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Kevin Lynch has 47 books on Goodreads with 11311 ratings. Kevin Lynch’s most popular book is The Image of the City.

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Preview — The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch

The classic work on the evaluation of city form.
What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion -- imageability -- and shows i...more

Paperback, Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, 208 pages

Published June 15th 1964 by Mit Press (first published 1960)

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Rating details

Aug 01, 2012Rob Shurmer rated it liked it

I have always been perplexed, given our fine architectural and design schools, by the pervasive dullness and banality of urban America. In Lynch I've discovered a like-minded friend: 'Not one American city larger than a village is of consistently fine quality, although a few towns have some pleasant fragments. It is hardly surprising, then, that most Americans have little idea of what it can mean to live in such an environment.... they are hardly aware of the potential value of harmonious surrou...more

Oct 04, 2016Andrea rated it really liked it

Shelves: public_space, architecture, cities-and-suburbs

Kevin Lynch -- he's been on my list of folks to read forever on architecture and cities and space, and with reason as The Image of the City is rather brilliant. He writes:

Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. City design is therefore a temporal art... At every instant, there is more than the eye can se

...more

The Image of the City by Kevin lynch was first released in 1960 and is a core text for anyone with an interest in Town Planning, Urban Design or the like. Lynch offers a study that considers the way in which cities are perceived and introduces a methodology for research into the field. The correct use of technical terms and repeated examples of the general language associated with the study of urban design is of great use to its intended audience.
In the opening chapters, the author introduces t...more

Jul 17, 2017Annie rated it really liked it

This is a really intriguing project, particularly as it was published almost 60 years ago, in 1960. I can't speak for Jersey City or LA, the other two cities examined, but Boston has changed dramatically in some ways, but stayed remarkably the same in others. Interesting to learn Copley Square was in 1960 already a marriage of the new (skyscrapers like John Hancock) and the old (central library, the church, etc.). And that the Christian Science building was, as now, distinctive for being an incr...more

Sep 21, 2016Jon rated it it was ok

If you want to frame a shed, you do not need to spend weeks hand-hewing lumber out of an oak from your backyard. You can, but you're probably better off getting lumber from the local lumber yard.
The Image of the City deals primarily with the idea and creation of mental maps, which was probably a novel idea in 1960. And although it's regarded as a fundamental and influential text in urban planning, this was not a worthwhile read for me.
The type and the style, although fine for the time, didn't wo...more

Image of the City is a seminal book to the field of urban design. In it, Lynch introduces a framework for analyzing the city in terms of five inter-related components: paths, landmarks, nodes, edges, and districts.
Lynch's study, involving Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles, although conclusive, is fairly open-ended and its findings result from open-ended field research as well as interviews.
Urban designers and environmental graphic designers today use Lynch's strategies when devising wayfindin...more

Aug 13, 2009okyrhoe rated it liked it

Even though it is an old text (1960), and the most 'academic' in its scope, I found this book to be the more interesting of the set. Maybe because it answered some of the issues I have been preoccupied with, regarding the urban reality of Athens. The concepts of legibility and the value of empiricism over theory, in talking about a city & its architecture helps explain why, for example, Omonia square will always be a site of 'chaos', despite efforts to 'humanize' the location.

Jan 08, 2016Safiya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Helpful for building one's own theories based on city imageability !
*Precious*

Mar 22, 2017Nicole rated it really liked it

Lynch provides clear analysis of the cognitive maps formed by inhabitants of his selected US cities. This seminal book has influenced so much of what I'm reading so it's useful to return to the source material.

Interesting research study and methodology concludes that strong visual form not only makes a city more livable but also improves quality of life. Suck it, Jersey City.

Site Planning Kevin Lynch Pdf

The author makes a case for the image of the city (how it looks), is it relevant, and does it play a part in one's perception and way-finding abilities. Yes it does matter so that parts of a city can be related to the whole of the city, so that users can easily and happily find their way, and so that the quality of life in cities can be improved. I really like the author's approach to diagramming each city. I only wish I would have read this as a first year architecture student instead of a rece...more

Good book, a classic, it has some useful information, especially if you're interested in town planning but I found it really tiring to read, i could hardly stay focused in about half the book, my eyes grew tired because the letters are tiny and I was counting the pages left until the end of the book all the time! I didn't enjoy reading this at all, I just hope someone had told me what the important bits are so I could skip all the rest!!

Sep 10, 2008Andrew added it

The problems of planning have rarely been put together so succinctly. Rather than promoting grand 'modernist' plans for revamping cityspace, Lynch promotes a far more modest approach, favoring legibility, utility, and humanity. Calling up the examples of Boston, Jersey City, and LA (all circa 1960), Lynch provides us with a tactical approach to both the psychogeography of our cities and the ways to reclaim space.

