Visual order and the image of the city (part 4)

Town Planning in Practice by Raymond Unwin, 1909

Terminate your vista. Jane Jacobs shares the same sage advice as Raymond Unwin did 40 years earlier. Sites created by intersections like those from Unwin’s illustration above are great spots for landmark structures - statuary, civic buildings, churches, or even an attractively landscaped moment. Streets do not need to appear to continue on endlessly if you terminate and interrupt them well.

Kevin Lynch, contemporaneous to Jacobs, provides the the research and language for describing such a moment where two of the five elements of The Image of the City occur:

• Path
• Landmark (or substitute a Node)

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck return to such concepts in Suburban Nation, where they discuss TND and other takes on The New Urbanism, noting how modern traffic engineering has made such intersections illegal. This makes it impossible to replicate a plan, such as John Nolen’s Mariemont, Ohio:

Mariemont, Ohio

I hope to get a few pictures of Mariemont the next time I’m down in nearby Norwood. But, even here in plan, you can see the streets interrupted by an important node at the town center. Note the civic buildings with their large lots - especially the Town Hall south of this node. Nolen sure could terminate a vista.

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.