This is critical book review of its kind by Urban Planner and Consultant Shashikant Nishnat Sharma

1. Image of the City
A review of the Book
3/16/2012
Shashikant Nishant Sharma
B. Planning, SPA, Delhi

2. Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Theory of Kelvin Lynch .................................................................................................................................. 3
Contents of the Book .................................................................................................................................... 3
Analysis: .................................................................................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER WISE DESCRIPTION........................................................................................................................ 4
1. The Image of the Environment ............................................................................................................. 4
2. Three cities ............................................................................................................................................ 5
3. The city image and its elements ........................................................................................................... 6
4. City form................................................................................................................................................ 7
5. New scale .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Analysis of the Writing Style ......................................................................................................................... 9
Flow:........................................................................................................................................................ 10
Focus: ...................................................................................................................................................... 10
Unity:....................................................................................................................................................... 10
Illustrations ............................................................................................................................................. 11
Coherence: .............................................................................................................................................. 12
Creativity: ................................................................................................................................................ 12
Comprehensive but Compact: ................................................................................................................ 13
Reference to Relevant Details:................................................................................................................ 13
Lucid Style: .............................................................................................................................................. 13
Readable: ................................................................................................................................................ 14
Concrete:................................................................................................................................................. 14
Concise: ................................................................................................................................................... 14
Correctness: ............................................................................................................................................ 15
Paragraphs .............................................................................................................................................. 15
Punctuations ........................................................................................................................................... 16
Abbreviations and Acronyms .................................................................................................................. 16
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................. 16

3. THE IMAGE OF THE CITY
Author: Kevin Lynch
Introduction
Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984 Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts)
was an American urban planner and author.
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 the 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.
Lynch's most famous work, The Image of the City published in 1960 by MIT Press, is the
result of a five-year study on how users perceive and organize spatial information as
they navigate through cities. 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:
 Paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel;
 Edges, perceived boundaries such as walls, buildings, and shorelines;
 Districts, relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or
character;
 Nodes, focal points, intersections or loci;
 Landmarks, readily identifiable objects which serve as external reference points.

4. In the same 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.
This book is about the look of the cities, and whether this look is of any importance, and
whether it can be changed. The urban landscape has many roles, but is missed out to be
seen, remembered, and to delight in. Giving visual form to the city is a special and a new
kind of design problem.
To examine this new problem, the book looks at three American cities: Boston, Jersey
City and Los Angeles and thereby suggests a method and offers some first principles of
city design.
Theory of Kelvin Lynch
Lynch influenced the field of city planning through his work on the theory of city form,
and studies relating to human perceptions of the city, on the perception of the city
environment and its consequences for city design.
Kevin Lynch says "Looking at cities can give a special pleasure, however common place
the sight may be. Like a piece of architecture, the city is a construction in space, but of a
vast scale, . . . perceived only in the course of long spans of time . . . At every instant,
there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, a setting or view
waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to its
surroundings, the sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences
. . . Every citizen has had long associations with some part of his city, and his image is
soaked in memories and meanings . . . “
Contents of the Book
1. The Image of the Environment
2. Three cities

5. 3. The city Image and Its elements
4. City Form
5. A new Scale
Appendices
1. Some references to orientation
2. The Use of the methodology
3. Two examples of analysis
Analysis:
Pros:
The content of the book is very simple and attractive. In the table of content there is
only the list of title of the chapters of the book and nothing about the subtitles under
each chapter. So, the author has tried to keep the curiosity of readers under control.
Cons:
The content has no indication of the sub-content of the chapter as there are no
subtitles in the table of content. The reader will have to search book if he need
particular reference.
CHAPTER WISE DESCRIPTION
1. The Image of the Environment
Legibility - Here the visual quality of the American city is considered by studying the
mental image of that city held by its citizens. The concentration is on one particular
visual quality: the apparent clarity or “legibility” of the cityscape. To explain this it is
compared to the same printed page of the book saying, if it is legible, it can be grasped
visually as a related pattern of recognizable symbols.

