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The View From The Road Final
The View From The Road Final
The View From The Road Final
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BETWEEN COMMUNISM AND REFORMISM: TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL WARFARE - THE POLITICS OF COLD WAR AESTHETICS IN KEVIN LYNCH AND ALDO
ROSSI’S READING OF THE CITY, 1960-1980. View project
A View from the Road or a View of the Road. The Aesthetic of Automobile Travel. View project
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The techniques used in the cinematic study The View from the Road served to
identify and reconstruct the effects certain internal alignments and geometric components
of freeways segments had over the cognition of highway travel. This essay attempts to
trace the evolution of urban simulation, from the ideas emerged with this early study, into
recent filmed simulations of model films; and addresses its connection to the symbology
Urbanism. In 1964 three urban studies graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), Kevin Lynch, John Myer and Donald Appleyard, cooperated on a
study assessing the effects of the internal alignment of freeways segments on highway
travel, taken from the perspective that highways can be potential vantage points for the
American urban landscape. The result from this study was the book The View from the
Road, originally published for the Center of Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and Harvard University. The study of the View from the Road repetitively
draws from, and uses Kevin Lynch’s conceptual elements for spatial cognition, from the
study conducted in his 1960’s book The Image of the City. The principles of mental
[spatial] mapping exemplified by Lynch were used in this work to interpret the cinematic
sequences of recorded visions of landscape taken while traveling on highways; to the end
such as tangents and arcs. This project brought together the ideas of these three
1
experimentation of new urban design models (Lynch and Myer), and the study of the
effect of traffic over urban communities (Appleyard). The project The View from the
Road presented an occasion for them to test individual ideas of environmental perception
These techniques were later developed and become common tools used to describe and
simulate the environmental experience. The notation system, for example, although hard
motion picture cameras, and realistic scale models were also later developed and become
It is probably safe to propose that Lynch, Myer, and Appleyard’s cooperation in this
project was a significant contribution to the development of more refined tools (and
ideas) for urban simulation. Appleyard brought the ideas of urban simulation explored in
this study to the next level by refurbishing the “Harvard Urban Simulator,” which
allowed him to test the principles discerned with the analysis and reconstruction of visual
sequences of travel in The View from the Road. Appleyard, using the simulation lab, and
with the help of upstream cinematographic techniques for simulation, and Star Wars film
makers John Dykstra, made a movie simulating road travel through Marin Country,
reconstructing the visual scenes in the manner theorized in the project The view from the
Road. The urban simulator (re-baptized the Berkeley’ simulator) and the movie, started a
1
Peter Bosselmann, ”The Berkley Environmental Simulation Laboratory: A 12 Year Anniversary,” Berkley
Planning Journal 1, no.1(1984): 150-160.
2
Ibid..
2
new way of representing urban projects, steering away from traditional methods of
communication and making planning projects more easily comprehensible for the general
public.
The use of the cinematic techniques employed for the study The View from the Road
is probably attributable to the type of Cinematic Urbanism at the basis of Lynch’s notion
of mental mapping. The later development of this idea into filmed environmental
simulations is, on the other hand, attributable to the growing importance of mass media as
approaches highway analysis; not only researching the perfect alignment to improve
highway functions, but also attempting to incorporate the highway within the city as an
object offering a kinetic experience and active participation to its forms. Therefore, in the
1960s, emerging from the experience of an era that witnessed the disassociation of
architecture and planning from the physical forms of cities, there was a need for finding
new models of urban design allowing a proper integration of the city structures in the
urban landscape. In post World War II years, therefore, there was an important shift in
paradigm leading to the depopulation and decay of city centers and development of
suburban residential areas. The increase of automobiles per household, during the
prosperity of post war years, and the availability of cheap land in suburbs induced the
most affluent citizen to abandon crowded urban dwelling in favor of single family homes
on large lots in the suburbs. With only the lower income residents and renters remaining
in city’s neighborhoods, many urban areas started to decline and underwent a wave of
redevelopment that lasted many decades. The construction of the interstate highway
3
system during President Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s, made this matter
worse by allowing the creation of suburbs in areas that were previously unreachable.
