the image of a good city

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Fabio Carrera Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning Ph.D. Candidate

City Design & Development Group

77 Massachusetts Ave., Rm.10-485, Cambridge, MA 02139

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MIT 11.947Seminar

I maging the CityThe Pla ce of Medi a i n City Design a nd Development

P r o f . L a r r y Va l e & P r o f . Sam Ba ss-War ne r

The Image of a Good City.

Imaging and Good City Form

December 13, 1998FINAL



The Image of the Good City Fabio Carrera MIT-DUSP-CDD

December 13, 1998. 2

INDEX

1 PREMISE.............................................................................................................................................................................................4

2 THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF CITY FORM: STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITY........................................................................ 4

2.1 STRUCTURE ....................................................................................................................................................................................5

2.2 ACTIVITY........................................................................................................................................................................................5

2.3 PLANNERS AS MANAGERS AND CREATORS OF STRUCTURES AND ACTIVITIES....................................................................6

3 FIT, IDENTITY AND SENSE...........................................................................................................................................................6

3.1 FIT ....................................................................................................................................................................................................6

3.2 IDENTITY AND SENSE ...................................................................................................................................................................6

4 THE MEANING OF “MEANING”................................................................................................................................................... 7

4.1 MEANING AS “INTENTION” .........................................................................................................................................................8

4.2 MEANING AS “UNDERSTANDING”...............................................................................................................................................8

4.3 MEANING AS “SIGNIFICANCE” .....................................................................................................................................................9

5 “THE IMAGE” AND OTHER IMAGES .........................................................................................................................................9

5.1 “THE” IMAGE ................................................................................................................................................................................10

5.1.1 The Collective Image........................................................................................................................................................10

5.2 OTHER IMAGES.............................................................................................................................................................................11

5.3 IMAGE PRIMITIVES.......................................................................................................................................................................11

? View.......................................................................................................................................................................................11

? Viewpoint..............................................................................................................................................................................12

? Spectacle................................................................................................................................................................................12

? Visual Impression..................................................................................................................................................................12

? Mental Map ..........................................................................................................................................................................13

? Freeze-Frame (or Snapshot)..................................................................................................................................................13

? Scene......................................................................................................................................................................................135.4 DEPICTIONS..................................................................................................................................................................................13

? Picture....................................................................................................................................................................................13

? Advertisements......................................................................................................................................................................14

? Motion Picture ......................................................................................................................................................................14

? TV Program...........................................................................................................................................................................14

? Documentary.........................................................................................................................................................................14

? Literary Prose........................................................................................................................................................................15

? Magazine Report ...................................................................................................................................................................15

? Newspaper Article ................................................................................................................................................................15

? Travel Guide..........................................................................................................................................................................15

5.5 E NVISIONINGS................................................................................................................................................................................15

? Visualization..........................................................................................................................................................................16

? Virtual Reality.......................................................................................................................................................................16

? Vision.....................................................................................................................................................................................16

? Revision.................................................................................................................................................................................16

5.6 A NALYTICAL SUMMARY OF IMAGE TERMINOLOGY .............................................................................................................16

6 IMAGE-BUILDING AND IMAGING.............................................................................................................................................17

6.1 EXPERIENTIAL IMAGES...............................................................................................................................................................18

6.1.1 Habitation..........................................................................................................................................................................18

6.1.2 Visitation............................................................................................................................................................................19





6.1.3 Ephemera............................................................................................................................................................................20

6.2 MEDIATED IMAGES: IMAGING...................................................................................................................................................21

6.2.1 Place Promotion ...............................................................................................................................................................22

6.2.2 Boosterism, Boasterism and Basherism ........................................................................................................................23

6.2.3 Media Portrayals..............................................................................................................................................................24

6.2.4 Informative Images............................................................................................................................................................246.2.5 Imaging in Education ......................................................................................................................................................25

7 RATING “PLACE” .........................................................................................................................................................................25

7.1 MEASURING THE CHANGE OF “PLACE” OVER “TIME”..........................................................................................................26

8 DESIGNING GOOD CITY IDENTITIES: PLANNERS AND IMAGING...............................................................................27

9 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................................................................................28

APPENDICES .........................................................................................................................................................................................29





1 Premise

This paper takes its cue from a paper by Prof. J ulian Beinart and attempts to organize a

framework for the analysis of city imaging. In the chapters that follow, I wil l introduce sometheoretical principles that may aid in the organizations of the various contributions of theFaculty Colloquium I magin g th e Ci ty. The Pla ce of M edi a in Ci ty Desi gn and D evel opment ,held at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Fall of 1998, under the guidance of Prof. Lawrence Vale and Prof. Sam Bass-Warner.

