Visual order and the image of the city (part 5)

Jane Jacobs explains two types of tactic to help clarify visual order for the city:

1. Emphasis
2. Suggestion

The tactics detailed in yesterday’s post were those falling in the former category, such as terminating vistas with landmark or interrupting a straight stretch of roadway with a plaza.

Jacobs’ chapter on visual order spends less time on the tactics of suggestion. That is, those that help unify a district’s character. Jacobs focuses on the street, again, listing different design elements that can help us perceive a street as a unified whole, even where there is diversity and vitality among the uses and structures:

• street trees
• strong and simple patterns in sidewalk pavement
• awnings

(cc) RachelH_ on flickr

(cc) Andrew A. Shenouda

Imagine a street where residences mix with commercial uses, where there is a mix of building ages and consequently their styles, materials, and craftsmanship. Adding such elements can suggest a unified whole.

These same strategies can be applied to larger districts. However, if every street and every district applies the same elements, the unified whole suggestion becomes untenable. The open sky can be a unifying element, but it’s presence nearly everywhere lacks the tactical weight of other unifying elements.

Visual order and the image of the city (part 2)

(cc) David Gane on flickrYesterday, I introduced Kevin Lynch’s five elements that make up The Image of the City in our minds:

1. Paths
2. Edges
3. Nodes
4. Landmarks
5. Districts

Last week, I asked whether architects hate cities. In her chapter on visual order, she sets up streets as our primary setting for viewing the city, and that it is problematic that they announce both activity and endlessness - especially under the tyranny of the grid found as an historical artifact of many cities.

Lynch backs Jacobs, suggesting that paths are the primary element in most of our mental maps because they are the setting in which we view all the other elements:

• Edges cut off paths
• Paths lead to nodes; sometimes, the intersection of two paths creates a node
• We see landmarks from paths; we orient ourselves along paths by them
• We travel through districts on paths

Paths are the key. The “problem” of visual order isn’t the activity on the street, it’s the false perception of an endless expanse of this activity. The architects that might hate the city have identify the problem incorrectly. Jacobs has some suggestions about how to use the other elements to solve this design problem - a much easier fix than:

• removing activity from the street
• ordering it in separate districts, or
• spacing it out so much that it makes sense at the speeds of an automobile

I’ll share those tomorrow.

Visual order and the image of the city (part 1)

Jane Jacobs’ chapter on “Visual order: its limitations and possibilities” borrows a bit from her contemporary, Kevin Lynch and the book he published at about the same time as The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Image of the City. I’ll try and show the overlap in the next post or two.

Lynch writes about the five elements that compose our mental image of the city:

1. Paths - These are the foremost elements. They’re our channels of travel. Jacobs writes about these a fair bit, covering the uses of sidewalks in the first portion of Death and Life. It also relates to her chapter on “The need for small blocks,” one of the conditions for diversity.
2. Edge - This is paramount in Jacobs’ discussion of border vacuums. These are the elements such as rivers, railroad tracks, or anything else that might be a barrier to paths. It may also be where two different use districts (see below) meet. They can be any linear element we don’t consider paths.
3. Node - Lynch calls these “strategic spots.” They can be intersections or other places of focus as we enter or use such spaces. They combine well with landmarks. Jacobs writes about neighborhood parks - sometimes a node. These are crucial as points of reference when, say, we’re giving directions to someone else.
4. Landmark - Unlike a node, you don’t have to be in the spot to see the landmark, but they can also be points of reference. Jacobs suggests the use of landmarks to interrupt the “endlessness” of the visual streetscape.
5. District - We recognize the extent of this element by some unifying character. Jacobs suggests design features that provide some sense of visual order, but these districts can also form around common use or other common identity. Jacobs has much more to say about districts and district vitality.