Public transportation also declined during this period, and the automobile became the
most reliable means of transportation, also accentuating the overall role and importance
of highways in American urbanism. In these years, and in the decades that followed, the
Bauhaus paradigm. Activist groups started to emerge to defend condemned areas of cities
from the redevelopment’s bulldozer. City Planning in university programs became less
concerned with the architectural aspects of the urban form and took a more logistic and
social orientation. At MIT, the studio based Architectural program also gradually started
to shift away from its adherence to the modern international style and to undertake new
The monograph The View from the Road consists in a relatively short (64 pages)
illustrated folio containing the study on highway travel by Kevin Lynch, Donald
Appleyard and John R. Myer. The book emphasizes the potentiality of highways of re-
establish visual order through the chaotic formlessness of cities by researching principles
to improve their design. The project was probably triggered by the emphasis of highway
development of the late 1950s, as part of the programs associated to the 1954 Housing
Act. The Project approaches the highway as an active element for the individual’s
experience of the urban form, rather than a static object in the landscape. Which as Kevin
Lynch said, “It assumes the symbol of an abstract composition in space which gains in
richness because it is not passively seen but actively traversed by the driver, whom
4
experiences visual as well as kinesthetic sensations of tilting, turning, dropping and
perception of travelers, derived from the geometry of the freeway. Their perceptions to
elements associated with individual segments, such as “three dimensional curves” and
curves and tangents cannot be noticed by the eye, but needs to be reconstructed in a
sequence.4 The perception of the viewer is, therefore, measured in relation to several
elements of alignment and how these connect to each other. 5 Consisting in elements of
and sense of anticipation (circular axis), and to perspective foreshortening and transition
curves. 6 The study also proposes that highways can influence traveler perception of
constructed by directing travel through significant places and pointing, with the twists
and curves of the road, at significant urban elements, creating a vision of the city for both
The cinematic techniques used for recording and reconstructing the experience of
highway travel in The View from the Road, seemed to be following the logic of the type
of Cinematic Urbanism7 at the basis of Lynch’s theory of the Image of the City. The
3
Christopher Tunnard and Boris Pushkareu, Man-made America: Chaos or Control, (New haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1963), 177.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid., 177-205.
6
Ibid.
7
Anthony Raynsford, “Civic Art in an Age of Cultural Relativism: The Aesthetic Origins of Kevin Lynch’s
Image of the City,” Journal of Urban Design 16, no.1 (February 2011): 45.
5
study The View from the Road attempted to reconstruct a similar sequence of mental
associations to explain the process establishing mental coherence for road orientation.
Discoveries Lynch made in occasion of the studies conducted in 1951, leading to the
formulation of the theory of the Image of the City, probably allowed him to make
that his research subjects constructed a mental image of the urban environment through
“visual impressions,”9 associated in meaning and memory.10 Lynch also noticed the
tendency of the human eye to switch from detail to detail recording sequences of views
that necessarily hold together, and assumed that the uncoordinated forms and array of
responsible for individual lack of orientation. 11 The logic Lynch used, however, seemed
to draw from the modernist use of abstract forms to construct coherent visual sequences
enclosed spaces and eye-level views of city streets. 12 Lynch could have, therefore,
8
Raynsford, “Civic Art in an Age of Cultural Relativism,” 45.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid., 47.
12
Ibid., 46.
6
Townscape pluralist tradition.
The modernist conception of wholeness and integration, largely drew upon the Gestalt
psychological model, supporting the idea that objects are recorded visually only in a
partial way, and that they only take meaning after they are joined together and integrated
mentally to produce an image of the whole urban form. 13 Modernists such as Kepes, for
example, believed that “the failure of the contemporary built environment to be visually
Lynch, on the other hand, seemed to have given a more pluralist interpretation to this
mental picture, and perceived the elements that made up an environmental setting to be
The idea of the street picture consisted in a concept of urban composition and theory of
the period of the Townscape movement. The Townscape movement, was considered a
British conservative phenomenon, but was also assimilated into various degrees into the
planning theories of many other countries. It was based on the re-interpretation of ideals
of British Romanticism, and contested not only the modernist ideas of the “City as an
organism,” of CIAM, but also the influence of garden city planning of post war Britain.