After a long image-theoretical disquisition in which I try to make sense of all of thevarious types of images that were discussed in the colloquium, I draw some conclusions of special pertinence to planners and planning education and scholarship. Many insights weregained by this first pass through such challenging subject matter and many research issueswere raised that should keep planning scholars busy for quite a while.

2 The Nuts and Bolts of City Form: Structure and Activity

The Beinart paper, together with the companion paper by Sennett, and many other writingshave confirmed to me the usefulness of starting from the very basic premise that a City isnothing more than structure and activity.

At the cost of becoming another “master of the obvious”, I think this simple premiserepresents a useful starting point for the image-theoretical framework that I feel is necessaryto make sense of all of the contributions to the Im aging the City seminar. This combinednature of cities may be tautologically obvious to everyone, hence superfluous, but it helps mein identifying the two major areas of potential intervention both for urban planners and forimaging professionals. A city can be truly changed both by modifications to its structuresand/or to its activities. We can modify the “container” and/or the “contents” of the city. Theseare the only changes possible in the real world of cities. A city may decline physically, but alsodemographically/socio-economically, or both.

Frenchman defined “place” as “structure plus action”, as opposed to “space”, which is just“structure”. Christian Norberg-Schulz says that “place is space with a distinct character”1.Lynch curiously focused on a specific type of “activity” – travel – in The Image of the Ci ty , andhe concentrated on legible, structural features, useful for orientation when navigating throughurban environments. In Vi ew from the Road , Lynch et al. Had a very similar aim, albeit fromthe viewpoint of a motorist. Later, Lynch made “activity” a fundamental leit-motif of practically all of his “performance dimensions” in Good Ci ty Form , which are mostly related to

human existence and behavior within cities2.Lynch did not think that this basic issue of structure and activity was banal. In chapter 2 of

Good Ci ty Form he states quite clearly that:

1 Norberg-Schulz, Geniu s Loci , p. 5.2 Lynch’s performance dimension of “vitality”, which at first sight may appear synonymous with “activity”, turns out to be

descriptive of life-sustaining parameters such assustena nce, safety and consonance, which are attr ibutes related exclusively to

health and physiological or psychological well-being.





Th e Fun dam ental problem i s to decid e wh at th e form of a human

sett l ement consists of: sol el y the in er t physical th i ngs? Or t he l iv i ng

organ i sms too? T he acti ons people engage i n? th e social str uctu r e? T he

econom i c system? The ecol ogical system? The cont r ol of th e space an d i ts

mean i ng? The wa y it pr esent s i tsel f to th e senses? I ts da i l y and seasona l r it hm s? I ts secular chan ges? L ik e any im port ant phenomenon, th e city

extends out i nt o ever y other ph enomenon, an d t he choi ce of wh er e to ma ke the

cut i s not an easy one 3.

Lynch makes the cut more or less along the lines of “structures and activities” when hesays that “th e chosen groun d i s th e spati otempor al d istr i buti on of hum an actions and the

physical t hi ngs wh i ch a r e th e context of th ose actions […]”4.

2.1 Structure

My definition of structure is very broad, since it includes all permanent or long-lastingphysical objects, both man-made and natural. Aldo Rossi made a big deal of the apparentlyobvious “hypoth esi s of t he ci ty as a m an-mad e object, as a wor k of ar chi tectu r e and engi neer i ng

th at gr ows over t ime”. He said “th i s i s one of the most substant i al hypotheses fr om wh i ch to

work” 5. Curiously though, Lynch’s use of the term st ructure in Th e Image of th e Cit y isdifferent from my intended meaning. Norberg-Schulz uses structure in the same sense asLynch does. They both really refer to “organization” when they talk about “structure” whereasI refer to physical objects and to their organization. My definition encompasses Lynch’s andNorberg-Schulz’s in that I call structure both “th e form al pr oper ti es of a system of

relat ionships” 6 and the physical objects that partake in such organizing relationships.Landscape and streetscape are structural to me and they can therefore be changed by

structural interventions (like new plantings or new construction). Natural features of thelocale, like water edges, river courses, hills, valleys, ponds, lakes and other characteristics of

the environmental terrain are structures within which human activity takes place, as arebuildings, streets, sidewalks, squares, highways, intersections, churches, civic buildings andpublic art. We can modify these features as planners and urban designers and, in fact, we do.We also can and should provide adequate maintenance for our physical structures both in thebuilt and natural environment.

