The Image Of The City Summary

“The Image of the City” was written in 1960 by Kevin Andrew Lynch, who was an American urban planner. He joined MIT to study city planning and in 1963 he became a full time professor in the same college. At the pinnacle of his career, he has provided significant research work on city planning and urban landscape. The book talks about urban environment, its history and time; and how people are affected by its external factors. The author begins the books by focusing on the term imageability, also called legibility which refers to extent of how well a cityscape can be read. He talks about how people read and organize cityscapes and its urban elements into understandable patterns. People living in urban cities always exhibit a process of way

The entire process has been analysed for the study and has been found that various other things are also involved in building an image of the city. Although every person has their own way of creating a mental image of the city, they tend to be in unison when grouped together. To understand the reasoning behind the same, a study was done by involving people to identify general images which covered common views and other urban elements.

The studies conducted by the author clarifies that the book talks about the perspective to the city from various elements and parts of the city, in contrast to understanding social cultures, needs and functional parts. These perspectives play a vital role in building a mental image of the city. The book showcases an insight into the methodology and study of this find.

1. The Image of the Environment
In the first chapter, the author discusses about the image of the environment. The book talks about the visual quality of a city by studying the mental image portrayed by its people. He uses legibility as a visual perception to identify, organize and analyse; and discuss how the concept can be useful in rebuilding of the cities during that

It gives us an opportunity to create our city into imageable landscapes, allowing people to perceive and change the meaning and functions. The designer will always face limitations in creating new image when talked about redevelopment. They have incorporate visual perspectives along with functional parts to create new meanings for the image. To strengthen public image, a visual plan has to be developed at a city scale. The designer has to account for processes between the observers and observed, which plays a vital role in building an external