Theories of Urban Design Mental Map by Kevin Lynch Serial Vision By gordon cullen Public spaces by Jane Jacob

1. Theory Of Urban Design
1950-1970
Prerna Sharma Bimenpreet Kaur

2. Mental Map
Kevin Lynch

3. Kevin Lynch
● Kevin Andrew Lynch was born on 7th Jan 1918 and died on
25th April 1984.
● He was an American urban planner and author.
● He is best known for his work on mental mapping and on
perceptual form of urban environments.
● His famous book The Image of the City which he published
in 1960 is very famous among his works.
● He practice site planning and urban design professionally
with lots of urban planners.
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4. Concept of Mental Mapping
● A mental map is a person's point-of-view
perception of their area of interaction.
● A person’s perception of the world is known as
mental map, it’s an individual’s own map of their
known world.
● The image which the user form in his mind about
the architectural and urban components of the
city and their places so he can direct his motion
through the city after that.
● Mental maps of an individual can be investigated
by:
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● Asking for directions to a landmark or
other location.
● Asking someone to draw a sketch map
of an area or describe that area.
● Asking a person to name as many
places as possible in short period of
time.

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Mental image properties :
The overall mental image of an urban environment
will be:
1. Partial : not covering the whole city
2. Simplified : omitting a great deal of information
3. Unique : each individual has his/her own
4. Distorted : not necessary has real distance or direction.
Concept of Mental Mapping

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Image Of The City Kevin Lynch Says That:
● A city is constructed in space, but of a vast scale.
● A city is described with its surroundings and elements.
● Explains that people's perception of the city is
important.
● Going through a city from the viewers mind is "image of
the city".
● Elements like nodes, paths, districts, edges, landmarks
make a city.
● To make a visual plan (map).
● Analyzing the forms and public areas.
● Understand problems, opportunities and use them in
designing a city.
Concept Of Legibility
● It is said to be the ease with which people understand
the layout of a place.
● To understand the layout of the city, people make a
mental map which contains mental images of the city
constraints varies from every individual

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Using three disparate cities as examples (Boston,
Jersey City, and Los Angeles), Lynch reported
that users understood their surroundings in
consistent and predictable ways, forming mental
maps with five elements:
● Pathway
● Edges
● District
● Node
● Landmark
Elements of city defined by Lynch

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Pathways
● Paths are the channels along which
observers move
● Paths are the most important elements in
people’s images.
● They may be streets, walkways, transit lines,
canals, railroads
● Other elements are arranged and along
them.
● Unclear paths = unclear city image

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Edges
● Edges are linear elements that form boundaries
between areas or linear breaks in continuity
● The strongest edges are continuous in form, and
often impenetrable to cross movement.
● Types of edges – natural and manmade.
● Difference between path and edge
Paths -Direct the motion to specific direction
Edges - Prevent motion in specific direction
● Edges are the linear elements not used as paths by
the observer.
● They are the boundaries and linear breaks in
continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges of
development, walls.

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Districts
Districts are the medium to large parts of the city which
share the same characteristics.
Style - spatial form, topography- colors- texture, urban
fabric.
Districts may have clear edges, or soft uncertain ones
gradually fading away into surrounding areas.
Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city
which the observer mentally enters "inside of," and
which are recognizable as having some common,
identifying character.

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Nodes
Strategic points in the city that:
• The user can enter it
• Be directed to many destinations
• It can be gathering places or intersection of paths, or
places for activities.
Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which
an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci
to and from which he is traveling.
They may be primarily junctions or concentrations

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Landmarks
A physical element with unique and special visual
features that has a "point-specific” location, and can be
identified from the distance.
Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in
this case the observer does not enter within them, they
are external.
They are usually a rather simply defined physical object:
building, sign, store, or mountain.

