[摘要]The Image of the City - Kevin Lynch
的确是很“dry”的一本书，没有诗兴的语言。
但是内容十分concrete，图像也很有说服力。很“硬”的一本书。但是，应该会像一本词典一样，价值不光在文字本身的组合。
懒得花更多时间去想如何描绘这本书了。唯一可惜的是，你一定要亲自去体验Boston, Jersey City跟Los Angeles，才会对书里的那么多例子有着更加深刻的体会。
以下为全书原文摘抄（轻微改写）
1.The Image of the Environment
The city is like a piece of architecture, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. It is therefore a temporal art, but can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other tempora, arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across.
The people and their activities are as important as the stationary physical parts.
*Legibility: This book will consider the visual quality of the American city by studying the mental image of that city which is held by its citizens, concentrating on the apparent clarity or "legibility" of the cityscape, by which we mean the ease with which its parts can be recognized and can be organized into a coherent pattern. We must consider not just the city in itself, but the city being perceived by its inhabitants. A good environmental image gives its possessor an important sense of emotional security. Potentially, the city is in itself the powerful symbol of a complex society, whose positive values of legible surroundings include emotional satisfaction, the framework for communication or conceptual organization, the new depths that it may bring to everyday experience.
*Building the image: environmental images are the result of a two-way process between the environment, which suggests distinctions and relations, and the observer, who, with great adaptability and in the light of this own purposes, selects, organizes, and endows with meaning what he sees.
An object seen for the first time may be identified and related not because it is individually familiar but because it conforms to a stereotype already constructed by the observer; a new object may seem to have strong structure or identity because of striking physical features which suggest or impose their own pattern. Each individual creates and bears his own image, but there seems o be substantial agreement among members of the same group so that the city planners who aspire to model an environment that will be used by many people. Therefore this study will tend to pass over individual differences.
*Structure and Identity: an environmental image may be analyzed into three components: identity, structure, and meaning. So various are the individual meanings of a city, even while its form may be easily communicable, that it appears possible to separate meaning from form, at least in the early stages of analysis. This study will therefore concentrate on the identity and structure of city images.
For an image to have value for orientation in the living space, it must be sufficient, allowing the individual to operate within his environment to the extent desired, sufficiently clear and well integrated to be economical of mental effort. It should be safe, with a surplus of clues so that the alternative actions are possible and the risk of failure is not too high. The image should preferably be open-ended, adaptable to change, allowing the individual to continue to investigate and organize reality, and communicable to other individuals.
*Imageability: This book will look for physical qualities which relate to the attributes of identity of what might be called imageability: that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. To Stern, "to create images which by larity and harmony of form" was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning.
Since image development is a two-way process between observer and the observed, it is possible to strengthen the image either by symbolic devices, by the retraining of the perceiver, or by reshaping one's surroundings.
Suzanne Langer, "Architecture is the total environment made visible."
2. Three Cities
To understand the role of environmental images in our own urban lives, we need to develop and test the idea of imageability, learn what forms make for strong images, and thus to suggest some principles for urban design. As in any small pilot study, the purposed was to develop ideas and methods, rather than to prove facts in a final and determinate way.
In each of the three cities examined, two basic analyses were carried out: 1. A systematic field reconnaissance of the area, where the observer mapped the presence of various elements, their visibility, their image strength or weakness, their connections and disconnections, other interrelations, etc. 2. A lengthy interview was held with a small sample of city residents to evoke their own images of their physical environment. The material is rich in suggestion, and has sufficient internal consistency to indicate that substantial group images do exist and are discoverable by some such means. The form of the environment itself played a tremendous role in the shaping of the image.
[Boston]
The area chosen for Boston includes the commercial core of the metropolitan area, as well as several high density residential districts, ranging from slum to upper-class housing.
For almost all the persons interviewed, this Boston is a city of very distinctive districts and of crooked, confusing paths. The open space of the Boston Common, the State House, and the view across the Charles River from the Cambridge side, it is an old, historical place, full of worn-out buildings, yet containing some new structures among the old. The city lacks open or recreational space. It is an "individual", small, or medium-sized city. It has large areas of mixed use, marked by bay windows, iron fences, or brownstone fronts.
Boston is a city of distinctive districts, and in most parts of the central area one knows where one is simple by the general character of the surrounding area, while the path system in Boston is generally confused. Nevertheless, so important is the function of circulation that the paths are still dominant in the total image. The major difficulties in the city images include confusions, floating points, weak boundaries, isolations, breaks in continuity, ambiguities, branchings, lacks of character or differentiation.
[Jersey City]
Jersey City, New Jersey, lies between Newark and New York City, and is a fringe area of both, with little central activity of its own. It has appearance of a place to pass through rather than to live in. The city has no single center, but rather four or five. The lack of character is apparent from a glance when the consensus of elements thought distinctive by Jersey City people is compared with the same diagram for Boston. The city is marked by the presence of several strong edges or isolating boundaries: the overhead lines of railroads and highways, the Palisades, and the two waterfronts.None of the respondents had anything like a comprehensive view of the city in which they had lived for many years. It was not a whole. It had no center, but was rather a collection of many hamlets. Much of the characteristic feeling for Jersey City seemed to be that it was a place on the edge of something else. Remark came out about the indistinguishability of the physical scene: "It's much the same all over...it's more or less just commonness to me." In this relatively undifferentiated environment there is a reliance not only on use-locations, but frequently on gradients of use, or of the relative state of repair of structures.
