Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Among geographers, the spatial component to behavioural research has attracted most
interest, and they derive much of their inspiration from the pioneering research by Lynch
(1960). Lynch's research asked respondents in North American cities to sketch maps of
their individual cities, and by simplifying the sketches, derived images of the city. Lynch
developed a specific technique to measure people's urban images in which respondents
drew a map of the centre of the city from memory, marking on it the streets, parks,
buildings, districts and features they considered important. 'Lynch found many common
elements in these mental maps that appeared to be of fundamental importance to the way
people collect information about the city' (Hollis and Burgess 1977:155). Lynch (1960)
found five elements in the resulting maps after simplifying them. These were
•
paths
which are the channels along which individuals move
•
edges
which are barriers (e.g. rivers) or lines separating one region from another
•
districts
which are medium to large sections of the city with an identifiable character
•
nodes
which are the strategic points in a city which the individual can enter and which
serve as foci for travel
•
landmarks
which are points of reference used in navigation and way finding, into which
an individual cannot enter.
(See Figure 5.10 for a schematic diagram of Lynchean landscape elements.)
The significance of such research for the tourist and visitor to the urban environment
is that the information they collect during a visit will shape their image of the place,
influencing their feelings and impressions of that place. Furthermore, this imageability of
a place is closely related to the legibility, by which is meant the extent to which parts of
the city may be recognised and interpreted by an individual as belonging to a coherent
pattern. Thus a legible city would be one where the paths, edges, districts, nodes and
landmarks are both clearly identifiable and clearly positioned relative to each other
(Walmesley and Lewis 1993:98). Indeed, Lynch argued that a successful urban landscape
would possess two desirable urban qualities of
imageability
(the value of objects in the
landscape to provoke a strong emotional response in observers) and
legibility
(the extent
to which the elements of a city can be seen as a coherent whole).
