THE IMAGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Kevin Lynch
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. C巨魔符文ity design is therefore a temporal 目标管理工具art, but it can rarely use the controlled and limite兰州牛肉拉面d sequ海底两万里读书心得ences of other temporal arts like music. On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, ab我有明珠一颗andoned, cut 解毒痤疮丸across. It is seen in al个人营业执照图片l lights and all weathers.
At every instant, there is more than the eye can e, more than the ear can hear, a tting or a view waiting to be explored. Nothing is experienced by itlf, but always in relation to its surroundings, the quences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences. Washington Street t in a farmer's field might look like the shopping street in the heart of Boston, and yet it would em utterly different. Every citizen has had long associations with some part of his city, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings.
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 obrvers of this spectacle, but are ourlves 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 n is in operation, and the image is the composite of them all.
Not only is the city an object which is perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of widely diver class and character, but it is the product of many builders who are constantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own. While it may be stable in general outlines for some time, it is ever changing in detail. Only partial control can be exercid over its growth and form. There is no final result, only a continuous succession of phas. No wonder, then, that the art of shaping cities for nsuous enjoyment is an art quite parate from architecture or rhusic or literature. It may learn a great deal from the other arts, but it cannot imitate them.
A beautiful and delightful city environment is an oddity, some would say an impossibility.
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 clear enough about the ugliness of the world they live in, and they are quite vocal about the dirt, the smoke, the heat, and the congestion, the chaos and yet the monotony of it. But they are hardly aware of the potential value of harmonious surroundings, a world which they may have briefly glimpd only as tourists or as escaped vacationers. They can have little n of what a tting can mean in terms of daily delight, or as a continuous anchor for their lives, or as an extension of the meaningfulness and richness of the world.
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. It will concentrate especially on one particular visual quality: the apparent clarity or "legibility" of the cityscape. By this we mean the ea with which its parts can be recognized and can be organized into a coher
ent pattern. just as this printed page, if it is legible, can be visually grasped as a related pattern of recognizable symbols, so a legible city would be one who districts or landmarks or pathways are easily identifiable and are easily grouped into an over-all pattern.
This book will asrt that legibility is crucial in the city tting, will analyze it in some detail, and will try to show how this concept might be ud today in rebuilding our cities. As will quickly become apparent to the reader, this study is a preliminary exploration, a first word not a last word, an attempt to capture ideas and to suggest how they might be developed and tested. Its tone will be speculative and 部署与布署的区别perhaps a little irresponsible: at once tentative and presumptuous. This first chapter will develop some of the basic ideas; later chapters will apply them to veral American cities and discuss their conquences for urban design.
Although clarity or legibility is by no means the only important property of a beautiful city, it is of special importance when considering environments at the urban scale of size, time,
and complexity. To understand this, we must consider not just the city as a thing in itlf, but the city being perceived by its inhabitants. Structuring and identifying the environment is a vital ability among all mobile animals. Many kinds of cues are ud: the visual nsations of color, shape, motion, or polarization of light, as well as other ns such as smell, sound, touch, kinesthesia, n of gravity, and perhaps of electric or magnetic fields. The techniques of orientation, from the polar flight of a tern to the path-finding of a limpet over the micro- topography of a rock, are described and their importance underscored in an extensive literature. Psychologists have also studied this ability in man, although rather sketchily or under limited laboratory conditions. Despite a few remaining puzzles, it now ems unlikely that there is any mystic "instinct" of way-finding. Rather there is a consistent u and organization of definite nsory cues from the external environment. This organization is fundamental to the efficiency and to the very survival of free-moving life.