[Los Angeles]
The Los Angeles area includes little more than the central business district and its fringes. Central Los Angeles is heavily charged with meaning and activity, with large and presumably distinctive buildings, and with a basic pattern: almost regular grid of streets, a different, and less sharp image than that of Boston. First is the decentralization of the metropolitan region; second, the grid pattern itself is an undifferentiated matrix, within which elements cannot always be located with confidence; third, the central activities are spatially extended and shifting.
When asked to describe or symbolize the city as a whole, the subjects used certain standard words: "spread-out," "spacious," "formless," "without centers." Central Los Angeles is far from the visual chaos of Jersey City, and it has a rather liberal number of single building landmarks, yet it was difficult to organized or comprehend as a whole. The image seemed to lack much of the recognizable character, stability, and pleasant meaning of central Boston.
3 The City Image and Its Elements
The contents of the city images so far studied, which are referable to physical forms, can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks: Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moves; edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer; districts are the 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; nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling; landmarks are another type of point-reference, but which the observer does not enter, keeping external to.
[Path]
For most people interviewed, paths were the predominant city elements, although their importance varied according to the degree of familiarity with the city. Concentration of special use or activity along a street may give it prominence in the minds of observers (Washington Street/Boston, subjects consistently associated with shopping and theatres, while many people seemed not to know that Washington extends beyond the entertainment segment). Characteristic spatial qualities were able to strengthen the image of particular paths (Cambridge St., Commonwealth Ave., Atlantic Ave./Boston all well known for their great width). Special facade characteristics were also important for path identity (Beacon St. and Commonwealth Ave./Boston distinctive partly because of the building facades that line them), while pavement texture seemed to be less important. Proximity to special features of the city (harbor, park, hill, etc) could also endow a path with increased importance, where the path would be acting secondarily as an edge.
Where major paths lacked identity, or were easily confused one for the other, the entire city image was in difficulty (many of the paths in Jersey City difficult to find, both in reality and in memory). Thus the paths, once identifiable, have continuity as well, is an obvious functional necessity. When the channel width changed (Cambridge St. at Bowdoin Sq./Boston), people had difficulty in sensing a continuation of the same path.
Paths may not only be identifiable and continuous, but have directional quality as well. This can be done by a gradient, a regular change in some quality which cumulative in one direction. People tended to think of path destinations and origin points. Cambridge St./Boston has clear, strategic terminal points, while others may have only one sharp terminal. Once a path has directional quality, it may have the further attribute of being scaled: one may be able to sense one's position along the total length, to grasp the distance traversed or yet to go. Scaling is most often accomplished by a sequence of known landmarks or nodes along the path.
Given a directional quality in a path, we may next inquire if it is aligned, that is, if its direction is referable to some larger system. One common cause of unaligned paths was the subtle, misleading curve (the one in Massachusetts Ave. at Falmouth St./Boston). The second common cause was the sharp separation of a path from surrounding elements (Boston Common, and Central Artery/Boston). It is elevated and does not allow a clear view of adjacent streets, but permits a kind of fast and undisturbed movement totally missing in the city. "It is a special kind of automobile-land rather than a normal city street."Recent research on the problems of erecting directional signs on the new freeways has shown that this disassociation from the surroundings causes each turning decision to be made under pressure and without adequate preparation. Railroad lines and the subway are other examples of detachment.
The water surrounding the Boston peninsula is a basic element to which parts may be aligned. The Los Angeles grid provided automatic alignment between downtown streets. It was easy to put down as a basic pattern in a sketch map, even if the individual streets were not distinguishable.
Path intersection: the simple perpendicular relationship seemed easiest to handle (best-known intersection in Boston that of Commonwealth Ave. and Arlington St.: a visually obvious tee, supported by the space, the planting, the traffic, and the importance of the elements joined) Indeed for several subjects, confused intersections with streets entering from many angles were one of their typical Boston characteristics. Yet even a non-perpendicular, five-pointed crossing may be made clear (Copley Square/Boston). The contemporary highway interchange is even more confusing, particularly since it must be negotiated at higher speeds. A perceptual problem on a larger scale is raised where a path branches slightly to make alternate paths, both of relative importance. Similarly in the subway system, the successive branching of main lines was a problem, since it was hard to keep distinct the images of two slightly divergent branches and hard to remember where the branch occurred.
A few important paths may be imaged together as a simple structure, despite any minor irregularities, as long as they have a consistent general relationship to one another (Boston subway system, Los Angeles freeway system, and Jersey City system of Hudson Boulevard). A large number of paths may be seen as a total network, when repeating relationships are sufficiently regular and predictable (Los Angeles grid, clear in interrelationships and hard to distinguish).
[Edges]
Edges are stronger in Boston and Jersey City but weaker in Los Angeles. Those edges seem strongest which are not only visually prominent, but also continuous in form and impenetrable to cross movement.
While continuity and visibility are crucial, strong edges are not necessarily impenetrable. Edges are often paths as well (Figueroa and Sunset St./Los Angeles, usually thought of as the edges of the Los Angeles central business district). The elevated railways of Jersey City and Boston are examples of what might be called overhead edges.
