Kevin Lynch: City Elements Create Images in Our Mind, 1960

Spatial concepts:
network, place, landmark, feature, attraction, container, representation, cognitive map, path

Kevin Lynch was a significant contributor to city planning and city design in the twentieth century. One of Lynch's innovations was the concept of place legibility, which is essentially the ease with which people understand the layout of a place. By introducing this idea, Lynch was able to isolate distinct features of a city, and see what specifically is making it so vibrant, and attractive to people. To understand the layout of a city, people first and foremost create a mental map. Mental maps of a city are mental representations of what the city contains, and its layout according to the individual. These mental representations, along with the actual city, contain many unique elements, which are defined by Lynch as a network of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.

Created: 
31 Dec 1969
Publisher: 
Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS), University of California, Santa Barbara
Creator: 
Ethan Sundilson
Subject(s): 
Spatial analysis
Geography
Regional science
Urban and regional planning
spatial integration
place-based analysis
place legibility
mental map
Resource type(s): 
Article
Ed level(s): 
High School
Higher Education
General Public
Audience(s): 
Learner
Educator
Researcher
General Public
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