Theory of Good City Form - Kevin Lynch - Reading Presentation

Theory of Good City Form
Kevin Lynch
Kevin Lynch, Good City Form, MIT
Press, 1984

KEVIN LYNCH -
• Kevin Andrew Lynch was an American urban planner & author.
• His most influential book include :-
– The Image of the City (1960).
– What time is this place? (1972).
– Good City Form (1981).
• Studied at Yale university, Taliesin (studio) under Frank Lloyd
Wright.
• Worked in Greensboro, NC as an urban planner but was
recruited to teach at MIT.

KEVIN LYNCH -
• Became an assistant professor in 1949, was tenured as an
associate professor in 1955, and became a full professor in
1963.
• Provided seminal contributions to the field of city planning
through empirical research on how individuals perceive and
navigate the urban landscape.
• Parallel to his academic work, Lynch practiced planning and
urban design in partnership with Stephen Carr.
• Died at his summer home in Martha's Vineyard in 1984.

INTRODUCTION
• Kevin Lynch sets out to answer the question of what
makes a good city, and in the process provides a
comprehensive discussion of urban theory.

INTRODUCTION
• Lynch proposes that the answer to his question lies in
the development of a theory which relates the value
of a city to its spatial characteristics.

INTRODUCTION
Lynch provides five criteria:
1. vitality,
2. sense,
3. fit,
4. access,
5. control,
Plus two "meta-criteria":
• efficiency and justice.

INTRODUCTION
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control
efficiency justice

INTRODUCTION
Lynch tests out his approach on city size, growth and
conservation, utopian models and planning practices.

Objectives
• More integrated and holistic approach to
thinking about and analyzing cities.

Objectives
• Change the way decision-makers consider the
assets and potential of cities might be organized
and managed.

Objectives
• Offer a mental toolkit that provides readers with the
cornerstones of a new mindset and so stimulate
readers’ own ideas to solutions for their cities.

Objectives
• To engender a critical debate amongst decision
makers at different levels and to influence the
policy, strategies and actions undertaken in cities.

VALUES & CITIES & HISTORY
• Impersonal forces do not transform human
settlements.
• The independent and relatively sudden jump to
civilization has occurred some six or seven times in
world history.
• In every case, the first cities emerged only
after a preceding agricultural revolution.
• New skills develop to serve the new elite.

• The physical environment plays a key role in this
unfolding.
• The city is a "great place," a release, a new world,
and also a new oppression.
• Its layout is therefore carefully planned to reinforce the
sense of awe.

• The motives of the transformation are clear:
1. better access and space for production,
2. an opportunity for profit in real estate
development, &
3. the control of space in order to control the
productive process and its participants.

VITALITY
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control

ATHEORYOFGOOD CITYFORM
1) VITALITY ‫حيوية‬
• The degree to which the form of the settlement:
– supports the vital functions,
– the biological requirements
– capabilities of human being,
– how it protect the survival of the species.

1) VITALITY‫حيوية‬
• He mentioned three principals of it which are:
– Sustenance, ‫القوت‬
– Safety, ‫االمان‬
– Consonance ‫التوافق‬

1) VITALITY
Sustenance: ‫القوت‬
– Availability of all the elements to sustain the life.
– There should be an adequate supply of food, energy,
water and air at the same time availability of proper
disposal of wastes.

1) VITALITY
Safety: ‫االمان‬
– Psychological safety, Social safety and
Physical safety.
– There should be safety from physical
elements like hazards, poisons, and
diseases, also social and psychological
safety like defense against violation
attacks, the prevention of food and fire,
the resistance to earthquake.

1) VITALITY
Consonance: ‫التوافق‬
– The environment should consonance with the basic
biological structure of human being.
– It should support natural rhythms, and should provide
optimum sensory input.

SENSE
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control

2) SENSE
• Sense depends on spatial form and quality, but
also on the culture, temperament, status,
experience, and current purpose of the observer.
• Thus the sense of a particular place will vary for
different observers.

2) SENSE
• This is the joint between the form of the
environment and the human processes of
perception and cognition.
• It depends on the form of the space, quality and
human activity.
• “Identity, Structure, Congruence, Legibility,
Transparency are the Characteristics of Sense.”

2) SENSE
– Identity - it is the extent to which person can
recognize or recall a place as being distinct
from other places, having unique character of
its own.