[Districts]
Districts can be recognized internally, and can be occasionally used as external reference as a person goes by or towards them. Boston, while confusing in its path pattern, has in the number and vividness of its differentiated districts, a quality that quite makes up for it. Districts in Jersey City are primarily ethnic or class districts with little physical distinction. Los Angeles is markedly lacking in strong regions, except for the Civic Center area.
On which city is felt to be a well-oriented one, New York (Manhattan) was unanimously cited, not so much for the grid, but because it has a number of well-defined characteristic districts, set in an ordered frame of rivers and streets.
The physical characteristics that determine districts are thematic continuities which may consist of an endless variety of components: texture, space, form, detail, symbol, building type, use, activity, inhabitants, degree of maintenance, topography. In a closely built city like Boston, homogeneities of facade--material, modeling, ornament, color, skyline, especially fenestration--were all basic clues in identifying major districts. Usually the typical features were imaged and recognized in a characteristic cluster, the thematic unit.
A certain reinforcement of clues is needed to produce a strong image. All too often, the region may have a few distinctive signs, but not enough for a full thematic unit, thus lacking any visual strength or impact. Yet social connotations are quite significant in building regions (class overtones, ethnic areas, names, etc.). When the main requirement has been satisfied, nd a thematic unit that contrasts with the rest of the city has been constituted, the degree of internal homogeneity is less significant, especially if discordant elements occur in a predictable pattern (small stores on street corners in no way weakened the non commercial image of Beacon Hill).
Districts have various kinds of boundaries. Some are hard, definite, precise (that of the Back Bay at the Charles River or at the Public Garden); other s may be oft or uncertain (the limit between downtown shopping and the office district); other region have no boundaries at all (the South End for many of our subjects).
These edges seem to play a secondary role: setting the limits to a district and maybe reinforcing identity, but apparently having less to do with constituting it. A strong core, surrounded by a thematic gradient which gradually dwindles away, may create a srot of district in a broader homogeneous zone, simply by "radiation".
Some well-known Boston districts were unstructured in the public image (West End and North End were internally undifferentiated for many people who recognized these regions). More often, thematically vivid districts such as the market area seemed confusingly shapeless, both externally and internally. Some regions are introvert, turned in upon themselves with little reference to the city outside them (North End and Chinatown/Boston); others may be extrovert, turned outward and connected o surrounding elements (Bunker Hill/Los Angeles, the city flows around its topographic feature, burying its edge in office buildings).
Some districts are single ones, standing alone, in their zone (Jersey City and Los Angeles regions, and the South End/Boston); others may be linked together (Little Tokyo and the Civic center/Los Angeles, West End-Beacon Hill/Boston, Back Bay, the Common, Beacon Hill, the downtown shopping district, and the financial and market areas/central Boston). The contrast and proximity of each area, moreover, heightens the thematic strength of each (Beacon Hill/Boston, sharpened by its nearness to Scollay Square and the downtown shopping district).
[Nodes]
Although conceptually small points in the city image, they may in reality be large squares, or somewhat extended linear shapes. The junction, or place of break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer, for decisions must be made at, and people heighten their attention at such junctions (Scollay Square, the Charles Street rotary, and South Station/Boston).
Nodes may be both junctions and concentrations (Journal Square/Jersey City, important bus and automobile transfer, also a concentration of shopping). A strong physical form is not absolutely essential to the recognition of a node (Journal Square/Jersey City and Scollay Square/Boston). Nodes, like districts, may have sharp or indefinite boundaries, and may be introvert or extrovert.
[Landmarks]
Since the use of landmarks involves the singling out of one element from a host of possibilities, the key physical characteristic of this class is singularity, some aspect that is unique o memorable in the context. Landmarks become more easily identifiable if they have a clear form or if they contrast with their background, and if there is some prominence of spatial location. In another sense, subjects might single out landmarks for their cleanliness in a dirty city (the Christian Science buildings/Boston) or for their newness in an old city (the chapel on Arch St./Boston). Spatial prominence can establish elements as landmarks in either of two ways: by making the element visible from many locations (the John Hancock Building/Boston, the Richfield Oil Building/Los Angeles), or by setting up a local contrast with nearby elements, i.e. a variation in setback and height. Location at a junction involving path decisions strengthens a landmark. The activity associated with an element may also make it a landmark. Once a history, a sign, or a meaning attaches to an object, its value as a landmark rises.
People unfamiliar with the city seemed to use distant landmarks in organizing the city and selecting routes for trips. They did so only for very general directional orientation or more frequently, in symbolic ways. But local landmarks, visible only in restricted localities, were much more frequently employed in the three cities studied.
[Element Interrelations]
Pairs of unlike elements may reinforce one another, resonate so that they enhance each other's power; or they may conflict and destroy themselves (John Hancock Building in relation to Copley Square/Boston).
Many observers seem to group their elements into intermediate organizations, which might be called complexes. After successful differentiation and understanding of parts, a study can move on to consideration of a total system.
[The Shifting Image]
Rather than a single comprehensive image for the entire environment, there seemed to be sets of images, which more or less overlapped and interrelated. Images may differ not only by the scale of area involved, but by viewpoint, time of day, or season.
Quite frequently, images were developed along, and then outward from, familiar lines of movement. Other maps were begun by the construction of an enclosing outline (Boston peninsula, filled in toward the center). Still others began by laying down a basic repeating pattern and then adding detail (path gridiron in Los Angeles). Fewer maps started as a set of adjacent regions then detailed as to connections and interiors.
