The Image of the City: Boston City, Los Angeles and Jersey City Paper Example

Introduction

The image of the city has been authored by Kevin Lynch who takes time to discuss the people's perception of cities. Kevin highlights the importance of the city appearance and how it can be altered to suit the view. The book also highlights some of the design problems that may arise from poor planning. The book examines three major cities; Boston city, Los Angeles and Jersey city, comparing their design and appearances. The book also discusses how users of a city understand and navigate through their surroundings. Kevin found out that passages, building structures, intersections, landmarks, and divisions of the cities help the users of a city navigate ("Review: Kevin Lynch - The Image of the City | The Mobile City," 2009). Kevin also argues that it is important for city designers to put into consideration the ease of a user to form a mental map, ease of navigation of the environment and ability of a user to operate on the environment.

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Chapter One: The Image of the Environment

Legibility

The chapter has been subdivided into four topics namely; legibility, building the image, and structure and identity ("Image of the city book review- Shashikant Nishant Sharma -16 March," 2012). The author's opinion stands that a beautiful city should be legible in that the construct should be easy to study and clear to the mind of the citizens. The book pinpoints that a city is indeed an object which can be enjoyed by its citizens and is a creation of many builders.

In most cases, cities keep on renovating with new structures now and then and in some instances modification of the same buildings. The book also discusses the importance of users of a city to recognize harmonious surroundings and not always complain about pollution from vehicles and people. In the legibility subtopic, the book focuses on the mental image perception by the citizens. The legibility of a city lies on the visual quality of the design of a given city (Kevin, 1960). More importantly, how easy a citizen can visualize or recognize parts of the city.

The book highlights that legibility lies in the ability of the user of a city to form a pattern from the landmarks and streets and mentally grasp the pattern. Legibility in a city is important since it is a way of helping the inhabitants has an easy method of traversing the environment without much help (Kevin, 1960). Imagine how difficult it would have been if big cities did not have street numbers or maps or route signs or even bus signs. Legibility also carries in it the free movement of a user by strategically placing buildings and landmarks mentally during movement. According to the book, legibility of a city will make it easier for a city inhabitant to give direction to a specific location. In addition, legibility in a city gives a user a sense of security in that; a user knows pathways and buildings should an incident occurs.

Building the Image

The next subtopic in the chapter is building the image, which basically discusses the user's ability to observe the city environment ("Image of the city book review- Shashikant Nishant Sharma -16 March," 2012). After mentally grasping the landscape of the city, the user should be able to build an image of the city through landmarks, paths, nodes, edges or districts. The book highlights that different users have different observations on a city as people build the images differently. Some markings on a city may seem important or easy to recognize to one user and still become difficult to picture by a different user. The book also reveals that first experiences by users in a city can help them build an image of the city. Also, some structures with unique features can be used to form images such as skyscrapers, oceans, drugstores or mountains.

Therefore, it is important for the designers of the city to consider the ability of a user of a city to build the image (Kevin, 1960). Even though image-making is different for the city users, it has been noted in the book that a group of inhabitants could find similar structures easy to recognize. The groups are the various homogeneous classes like gender, age sets, careers or cultures. Also, building the image works hand in hand with legibility to help the user map the city and understand the various joints in the city.

Structure and Identity

The final subtopic discussed in the book is structure and identity which classifies the environmental image into identity, meaning, and structure. Structure and identity help to define "Imageability" as the quality evident in an object (physical) that can help in signifying an image to an observer. For a user to build an image, he or she has to identify an object that seems distinct from other objects in the vicinity (Kevin, 1960). The step is known as identification; whereby the user uses his or her visual skill to recognize an object that will help in mapping the city. The second step is to ensure that the object of choosing has a pattern that is related to other objects and the user of the city. The last step in structure and identity is for the object that the observer has identified to have some meaning to him or her.

The book gives an example of an exit observation to a user. In most cases, a door could signify an exit point to the user and to some users the door could be described as an entry point or as a landmark to guide someone while giving directions (Kevin, 1960). The key point in structure and identity is that the user's perception of an object should have an identity and meaning. Hence, it is important while building cities to concentrate on the clarity of the physical image to aid in developing meaning to the users without assisted guidance. All in all, the structure and identity is a key component in the construction and layout of the city.

References

Image of the city book review- Shashikant Nishant Sharma -16 march,? (2012, March 18). Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/shashikantnsharma/image-of-the-city-book-review-shashikant-nishant-sharma-16-march-2012

Kevin, L. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge Massachusetts.

Review: Kevin Lynch - The Image of the City | The Mobile City. (2009, May 8). Retrieved from http://themobilecity.nl/2009/05/08/review-kevin-lynch-the-image-of-the-city/