The Image of the City


The Image of the City is a 1960 book by American urban theorist Kevin Lynch. The book is the result of a five-year study of Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles on how observers take in information of the city, and use it to make mental maps. Lynch's conclusion was that people formed mental maps of their surroundings consisting of five basic elements.

Imageability

Lynch argues that for any given city, a corresponding set of mental images exist in the minds of the people who experience that city. Contributing to those images are five qualities which Lynch identifies as Paths, Edges, Districts, Nodes, and Landmarks.
The Image of the City has influenced the fields of environmental psychology and environmental behavior as well as a generation of researchers working within them. Researchers that include Amos Rapoport, Claire Cooper Marcus, Oscar Newman, William H. Whyte, Kenneth Craik and Donald Appleyard.