- Email: [email protected]
For Kevin Lynch: In appreciation
Journal of Environmental Psychology (1984) 4, 197-199
F O R KEVIN LYNCH: IN A P P R E C I A T I O N D A V I D STEA Urban Research Center, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
KEVIN LYNCH
(Photo: Alan Rabinowitz) I was introduced to Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City some 22 years ago while a graduate student at Stanford, and in 1983 it became a text for a course I originated, called 'The Psychology o f Environmental Design'. I wanted very much to meet the creator of this marvellous work, and had the opportunity in late 1964. Expecting an august and d i s t a n t - - a n d frankly, old--personage, and a cold greeting in the bargain, I shuffled gingerly and deferentially into his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (better known as M.I.T.). Contrary to my expectations, I received a warm welcome from a smiling, soft-spoken man who seemed eternally young. We looked at his collection of children's images of Brooklyn, and chatted on into the afternoon. It was the beginning of a sporadic, but long, association, and of a rapidly expanding network of workers in what later came to be called 'environmental cognition'. Now, the eternally young m a n whom we thought would be with us forever, is gone. The person who served as an inspiration to the once-lonely and isolated pioneers of environmental social science is with us no more, but his legacy--in the form of books, articles, and other publications--lives on, a product of his own life history. Born in Chicago in 1918, Lynch studied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen on a Fellowship, at Yale University, and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, before entering the United States A r m y in World W a r II. After receiving a city planning degree from M.I.T. in 1947, he worked as Assistant City Planner in Greensboro, North Carolina. He returned to M.I.T. in 1949, and his illustrious career there lasted 30 years. During this period he was awarded two honorary doctorates, was accorded special recognition by both the American Institute of Architects and the American Institute of Planners, and received the first Alfred Bettman Award in City Planning.
198
D. Stea
Kevin Lynch's research, practice, and influence transcended the United States to include other parts of the world, particularly Latin America. In collaboration with John Myer, Stephen Carr, and the late Donald Appleyard, he conceived, planned, designed or influenced projects in the cities of Boston, Burlington, Cleveland, Columbia, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., as well as cities in Mexico, Puerto Rico, San Salvador and Venezuela. Lynch's books included Site Planning, Theory of Good City Form, What Time is This Place and Image of the City. The latter two books reflect his differences with the 'grand design' or 'formgiver' approach to urban planning, and also demonstrate his concern with ' h u m a n scale', relating design to everyday experience. I f What Time is This Place was his most poetic and philosophical work, The Image of the City was his most influential--especially a m o n g environmental psychologists. Environmental psychology was as much the creation o f people outside psychology as those within the field. Kevin Lynch was unquestionably the prime contributor from urban planning, but he transcended even that distinction: during a period when cognition had been all but banished from scientific psychology, his writings spearheaded its re-entry. Long before the renaissance of cognition in the social sciences during the mid-1970s, Kevin Lynch had uncovered and popularized both a new application and a new approach. The heuristic contribution of The Image of the City was considerable; studies o f 'urban imagery' proliferated, and spread to include a variety of cities over the globe. The major influence of Kevin Lynch, however, was not innumerable minor studies of urban imagery, but a perspective that linked cognition, urban design, urban planning, and public policy. This was perhaps best described in his foreword to Environmental Knowing (Moore and Gollidge, 1976, pp. vii-viii): 'The diverse ways in which different groups see the same place are important for public policy. Critical for public policy also are the fascinating similarities, arising from features of the environment itself, or from our common biological heritage, or .... from similarities in the nature of the social networks within groups that at first glance may seem wildly dissimilar. Similarities of cognition are particularly useful in making city policy. They are essential if people are to communicate and cooperate with one another .... Most designers and planners, on the other hand, as they take notice of environmental cognition, simply acquire a new verbal style, add a novel field survey to their repertoire (a survey done, as always, by themselves), and continue to ignore the city as experienced by their inarticulate clients. They are trained to look at place, not at people. Each profession looks along its own nose, and to see perceiver and perceived whole is a difficult business. To line that understanding to public policy is an even more difficult business.' Just as cogent were Lynch's comments on theory: 'The theories that keep us aware are those that arise and are tested in the midst of life ... theory and action require each other.' The above are but samples o f the passages in which he not only encapsulated the record of the past, but set out an agenda for the future. As theoretician, futurist, researcher, practitioner, and teacher, Kevin Lynch was a pioneer and a giant who transcended the boundaries of his own field. His contributions
For Kevin Lynch: In Appreciation
199
affected other disciplines not just because they were inherently significant, but also because they were presented without jargon, so simply, so clearly that they could not be ignored. For, above all else, Lynch was an eminently reachable human being, the image of our better selves. Along with his wisdom, we shall miss his wit, and his counsel.
