Okay, it's taken me a bit of time to get the next review out. Between touring Waiheke Island last weekend, and increasing my daily reading of planning news, it has taken me nearly two weeks to chew through and digest Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City. This book is obviously regarded as one of the classics of planning, and so I tried to spend a little extra time with it. I probably should have spent more time with it, in fact, as I gather that this book has influenced at least a couple generations of planners in one way or another.
This book introduces the idea of "imageability" of a city. That is, some cities or some areas in a city have stronger identities than others. Lynch studied Boston, Jersey city, and Los Angeles surveying people about elements of the cities. Some areas were well known by residents and were described in great detail, other areas of each city dropped out of mind for the residents. Lynch proposed 5 components that contribute to imageability: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks.
Boston was considered a highly imageable city with a number of boroughs having a strong visual identity.
Jersey City was said to be in a very imageable place, but that it lacked image. Interestingly, Lynch notes that people from Jersey City (Jersians? Jerseyites?) typically described areas by use or by street name, rather than than visual features.
LA was seen as sort of a mid-way between Jersey and Boston: not as imageable as Boston, but more so than Jersey City. Lynch notes the dominance of autos and the highway system in LA even in 1960. Lynch also mentions the flowers and vegetation, and calls them "the glory of many of the residential sections of the city." I wonder if that's the case now with the water shortages. I haven't spent any time in LA, but it seems that water use might preclude extensive gardens now? Or is that the problem?
Lynch noted that the joy of seeing a panorama of the city was common to all three, and asked if it would be possible to make panoramic views of the city more common. It seems like there might be some basic geometric limitations to this idea. Perhaps there are some heuristics that could be applied to identify areas that could potentially have a pleasant panoramic view.
Despite being published in 1960, this has given me something to think about in terms of the overall aesthetics of a city. A lot of the discussion in this book deals with large scale development of city image. I'm guessing that most city planners don't get to work on the ultra-high visibility elements of a city. Though the thought of radically shaping the image of a city is appealing ("Hey, you! Put a building there! Build that rail line! We need a park on that hillside stat!"), I think that urban planners probably don't get to dictate their artistic visions quite as painters do. Instead, I'd imagine that planning involves a lot of secondary or tertiary controls. Maybe you get to chisel the first grooves in a slab of sandstone, but the wind and the water are ultimately going to do the carving.
Lynch suggests some soft controls to achieve visual form in the city: zoning provisions, advisory review, persuasion of private design. I'm not comfortable with dictatorial controls, as fun as it would be to realize my own vision for a city.
Still, those strongly planned elements do exist. Reading this book, I am struck how "imageable" Auckland is. One Tree Hill, Auckland Domain and museum, the harbour bridge, Devonport's Mt. Victoria and North Head, the Sky Tower, etc. Part of my slowness in posting this was that I wanted to take some photos of the more distinctive parts of Auckland. That will have to wait for a future blog post.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
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1 comments:
I amy haveto check this one out! The twin cities are the best imaged place I've ever been. It is easy to walk from landmark to land mark in many cases and from neighborhood to neighborhood. It felt in many ways like living in a series of closely connected villages. The result was lots of community awareness and community pride. I think there is a synergy in this with "Minnesota nice" and with the famous Minnesota social progressivism. Izhevsk had some of the same character in spite of the Communists and now the wild west capitalists. It is hard to tell which is worse for community.
Actually thinking about Vegas and Sanders county I have to give capitalism an edge. Vegas focuses totally on the strip which is never static. It cannot ever have an image because landmarks and areas are constantly being destroyed and relocated. Outlying areas try to orient themselves in respect to the strip but it moves out from under them on a moment's notice. This leaves all of the outlying areas as a myriad of cookie cutter walled compounds. Vegas may be a city but it is hard to imagine it as a community or a place residents can attach them selves to.
Saunders County prides its self as being the wild west complete with transplanted poseurs in faux western garb. The old timers focused on their villages in an often rigid and exenophobic way. (Trout Creek old timers are a bit suspicious at best of the city slickers in Thompson Falls and vice versa.) This is slowly being over lain by an influx of relatively wealthy retirees who are here for the scenery and hunting and fishing. The local communities mean nothing to them. Their landmarks and community images are in California or Washington. Right now traditional landmarks and images are eroding with neither the will nor means to replace them with much else.
In both Vegas and and Saunders County rapid growth has or is out pacing people's ability to form an enduring image of them.
Peter, did I understand the basics of the book here or did I miss the point?
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