As a purposive simplification ,the image was made by reducing, eliminating, or even adding elements to reality, by fusion and distortion, by relating and structuring the parts. However distorted, there was a strong element of topological invariance with respect to reality.
[Image Quality]
Images of an element differed between observers in terms of their relative density, i.e. the extent to which they were packed with detail. Another distinction could be made between concrete, sensuously vivid images, and those which were highly abstract, generalized,and void of sensuous content. Images could be further distinguished according to their structural quality: no inter-structure-->positional structure, parts roughly related in terms of their general direction/distance-->flexible structure, parts connected one to the other-->rigid structure, parts firmly interconnected in all dimensions. We are continuously engaged in the attempt to organize our surroundings, to structure and identify them.
4. City Form
A city is a multi-purpose, shifting organization, a tent for many functions, raised by many hands and with relative speed. The form must be somewhat noncommittal, plastic to the purposes and perceptions of its citizens. There are fundamental functions of which the city forms may be expressive: circulation, major land-uses, key focal points. As an artificial world, the city should be so in the best sense: maybe by art, shaped for human purposes.
[Designing the Paths]
The paths, the network of habitual or potential lines of movement through the urban complex, are the most potent means by which the whole can be ordered. A visual hierarchy of the streets and ways: a sensuous singling out of the key channels, and their unification as continuous perceptual elements, this is the skeleton of the city image. The line of motion should have clarity of direction. If positions along the line can be differentiated in some measurable way, then the line is not only oriented, but scaled as well. Observers are impressed by the apparent "kinesthetic" quality of a path, the sense of motion along it: turning, rising, falling. Any visual exposure of the path, or its goal, heightens its image. Paths may be designed, as a specific pattern of certain individual elements, or a network which explains the typical relations between all paths in the set without identifying any particular path.
[Design of Other Elements]
Edges as well as paths call for a certain continuity of form throughout their length, and also gain strength if it is laterally visible for some distance, marks a sharp gradient of area character, and clearly joins the two bounded regions. Particularly where the regions bounded are not of contrasting nature, then it is useful to differentiate the two sides of an edge, to orient the observer in the "inside-outside" sense. An edge can become a seam rather than a barrier, a line of exchange along which two areas are sewn together. One way of increasing the visibility of an edge is by increasing its accessibility or use, as when opening a waterfront to traffic or recreation.
The essential characteristic of a viable landmark, on the other hand, is its singularity, its contrast with its context or background. Its location is crucial: if large or tall, the spatial setting must allow it to be seen; if small, there are certain zones that receive more perceptual attention than others: floor surfaces, or nearby facades at, or slightly below, eye level. Any breaks in transportation--nodes, decision points--are places of intensified perception. If landmarks are clustered, they reinforce each other in a more than additive way.
The nodes should have perceptual support from the achievement of identity by the singular and continuous quality of the walls, floor, detail, lighting, vegetation, topography, or skyline of the node. The node is more defined if it has a sharp, closed boundary, and does not trail off uncertainly on every side. If a break in transportation or a decision point on a path can be made to coincide with the node, the node will receive even more attention. The joint between path and node must be visible and expressive. The condensation points can, by radiation, organize large districts around themselves if their presence is somehow signalized in the surroundings. The node can be related to the larger orientation system if it has a local orientation within itself.
A district is delimited by three or four such characteristics: continuity of color, texture, or material, of floor surface, scale or facade detail, lighting, planting, or silhouette. A district is further sharpened by the definiteness and closure of its boundary. When suitably differentiated within, a district can express connections with other city features, while the boundary must now be penetrable: a seam, not a barrier.
[Form Qualities]
Clues for urban design can be summarized into: singularity, form simplicity, continuity, dominance of one part over another, clarity of joint, directional differentiation, visual scope, motional awareness, time series, names and meanings.
[The Sense of the Whole]
The five elements must be considered simply as convenient empirical categories, within and around which it has been possible to group a mass of information. Having mastered their characteristics, the designer will have the task of organizing a whole which will be sensed sequentially, whose parts will be perceived only in context. The citizen shifts his place of residence more frequently today than ever before, from area to area, from city to city. Good imageability in his environment would allow him to feel quickly at home in new surroundings. Changes in city environment, as techniques and functions shift, are often disturbing to the citizen emotionally, and tend to disorganize his perceptual image.
[Metropolitan Form]
Total imageability of an extensive area such as a metropolitan region would not mean an equal intensity of image at every point. We can speculate that metropolitan images could be formed of such elements as high-speed highways, transit lines or airways; large regions with coarse edges of water or open space; major shopping nodes, basic topographic features; perhaps massive, distant landmarks. Considering our present way of experiencing a large urban area, however, one is drawn toward another kind of organization: that of sequence, or temporal pattern.
[The Process of Design]
A frequent problem for the designer is the sensitive reshaping of an already existing environment. At other times, he faces the creation of a new image. These shapings or reshapings should be guided by what might be called a "visual plan" for the city or metropolitan region: a set of recommendations and controls which would be concerned with visual form on the urban scale. The final objective of a plan is not the physical shape itself but the quality of an image in the mind.
5. A New Scale
True enough, we need an environment which is not simply well organized, but poetic and symbolic as well.