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14. Serial Vision
Gordon Cullen

15. Gordon Cullen
● Thomas Gordon Cullen (9 August 1914 – 11 August 1994) was
an influential British architect and urban designer who was
a key motivator in the Townscape movement.
● Cullen presented a new theory and methodology for urban
visual analysis and design based on the psychology of
perception, such as on the human need for visual
stimulation and the notions of time and space.
● He is best known for the book Townscape, first published in
1961.
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16. Serial Vision Serial Vision is to walk from one end of the plan to
another, at a uniform pace, will provide a sequence of revelations
which are suggested in the serial drawings opposite, reading
from left to right.
Place Place description is in a world of black and white the roads
are for movement and the buildings for social and business
purposes.
Content Content concerned with the intrinsic quality of the
various subdivisions of the environment, and start with the great
landscape categories of metropolis, town, arcadia, park,
industrial, arable and wild nature.
Focal Point Focal point is the idea of the town as a place of
assembly, of social intercourse, of meeting, was taken for granted
throughout the whole of human civilization up to the twentieth
century.
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17. Outdoor Publicity One contribution to modern townscape,
startlingly conspicuous everywhere you look, but almost
entirely ignored by the town planner, is street outdoor
publicity. This is the most characteristic, and, potentially, the
most valuable, contribution of the twentieth century to urban
scenery. At night it has created a new landscape of a kind never
before seen in history.
Man-made enclosure, if only of the simplest kind, divides the
environment into HERE and THERE. On this side of the arch, in
Ludlow, we are in the present, uncomplicated and direct world,
our world. The other side is different, having in some small way
a life of its own (a with-holding).
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Closure Closure, may be differentiated from Enclosure, by
contrasting ‘travel’ with ‘arrival’. Closure is the cutting up of
the linear town system (streets, passages, etc.) into visually
digestible and coherent amounts whilst retaining the sense
of progression. Enclosure on the other hand provides a
complete private world which is inward looking, static and
self-sufficient.

18. Serial Vision
Gordon Cullen said “ Urban experience is one of a series of
revelations, with delight and interest being stimulated by
contrasts”
Cullen work showed how movement can be read as a
pictorial sequence
He showed how our perception of time passing and
distance travelled differs from reality
New modes of travel has provided additional ways of
seeing,engaging with and forming mental images :
● Seen at different speeds
● With different levels of focus
● The pedestrian viewpoint is accompanied by the
freedom to stop and engage with one’s surroundings
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19. Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, India
Designed by Herbert Baker and Edward Lutyens, the new
capital was envisioned on the principles of Garden City.
The Rajpath that leads to the Rashtrapati Bhavan has a
series of visual screening as well as enhancing elements,
thus, creating a progression of frames.
A sense of progression is created and keeps the observer
moving forward. The avenues and the water bodies confine
you to the focal point and as you move forward your frame
gets bigger with multiple buildings and different views.
An illusion of nearness and closeness that is created in the
first frame fades out as one approaches the main building
in focus, revealing more and more buildings of different
scales and functions.
In this example, serial vision is used to suggest the
majestic and authoritative nature of the building in focus.
India Gate
Rashtrapati
Bhavan
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● The sequence at axis of The Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi emphasizes
the role of levels and screening in serial vision.
● For here what could simply have been one picture reproduced four times,
enlarging the centre of the previous view and bringing us near to the
terminal building, turns out to be four separate and unique views.
● This Bhavan acts as an enticer to the observer as he is gradually lead further.
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21. PUBLIC SPACES
Jane Jacobs

22. Jane Jacob
● Jane Jacobs OC OOnt (née Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was
an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist who
influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics.
● Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued
that "urban renewal"/"slum clearance" did not respect the needs of
city-dwellers.
● Jacobs organized grassroots efforts to protect neighborhoods
from "urban renewal"/"slum clearance", in particular Robert
Moses' plans to overhaul her own Greenwich Village
neighborhood.
● She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower
Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly
through an area of Manhattan which later became known SoHo, as
well as part of Little Italy and Chinatown.
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23. “ No one can find what will work for our cities by
looking at … suburban garden cities, manipulating
scale models, or inventing dream cities. You’ve got to
get out and walk.
- Jane Jacobs.