The Townscape movement stood in opposition to the modernist idea of “unified whole,”
that saw the city as a unified system with all the elements connected together and
hierarchically related. Instead, the Townscape movement saw the city as a pluralistic
13
Raynsford, “Civic Art in an Age of Cultural Relativism,” 51.
14
Ibid., 46.
7
entity, consisting in a collage of different types of street blocks, composed by different
The eye-level view is a one point perspective view of the street, framed by buildings, and
opening a view over an architectural element (usually a tower). This type of arrangement
creates spatial coordinates, frames the view and establishes scale and distance. It also
allows the eye to rest on prominent objects, to create associations between contrasting
urban elements, and provides the perception of spatial distances and direction. The eye-
level view is fundamental to the legibility of an urban area, because it gives it symbolic
The experience of highway travel is described in the book The View from the Road
recordings from the annotations and sketches are summarized in two diagrams,
displaying overlapping
cognitional impressions.
15
Raynsford, “Civic Art in an Age of Cultural Relativism,” 48.
8
different purposes (daily commuters versus tourists).
Note: The readings are recorded through series of ground (photographic) obliques capturing visual sequences at close
interval, and by perspective sketches of views. The purpose of the sketches was to record the sequences of objects as
they were perceived by the eyes, allowing to analyze visual perceptions both at the subjective and objective level. The
visual sequences recorded through the sketches also allowed to strip the experience to its most essential elements
allowing a comparison of the sequences of alternative modes and directions.
9
Note: The drawings conveyed a strong sense of motion, sequence and spatial orientation; recording objects along the
road side but excluding traffic and features far away in the landscape. Study subjects recorded similar objects and
features, and were particularly attracted to sudden visual experiences (of objects or events) that were also often
associated to visual forms from memory. The feature more often recorded were the forward view of the road, spatial
confinements at the side of the road and overhead, outlines and siluettes against the sky, roadside details, and obstacles
to vision, objects obstructing the road and axial views. The sketches were often in perspective view and always
recorded enclosures created by bridges and overpasses. While objects were recorded only if they were in the line of
vision; vertical objects were often recorded in the form of silouettes (lamps, chimneys or towers).16
16
Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch and John Myer, The view from the Road, (Cambridge: Massachusetts
M.I.T Press, 1964), 26.
10
Note: The sense of motion and speed affected the perception of the surrounding objects, the sense of direction,
orientation and the perception of the band of vision. The vision was also strongly focused forward, for both the
passenger and the driver. And the eye of the traveler was often drawn to spatial enclosures, to the play of light, the
relationship of space in sequence, and to the overlapping and direction of principal views. The attention of the traveler
was centered to find orientation, to sense the approach of destinations, to assess the location of major urban and natural
features, and to interpret the meaning of the surrounding landscape.
an audience with a framed and filtered vision directed forward.” 17 This visual experience
is, therefore, almost imposed upon the driver that has no choice but to view it, given his
framed and limited view, inability to choose the path, and immobility. The quality of this
visual experience will depend on the light, color, texture, motion and outlines of the
edges of the road. Views will be organized into sequences and the identifiable objects
will provide orientation, amplifying the sensation of motion.18 When perceived over an
extended period of time, these objects, motions, spaces, and meanings become organized
into complex sequences. 19 The highway experience, will therefore offer the driver the
and space, and by the sense of control over the car. Lynch said that the “sense of spatial
sequence is like that of large scale architecture…[and] the continuity and insistent
The road is described in this book not as a static bulk object in the landscape as it appears
to people along its borders, but as an element presenting a two faced problem,21 where
the experience of travel is reversible and “can be done in both directions like a playback
17
Appleyard, et al., The view from the Road, 5.
18
Ibid., 4.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
11
in a movie.“22 The view from the road can therefore offer the driver an occasion for a
“dramatic play of space and motion, of light and texture, all on a new scale,”23 and by
offering long visual sequences of the metropolitan area, can provide a view of the way
the city is organized, what it symbolizes, how it is used and how people relate to it.24
The project draws on elements of symbolism from Kevin Lynch’s theory of the Image
of the City by recalling the principles of basic orientations proposed by this “imagistic”
theoretical model. The pluralistic view of the urban environment based on the subjective
is re-proposed in The View from the Road by illustrating how travelers will feel oriented
along highways.25 Highways will therefore provide orientation for the traveler by going
through specific and well recognizable areas of the city, and by being oriented in a way to
specific and recognizable areas (districts) by the viewing of cultural activities. The
pluralistic view of the environment in The View from the Road, is particularly invested in
the scope of travel (what would a commuter or a tourist look at), and follows the same
logic in the interpretation of the elements of the theory of the Image of the City.