This is considered the bible of urban design texts, but frankly I think it is lacking. Lynch examines various aspects of cities - nodes, paths, edges, etc - drawing upon extensive research he performed in the 1950s. If you haven't been to the places he writes about, Boston, Jersey City, San Fran, it can be difficult to fully understand what he is referring to. Surely someone could produce an updated version of this to reflect the design challenges of today's cities.

1) 'Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. City design is therefore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other temporal arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across. It is seen in...more

Kevin Lynch is concerned not so much with the actual physical substance of the city but rather with the image that that substance conveys. Our ideas of a city, he says, are mixed with memories and meanings. In this sense, his thinking is not unlike that of David Kolb in *Sprawling Places*, which argues suburbs need to be seen as areas of greater complexity than they typically are via the memories and meanings attached to locales. Rather than mourn chain stores taking over an area, we can see the...more

'Moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts. We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with the other participants. Most often, our perception of the city is not sustained, but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other concerns. Nearly every sense is in operation, and the images is the composite of them all.' (2)
'Another [Jersey City] woman spoke of driving o...more

Jan 27, 2019Alexander rated it liked it

The premise is interesting: how do people think about their cities? What impresses on their memories? What are the component parts, and what are the important features of these parts in a good city?
I just found the execution was a bit of a mess. The maps and figures are often scattered throughout the book and sometimes a challenge to interpret or rely on, and some of the appendices could have easily been moved into the actual text. Lynch's writing tends to reach for an academic tone and just end...more

Apr 02, 2018Sarwesh Shah rated it really liked it

Kevin Lynch's thesis is a spectacular piece of research that attempted to theorise the idea of city forms. Very few researchers have managed to intervene in the abstractness that research premise offers and come up with such powerful yet simple connotations. It is no wonder that this book is helping city planners develop a better layout for the new city sectors. The book also describes the effect of a city landscape on its inhabitants.
An extract from this book was a pre-read for our course 'Narr...more

Dec 19, 2017Eric Wallace rated it really liked it

This is the kind of book I particularly love stumbling upon, simply because it expands my mind with ideas I hadn't given much thought to before.
It is densely packed with references to anthropological studies, literary quotes, and abstractions explained succinctly — a scholarly work that's beautifully written so it becomes accessible.
It quickly engaged my inner geek in such a way that, after reading about the topic of Appendix A on page six, I immediately proceeded to read that entire appendix be...more

Useful and academic. Sometimes though I just wanted simpler language to convey the concepts. The diagrams were helpful in clarifying the ideas. Wondering about the explicit role of open space in city-building and image. May have to re-read some sections. It seemed a bit heavy on buildings and streets. I'll have to find a corresponding book dealing with the structural role of open space to urban image.

Jul 12, 2019Carl Fairclough rated it really liked it

Interesting conclusions drawn regarding how we orient ourselves in environments, and applicable to fields outside urban planning.
My main criticism is the ordering of the content — the appendices were far more interesting to me than the core content. I think it would have been much better to have read these (citations of anthropological studies & literary references, and the methodology) before the rest of the book.
Otherwise interesting, and highly applicable to design of any kind.

Aug 07, 2018Jennifer Stoloff rated it liked it

This is an important book that I had only read part of until I finally got it done. I didn't love it. I think a lot of the ideas are important but the style is elliptical and doesn't bother to define most of the key terms. It's clear what they mean but the relative importance or use of 'path' or 'node' is rather subjective and difficult to contextualize.

Oct 05, 2018Alice Lemon rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recs-alex-baca, recs-blair, topic-cities

I'm really glad I read this...it's a wonderful study of how people form mental maps and images of cities, and so useful for thinking about urban design, but also thinking about my own experiences navigating cities and places.

Feb 28, 2019Chris D'Antonio rated it really liked it

It was neat and undergirds a lot in urban design. Will circle back later.

Mar 09, 2018

Pamela rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2018, cities-architecture-planning

Fascinating in synopsis, not so much as you’re reading it. It’s something I’m glad to have read, gained a lot of insight from and did enjoy reading at all.

Still have a copy.

the legible city!
The Image of the City is © 1960 from the Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies.
The Legible City--a city you can read! As an iconographer writes rather than draws or paints an icon, a city comprised of colors, shapes, motion, and light can be viewed, read and interpreted as an environmental image. The picture includes identity (what is it?), structure (space, shape, pattern relation and discrimination) and meaning (emotional, psychological, historical values) from the observ...more

Jan 15, 2010Anna S. rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Mar 25, 2016Jay Brand rated it liked it

Shelves: urban-design, large-scale-design, design, boston, los-angeles, subjective-experience-of-cities, imageability, jersey-city, urban-studies, urban-planning

Very interesting description of the 'imageability' of three American cities: Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles. Based on extensive interviews and guided tours with a convenience sample of residents, some important conceptual abstractions were derived from this empirical information to help organize the subjective image that constitutes the subjective experience of large urban centers. These abstractions include nodes, landmarks, paths, edges, and districts or regions.
However, it was difficult...more

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