6. Although legibility is not the only important property of a beautiful city; but is of
importance when environments at the urban scale of size, time and complexity is
considered.
Building the image - Environmental images are the result of a two –way process
between the observer and his environment. The image of a given reality may vary
significantly between different observers. There are formal types of image elements into
which we can conveniently divide the city image: path, landmark, edge, node and
district.
Structure and Identity – it says, an environmental image may be analyzed into three
components: identity, structure and meaning. All the three terms are defined then
which leads to the definition of Imageability as, the quality in a physical object which
gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer.
Through these terms and related examples, the readers are asked to learn to see the
hidden forms in the vast cover of our cities. The conscious remolding of the large-scale
physical environment has been now possible. This problem is put in capsule definition of
architecture by Suzanne Langer:
“It is the environment made visible.”
2. Three cities
Analyses are done for the central areas of three American cities: Boston,
Massachusetts; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Los Angeles, California. Boston is unique in
character among American cities, being both vivid in form and full of locational
difficulties. Jersey City was chosen for its apparent formlessness, for what seemed, on
first observation, to be its extremely low order of Imageability. Los Angeles is a new city,
of an utterly different scale, and with a gridiron plan in its central area. In every case a
central area of approximately 2 ½ by 1 ½ miles was taken for study. In each of these
cities, two basic analyses were carried out:

7. 1. A systematic field survey was made by a trained observer, who mapped the
presence of various elements, their visibility, their image strength or weakness, and
their connections, disconnections, and other interrelations. Also any special successes or
difficulties in the potential image structure were mapped.
2. A lengthy interview was held with a small sample of city residents to evoke their
own images of their physical environment. The interviews included requests
descriptions, locations, and sketches, and for performance of imaginary trips.
Distinct differences in the imageability of the three cities appeared. Certain features:
open space, vegetation, sense of motion on the paths, visual contrasts-seemed to be of
particular importance in the cityscape.
3. The city image and its elements
Here, it says a public image of any given city is the overlap of many individual images.
The contents of city images studied, which are referable to physical forms, are classified
into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. Each of these
elements has been defined then.
The author says, none of the element types isolated above exist in isolation in the real
case. Districts are structured with nodes, defined by edges, penetrated by paths and
sprinkled with landmarks. Elements regularly overlap and pierce one another. All three
cities have been discussed in relation to these elements.
Element interrelations - These elements are simply the raw material of the
environmental image at the city scale. They must be patterned together to provide a
satisfying form. Now the author suggests considering the interaction of pairs of unlike
elements. Such pairs may reinforce one another, resonate so that they enhance each
other’s power, or they may conflict and destroy themselves.
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

8. interrelated. Images may differ not only by the scale of area involved, but by viewpoint,
time of day, or season.
Image quality – study of various individual images revealed certain other distinctions
between them. For example, images of an element differed between observers in terms
of their relative density, i.e., the extent to which they were packed with detail.
From this, one might infer that the images of greatest value are those which most
closely approach a strong total field: dense, rigid and vivid; which make use of all
element types and form characteristics without concentration; and which can be put
together either hierarchically or continuously, as occasion demands.
4. City form
In this chapter the author talks about what opportunity we have of forming our new
city world into an imageable landscape: visible, coherent and clear. The author says that
the city dweller requires a new attitude and a physical reshaping of his domain into
forms which entrance the eye, which organize themselves from level to level in time and
space, which can stand as symbols for urban life. The form must be somewhat
noncommittal, plastic to the purposes and perception of its citizens.
As an artificial world, the city should be so in the best sense: made by art, shaped for
human purposes. It is our ancient habit to adjust to our environment, to discriminate
and organize perceptually whatever is present to our senses. Survival dominance based
them on this sensuous adaptability, yet now we may go on to a new phase of this
interaction.
Designing the paths – To heighten the image ability of the urban environment is to
facilitate its visual identification and structuring. The elements isolated above – the
paths, edges, landmarks, nodes and regions – are the building blocks in the process of
making firm, differentiated structures at the urban scale. It says how important are the

9. paths, the network of habitual or potential lines of movement through the urban
complex by which the whole can be ordered by concentration of some spatial use or
activity along their margins, a characteristic spatial quality, a special texture of floor or
façade, a particular lighting pattern, a unique set of smells or sounds, a typical detail or
mode of planting.
These characters should be so applied as to give continuity to the path. If one or more of
these qualities is employed consistently along the line, then the path may be imagined
as a continuous, unified element. the author also suggests how a visual hierarchy and
scale can be given to line (path).he also says if the intersection (the point of connection
and decision for the man in motion) can be visualized clearly, if the intersection itself
makes a vivid image and if the joint of the two paths with respect to each other is clearly
expressed, then the observer can build a satisfactory structure.
Form qualities – The clues for urban design have been summarized under this topic as:
a. Singularity
b. Form simplicity
c. Continuity
d. Dominance
e. Clarity of joint
f. Directional differentiation
g. Visual scope
h. Motion awareness
i. Time series
j. Names and meanings
All of these qualities do not work in isolation. A region would be unmistakable which
had a simple form, a continuity of building type and use, which was singular in the city,
sharply bounded, clearly jointed to a neighboring region and visually concave.
The sense of the whole – in discussing design by element types there is a tendency to
skim over the interrelation of the parts into a whole. In such a whole, paths would
expose and prepare for the districts, and link together the various nodes. The nodes
would joint and mark off the paths, while the edges would bind off the districts, and the
boundaries would indicate their cores. It is the total orchestration of these units which

