FACILITATING LEGIBILITY
Human beings naturally simplify and categorize the excess of sensory input that they continuously experience. This allows us to take the visual/auditory/olfactory/etc. information, make it symbolically legible, and build coherent thought processes. In other words, we mentally structure our environment by simplification. We understand something (i.e. produce a mental image of it) only through a process of symbolic classification and extraction of the data relevant to us.
If the mental image of one’s environment is produced by categorizing symbols, then the efficacy of this process is tied to the legibility of the symbols. An easy-to-read environment is produced through easy-to-read symbols.
Therefore, a designer can guide the mental structuring of a city’s image through form. The degree of clarity (in other words: legibility) of form manifests as the ability of the user to recognize the parts and synthesize a coherent whole. By choreographing the forms of a city, a designer is molding the identity of the place. Given the criteria of legibility, the language of design becomes of high importance.
IMAGEABILITY
Kevin Lynch’s book, The Image of the City, is a detailed study of the way we structure our cities psychologically. For Lynch, the “imageability” of a city is directly related to the success of its urban plan. Lynch argues that the ease in which one can recognize the patterns and meanings of their environment, the more pleasure and utility they will extract from it.
Lynch’s book is an attempt to connect legibility of a city’s composition to its success as a place. Without legibility, confusion sets in. This, for Lynch, is the ultimate failure of an urban environment. Confusion robs us of our emotional security and puts us at odds with the outside world. A strongly structured image of the city, however, establishes a harmonious relationship between city and user. Imageability, therefore, is a gauge of success in the design of cities.
PERCEPTION VS IMAGE
The gap between perception and image is bridged by consensus. Through the aforementioned process of symbolic simplification and categorization, an individual gains a perceived notion of what their environment “is.” Taken a step further, a collective of individuals creates an image based on the unspoken consensus of aligned perception.
Each individual will have a differing (even if only slightly) perception of their environment. This is natural as everyone experiences the same city differently. The image of a city, however, can be thought of as the sustained composite of all individual notions.
This definition of “image” reinforces Lynch’s argument about ease of imageability. A more legible environment lends itself to greater consensus in perception and, therefore, a more vivid image. Clarity of symbol and form leads to consensus, which implies a coherent and harmonious image.
DEFINING ORDER
The way which “order” is defined is important to following Lynch’s argument. Lynch claims that an ordered environment establishes a frame of reference that is essential to understanding a place and the relationship it holds to its extended environment.
Held as the highest standard, however, order could certainly eclipse all other characteristics of an urban plan, leading to monotony, which would only have an adverse effect on legibility. Of course, there is nuance to the way that Lynch defines order. A rich framework consists of far more than a neat and regularly ordered structure. Lynch intends for an ordered environment to display both logical clarity and formal diversity at once.
Acknowledging the complex system that any city represents, it’s easy to imagine the dense layering of information that, even when orderly, bears a great wealth of variety and richness. Lynch does not mean to imply an idealized notion of order (a hyper-rational city structured like a card catalogue), but a logical and legible structure that can be discerned with mental clarity. Order does not imply obviousness, merely a coherent logic.
CONSTRUCTING ORDER
Much of Lynch’s study focuses on the components of a city that are used to build order into its structure. He distills these components down to five: path, edge, district, node, and landmark.
These are the reoccurring elements recognized both by city planner and citizen that are used to build a legible structure into the urban environment. They represent the basic symbols we use to construct the mental framework of a city. They become the common language that designers can utilize to speak to the user.
This is possible, for example, because everyone can both recognize the form and understand the utility of a path as a means to connect point A to point B. Similarly, though on perhaps a higher level of abstraction, we can read the commonality of forms and patterns that are identified as a district of a city. One person may use different cues or conceptualize the boundary of that district slightly differently, but we can agree on them nonetheless. The looseness of definition of a district does not preclude consensus of its general geographic boundaries, a characteristic that could play positively or negatively depending on its social context.
The network of relationships between these basic components (path, edge, district, node, and landmark) builds the armature for the mental model of a city. It is the skeleton that all the other detail fills in. It is the frame of reference that makes the complexity of a city legible. Recognizing and linking the components may be more or less difficult from city to city. This is where the degree of cities’ imageability differs. This is why Lynch believes strongly that physical order is tied to image.
// BOSTON MAPPED THROUGH LYNCH'S VERBAL INTERVIEWS
DIFFERENTIATION
Lynch’s focus on particular components boils down to one thing: differentiation. Paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks all produce a contrast with their local context. This makes them obvious elements to use for a mental structuring, as they are more readily recognizable than a city’s more subtle characteristics. Their use brings an intrinsic hierarchy to the urban environment, both physically and psychologically.
Lynch’s five components differentiate the physical environment both in terms of geographic space and functional type. Thus, they will be legible to someone experiencing them (due to their ability to engender physical differentiation) as well as appropriate for a meaningful symbolic structuring (due to their ties with function).
THE LANGUAGE OF WATERFRONTS
Given these five components defined by Lynch, it is not a huge leap to see why a waterfront can be a potent force in bringing order to a city. A waterfront can be paired with any one of their definitions, or even a combination of them. A river can mark a path, an edge, a district, a node, and a landmark. In fact, it is very difficult to imagine an urban waterfront that eludes being tied to any of these elements. To use Lynch’s vocabulary, a waterfront is a highly imageable form.
Of course, a waterfront is what you make of it, but in an urban context most have certain inherent properties that naturally lend themselves to facilitate the ordering of structure. The most obvious of these is scale. Rivers and coasts generally dominate their local context in terms of scale. It is unsurprising when cities, especially their older cores, form a planar logic that begins with the winding geometry of a river.
Accompanying the monumental scale of your average urban waterfront is the presence of a large spatial clearing in an otherwise densely built environment. A waterfront can serve as an uplifting spatial release when juxtaposed with tighter adjoining urban spaces.
A waterfront is also a naturally strong edge. Compared to other options, it is often difficult and expensive to build on the water. As a result, a river often becomes a barrier for movement. It easily becomes an obstacle. Although potentially unfortunate for other reasons, an obstacle is a very legible (and highly imageable) thing.
Large bodies of water also bring substantial material contrast to the city. They reflect, flow, shimmer, freeze, rise and subside. Waterfronts have visual and auditory properties that differentiate them from the city at large. The water itself demarcates an unmistakable zone that is legibly different from its context.
Each of these characteristics (scale, boundary, materiality, and others as well) can be found in other common city forms (perhaps a grand square or large pedestrian street). However, rarely does any element capture so many as vividly as a waterfront. Lynch would agree that an urban waterfront has the potential for robust imageability that can help structure great cities.
WATERFRONT AND IMAGE
Carefully crafting a waterfront will have considerable impact on the image of a city. A good waterfront can serve as the backbone of the city’s structural skeleton. It will appropriately dominate the hierarchy of anyone’s mental model of the urban environment. If integrated correctly, the waterfront will function as a frame of reference for defining and ordering other spaces of a city in relation to it, constructing a clear diagram for understanding the logic of the city. An imageable waterfront makes for an imageable city.
// CHOI ROPIHA'S MASTERPLAN FOR A NEW CITY IN SOUTH KOREA
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