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"...First there must be clear demarcation between what
is public space and what is private space.
Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes
belonging to those we might call natural proprietors of
the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle
strangers and to ensure the safety of both residents and
strangers must be oriented to the street. They cannot
turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly
continuously... "
Jacobs led the way in advocating for a place
based,community centered approach to urban
planning, decades before such approaches were
considered sensible

25. ● The only way to learn what principles of planning and
what practices in rebuilding will help us to achieve this
goal is paying attention and understanding how cities
work in real life.
● We cannot solve other problems (as automobile
traffic) until we know how the city itself works and
what else it needs to do in its streets.
● The importance of TRUST in the streets The trust of a
city street is formed over time from many, many little
public sidewalk contacts.
● The sum of such casual, public contact at a local level –
most of it fortuitous, most of it associated with errands
- is a feeling for the PUBLIC IDENTITY of people, a
web of public respect and trust, and a resource in
time of personal or neighbourhood need.
● The absence of this trust is a disaster to a city street.
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26. ● We see the comparison between two sides of the same
wide street in East Harlem with presence and absence
of casual public trust.
● While on the old-city side, which is full of public
spaces, the children are being kept well in hand on the
other side, the project side, the children are alone and
behaving destructively and nobody thinks about having
the right to stop them. This side of the street lacks of
casual public trust.
● We can also see the comparison between a city area
possessing a public sidewalk life and a city area lacking
it. Sometimes it is connected with the places for people
to gather although some of them are dead and useless.
Why? Because of the matter of city privacy
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27. ● A good city street neighborhood achieves a marvel of
balance between its people’s determination to have
essential privacy and their simultaneous wishes for
differing degrees of contact, enjoyment or help from the
people around.
● This balance is largely made up of small, sensitively
managed details, practiced and accepted so casually that
they are normally taken for granted.
● TOGETHERNESS, apparently a spiritual resource of
the new suburbs,works destructively in cities. The
requirement that much shall be shared drives city
people apart.
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28. SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF SIDEWALK LIFE AND PUBLIC
CHARACTER
● Public character is anyone who is in frequent contact
with a wide circle of people. He just need to be
presented, his main qualification is that he is public, that
he talks to lots of different people. In this way news
travels that is of sidewalk interest.
● Sidewalk public contact and sidewalk public safety,
taken together, bear directly on our country’s most
serious social problem – segregation and racial
discrimination.
● Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear,
sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a
city’s wealth of public life may grow. Los Angeles is an
extreme example of a metropolis with little public life.
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Cities as Ecosystems
● Jacobs approached cities as living beings and
ecosystems.
● She suggested that over time, buildings, streets and
neighborhoods function as dynamic organisms,
changing in response to how people interact with
them.
● She explained how each element of a city sidewalks,
parks, neighborhoods, government, economy
functions together synergistically, in the same
manner as the natural ecosystem.
● This understanding helps us discern how cities work,
how they break down, and how they could be better
structured.
Perspectives
Mixed-Use Development
● Jacobs advocated for "mixed-use" urban development -
the integration of different building types and uses,
whether residential or commercial, old or new.
● According to this idea, cities depend on a diversity of
buildings, residences, businesses and other non-residential
uses, as well as people of different ages using areas at
different times of day, to create community vitality.
● She saw cities as being "organic, spontaneous, and untidy,"
and views the intermingling of city uses and users as crucial
to economic and urban development.

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Perspectives
Bottom-Up Community Planning
● Jacobs contested the traditional planning approach
that relies on the judgment of outside experts,
proposing that local expertise is better suited to
guiding community development.
● She based her writing on empirical experience and
observation, noting how the prescribed government
policies for planning and development are usually
inconsistent with the real-life functioning of city
neighborhoods.
The Case for Higher Density
● Although orthodox planning theory had blamed high
density for crime, filth, and a host of other problems,
Jacobs disproved these assumptions and demonstrated
how a high concentration of people is vital for city life,
economic growth, and prosperity.
● While acknowledging that density alone does not
produce healthy communities, she illustrated through
concrete examples how higher densities yield a critical
mass of people that is capable of supporting more
vibrant communities.
● In exposing the difference between high density and
overcrowding, Jacobs dispelled many myths about high
concentrations of people.

31. THANK YOU
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