10. would knit together a dense and vivid image, and sustain it over areas of metropolitan
scale.
Metropolitan form – the increasing size of our metropolitan areas and the speed with
which we traverse them raise many new problems for perception.
Total imageability of an extensive area such as a metropolitan region would not mean
an equal intensity of image at every point. There would be dominant figures and more
extensive backgrounds, focal points and connective tissue. There are two techniques
suggested:
 The entire region is organized as a static hierarchy.
 Any given part of the region might focus on a minor node, these minor nodes
being satellite to a major node, while all the major nodes are arranged to
culminate in a single primary node for the region.
5. New scale
True enough, we need an environment which is not simply well organized, but poetic
and symbolic as well. It should speak of the individuals and their complex society.
But clarity of structure and vividness of identity are first steps to the development of
strong symbols. Such a sense of place in itself enhances every human activity that occurs
there and encourages the deposit of memory trace. In development of the image,
education in seeing will be quite as important as the reshaping of what is seen. If art and
audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions of
their inhabitants.
Analysis of the Writing Style

11. In this section of the report we will discuss about the pros and cons of the writing style
of a great author which will be like looking at the Sun with a lamp. Still, for the sake of
enhancing the knowledge base of the readers, I will try to do justice with my work.
Flow:
Pros: There is a definite flow of ideas in the book. The author starts with briefly the
people perceive their built environment and then we goes on to substantiate his
observations through case studies and arrive at some substantial information and
understanding of the elements which create the image of the city. Then in second last
chapter he suggest how we can use his finding in consciously deciding the image of the
city which is lacking in many modern cities and colonies which seems to be a row of
match boxes. And finally, he gives an account of his methodologies and techniques of
research.
Cons: I could not find any disruption in the flow of ideas in the book.
Focus:
Pros:
The book revolves around a central idea which is Image of the City. Each paragraph has
a clear main point or topic sentence. The chapterisation of the book has been done
keeping in view the requirement of the subject under discussion. He starts with the
general perception of the people and then introduces some terms and terminology to
illustrate his ideas in a better manner and make readers understand his point of views.
The author has taken up three case studies and then he finally concludes the book with
the study results identifying the elements of the image of a city.
Cons:
Book sometimes focuses more on some aspects. The author analyse the fact in-depth,
and this leads to shift in focus.
Unity:
Pros:
Every paragraph in a chapter is well related to the main idea. Each paragraph has tried
to stick to its main point. And elaborate the idea through illustrations. The reader will

12. feel the maturity of the author in keeping a unity in the diverse ideas he has put forward
to support his argument and analysis of the three cities.
Cons:
No comment.
Illustrations
Pros:
The book has good number of illustrations and maps which not only makes the book
bore readable but also adds to the comprehensibility of the concepts which author has
successfully presented in his book.
Cons:
There are more illustrations in the case studies.

13. Coherence:
Pros:
The book is organized logically, flow smoothly, and "stick" together. In other words,
everything in the writing makes sense to a reader and he feels the urge to read further
to complete the broader image that the author is trying to create. You will never feel
that a particular section of the book is worthless of little importance. This can be
achieved only through keeping coherence in the follow of ideas which I think author has
tried to do.
Cons:
The coherence in the second last chapter i. e., ’City Form’ is lacking to some extent.
Creativity:
Pros:
The book carries some of the personality, the individuality of its author. Kevil Lynch had
developed his own writing style. He starts with a hypothesis and then tests it through
the studies. You will find that he give very simple examples to substantiate his point of
view or augment the understanding of the readers.
Cons:
The introduction of new concepts and meaning to the existing words adds to the
confusion like imageability or way-finding to the average reader who may not have
comprehensive knowledge of the intricacies of the language. For example author
defines ‘Legibility’ as a term used to describe the ease with which people can
understand the layout of a place. By making questionnaire surveys, Lynch defined a
method of analyzing legibility based on five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes and
landmarks.