2.2 Activity

My definition of activity is equally broad, in that it includes all human-related social andeconomic behavior, as well as mere presence and/or existence of human beings within theurban environment. Sennett’s concept of habitat ion corresponds to my meaning of activity.Government policies, the economy, social justice and many other factors affect our activities

within a city. Planners can and do affect activities, by promulgating regulations and codes, byawarding licenses and by promoting community involvement in decisions affecting the urban

3 Lynch, Good Ci ty For m , p. 48.4 Idem. 5 Aldo Rossi, Th e Ar chi tectur e of the Ci ty , p. 34.6 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Geni us L oci , p. 166. Norberg-Schulz calls the physical objects that compose the structure of a city

simply “things”, based on Heidegger’s terminology.





fabric and hence the life of the citizens. Certain activities that are generally favored withinthe city (like recreation) are also frowned upon in some specific location (like recreationalrollerblading in City Hall plaza in Boston). Business activity can be promoted with incentivesor fostered by a booming consumer market, but it can also be discouraged by disincentives andrestricted by a “poor economic climate”.

2.3 Planners as managers and creators of structures and activities

Structure and activity – similarly to what Norberg-Schulz indicates in Geni us L oci – areboth to be considered ‘concrete’ characteristics that are experienceable in the real world.Physical things and human activities are amenable to modification over time, due to thenormal course of events or, more importantly, as a consequence of the intervention, policiesand programs designed by planners and other professionals. The only “real” changes to cityform will be changes to either its structure or its activities or both.

3 Fit, Identity and Sense

To me, the combination of structure and activity is what gives a city its unique identity. This combination is precisely what Lynch calls F i t in Good Ci ty Form .

3.1 Fit

Fit is “th e ma tch between acti on and form ” 7. At any one time, only one single identity isbeing expressed in a city by its current structural endowment, by its present variety of activities and by the apparent fit between form and action. A good fit indicates that the city’sactivities are taking place in congruous “containers”. When only small adjustments to eitheractions or to structures are necessary to improve the “ergonomics” of a place, the fit isconsidered good. When major changes are necessary to improve the comfort and satisfactionof a city’s inhabitants, the fit is not so good.

Unfortunately, this unique sensible (i.e. capable to be sensed) combination that is presentat any moment in any city keeps changing – ever so slightly – every minute and it is so widelydispersed that nobody ever perceives the same exact mixture of the permanent backdrop andof the ephemeral action taking place in it. We simply cannot take it all in, neither spatiallynor temporally, so despite the fact that only one identity is expressed by a city, manyinterpretations of this identity are internalized by those who are exposed to such a city, eitherdirectly or indirectly.

Fit seems to be a major performance indicator that planners and designer should paycareful attention to, both in terms of major interventions and in terms of programmed upkeep.

3.2 Identity and Sense

Lynch considers identity as a fundamental component of an environmental image8, andalso considers it “th e sim pl est form of sense” 9. However, his definition of identity is again

7 Lynch, Good Ci t y Form, p. 151.8 Lynch, Th e Im age of the Cit y , p. 8.9 Lynch, Good Ci t y Form , p. 131. The same concept appears in the posthumousCit y Sense and Cit y Design , p. 295.





different from mine. His ident ity is a simpler concept, purely physical, which can betranslated into “distinguishabil ity” or “recognizability”, which are clearly operationaldefinitions, related to his interests in legibility and orientation. To Lynch, Identity is whatmakes a place more easily “identifiable”. I take a broader view of identity, which is moreattuned to a concept of “unique character” as described by Norberg-Schulz10, although he too

restricts his definition to purely physical manifestations.I go beyond the physical permanence to suggest that identity is produced by a combination

of concrete objects (and their relations) and dynamic human activity. J ust like “al l p l aces have character” 11 , all places have an identity. I can think of several places that are characterizedmore by what “happens” there, by the vitality of city life, than by what the buildings and placeslook l ike. New York city may be partially in this category, but even more so is Hollywood,which has almost no physical image associated to it in my mind. Venice may be at the oppositeend of the spectrum, since it is becoming more and more of a Disney stage-set where thephysical aspects of the city overwhelmingly define the place, whereas human occupations arecompletely secondary and are catering more and more to the touristic monoculture.

We only perceive snippets of identity, since the whole identity of a city is beyond the

grasp of our limited senses. We build up a “composite” interpretation of a city’s complexidentity by repeated exposure to sensate information about a city. This is how we create aninternal, mental “image of the city” just a Lynch defines it: “th e obser ver – w i th gr eat

adap tabi li ty and i n t he l i ght of hi s own pu r poses – sel ects, organi zes, and endows wi th meani ng

what he sees” 12.

4 The meaning of “Meaning”

Meaning, then, is what we each attach to our perception of a place’s identity, when weinternalize what we see (but also hear, smell and, to a lesser extent, taste and touch), which

may consist of human activity or physical elements of the built form, or both. Meaning guidesour mental selection and archival processes. Meaningless sensate experiences will bediscarded. More meaningful experiences will be retained and will be more easily retrievablein the future depending on the “strength” of their meaning. Our internal definition of meaning will itself be subject to change on the basis of the ad-hoc, cumulative revisions of ourselection and storage criteria, that are constantly being used to filter out the noise from thetruly useful and important information that our senses continuously and indefatigably collectwhile we are alive and awake in the world.

Meaning is more or less sidestepped by Lynch in Th e Image of th e Cit y , although he doessay that an image of a place is “soaked in memories and meanings”13 and that “i t appears possi bl e to separ ate meani ng fr om form” 14. He does discuss meaning in A Pr ocess of Comm un i ty

Vi sual Sur vey 15 and one may equate his definition of Sense in Good Ci ty Form to

meaningfulness. A city “makes sense” to us if we can “read” it and attach values to its image.

10 Norberg-Schulz, Geniu s L oci , pp. 13-14.11 Ib id. , p.14.12 Lynch, Th e Im age of the Cit y , p. 6.13 Ib id. , p. 1.14 Ib id. , p.9.15 Unpublished paper, contained in the collectionCi ty Sense and Cit y Design , p. 296.





Lynch understood that “meaning” is a broad concept that embraces several cognitive processeswhen he said that “people wi l l ‘r ead’ a city l and scape; they ar e looki ng for pr act i cal in form at i on;

th ey ar e cur i ous; th ey ar e moved by w ha t t hey see ”16.Norberg-Schulz focused almost exclusively on “thepsychic implications of architecture

rather than its practical side” although he certainly admits “that there exists an

interrelationship between the two aspects”17. Both in Geni us L oci and in many other of hiswritings (M eani ng in Wester n Ar chi tectur e , The Concept of Dwell i ng, Archi tectu r e: Meani ng

and Place ), Norberg-Schulz addresses specifically the issue of meaning and other relatedpsychic dimensions, although his definition of meaning is fuzzy at best. According to Norberg-Schulz, there are multiple meanings “inherent in the world” and they have deep roots. “In

genera l th ey ar e cover ed by [his] four categori es of “thi ng”, “ord er ”, “char acter ” and “li ght ” .18

Beinart, in his paper, reports the descriptions of meaning in architecture offered byWilliam Porter embodi ed m eani ng, desi gnati ve meani ng and shar ed m eani ng . To me, these areuseful categories with which to understand the meaning-production process, but do notaddress the more fundamental essence of meaning. Porter is looking at the “means” of meaning19, whereas I look at the “meaning” of meaning.

4.1 Meaning as “intention”

When we say: “I didn’t mean to offend you” or “he/she means well, but …”, we arespeaking of “intent”. This use of “meaning” may not seem to apply very well to our perceptionof cities, but it probably plays an important role in the composition of what Beinart (or Porter)called “embodied meaning”, the meaning that the builders of the city have imbued the stoneswith.

This seems to be the “spirit” that Norberg-Schulz speaks of when he says “th e meani ngs

wh i ch a r e gathered by a pl ace consti tu te i ts geni us l oci ”20. The original “intent” of shapers of urban space resides in the structures of the city and gives them “character”, moreover thestructures also reflect some pre-existing meanings that are exuded by the natural setting in

which building takes place. “Thr ough bui ld i ng m an gi ves meani ngs concrete pr esence, and he gather s bui l di ngs to visual ize and symboli ze hi s form of l if e as a totali ty”.

Ruskin was adamant in his view that no architecture will ever succeed and please oursenses unless it embodies the labor and intention of humble and skilled artisans. He said thatfirst of all, “we shoul d i n everyt hi ng d o our best; and , second l y, that we shoul d consid er i ncr ease of appar ent l abour as an in cr ease of beaut y in t he bui l di ng” .21

4.2 Meaning as “understanding”

Only when we have a grasp of the meaning of a word or an image, can we really say weunderstand that word or that image. Without understanding the meaning of a concept, wecannot really say we understand the concept. Thus meaning seems to be a cond i t i o si ne qua

non for the understanding of the city. Lynch says that “the vi sual envi r onm ent should be

16 Idem.

17 Norberg-Schulz, Geniu s L oci , p. 5.18 I b id ., p. 17019 I refer to the “means” of endowing, conveying, transferr ing and distributing meaning.20 Norberg-Schulz, Geniu s L oci , p. 170.21 Ruskin, Th e Seven L am ps of Ar chitectur e , pp. 20-21.





meani ngfu l ; that i s, its visibl e chara cter shoul d r el ate to oth er aspects of l i fe […]”22 The moreknowledge one has about a city, in all its facets, the more meaningful the city becomes.Lynch’s legibi l i ty andorientation are vehicles through which we can begin to understand a city,by reading it and knowing it better. Thus one could say that th e Image of the Ci ty is really allabout a specific route to one type of meaning, which is quite a departure from the usual

contention that L ynch ignored meaning in his seminal book. One of the ways in which a cityacquires meaning is when we begin to understand the lay of the land and we are able tonavigate it. We always “are looking for practical information” that will help us “make sense”of the place.

4.3 Meaning as “significance”

Another use of “meaning” is found in common phrases like “this means a lot to me”,where the verb is synonymous with “signifies”. This, to me, is the most value-laden of thethree meanings of meaning. The significance of any encounter, with a city’s physicalconstructs or with a city’s inhabitants, depends not only on the innate significance of thosestructures and activities, but, to a large degree, also to our own internal state at the momentof the encounter. When we are happiest or saddest, the same street scene may acquire vastlydifferent meaning to us. We evaluate the situation and assign a “weight” to our internalmemory of it, based on the intrinsic qualities of the experienced objects and events, as well ason our internal “weighing mechanism” at that moment.

The experience of architectural beauty or of urban pleasantness certainly makes a placemore significant or more important in our mind. We are pleasure-seeking creatures and I amsure we attach more meaning to what we like, although we should probably talk about positivemeaning in this case. I t is entirely possible, in fact, that we may attach strong significance totruly distasteful spatial experiences, which would represent negative meaning. Regardless of the sign, a composite meaning will probably have a “strength” which is the sum of all thestrengths of its constituent parts. The strength of the Image of a city depends on the strength

of its overall meaning.A good image of a city is made up of a lot of positive meanings found in both physical

objects and in human activities. A bad image is mostly negative. I t is the balance of meaningthat counts in the final Image since every city will probably manifest both positive andnegative meanings.

5 “The Image” and other images

I think it is important to make a clear differentiation between the two main meanings thatthe word “image” can acquire with respect to City Design and Development.

On the one hand, there is the singular: the Image (capitalized to distinguish it). Thisrefers to an internalized, digested, mental distillation of the “essence” of a city “soaked inmeaning”. Each individual will construct his or her internal Image of a City.

On the other hand, there are the innumerable, distinct optical “images” of a city that weare constantly exposed to, some of which we somehow retain in our memory. Optical images

22 Norberg-Schulz, Geni us Loci, p. 5.




December 13, 1998. 10

depict different viewpoints of the complex metropolis, as captured in photos, movies, TVprograms, ads, print media, online media, etc.

5.1 “The” Image

The quintessential mental Image (capitalized) is made up of a layering of all sensateinputs, above and beyond just the visual inputs that belong to the second class of images

(lower-case, generic), discussed below. Visual impressions (also discussed below) are purelyvisual mental images, whereas The Image is metaphysical and not simply visual, but muchmore complex and multi-sensorial.

The nature of “The Image” of a City is essentially abstract although it is based on veryconcrete foundations. We are all exposed to continuous environmental experiences, eitherdirectly or through some indirect medium. Somehow, we internalize a “synthesis” of thisbombardment of sensate inputs and organize our own internal mental Image of a City in theprocess. This synthetic Image is not purely based on visual fragments, but it encapsulates allof our other knowledge and opinions about the place.