但是内容十分concrete，图像也很有说服力。很“硬”的一本书。但是，应该会像一本词典一样，价值不光在文字本身的组合。
懒得花更多时间去想如何描绘这本书了。唯一可惜的是，你一定要亲自去体验Boston, Jersey City跟Los Angeles，才会对书里的那么多例子有着更加深刻的体会。
以下为全书原文摘抄（轻微改写）
1.The Image of the Environment
The city is like a piece of architecture, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time. It is therefore a temporal art, but can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other tempora, arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across.
The people and their activities are as important as the stationary physical parts.
*Legibility: This book will consider the visual quality of the American city by studying the mental image of that city which is held by its citizens, concentrating on the apparent clarity or "legibility" of the cityscape, by which we mean the ease with which its parts can be recognized and can be organized into a coherent pattern. We must consider not just the city in itself, but the city being perceived by its inhabitants. A good environmental image gives its possessor an important sense of emotional security. Potentially, the city is in itself the powerful symbol of a complex society, whose positive values of legible surroundings include emotional satisfaction, the framework for communication or conceptual organization, the new depths that it may bring to everyday experience.
*Building the image: environmental images are the result of a two-way process between the environment, which suggests distinctions and relations, and the observer, who, with great adaptability and in the light of this own purposes, selects, organizes, and endows with meaning what he sees.
An object seen for the first time may be identified and related not because it is individually familiar but because it conforms to a stereotype already constructed by the observer; a new object may seem to have strong structure or identity because of striking physical features which suggest or impose their own pattern. Each individual creates and bears his own image, but there seems o be substantial agreement among members of the same group so that the city planners who aspire to model an environment that will be used by many people. Therefore this study will tend to pass over individual differences.
*Structure and Identity: an environmental image may be analyzed into three components: identity, structure, and meaning. So various are the individual meanings of a city, even while its form may be easily communicable, that it appears possible to separate meaning from form, at least in the early stages of analysis. This study will therefore concentrate on the identity and structure of city images.
For an image to have value for orientation in the living space, it must be sufficient, allowing the individual to operate within his environment to the extent desired, sufficiently clear and well integrated to be economical of mental effort. It should be safe, with a surplus of clues so that the alternative actions are possible and the risk of failure is not too high. The image should preferably be open-ended, adaptable to change, allowing the individual to continue to investigate and organize reality, and communicable to other individuals.
*Imageability: This book will look for physical qualities which relate to the attributes of identity of what might be called imageability: that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. To Stern, "to create images which by larity and harmony of form" was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning.
Since image development is a two-way process between observer and the observed, it is possible to strengthen the image either by symbolic devices, by the retraining of the perceiver, or by reshaping one's surroundings.
Suzanne Langer, "Architecture is the total environment made visible."
2. Three Cities
To understand the role of environmental images in our own urban lives, we need to develop and test the idea of imageability, learn what forms make for strong images, and thus to suggest some principles for urban design. As in any small pilot study, the purposed was to develop ideas and methods, rather than to prove facts in a final and determinate way.
In each of the three cities examined, two basic analyses were carried out: 1. A systematic field reconnaissance of the area, where the observer mapped the presence of various elements, their visibility, their image strength or weakness, their connections and disconnections, other interrelations, etc. 2. A lengthy interview was held with a small sample of city residents to evoke their own images of their physical environment. The material is rich in suggestion, and has sufficient internal consistency to indicate that substantial group images do exist and are discoverable by some such means. The form of the environment itself played a tremendous role in the shaping of the image.
[Boston]
The area chosen for Boston includes the commercial core of the metropolitan area, as well as several high density residential districts, ranging from slum to upper-class housing.
For almost all the persons interviewed, this Boston is a city of very distinctive districts and of crooked, confusing paths. The open space of the Boston Common, the State House, and the view across the Charles River from the Cambridge side, it is an old, historical place, full of worn-out buildings, yet containing some new structures among the old. The city lacks open or recreational space. It is an "individual", small, or medium-sized city. It has large areas of mixed use, marked by bay windows, iron fences, or brownstone fronts.
Boston is a city of distinctive districts, and in most parts of the central area one knows where one is simple by the general character of the surrounding area, while the path system in Boston is generally confused. Nevertheless, so important is the function of circulation that the paths are still dominant in the total image. The major difficulties in the city images include confusions, floating points, weak boundaries, isolations, breaks in continuity, ambiguities, branchings, lacks of character or differentiation.
[Jersey City]
Jersey City, New Jersey, lies between Newark and New York City, and is a fringe area of both, with little central activity of its own. It has appearance of a place to pass through rather than to live in. The city has no single center, but rather four or five. The lack of character is apparent from a glance when the consensus of elements thought distinctive by Jersey City people is compared with the same diagram for Boston. The city is marked by the presence of several strong edges or isolating boundaries: the overhead lines of railroads and highways, the Palisades, and the two waterfronts.None of the respondents had anything like a comprehensive view of the city in which they had lived for many years. It was not a whole. It had no center, but was rather a collection of many hamlets. Much of the characteristic feeling for Jersey City seemed to be that it was a place on the edge of something else. Remark came out about the indistinguishability of the physical scene: "It's much the same all over...it's more or less just commonness to me." In this relatively undifferentiated environment there is a reliance not only on use-locations, but frequently on gradients of use, or of the relative state of repair of structures.
