legible, through definite sensory cues
2. its image has to be perceived by the observer, arbitrarily selected by
the community and finally manipulated by city planners.
3. legibility and imageability would then lead to the identification of a
structure, and therefore a precise identity, which are both
parameters through which it is possible to analyze an urban system
and its own elements.
4. Lynch reckons that there might be different relations of complexity
within every structure:
5. these consist in the relations between definite elements, which are
identified in:
path_landmark_edge_node_district.


3.The elements of cognitive images of the cities
5 principles

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.

In the 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.
1. Paths - the streets,
sidewalks, trails, and other
channels in which people
travel.
2. Edges -perceived boundaries
such as walls, buildings, and
shorelines;
3. Districts - relatively large
sections of the city
distinguished by some
identity or character;
4. Nodes intersections, focal
points .
5. Landmarks - readily
identifiable objects which
serve as external reference
points.

4.Design Principles for Wayfinding
Create an identity at each location, different from all
others.
Use landmarks to provide orientation cues and
memorable locations.
Create well-structured paths.
Create regions of differing visual character.
Don't give the user too many choices in navigation.
Use survey views (give navigators a vista or map).
Provide signs at decision points to help wayfinding
decisions.
Use sight lines to show what's ahead.


The View From the Road
(published in 1964) by Kevin Lynch,
Donald Appleyard and John R. Myer, was
dedicated to the idea that
highways & roads could be
works of art.
In an age when most of us spend significant
amounts of time traveling, the ideas that
Kevin Lynch portrayed is important.

When we are travelling in car we have little
to look at other than what is out the
window , which provides planners ample
opportunities to play with visual effects and
create an interesting and scenic drive.

The interlocking and intricate systems that
highways & roads create are visually
interesting and make statements about
where one is and where you can go as well
as show how connected we really are.
Lynch used an interesting means to show what
they felt were the visual requirements of
highways & road design.
Good City Form (1984) is a kind
of inspiring book that every urban planner
and architect should read and analyze.
book explains the connection between
urban landscapes physical form and its
interaction with human activities.

The main question that Lynch tries to
reveal in that book is 'What makes a good
city?
he has studied past and present
practices of urban landscapes in cities,
villages, parks and built-up settlements.
He studied examples from different kind
of cities throughout the whole world and
supported his theories based on features
that are typical to every human being.

one of the greatest accomplishments conveyed from this
book is that the book creates universal dimensions to figure
out both the social and physical aspects about urban
landscape.

These dimensions are vitality, fit, sense, access and control
and two meta-criteria of efficiency and justice.

Dimensions articulated within the book represent the
indivisible relationship of constructions and values.

From these dimensions he re-underlined that holding a
solely mechanic view of urban environments by no means can
build up a good city.
6.Quotes - Kevin Lynch

The Image of the City Not only is the city an object which is
perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of widely
diverse class and character, but it is the product of many builders
who are constantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own.
While it may be stable in general outlines for some time, it is ever
changing in detail. Only partial control can be exercised over its
growth and form. There is no final result, only a continuous
succession of phases.









Environmental Images

We must consider not just the city as a thing in itself, but the
city being perceived by its inhabitants.

In the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the
environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the
exterior physical world that is held by an individual.

A good environmental image gives its possessor an
important sense of emotional security. He can establish an
harmonious relationship between himself and the outside
world. This is the obverse of the fear that comes with
disorientation.
The Adaptable Image

The observer himself should
play an active role in perceiving
the world and have a creative
part in developing his image.

The observer with great
adaptability and in the light of his
own purposes selects, organizes,
and endows with meaning what he
sees.