KEVIN LYNCH’S “Image of the City”
- primarily discusses something he terms as “place legibility:” the ease with which people understand the layout of a place
- in order to understand a city, every person makes their own mental map, which consists of 5 distinct features: paths, edges, districts, nodes, & landmarks
- paths are channels by which people move, i.e. the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and Pollock Road in front of the HUB
- edges are lines that aren’t paths, like walls, seashores, or any kind of boundary, i.e. Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and the Berlin Wall
- districts are sections of the city with an identifiable character, like a wealthy neighborhood versus a slum; i.e. the boroughs of NYC (Lynch is actually talking more about districts that we each personally understand, so it’s more accurate to say, in his terms, that districts are how I view PSU’s campus)
- nodes are points or strategic spots where there is an extra focus or added concentration of city features, like a busy intersection or a popular city center; i.e. Dupont Circle in Washington DC and the intersection of College Ave and Allen St
- landmarks are external physical objects that act as reference points; i.e. the Washington Monument or the Lion Shrine
JANE JACOBS’S “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”
- mostly wanted designers to realize that parks are not in and of themselves healthy, positive additions to urban and suburban life: cities (their activity, their density, the interest that they bring in the form of foot traffic, the enclose they provide by way of buildings and streets) already have the healthy, safe, active places that parks aim to mimic
- ideal conditions for diversity in a city include:
- districts must serve more than one primary function to ensure presence of people using the same common facilities at different times
- blocks should be short to increase path options between points of departure and destinations, therefore enhancing social relations
- buildings should be of varying ages to accommodate different people and businesses that can afford different levels of rents
- a dense concentration of people including residents and businesses to promote visible city life
Other considerations to make while designing:
- busy sidewalks, used by day & night and by different populations, checks crime
- proprietors and neighbors situated close to the ground provide “eyes on the street,” a citizen surveillance system that builds trust
- slums are typically designed to turn inward onto courtyards, away from streets & sidewalks
- the lack of sidewalks leads to “turf:” gang warfare by the poor, fortressing by the wealthy
- primary uses of sidewalks: safety, contact, assimilating children
- successful, functional, best parks are those under intense use by a diverse set of companies and residents, and have these 4 characteristics: intricacy, centering, sun, & enclosure
–The Garden City (Ebenezer Howard)
- Howard’s goal was to make cities as little like the overcrowded London of his day as possible (to solve problems of urban pollution and overcrowding)
- very precise: out of 6000 acres bought for the city, only 1000 were for the city, with a population cap of 32,000
- small garden cities would be connected by canals and transit and separated by agricultural spaces
- separates program of the city, like commercial, industrial, residential, and public spaces
- “Town and country must be married, and out of this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilization.”
- Jacobs: “[Howard’s] aim was the creation of self-sufficient small towns, really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life among others with no plans of their own. As in all utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge.” In other words, Jacobs believed that Howard’s plans lacked any opportunity for diversity of spaces and therefore people, which is, as she argues, exactly what a city is supposed to be.
–The Radiant City (Le Corbusier)
- Le Corbusier was also trying to solve the problems of urban pollution and overcrowding, but unlike Howard, he envisioned building up, not out
- his plan “Towers in the Park” proposed numerous high-rises, each surrounded by green space. Space was again clearly delineated between different uses
- Jacobs: “Le Corbusier’s Utopia was a condition of what he called maximum liberty, by which he seems to have meant not liberty to do anything much, but liberty from ordinary responsibility…. Nobody was going to have to struggle with plans of his own.” In other words, Jacobs argues that Le Corbusier’s vision for urban life was destructive to the city, alienating people from each other and elevating the car over the human.
–The City Beautiful (Robert Moses)
- Moses basically tried to get a bunch of his designs built and was thwarted by Jacobs
- mostly highways that would require the demolishing of slums and neighborhoods around New York City
- Jacobs described the process by which a highway run through the heart of a neighborhood could destroy it by creating a “border vacuum,” rendered lifeless and ultimately unsafe by the lack of people venturing across it. She also stated that the planners’ infatuation with building as many parks as possible, wherever they could be stuffed in, often resulted in deserted parks that were a breeding ground for crime and decay
- Jacobs: “Are we building cities for people or for cars?”
WILLIAM WHYTE
- founded Project for Public Spaces when he started wondering about how city spaces that were already built were actually working out
- believed that public spaces must facilitate civic engagement and community interaction
- preached “Bottom-Up Place Design:” people choose spaces by their feet, finding spaces that are easy to use and comfortable
LEWIS MUMFORD
- architectural critic (among many other things); still regarded as the leading 20th century authority on cities
- believed that the sprawling American suburbs of the post-WWII era lacked communal focus with separate residential, commercial, and cultural centers and their emphasis on cars
- firmly believed that without slowly building up cities and cultural centers, neither the good of the community nor of humanity would be well-served
WHAT SHOULD WE DO AT THE SITE?
Borrowing the ideas of Lynch, Jacobs, Whyte, and Mumford, here is a list of things that I think we should do when we get to the site:
- Identify paths, edges, districts, nodes, & landmarks
- Observe the destinations and movement patterns of people using the site/the area around the site
- Note the age and use of the buildings around the site
- Find parks, markets, residences, etc. in the area from which to draw inspiration and to find flaws that our designs could improve
- Measure street widths, intersections, sidewalk widths, building setbacks, and more
- Observe traffic patterns on/around the site, both cars and pedestrians (and any other types of transportation?)
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