Reference
Moore, G. T. and Golledge, g. G. (1976). EnvironmentalKnowing. Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania: Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross.
F O R KEVIN LYNCH: IN A P P R E C I A T I O N D A V I D STEA Urban Research Center, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
KEVIN LYNCH
(Photo: Alan Rabinowitz) I was introduced to Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City some 22 years ago while a graduate student at Stanford, and in 1983 it became a text for a course I originated, called 'The Psychology o f Environmental Design'. I wanted very much to meet the creator of this marvellous work, and had the opportunity in late 1964. Expecting an august and d i s t a n t - - a n d frankly, old--personage, and a cold greeting in the bargain, I shuffled gingerly and deferentially into his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (better known as M.I.T.). Contrary to my expectations, I received a warm welcome from a smiling, soft-spoken man who seemed eternally young. We looked at his collection of children's images of Brooklyn, and chatted on into the afternoon. It was the beginning of a sporadic, but long, association, and of a rapidly expanding network of workers in what later came to be called 'environmental cognition'. Now, the eternally young m a n whom we thought would be with us forever, is gone. The person who served as an inspiration to the once-lonely and isolated pioneers of environmental social science is with us no more, but his legacy--in the form of books, articles, and other publications--lives on, a product of his own life history. Born in Chicago in 1918, Lynch studied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen on a Fellowship, at Yale University, and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, before entering the United States A r m y in World W a r II. After receiving a city planning degree from M.I.T. in 1947, he worked as Assistant City Planner in Greensboro, North Carolina. He returned to M.I.T. in 1949, and his illustrious career there lasted 30 years. During this period he was awarded two honorary doctorates, was accorded special recognition by both the American Institute of Architects and the American Institute of Planners, and received the first Alfred Bettman Award in City Planning.
198
D. Stea
Kevin Lynch's research, practice, and influence transcended the United States to include other parts of the world, particularly Latin America. In collaboration with John Myer, Stephen Carr, and the late Donald Appleyard, he conceived, planned, designed or influenced projects in the cities of Boston, Burlington, Cleveland, Columbia, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., as well as cities in Mexico, Puerto Rico, San Salvador and Venezuela. Lynch's books included Site Planning, Theory of Good City Form, What Time is This Place and Image of the City. The latter two books reflect his differences with the 'grand design' or 'formgiver' approach to urban planning, and also demonstrate his concern with ' h u m a n scale', relating design to everyday experience. I f What Time is This Place was his most poetic and philosophical work, The Image of the City was his most influential--especially a m o n g environmental psychologists. Environmental psychology was as much the creation o f people outside psychology as those within the field. Kevin Lynch was unquestionably the prime contributor from urban planning, but he transcended even that distinction: during a period when cognition had been all but banished from scientific psychology, his writings spearheaded its re-entry. Long before the renaissance of cognition in the social sciences during the mid-1970s, Kevin Lynch had uncovered and popularized both a new application and a new approach. The heuristic contribution of The Image of the City was considerable; studies o f 'urban imagery' proliferated, and spread to include a variety of cities over the globe. The major influence of Kevin Lynch, however, was not innumerable minor studies of urban imagery, but a perspective that linked cognition, urban design, urban planning, and public policy. This was perhaps best described in his foreword to Environmental Knowing (Moore and Gollidge, 1976, pp. vii-viii): 'The diverse ways in which different groups see the same place are important for public policy. Critical for public policy also are the fascinating similarities, arising from features of the environment itself, or from our common biological heritage, or .... from similarities in the nature of the social networks within groups that at first glance may seem wildly dissimilar. Similarities of cognition are particularly useful in making city policy. They are essential if people are to communicate and cooperate with one another .... Most designers and planners, on the other hand, as they take notice of environmental cognition, simply acquire a new verbal style, add a novel field survey to their repertoire (a survey done, as always, by themselves), and continue to ignore the city as experienced by their inarticulate clients. They are trained to look at place, not at people. Each profession looks along its own nose, and to see perceiver and perceived whole is a difficult business. To line that understanding to public policy is an even more difficult business.' Just as cogent were Lynch's comments on theory: 'The theories that keep us aware are those that arise and are tested in the midst of life ... theory and action require each other.' The above are but samples o f the passages in which he not only encapsulated the record of the past, but set out an agenda for the future. As theoretician, futurist, researcher, practitioner, and teacher, Kevin Lynch was a pioneer and a giant who transcended the boundaries of his own field. His contributions
For Kevin Lynch: In Appreciation
199
affected other disciplines not just because they were inherently significant, but also because they were presented without jargon, so simply, so clearly that they could not be ignored. For, above all else, Lynch was an eminently reachable human being, the image of our better selves. Along with his wisdom, we shall miss his wit, and his counsel.
Reference
Moore, G. T. and Golledge, g. G. (1976). EnvironmentalKnowing. Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania: Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross.