Cities are not a final result, but act in phases, with the finish line never in sight. Even though most of the citizens of the city can comment on its ugliness, with dirt and chaos, Lynch goes on to emphasise still what an anchor it is, even with its seemingly negative aspects. I noticed these comments on the "Way To Work" exercise we participated in for class. A lot of the group, myself included, remarked on the hectic commute, everything seeming so frantic. When Lynch asks the reader if that idea speaks more to the actual surroundings or the person[s] reacting to the surroundings. What is being shaped by whom?
Legibility or clarity of the cityscape and how it relates to the readability of a coherent pattern becomes important to even the casual viewer or visitor. Realizing that Manhattan's skyline still belongs to New York even without the Twin Towers, because with any background of seeing the city, even in a photograph post 1971, you could focus on two beastly siblings at the edge by the water and knew instantly something was missing even if you just turned on a television after 10 years of having it off. I'm interested in how our ideas of skylines can create a relateable quality - is one skyline better than the rest? On a recent trip I took to Buffalo, New York, I found myself commenting when passing through Gary, Toledo, Cleveland and Erie..."Oh, I must be close to downtown because there's the skyline...that's the skyline? Wow, it's no Chicago..." Even not being from this city, it was easy to become a defender of its structure of what my perceptions were to its greatness.
On that trip to Buffalo, having never been there, I borrowed a friend's GPS system. The trip in Buffalo was filled with appointments and meetings, so I was grateful for having satellites take the guess-work out of things and have my back to navigate my destination and get me there as quickly as possible. I would have liked to spend more time, get lost and find my way back with the breadcrumbs of landmarks I could have created for myself. Although I wonder, how do we choose our landmarks? Is it based on the landmark relating to "it literally points or directs me this way" or "when I see ________ I know I am or feel like I am close to home?". This was brought up in the class discussion and I thought it interesting to read it in The Image of the City, but how can anyone seemingly get lost in a city? Guides everywhere in the form of people, maps and signs - especially useful when you think about natural guides being blocked out by a city's own exports [light that blocks the stars, pollution the halts the smell of bodies of water, etc.]. What cues do I use and could have implored to recognize the way in a strange town? Do I form emotional connections with these cues? If we make emotional connections with landmarks, both natural and man made, can we create a hometown out of any port in a storm?
I personally found the excerpts from Michel de Certeau's book on everyday life confusing and difficult to get through, although there was a section I thought easy to visualize when comparing to Lynch's ideas on forming a specific or changing identity to a place. Certeau begins to talk of places like the Red Square becoming less of an actual physical place, but how it represents an idea, becomes a metaphor or completely detaches itself from an original meaning. I began to think of multiple places around the world with the same name, but are drastically different. Names like Paris, Moscow and Rome suddenly seem less exciting when you find out they are in Texas, Idaho and New York and not their European counterparts. When forming what shapes my visual memory of my own hometown, it's easy to get tripped up on a what a lot of people think of when they hear Honolulu, "paradise". There is a beach, which is technically part of Waikiki Beach [the shore that hugs Honolulu's hotel district], but further to the east: San Souci. It's a proper name for a place, directly translated from French to mean "carefree" or "without worries". The 3 images below are as follows: the Sanssouci summer palace in Potsdam, Germany which belonged to Frederick the Great [circa 1750s]; the Sans-Souci Palace of Haiti [built circa 1813] and lastly San Souci beach in Honolulu [3,000,000 BCE, named circa 1920].
All 3 places have the same name, striving for the same original meaning. I only knew of one San Souci when growing up. How do we define areas? By their history, current purpose or even the name of such a place or neighborhood? Thinking of flying back into Honolulu, each time it's considerable that the entry way is [usually] airplane, which lands onto the island at an airport, it's node. Although, the entire island of Oahu and all the Hawaiian islands' nodes can also be its largest edge. By plane, you usually see the same thing every time, if flying in at night: the twinkling of the stars dims to the pitch black of the Pacific and then brightens again to the hotels of Waikiki. The crowning jewel and possibly most recognizable feature of Honolulu's skyline, is Diamond Head. A natural monument looming over human built structures.
After the class discussions and readings, it makes me think about how images of the city are formed. For every given reality for which nature and the constructed environment build the image, the perception of that reality changes per the image maker and viewer. If city planners are the manipulators of physical environments, then image makers can be the manipulators of all beyond the physical and construct different or parallel realities. Referring to Lynch's definitions of: landmark, edge, node, path and district, he opens up the conversation of who defines what? A person driving a car could consider Lake Shore Drive here in Chicago as a path, where someone who doesn't drive considers it an edge. I wonder on my own trips to and from home, work and other numbered visits to the same locale, how long does it take before I force myself to take a new route, just for pleasure, not out of necessity? To see or experience something different?
Below are 3 different maps, by different people at separate times of Chicago. How have physical and perceived edges, nodes, landmarks, paths and districts changed or remained static over the past 136 years from the first pictured map being created?
A slight tangent, but I greatly enjoyed Kevin Lynch's nod to Suzanne Langer's quick summary of architecture, "The total environment made visible." I had never heard that before, but it made me think of design and whatever its context in a new way. After rereading the preface to The Image of the City and considering it was written after years of research in 1960, for contemporary thought: I wonder what Kevin Lynch's take would be on the planning and constant rebuilding of an ancient city like Dubai?
