A THEORY OF GOOD

CITY FORM
- KEVIN LYNCH
INTRODUCTION
• Kevin Lynch sets out to answer the question of what
makes a good city, and in the process provides a
comprehensive discussion of urban theory.
• Lynch proposes that the answer to his question lies in
the development of a general normative theory which
relates the value of a city to its spatial characteristics.
• Lynch provides five criteria, plus two "meta-criteria":
vitality, sense, fit, access, control, plus efficiency
and justice.
• Lynch tests out his approach on city size, growth and
conservation, utopian models and planning
practices.
OBJECTIVES
• To provide readers with a more integrated and holistic
approach to thinking about and analyzing cities. In the
longer run this will change the way decision- makers
consider the assets and potential of cities might be
organized and managed.
• To offer a mental toolkit that provides readers with the
cornerstones of a new mindset and so stimulate
readers’ own ideas to solutions for their cities.
• To engender a critical debate amongst decision
makers at different levels and to influence the policy,
strategies and actions undertaken in cities.
VALUES AND CITIES
• Impersonal forces do not transform
human settlements.
• In every case, the first cities emerged
only after a preceding agricultural
revolution.
• New skills develop to serve the new
elite.
• The physical environment plays a
key role in this unfolding.
• The city is a "great place," a release,
a new world, and also a new
oppression.
• Its layout is therefore carefully
planned to reinforce the sense of
awe, and to form a magnificent
background for religious
ceremony.
• The motives of transformation are
clear—better access and space for
PERFORMANCE DIMENSIONS -
VITALITY
Vitality- The degree to which the form of the settlement supports the vital
functions, the biological requirements and capabilities of human being, how it
protect the survival of the species. He mentioned three principals of it which
are sustenance, safety, consonance.
• Sustenance- availability of all the elements to sustain the life. There should
be an adequate supply of food, energy, water and air at the same time
availability of proper disposal of wastes, i.e. the “throughput”.
• Safety- it considers psychological safety, social safety and physical safety.
There should be safety from physical elements like hazards, poisons, and
diseases, also social and psychological safety like defence against violation
attacks, the prevention of food and fire, the resistance to earthquake.
• Consonance- the environment should consonance with the basic biological
structure of human being. It should support natural rhythms, and should
provide optimum sensory input.
SENSE
• Sense- This is the joint between the
form of the environment and the
human processes of perception and
cognition. It depends on the form of
the space, quality and human activity.
He said identity, structure,
congruence, legibility, transparency
are the characteristics of Sense.
• Identity- it is the extent to which
person can recognise or recall a place
as being distinct from other places,
having unique character of its own.
• Structure- which at the scale of small
place is the sense of how its parts fit
together and in large settlements is
the sense of orientation.
• Congruence-
identification/
recognization of the
place by form of
city or building.
• Transparency- one
can directly
perceive the
operations of the
various technical
functions, activities,
and social & natural
processes that are
occurring within the
settlement.
• Legibility-
FIT
• The fit of a settlement
refers to how well its
spatial and temporal
pattern matches the
customary behavior of
its inhabitants.
• It is the match
between action and
form in its behavior
settings and behavior
circuits.
• There are 2 kinds of
fits- 1. Good fit. 2. Bad
fit
ACCESS
• It is the extent to which goods, services,
place and information are accessible with
minimum time and efforts. (least path of
resistance) It is classified as access to other
people, access to human activities, access
to services, access to material resources,
access to natural environment, access to
information
• Cities may have first been built for symbolic
reasons and later for defense, but it soon
appeared that one of their special
advantages was the improved access they
afforded.
• Modem theorists have seen transportation
and communication as the central asset of
an urban area, and most theories of city
genesis and function take this for granted.
CONTROL
• Spatial controls have strong
psychological consequences:
feelings of anxiety, satisfaction,
pride, or submission.
• Author speak here of the control
of human space.
• Control may be explicit and
codified, or implicit, informal,
and even illegitimate, as when
an adolescent gang controls its
turf.
• Aspects of control –
Congruence, Responsibility,
Certainty
META – CRITERIA -
EFFICIENCY JUSTI
• It is the balancing criteria; it
CE
• Justice is the way in
relates the level of achievement in which benefits and
some performance to loss in some costs of any one kind
other. are distributed between
• There are certain interdimensional persons.
conflicts like • It deals with all the
• i. a vital environment will often performance dimensions
conflict with decentralized user like vitality, sense, fit,
control, access and control.
• ii. the ideal vital environment will
often conflict with a well-fitted
one,
• iii. Sense is frequently in
A PLACE UTOPIA
• AN URBAN COUNTRYSIDE
• ITS DEVELOPMENT
• REGIONAL TRUSTS
• LAND MANAGEMENT
• THE RIGHT TO SPACE
• RENT AND ALLOCATION
• HOW THE SYSTEM
COMES INTO BEING
• CHARACTER AND MIX
• READING PLACES AND
SACRED PLACES
A PLACE UTOPIA
• SOCIAL MIX
• URBAN CENTERS
• MOBILITY
• COMMUNICATIONS
• RECYCLING OF STRUCTURES
AND RESOURCES
• LEVELS OF CONSUMPTION
• RESPONSIBILITY
• TRAVEL AND MIGRATION
• LAND DESIGN
CONCLUSION
• Good city form should be vital
(sustainable, safe and
harmonious), it is sensible
(identifiable, structured,
congruent, transparent,
legible, unfolding and
significant), it is well fitted
(resilient), it is accessible
(diverse, equitable and
locally manageable), and it is
well controlled (congruency,
certainty, responsible and
intermittently loose) and all
of these are achieved with
justice and internal
efficiency.