This mental Image is constantly revised as new information comes in. “The im age so

devel oped now l im i ts and emphasi zes wha t i s seen, w hi l e th e image i tsel f i s bei ng t ested agai nst

th e fi l ter ed per ceptu al i npu t i n a constan t i nt er actin g process. Thu s th e image of a given r eal i ty

may var y si gni f i can tl y betw een obser ver s.” 23 And, I would add, it may vary significantly withinthe same observer over time.

In the formation of a cumulative Image, “nearl y ever y sense i s in oper ati on, and th e image

i s the composi te of them al l .” 24, but the Seminar concentrated almost exclusively on the visualcomponent of the composite mental Image, with only some audio accompaniment in the movieclips presented by J enkins (besides the oral presentations made by the authors). An Image ismade up of stored-up bits of experience, primarily visual and audio, which have an attachedsignificance or weight. When we recall the Image of a city, we unroll our mentalconcatenation of impressions and we are able to synthesize our overall feeling for that city

into very succinct evaluations such as “lovely city”, “awful place” and the like. At the visuallevel of our internal Image, I suspect that everyone produces “hybrid” mental images that areperhaps composites or blends of “real” images, metaphysical encapsulations of reality,compressed into a synthetic, virtual mental picture (see below).

5.1.1 The Collective Image

Not only will different mental filtering mechanisms create different Images in differentpeople that happen to be exposed to the same locality at the same time, but most people willbe exposed to different city experiences at different times and from different spatialviewpoints. Given such disparate Image-construction paths, it is remarkable that wenonetheless seem to be able to identify “public Images” that somehow emerge as common

denominators in the individual I mages that different people have of the same city.“I t i s these group images, exhi bi t i ng consensus among signi f i cant number s, that i nt er est

ci ty pl ann er s wh o aspir e to model an envi r onment th at w i l l be used by many people.” 25 Butperhaps such uniformity of Images is not so surprising when we consider that the city’s

23 Idem. 24 Ib id. , p. 2.25 Ib id. , p. 7.




December 13, 1998. 11

buildings, roads, natural features and general patterns of activities are rather permanent andare experienced by all who inhabit the city or visit it in person. Thus a common Image is muchmore likely if the place has a “special identity” whereby structure, activity and fit stand outand assume special relevance. Porter’s “shared meaning” is associated with the CollectiveImage of a place.

5.2 Other images

In my framework, the generic term image (with a small “i”), refers both to opticalsensations of “physical likeness” as well as to individually stored, visual mental impressions of physical objects and activities. Both immediate, real-time, visual perception, and the laterrecall of what’s retained of these environmental perceptions are in reality “mental” processes,as physiology teaches us26.

These basic fundamental images come in many varieties, which I have roughly organizedin an informal taxonomy, to make my later comments a little clearer:

?? Image Primitives, which include all basic forms of visual perception, storage and

subsequent recall of real images?? Depictions, which are mediated descriptions or representations of reality?? Envisionings, which are fabricated similes of reality

The following is a first cut at a glossary of the numerous types of images that make up thevisual experience of us all. These are not meant to be final, cast-in-stone classifications, butrather “working definitions” useful as a tool for organizing many of the Seminar’scontributions along some cognitive dimensions that might facilitate their analysis. In thedefinitions that follow, I wil l try to be general, but I wil l also refer to Urban Design andPlanning concepts where appropriate.

In common parlance, many of the terms introduced below are used interchangeably, but

here I attempt to assign a specific meaning to each to make the overarching framework asclear as possible.

5.3 Image Primitives

In this general category I have included terms that denote what – to me – are fundamentalimage-related linguistic constructs that are used to label the inputs to our optical andcognitive visual processes. Although most of these terms are often used in their metaphoricalsense, in the paragraphs that follows, all definitions are restricted to the literal, visualmeaning of the words, unless otherwise noted.

?? View

I define a “view” as the actual, real-time, continuous optical sensation that one can take infrom any vantage point in the physical world. The view of the world that all seeing people areexposed to each and every day is composed of a dynamic series of images collectedautomatically by our eyes as they rove the territory around us. Even when we are fixing an

26 See for example, Solso (1996), p. 4: “seein g i s accompl ished t hr ough both the visual st im ulat ion of eye and the interpretat ion

of sensory signal s by the brain ”.




December 13, 1998. 12

object, our eyes’ saccadic movements still produce a continuous stream of single frames of verynarrow detail.

