Download Urban Research Reflections: Image of the City & Time in Place by Kevin Lynch and more Papers Computer Science in PDF only on Docsity! Michael Barker – mbarker2 CS 598 KGK – 3/4/08 The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch I was a little confused about the method that Lynch talked about in the first couple of chapters. It was stated that several researchers went off into the different cities and did observations. I was a little confused because I didn’t really know what they did; I assumed that it had something to do with creating an image of the city. Lynch said that they would talk to people from the city about the city, and I would assume that based on the observations and talking to people they would form an image about the city. I don’t know if that is necessarily the best way of getting an image of a city. If you are from the are it is true that you will know a lot more about it, but it is also true that they will be much more likely to overlook things. I believe this idea was mentioned in class. I thought that the majority of the stuff that Lynch talked in the chapters was pretty straight forward. I don’t want to say that it is obvious, but the stuff he talked about sort of is. I guess a better phrase for it is it makes sense. For example, it makes sense to show direction in arrows on a map if the direction has meaning. Also, it is makes a lot of sense to show depth by changing the size of the objects based on how far away they are. Michael Barker – mbarker2 CS 598 KGK – 3/4/08 What Time is this Place by Kevin Lynch I really didn’t get this paper. I had a lot of trouble seeing the reason behind the questions that Lynch posed, and even where he was going with them. Throughout the chapter he would pose many questions like, what if we could control sounds like this? or what if we could design a building to destroy as a spectacle? I really didn’t see the point of asking such questions. I also thought that the flow of the paragraph was very choppy and Lynch would jump around to different topics seemingly without actual transitions connecting them. One of the things that Lynch talked about was the process of erecting a building. He said something about making the process more aesthetic from an observational perspective. I wasn’t really sure if he meant that builders should try to make the process more aesthetic for observers or if he meant that as observers we should try to see the aesthetics of the entire process when looking at it. I think that the latter makes much more sense. The fact that erecting a building takes a large amount of time means we don’t see the whole process as an observer and it may just look like a mess or ugly if you just look at it for a small period of time, but if you step back and look at the entire process it is actually very cool and interesting. I can agree with this statement. Another good example of this is a plant growing. I don’t know if this is what Lynch meant by the statement or this paper, but this makes sense to me.