In the theory of the The Image of the City Lynch makes the assumption that cities are
inhabited by different urban societies, which understand and interpret the urban
mentally map and orient themselves within complex urban area. Each individual has a
22
Ibid., 5.
23
Appleyard, et al, The view from the Road, 3.
24
Ibid.
25
Carla Breeze, “Interview: John R. Myer,” in Arude, http://www.arudemag.com/john-r-myer/ (accessed
May 2, 2013).
12
different and subjective representation of this urban image that taking the form of a
cognitive mental map, comprises a set of elements universally recognizable in the urban
environment. Lynch proposes that the elements comprised in this cognitive map can be
categorized in “paths” consisting of lines along which the observer feels he can move;
“edges,” which are the lines that appear as barriers or boundaries; “nodes,” that are the
focal points into which one imagines the “environment” can be entered; and “landmarks,”
consisting of points mainly serving as reference.26 The idea is that although this cognitive
map provides orientation and familiarity and serves as a pictorial reference for navigating
the landscape; space will be perceived differently by the way different individuals will
relate visual perception of architectural forms to familiar cultural constructs. Lynch calls
this construct the “city’s environmental image,”27 primarily referring to the “result of a
In The View from the Road suggests that highways, by allowing a visual sequence for
the observer in motion, could provide a means of re-establishing coherence and order on
the metropolitan scale and resolve the problem of the visual formlessness of cities.29
Lynch said that all the “image elements,” such as paths, nodes, districts, edges and
landmarks can be identified from the highway, remembered and can provide orientation
and familiarity. The “highway itself is a path” which on its “course goes through edges,
26
Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1960), 1-181.
27
Tanu Sankalia, “Kevin Lynch, Walter Benjamin and Interstitial Space in San Francisco,” (paper presented at the
conference of the Heritage Agency of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen, World in Denmark 2010,
Copenhagen, Denmark, June 17, 2010), 2.
28
Magdalena Zmudzinska-Nowak, “Searching for Legible City Form: Kevin Lynch’s Theory in Contemporary
Perspective,” Journal of Urban Technology 10, no.3 (2003): 19-39.
29
Appleyardet al, The view from the Road, 2.
13
crosses other paths, enter districts, passes landmarks. [Becoming] … both an image
element and a sequence made up of image elements.” 30 Lynch emphasized that the
circumstances of travel, and assumes different meanings depending on whether the trip is
for pleasure or for commute, whether it is in rural areas, in the suburbs or in urban
centers. An experience that will also differ according to the cultural determinants of the
individual undertaking the trip, because according to Lynch, different audiences will
experience a trip in different ways. A tourist, for example, will be mainly engaged with
getting familiar with the environment and will experience the landscape with a fresh eye,
noticing the most details and attaching it with the fewer personal meaning. 31 A
commuter, on the other hand, will be more likely to ignore larger landscape features,
observing instead activities, new objects, and the moving of traffic on the road. 32 The
driver will also experience the trip differently from the passenger, since his vision will be
concentrated on the events of the road, and confined to a narrow forward angle. 33 The
passenger, on the other hand, will have the freedom to look at a broader angle of vision
Lynch’s pluralistic idea of the urban aesthetic was also shared by the other two
authors of The View from the Road. Myer and Appleyard frequenting MIT at the same
time as Lynch were also exposed to the shift in paradigms of the architectural and
30
Appleyard, et al., The view from the Road, 2.