?? Viewpoint

The specific visual angle from which one views reality. This relates primarily to theobserver’s location with respect to the physical object being viewed. Hayden and MacLeanshowed us how interesting and potentially useful aerial views can be in helping us grasp thephysical implications of urban sprawl. Martin and Warner, on the other hand, introduced anautomobile-based way of looking at typical urban travel paths, which may yield furtherinsights to planners and designers.

?? Spectacle

A special subset of views, which are particularly vivid. A spectacle may be an awesomearchitectural space, like a great square, or it may be an enchanting natural vista, like theGrand Canyon, of it may refer to ephemera, such as festivals or other celebratory group

activities, where the spectacle is more in the action and less in the scenography. MarkSchuster eloquently reminded us of the power of ephemeral events in the shaping of an urbanimage and viceversa.

?? Visual Impression

The distilled mental image of a physical encounter with a specific physical object or event. This is a more fundamental and basic mental image than the one discussed above in referenceto The Image. Our brain fortunately retains only a fraction of the countless tri llions of imagesthat are impressed upon our retinas every day. What we are left with are “mental snapshots”of the real world that are somehow retained, more or less faithfully, in our long term memory.People with photographic memory may have more faithful internal images of external reality.

Familiarity will produce more detailed and frequent visual impressions about the placeswe habitually traverse. Movie-like sequences of visual impressions may be retained in ourlong-term memory, as well as single snapshots. Sound-bites and conversations are alsoretained as are other sensory inputs like smell, touch and taste. All of our senses pitch in andhelp construct the mental record of place experiences, but here we are concerned exclusivelywith the mental retention of visual inputs. The smallest visual unit that we retain in our longterm storage is what I call a visual impression. Each visual impression may have meaningattached to it, as well as a mental narrative that complements the meaning27.

The faithfulness of our internalized visual impressions to the reality which they portend toencapsulate seems to fluctuate from the “vivid” photographic memory to the “fuzzy” mentalfabrication of verisimilar, but fundamentally un-real – and to a large extent symbolic – mental“artist’s renderings” of our visual experience. There seems to be a hierarchy of levels of

abstraction at play in the production of fuzzy symbolic mental collages from vivid and accuratemental snapshots of reality.

27 This issue of a “mental narrative” that accompanies stored visual impressions is worthy of further attention, despite its cursory

treatment herein.




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?? Mental Map

A mental layout of a place, used to navigate the urban space in everyday life. This is whatLynch was grappling with in Th e Image of th e Cit y . I t may be a plan-view image or more likelya concatenation of eye-level clues (for a pedestrian), or a sequence of indicators used by a

motorist, like in Vi ew fr om t he Road and in the seminar contribution by Martin and Bass-Warner. The nature of a mental map is prevalently structural, based more on notable featuresof the physical environment and less on activities experienced along the way. Inasmuch asMental Maps help us understand a city, they can be said to be contributors to meaning.

?? Freeze -Frame (or Snapshot)

A view-bite that isolates and circumscribes a specific view and captures and reproduces itfor viewing post facto (not in real time). Frames are the physical equivalent of mental visualimpressions in that they “freeze” specific views out of a multitude of potential candidates.Freeze-frames are “external” impressions, sharable with other people, whereas visualimpressions are not.

Al l photographic snapshots are frozen frames, according to this definition, since they areselective, isolated images of reality. By their very nature, snapshots are subjected to aselection process, be it internal to our brain (visual impressions) or carried out by an externalagent, like a photographer. Due to this subjective selectivity, snapshots are highly vulnerableto mystification. Briavel Holcomb, showed us just how selective snapshots can be inrepresenting an a-contextual reality, which is so narrowly focused as to become nearlyfraudulent. Yet snapshots, just like visual impressions, always (try to) represent the truephysical reality, albeit selected according to some overt or covert guiding principle.

?? Scene

A scene, as I define it here, is a frame that contains activity. The key here is the action,

which represents the “figure” that sets itself apart against the “ground” of the physicallandscape.

5.4 Depictions

The second broad category of images includes all of the terms that refer to visualdepictions or reproductions of real experiences in space and time.

?? Picture

A form of freeze-frame, but more fictionalized, hence less real. Pictures can representactive scenes or inert structures. The main feature of pictures is their departure from therealistic nature of snapshots and frames. Pictures are fictionalized visual snippets of reality.

