Good City Form
Kevin Lynch
Historically...
The oldest known cities were temple cities
Laid out along processional avenues and impressive
sights
Built to impress pilgrims and get their tribute
(Disney World, Las Vegas)
Temple Cities
Temple Cities
 efined a place for humans in the
D
Cosmos, seperating us from chaos
The rulers are the upholders of order
Leads to 'holy city plan'
Feng shui
Machine Cities
New settlements in foreign lands laid out on a grid
Allows planning, expansion, change and impermanence
Combined with fortification, allows easier defense
Control by segregation
(Roskilde Festival)
Machine Cities
The city is seen as a collection of parts
Scalable and flexible
Repeating patterns
Sprawl
Machine Cities
Values
Vitality
Access
Fit
Control
Sense
Vitality
• Support of biological human needs
• And human capabilities
o
o
o
o
Should have access to food & water etc.
Remove waste
Prevent disease
Defend against attack
• Expectations scale with our ability
(eg. to predict disasters)
Fit
• Human Factors
• Rhythms
o Work hours
o Sleep
o Day/Night
o Seasons
• Suitedness to purpose and ease of use
• Can be emergent and non-universal (McGyver)
Fit
• Manipulability
o the ability to influence environment
• Flexibility to suit future purposes
(Grid layout suited for this)
Bad Fit
Good Fit
Sense
Sense
• Legibility of a place
• Identity
• Sensory impression
• Cognitive impression
Sense
A good city cannot follow a strict model,
since differentiation is a value in itself
Identity and "historicalness" are hard to
make
The experience of a place should have flow
Transparency: The processes and origins
should be legible too
Access
Variety of destinations >< Travel time
Externalities
Control
Access
Access
Control
control of space is useful for creating feelings of
dominance, status, power
vs.
excluded, submitted, weak
Control
Wastelands
• Hard-to-reach areas outside the city
• Low degree of control
• High degree of subversiveness, freedom
• Fit