[Los Angeles]
The Los Angeles area includes little more than the central business district and its fringes. Central Los Angeles is heavily charged with meaning and activity, with large and presumably distinctive buildings, and with a basic pattern: almost regular grid of streets, a different, and less sharp image than that of Boston. First is the decentralization of the metropolitan region; second, the grid pattern itself is an undifferentiated matrix, within which elements cannot always be located with confidence; third, the central activities are spatially extended and shifting.
When asked to describe or symbolize the city as a whole, the subjects used certain standard words: "spread-out," "spacious," "formless," "without centers." Central Los Angeles is far from the visual chaos of Jersey City, and it has a rather liberal number of single building landmarks, yet it was difficult to organized or comprehend as a whole. The image seemed to lack much of the recognizable character, stability, and pleasant meaning of central Boston.
3 The City Image and Its Elements
The contents of the city images so far studied, which are referable to physical forms, can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks: Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moves; edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer; districts are the 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; nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling; landmarks are another type of point-reference, but which the observer does not enter, keeping external to.
[Path]
For most people interviewed, paths were the predominant city elements, although their importance varied according to the degree of familiarity with the city. Concentration of special use or activity along a street may give it prominence in the minds of observers (Washington Street/Boston, subjects consistently associated with shopping and theatres, while many people seemed not to know that Washington extends beyond the entertainment segment). Characteristic spatial qualities were able to strengthen the image of particular paths (Cambridge St., Commonwealth Ave., Atlantic Ave./Boston all well known for their great width). Special facade characteristics were also important for path identity (Beacon St. and Commonwealth Ave./Boston distinctive partly because of the building facades that line them), while pavement texture seemed to be less important. Proximity to special features of the city (harbor, park, hill, etc) could also endow a path with increased importance, where the path would be acting secondarily as an edge.
Where major paths lacked identity, or were easily confused one for the other, the entire city image was in difficulty (many of the paths in Jersey City difficult to find, both in reality and in memory). Thus the paths, once identifiable, have continuity as well, is an obvious functional necessity. When the channel width changed (Cambridge St. at Bowdoin Sq./Boston), people had difficulty in sensing a continuation of the same path.
Paths may not only be identifiable and continuous, but have directional quality as well. This can be done by a gradient, a regular change in some quality which cumulative in one direction. People tended to think of path destinations and origin points. Cambridge St./Boston has clear, strategic terminal points, while others may have only one sharp terminal. Once a path has directional quality, it may have the further attribute of being scaled: one may be able to sense one's position along the total length, to grasp the distance traversed or yet to go. Scaling is most often accomplished by a sequence of known landmarks or nodes along the path.
Given a directional quality in a path, we may next inquire if it is aligned, that is, if its direction is referable to some larger system. One common cause of unaligned paths was the subtle, misleading curve (the one in Massachusetts Ave. at Falmouth St./Boston). The second common cause was the sharp separation of a path from surrounding elements (Boston Common, and Central Artery/Boston). It is elevated and does not allow a clear view of adjacent streets, but permits a kind of fast and undisturbed movement totally missing in the city. "It is a special kind of automobile-land rather than a normal city street."Recent research on the problems of erecting directional signs on the new freeways has shown that this disassociation from the surroundings causes each turning decision to be made under pressure and without adequate preparation. Railroad lines and the subway are other examples of detachment.
The water surrounding the Boston peninsula is a basic element to which parts may be aligned. The Los Angeles grid provided automatic alignment between downtown streets. It was easy to put down as a basic pattern in a sketch map, even if the individual streets were not distinguishable.
Path intersection: the simple perpendicular relationship seemed easiest to handle (best-known intersection in Boston that of Commonwealth Ave. and Arlington St.: a visually obvious tee, supported by the space, the planting, the traffic, and the importance of the elements joined) Indeed for several subjects, confused intersections with streets entering from many angles were one of their typical Boston characteristics. Yet even a non-perpendicular, five-pointed crossing may be made clear (Copley Square/Boston). The contemporary highway interchange is even more confusing, particularly since it must be negotiated at higher speeds. A perceptual problem on a larger scale is raised where a path branches slightly to make alternate paths, both of relative importance. Similarly in the subway system, the successive branching of main lines was a problem, since it was hard to keep distinct the images of two slightly divergent branches and hard to remember where the branch occurred.
A few important paths may be imaged together as a simple structure, despite any minor irregularities, as long as they have a consistent general relationship to one another (Boston subway system, Los Angeles freeway system, and Jersey City system of Hudson Boulevard). A large number of paths may be seen as a total network, when repeating relationships are sufficiently regular and predictable (Los Angeles grid, clear in interrelationships and hard to distinguish).
[Edges]
Edges are stronger in Boston and Jersey City but weaker in Los Angeles. Those edges seem strongest which are not only visually prominent, but also continuous in form and impenetrable to cross movement.
While continuity and visibility are crucial, strong edges are not necessarily impenetrable. Edges are often paths as well (Figueroa and Sunset St./Los Angeles, usually thought of as the edges of the Los Angeles central business district). The elevated railways of Jersey City and Boston are examples of what might be called overhead edges.
[Districts]
Districts can be recognized internally, and can be occasionally used as external reference as a person goes by or towards them. Boston, while confusing in its path pattern, has in the number and vividness of its differentiated districts, a quality that quite makes up for it. Districts in Jersey City are primarily ethnic or class districts with little physical distinction. Los Angeles is markedly lacking in strong regions, except for the Civic Center area.
