Name: The Image of the City
ISBN: 9780262620017

At a Glance

Why This Clicks

Reading the City

Explore how city form shapes the image a place leaves with its residents.

Come here for

A new lens on what urban form means to city dwellers
The planner’s challenge of making a city more vivid and memorable

Expect

Imageability as a guide to evaluating city form
Studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City

Book Details

Authors: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: June 15, 1964
Format: Print & ebook
Theme: Modern Architecture (to 1945) · Contemporary Architecture (1945-)
Reading lane: Modern Architecture (to 1945)

Affinity

Publisher Categories

Modern Architecture (to 1945)
Urban & Land Use Planning
Cities & Urban Planning

About This Book

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 its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads t...

Read full description

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 its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.