2) SENSE
– Structure - which at the
scale of small place is
the sense of how its
parts fit together in
large settlement is the
sense of orientation.

2) SENSE
– Congruence - identification/ recognization of the
place by form of city or building.

2) SENSE
– Transparency - one can
directly perceive the
operations of the various
technical functions,
activities, and social &
natural processes that are
occurring within the
settlement.

2) SENSE
– Legibility - inhabitants of settlement are able to
communicate accurately to each other via its
symbolic physical feature.

Edge
Path
District Node
Landmark

FIT
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control

3) FIT
• The fit of a settlement refers to how well its
spatial and temporal pattern matches the
customary behavior of its inhabitants.

3) FIT
• It is the match between action and form in its behavior
settings and behavior circuits.
• It is the match between place and whole patterns of
behavior.
• It is linked to characteristics of the human body and
of physical system in general.

3) FIT
• Characteristics of fit:
1. Adaptability
2. Manipulability
3. Reversibility excess capacity
4. Improving accessibility
5. Separation of parts
6. Modular and standardization
7. Reduction of recycling costs

3) FIT
There are Two kinds of fit :-
– good fit.
– bad fit.

ACCESS
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control

4) ACCESS
• It is the extent to which goods, services, place and
information are accessible with minimum time and
efforts.

4) ACCESS
• It is classified as access to:
1. people
2. human activities
3. services
4. material resources
5. natural environment
6. information

4) ACCESS
• Cities may have first been built for symbolic reasons
and later for defense, but it soon appeared that one of
their special advantages was the improved access they
afforded.

4) ACCESS
• Modem theorists have seen transportation and
communication as the central asset of an urban area.

CONTROL
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control

5) CONTROL
Spatial controls of human space have strong
psychological consequences:
1. feelings of anxiety
2. satisfaction
3. pride, or
4. submission

5) CONTROL
Control may be:
• explicit and codified, or
• implicit, informal, and even illegitimate.

5) CONTROL
• It refers to the pervasive phenomena of territorial
occupation of space and time for discharging day to
day activities.
• It depends upon ownership.

5) CONTROL
• There are some spatial rights, like right to:
– presence
– be in place
– use
– action
– modification
– disposition (placed or arranged)

5) CONTROL:
1- Congruence: (compatibility)
– The extent to which the actual user or
inhabitants of a space control it in proportion to
the degree of their permanent stake in it.
– User congruence allows for better fit and
greater security, satisfaction and freedom as a
consequence of it.

5) CONTROL
– Responsibility:
– Is a balancing criteria and supposes that
those who control a place should have
motives, information and power to do it
well.

5) CONTROL
– Certainty:
– The degree to which people understand
the control system, can predict its scope,
and feel secure with it.

EFFICIENCY & JUSTICE
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control
efficiency justice

6) EFFICIENCY
• Efficiency is the balancing criterion:
• It relates the level of achievement in
some performance to a loss in some
other.

6) EFFICIENCY
• Efficiencies of settlements can be
compared only by seeing which
achieves the best level in some one
dimension, given a fixed amount of
other values expended or achieved.

6) EFFICIENCY
“Objective" comparisons of efficiency can be
made only when all types of costs and benefits
but one are held constant.

6) EFFICIENCY
There are certain inter-dimensional conflicts like:
i. A vital environment will often conflict with
decentralized user control,
ii. The ideal of a vital environment will often conflict
with a well-fitted one,
iii. Sense is frequently in opposition to adaptability of
fit,
iv. Present and Future fit are contradictory to each
other.

6) JUSTICE
• Justice is the way in which benefits and costs of any
one kind are distributed between persons.
• It deals with all the performance dimensions like:
1. vitality,
2. sense,
3. fit,
4. access and
5. control.

CONCLUSION
• Good city form should be:
1. vital (sustainant, safe and consonant),
2. sensible (identifiable, structured, congruent,
transparent, legible, unfolding and significant),
3. well fitted (manipulable, and resilient),
4. accessible (diverse, equitable and locally
manageable),
5. well controlled (congruent, certain, responsible
and intermittently loose)

CONCLUSION
• All of these are achieved with
– Justice and internal Efficiency.

CONCLUSION
vitality
sense
fitaccess
control
efficiency justice

Theory of Good City Form - Kevin Lynch - Reading Presentation

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Theory of Good City Form - Kevin Lynch - Reading Presentation