14. Comprehensive but Compact:
Pros:
The book is comprehensive in the sense that it has covered all the relevant facts and
analysis to the requirement of the subject matter. And at the same time you will find the
book is compact in the sense that it has not given unnecessary stuffs to mesmerize the
readers but let him think and interpret.
Cons:
In order to make the book comprehensive on the subject, author has sacrifices
compactness in some section of the book. Like when we study about ‘paths’.
Reference to Relevant Details:
Pros:
In effective writing, reference to relevant details is necessary. The annexure of the book
and the bibliography will tell the story in detail. The data used in the book has been well
referenced. The author has used superscripts to denote the references.
The Appendices to the book offers more practical application of the approaches
discussed in the main part of the work. Some References to Orientation are provided,
including discussion of the Types of Reference Systems, Formation of the Image, The
Role of Form, and the Disadvantages of Imageability. The Use of the Method expands
upon “The Method” as the Basis of Design, and proposes Directions for Future Research.
Cons:
Use of superscripts is now a day more out dated. It distracts the readers.
Lucid Style:
The book is presented in a lucid style. It has logical and systematic arrangement of
different parts. It is easily and clearly understandable by all those for whom it is meant.

15. It creates interest among readers because of its lucid and convincing style. Clear
thinking, objective tone and logical arrangement of thoughts have made the book
simple and lucid.
Readable:
Pros:
In terms of what makes for good writing, readability is about the basic ability of a reader
to make sense of what is written. And I think the author that done justice with the
readers. The use of grammar and simple English has made the book more readable to
the students of planning, architecture, design and urban affairs.
Cons:
Introduction of new terms and giving new meanings to the old words make an average
reader confused. For Example see, he give ‘District’ a new meaning by defining areas
with perceived internal homogeneity- "are 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"
Concrete:
The author has put his ideas in a concrete manner through the examples of the three
cities. In order to put concrete facts and figures, the author has not deviated from
keeping the writing style in intimate manner and you can say this is an intensification of
the old “show, don’t tell” rule – powerful writing doesn’t just show, it shows in real-
world ways that are easily approachable. The book is real example of this style.
Concise:
Pros:
The author has written the paragraphs in a concise manner to make the interpretation
easy. He has kept he paragraphs relative smaller which adds to the breakup of ideas into
segments so that the readers don’t get confused or bored.

16. Cons:
Author cannot be concise in explaining a new concept. And we can find that when he
introduces concepts of imageability he breaks the norms of being concise.
Correctness:
The book is written in generally correct Standard English, with complete sentences, and
be relatively error-free.
Let’s look at a paragraph from book and analyse it.
Paragraphs
Pros:
Paragraphs are small and medium sized with ten to twenty lines. Most of the
paragraphs are limited to a particular topic. Spaces have been provided to distinguish
between the main paragraph and sub-paragraphs.
Cons:
Some explanatory paragraphs are large and readers feel intimidating.
Now let’s look at a paragraph.
An environmental image may be analyzed into three components: identity, structure,
and meaning. It is useful to abstract these for analysis, if it is remembered that in reality
they always appear together. A workable image requires first the identification of an
object, which implies its distinction from other things, its recognition as a separable
entity. This is called identity, not in the sense of equality with something else, but with
the meaning of individuality or oneness. Second, the image must include the spatial or
pattern relation of the object to the observer and to other objects. Finally, this object
must have some meaning for the observer, whether practical or emotional. Meaning is
also a relation, but quite a different one from spatial or pattern relation.
Thus, an image useful for making an exit requires the recognition of a door as a distinct
entity, of its spatial relation to the observer, and its meaning as a hole for getting out.
These are not truly separable. The visual recognition of a door is matted together with its
meaning as a door. It is possible, however, to analyze the door in terms of its identity of
form and clarity of position, considered as if they were prior to its meaning.

17. Here, you can see that it is a paragraph broken into two subparts to make the reading
and interpretation easy simultaneously. The paragraph starts with some enlisting the
components of an image and then subsequently; author illustrate the concept in a lucid
manner. He further re-enforces his views through an example of very common nature
but illustrated in a manner to suit the requirement.
Punctuations
There is good use of punctuations in the book.
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Few or no use of abbreviations is a good quality of good writing.
Conclusions
Overall the book is well written and the author has applied most of the writing styles
and techniques in the good manner to produce a masterpiece in the field of the
planning literature.
Shashikant Nishant Sharma
SNSharma.SPA@gmail.com