“The City Image and its
Elements”
from The Image
Kevin Lynch
Editors’ Introduction a
Kevin Lynch (1918-1989) is the towering figure of twentieth-contury urban design. The Image ofthe City, from
which this selection is taken, is the most widely read urban design book of alltime. Lynch was a professor of urban
Studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he taught courses in urban design.
As a young student Kevin Lynch apprenticed himself to Frank Lloyd Wright. Drawing widely on material from
Psychology and the humanities, Lynch sought to understand how people perceive their environments and how