31
Ibid, 4.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
14
planning fields. Similar to Lynch, they later became involved in projects of neighborhood
planning, and contributed with new ideas for the development of innovative planning
processes. John R. Meyer’s friendship with Lynch can be traced back to the time they
spend studying together in Italy in 1952. Myer helped Lynch with the studies on
“cognitional orientation” conducted in Florence by acting as a subject for the field study,
and reporting how he felt oriented in the city and why. Myer and Lynch also cooperated
in several urban design projects, including the design of the plan for the Boston
Government Center in 1958, and in the design of the 1961 Downtown Residential Faneuil
Hall Plan for the Boston Waterfront. The Faneuil Hall Plan was very successful with
revitalizing the Boston waterfront by creating a connection between the sea and the city,
and introducing new economic activities in this once blighted neighborhood. The project
Urban Design paradigms by combining the Corbusier, modernist non contextual model to
Lynch and Myer’s contextual ideas based on the preservation of the city’s identity
through the conservation of significant buildings. Appleyard was the one that continued
to work on the idea of The View from the Road and took the studies to the next level by
of environments. Donald Appleyard was a British architect that studied Urban Planning
at MIT, and subsequently taught at MIT and UC Berkeley. He centered his life studies
upon the effect of traffic on the lives of urban dwellers, and in studies of neighborhood
encompassing the scope of urban design within social sciences, and conducted, since the
early 1960s, studies on the livability of streets, measuring the effect of traffic on resident
15
socialization. He discovered the importance of home territory (exchange space) in
people’s socialization, and was one among the firsts to experiment with the use of image
mapping for transportation and planning uses.35 Through his life he challenged traditional
views of highway design, focusing with his work on the social and political aspect of
urban circulation, in an attempt to replace the strictly technical and economical approach
highway design typically adopts.36 His studies and work were finally summarized in a
theory for “streets for living” in the books Livable Streets, published in 1981, a year
sequences by compressing significant events of highway travel was a phase of the project
The View from the Road that was never implemented. Then, in 1972 Apppleyard
with Kenneth Craik, also involved with research on environmental cognitions. This
with a tiny set of movable prism lenses simulating movements, such as walking, driving,
or flying. The result from this experiment was a realistic model film of a site in Marin
County that validated the simulator as a research tool and introduced simulation
35
Donald Appleyard, Livable Streets, (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1981).
36
Edoardo De Vasconcellos, “The Use of Streets: A Reassessment and Tribute to Donald Appleyard,”
Journal of Urban Design 1, no.9 (2004), 3-22.
37
Allan B. Jacob and Clare C. Marcus, In Memoriam: Donald Appleyard City and Regional Planning;
Landscape Architecture: Berkeley 1928- 1982, Professor of Urban Design, edited by David Krogh,
(Oakland: Academic Senate, University of California, 1987).
38
Peter Bosselmann, ”The Berkley Environmental Simulation Laboratory: A 12 Year Anniversary,”
Berkley Planning Journal 1, no.1 (1984): 150-160.
16
development and use of simulation techniques to more effectively present projects of
Architecture and Urban Design to the public. The planning and design professions have
gradually moved away from traditional methods of representation (drawing tables), and
Simulation employing models, videotapes and films has been employed as a medium for
participatory planning, since the years that followed the refurbishment of the Harvard
simulator. And since 1976 several projects have used model films for measuring public
responses to project of community based design.39 In 1979 the short film produced in
occasion of the modeling of the “San Francisco Conservation and Development Plan,
Phase I” using the updated 1935 model of the city of San Francisco, successfully
juxtaposed the views of the existing city with two alternative potential future scenarios.
The actual visualization of what the initiative could do to the San Francisco Skyline
allowed the audience to take sides and defeated the referendum. The San Francisco
Downtown Plan was also simulated in the following years, including a visualization of
the height, bulk and density of structures. A two part film entitled “Downtown San
Francisco: choices for the future” illustrating a next to final version of the downtown plan
and five general urban design goals, was completed in 1982 using the model of the
downtown plan.40
The View from the Road introduced the idea of cinematography to study urban
the study of environmental cognition from highways. This idea of simulation with the
39
Bosselmann, ”The Berkley Environmental Simulation Laboratory,” 150-160.
40
Ibid.
17
development of cinematographic techniques, has allowed overcoming the limitation
forms, changing the relationship between forms and space. In a broader sense the
development of techniques and paradigms from the cinematic approach from the view
from the road to model simulation, went along with the switch from modern cinematic
41
Nezar Alsayyad, Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from Reel to Real. New York & London:
Routledge, 2006, New York & London: Routledge (2006), 5-9.
18
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19
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20