On which city is felt to be a well-oriented one, New York (Manhattan) was unanimously cited, not so much for the grid, but because it has a number of well-defined characteristic districts, set in an ordered frame of rivers and streets.
The physical characteristics that determine districts are thematic continuities which may consist of an endless variety of components: texture, space, form, detail, symbol, building type, use, activity, inhabitants, degree of maintenance, topography. In a closely built city like Boston, homogeneities of facade--material, modeling, ornament, color, skyline, especially fenestration--were all basic clues in identifying major districts. Usually the typical features were imaged and recognized in a characteristic cluster, the thematic unit.
A certain reinforcement of clues is needed to produce a strong image. All too often, the region may have a few distinctive signs, but not enough for a full thematic unit, thus lacking any visual strength or impact. Yet social connotations are quite significant in building regions (class overtones, ethnic areas, names, etc.). When the main requirement has been satisfied, nd a thematic unit that contrasts with the rest of the city has been constituted, the degree of internal homogeneity is less significant, especially if discordant elements occur in a predictable pattern (small stores on street corners in no way weakened the non commercial image of Beacon Hill).
Districts have various kinds of boundaries. Some are hard, definite, precise (that of the Back Bay at the Charles River or at the Public Garden); other s may be oft or uncertain (the limit between downtown shopping and the office district); other region have no boundaries at all (the South End for many of our subjects).
These edges seem to play a secondary role: setting the limits to a district and maybe reinforcing identity, but apparently having less to do with constituting it. A strong core, surrounded by a thematic gradient which gradually dwindles away, may create a srot of district in a broader homogeneous zone, simply by "radiation".
Some well-known Boston districts were unstructured in the public image (West End and North End were internally undifferentiated for many people who recognized these regions). More often, thematically vivid districts such as the market area seemed confusingly shapeless, both externally and internally. Some regions are introvert, turned in upon themselves with little reference to the city outside them (North End and Chinatown/Boston); others may be extrovert, turned outward and connected o surrounding elements (Bunker Hill/Los Angeles, the city flows around its topographic feature, burying its edge in office buildings).
Some districts are single ones, standing alone, in their zone (Jersey City and Los Angeles regions, and the South End/Boston); others may be linked together (Little Tokyo and the Civic center/Los Angeles, West End-Beacon Hill/Boston, Back Bay, the Common, Beacon Hill, the downtown shopping district, and the financial and market areas/central Boston). The contrast and proximity of each area, moreover, heightens the thematic strength of each (Beacon Hill/Boston, sharpened by its nearness to Scollay Square and the downtown shopping district).
[Nodes]
Although conceptually small points in the city image, they may in reality be large squares, or somewhat extended linear shapes. The junction, or place of break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer, for decisions must be made at, and people heighten their attention at such junctions (Scollay Square, the Charles Street rotary, and South Station/Boston).
Nodes may be both junctions and concentrations (Journal Square/Jersey City, important bus and automobile transfer, also a concentration of shopping). A strong physical form is not absolutely essential to the recognition of a node (Journal Square/Jersey City and Scollay Square/Boston). Nodes, like districts, may have sharp or indefinite boundaries, and may be introvert or extrovert.
[Landmarks]
Since the use of landmarks involves the singling out of one element from a host of possibilities, the key physical characteristic of this class is singularity, some aspect that is unique o memorable in the context. Landmarks become more easily identifiable if they have a clear form or if they contrast with their background, and if there is some prominence of spatial location. In another sense, subjects might single out landmarks for their cleanliness in a dirty city (the Christian Science buildings/Boston) or for their newness in an old city (the chapel on Arch St./Boston). Spatial prominence can establish elements as landmarks in either of two ways: by making the element visible from many locations (the John Hancock Building/Boston, the Richfield Oil Building/Los Angeles), or by setting up a local contrast with nearby elements, i.e. a variation in setback and height. Location at a junction involving path decisions strengthens a landmark. The activity associated with an element may also make it a landmark. Once a history, a sign, or a meaning attaches to an object, its value as a landmark rises.
People unfamiliar with the city seemed to use distant landmarks in organizing the city and selecting routes for trips. They did so only for very general directional orientation or more frequently, in symbolic ways. But local landmarks, visible only in restricted localities, were much more frequently employed in the three cities studied.
[Element Interrelations]
Pairs of unlike elements may reinforce one another, resonate so that they enhance each other's power; or they may conflict and destroy themselves (John Hancock Building in relation to Copley Square/Boston).
Many observers seem to group their elements into intermediate organizations, which might be called complexes. After successful differentiation and understanding of parts, a study can move on to consideration of a total system.
[The Shifting Image]
Rather than a single comprehensive image for the entire environment, there seemed to be sets of images, which more or less overlapped and interrelated. Images may differ not only by the scale of area involved, but by viewpoint, time of day, or season.
Quite frequently, images were developed along, and then outward from, familiar lines of movement. Other maps were begun by the construction of an enclosing outline (Boston peninsula, filled in toward the center). Still others began by laying down a basic repeating pattern and then adding detail (path gridiron in Los Angeles). Fewer maps started as a set of adjacent regions then detailed as to connections and interiors.
