NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE

NAME: PAMOTONGAN, JAY B. DATE: SEPTEMBER 03, 2020

SUBJECT/SECTION: ASPENC2 – ARC162

REACTION PAPER: “The City Image and Its Elements by Kevin Lynch”

According to the book by Kevin Lynch entitled “The City Image and Its Elements”
there are contents of the city images that has been studied, which are referable to physical
forms, and which can conveniently be classified into five types of elements, and these are
the paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.

These five types of elements isn’t new to me since it was already introduced to me in our
planning subject, and was used in our place making plate where we applied it in our chosen
study area. As what I have understand on Kevin Lynch’s five types of elements, it is where
people can better understand the layout of the place. The first type of element is the Paths
which are the travel routes that people use, it consist of railroads, pedestrian routes,
automotive roads or other informal means used to access a destination. The second type is
the Edges, where it utilize paths but not exclusive to them, edges are boundaries to
identifiable spaces it can be shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, or walls. The third
type is the Districts, where areas that are entered into that are obvious to the perceiver are
districts, they can have distinguishable characteristics known to those inside and outside of
them, since they have an apparent dimension. The fourth type is the Nodes, it is the
connections between two points that a person can interact with and enter into define
nodes, it is where an intersection creates a destination point where activities may happen
making them a focus and provide a person with decisions or opportunities to alter their
course. The fifth type is the Landmark, it is often a single object such as a statue or building,
they are destinations but also used as way finding features to help navigate a space.

Having identified these elements Lynch describes the skeletal elements of city form. To build
a broader vocabulary upon this basic framework we must consider other natural and man-
made urban form. Those elements of the city are not isolated from one another. We can’t
say the paths are only the roads and the nodes are the points or so on. All elements are
helping each other to define themselves in the city. Observers of the city can experience
the city image with those elements.