As a purposive simplification ,the image was made by reducing, eliminating, or even adding elements to reality, by fusion and distortion, by relating and structuring the parts. However distorted, there was a strong element of topological invariance with respect to reality.
[Image Quality]
Images of an element differed between observers in terms of their relative density, i.e. the extent to which they were packed with detail. Another distinction could be made between concrete, sensuously vivid images, and those which were highly abstract, generalized,and void of sensuous content. Images could be further distinguished according to their structural quality: no inter-structure-->positional structure, parts roughly related in terms of their general direction/distance-->flexible structure, parts connected one to the other-->rigid structure, parts firmly interconnected in all dimensions. We are continuously engaged in the attempt to organize our surroundings, to structure and identify them.
4. City Form
A city is a multi-purpose, shifting organization, a tent for many functions, raised by many hands and with relative speed. The form must be somewhat noncommittal, plastic to the purposes and perceptions of its citizens. There are fundamental functions of which the city forms may be expressive: circulation, major land-uses, key focal points. As an artificial world, the city should be so in the best sense: maybe by art, shaped for human purposes.
[Designing the Paths]
The paths, the network of habitual or potential lines of movement through the urban complex, are the most potent means by which the whole can be ordered. A visual hierarchy of the streets and ways: a sensuous singling out of the key channels, and their unification as continuous perceptual elements, this is the skeleton of the city image. The line of motion should have clarity of direction. If positions along the line can be differentiated in some measurable way, then the line is not only oriented, but scaled as well. Observers are impressed by the apparent "kinesthetic" quality of a path, the sense of motion along it: turning, rising, falling. Any visual exposure of the path, or its goal, heightens its image. Paths may be designed, as a specific pattern of certain individual elements, or a network which explains the typical relations between all paths in the set without identifying any particular path.
[Design of Other Elements]
Edges as well as paths call for a certain continuity of form throughout their length, and also gain strength if it is laterally visible for some distance, marks a sharp gradient of area character, and clearly joins the two bounded regions. Particularly where the regions bounded are not of contrasting nature, then it is useful to differentiate the two sides of an edge, to orient the observer in the "inside-outside" sense. An edge can become a seam rather than a barrier, a line of exchange along which two areas are sewn together. One way of increasing the visibility of an edge is by increasing its accessibility or use, as when opening a waterfront to traffic or recreation.
The essential characteristic of a viable landmark, on the other hand, is its singularity, its contrast with its context or background. Its location is crucial: if large or tall, the spatial setting must allow it to be seen; if small, there are certain zones that receive more perceptual attention than others: floor surfaces, or nearby facades at, or slightly below, eye level. Any breaks in transportation--nodes, decision points--are places of intensified perception. If landmarks are clustered, they reinforce each other in a more than additive way.
The nodes should have perceptual support from the achievement of identity by the singular and continuous quality of the walls, floor, detail, lighting, vegetation, topography, or skyline of the node. The node is more defined if it has a sharp, closed boundary, and does not trail off uncertainly on every side. If a break in transportation or a decision point on a path can be made to coincide with the node, the node will receive even more attention. The joint between path and node must be visible and expressive. The condensation points can, by radiation, organize large districts around themselves if their presence is somehow signalized in the surroundings. The node can be related to the larger orientation system if it has a local orientation within itself.
A district is delimited by three or four such characteristics: continuity of color, texture, or material, of floor surface, scale or facade detail, lighting, planting, or silhouette. A district is further sharpened by the definiteness and closure of its boundary. When suitably differentiated within, a district can express connections with other city features, while the boundary must now be penetrable: a seam, not a barrier.
[Form Qualities]
Clues for urban design can be summarized into: singularity, form simplicity, continuity, dominance of one part over another, clarity of joint, directional differentiation, visual scope, motional awareness, time series, names and meanings.
[The Sense of the Whole]
The five elements must be considered simply as convenient empirical categories, within and around which it has been possible to group a mass of information. Having mastered their characteristics, the designer will have the task of organizing a whole which will be sensed sequentially, whose parts will be perceived only in context. The citizen shifts his place of residence more frequently today than ever before, from area to area, from city to city. Good imageability in his environment would allow him to feel quickly at home in new surroundings. Changes in city environment, as techniques and functions shift, are often disturbing to the citizen emotionally, and tend to disorganize his perceptual image.
[Metropolitan Form]
Total imageability of an extensive area such as a metropolitan region would not mean an equal intensity of image at every point. We can speculate that metropolitan images could be formed of such elements as high-speed highways, transit lines or airways; large regions with coarse edges of water or open space; major shopping nodes, basic topographic features; perhaps massive, distant landmarks. Considering our present way of experiencing a large urban area, however, one is drawn toward another kind of organization: that of sequence, or temporal pattern.
[The Process of Design]
A frequent problem for the designer is the sensitive reshaping of an already existing environment. At other times, he faces the creation of a new image. These shapings or reshapings should be guided by what might be called a "visual plan" for the city or metropolitan region: a set of recommendations and controls which would be concerned with visual form on the urban scale. The final objective of a plan is not the physical shape itself but the quality of an image in the mind.
5. A New Scale
True enough, we need an environment which is not simply well organized, but poetic and symbolic as well.
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- 作者: Kevin Lynch
- 出版: MIT Press
- 定价: GBP 21.00
- 装帧: Paperback
- 页数: 194
- 时间: 1960-1-1