Many place-promoting ads, as Holcomb showed us, when they don’t use selectively croppedsnapshots, often use pictures that fictionalize reality in order to attract the attention of thetarget audience. Painters often produce pictures that go beyond a photographically faithfulreproduction of reality.




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?? Literary Prose

A fictional sequence of scenes, expressed in textual narrative. As Beinart pointed out inhis contribution to the seminar, literary works with no accompanying pictures were theprimary mode of communication of urban characteristics in Medieval times. Often, city stories

are more vividly portrayed with literary narration than by visual means. The bookshelves of any library contain plenty of examples of urban literature that is capable of stirring up strongmental pictures with the sole power of the written text.

?? Magazine Report

A mostly non-fictional sequence of scenes, expressed in narrative and pictures. Magazinesare powerful conveyors of images in pre-digested form, composed of both textual narrative andvisual snapshots. Generally speaking, nationally circulated weekly magazines report non-fictional stories about cities, although strong opinions often permeate the articles and affectthe narrative as well as the visual choices of the authors and editors.

The famous For tune article that trumpeted the success of Cleveland’s Development Model

is but one of the many examples of the power of such popular vehicles of information.

?? Newspaper Article

A non-fictional sequence of scenes, expressed in narrative. Similar to Magazine Reports,but more nuts and bolts and with no fancy visuals, except an occasional black and whitepicture. Recently, the proliferation of color inserts (appropriately called “magazines” or“journals”) sold with newspapers, particularly with the Sunday editions, have allowed moreexpressive abilities to newspapers, thus narrowing the gap with weekly magazines. The maindifference between newspapers and magazines, insofar as the creation of Image, is the factthat most newspapers, except for the New York Times, have a circulation that is limited to alocal metropolitan area. Despite their lack of national readership, newspapers remain

perhaps the most important and powerful shapers of urban sentiments since they reach localaudiences – where most place-decisions are made – on a daily basis.

?? Travel Guide

A non-fictional book containing organized information intended for visitors of a place.Beinart led us along the Medieval pilgrimage routes that were advertised with guide books,praise books, as well as through oral communications among travelers. To some extent, travelguides mediate the experience of a visitor by selecting “places of interest” or “must see”architectural features that may affect the Image a visitor will come away with after visiting aplace.

5.5 Envisionings The third category of images includes all mental images produced by the imagination and

based only partially – or not at all – on real images. I coined this term because I foundalternatives such as “fabrications” and “concoctions” unsatisfactory due to the negativeconnotations they carry with them. Envisionings on the other hand is a value-neutral termthat allows the possibility that such flights of fancy may in fact constitute positivecontributions to the planning profession, as they often do.




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?? Visualization

A technical aid used to represent how a place looks or to imagine how a place could look.Visualizations may consist of drawings reproducing fragments of the current world, but moreoften they foretell the way the world may look in the future, based on programmatic

principles. Planners constantly use visualizations in their professional roles as creators of alternative futures. Visualizations are exclusively concerned with changes to the physicalstructure of the environment.

?? Virtual Reality

An interactively experienceable recreation of a place that never existed and may neverexist. I t differs from visualization in that it is dynamic and interactive and not directlyconcerned with changes to the real world. I ts purpose is less obviously practical than that of visualizations. Virtual worlds encapsulate both structure and activity, plus they contain us asactors, thus they are the closest surrogates of reality in this list. Movies are similar, but weare not invited to be interactive participants in them… However, as Beamish eloquently

showed us, despite the great computer advances of the last decade, the Images projected byvirtual worlds, and their meanings, while intr iguing, seem to remain elusively disconnectedfrom the more practical concerns of the planner or urban designer at this time.

?? Vision

A forward-looking abstraction embodying dreams about a place. Visions are made up bothof visualizations as well as of an accompanying narrative. The role of the narrative is that of giving body to the changes in activity that a vision portends. Thus, visions foretell changesboth in structure and in activity, unlike visualizations that are restricted, in my definition, just to the material world of structures. So it is common to find sentences such as “the newconvention center will rejuvenate the economy of our downtown” in the narrative that

accompanies visions. Visionary illustrations in such plans as theCl evel and 2000 often depict ahappy, racially uniform (Caucasian), population engaged in fun “activities” that are part andparcel with the proposed construction of new structures, in a unified “vision” of progress andprosperity.

?? Revision

A Revision is a backward-looking abstraction embodying modern interpretations about aplace as it once was (or might have been). I decided to use this term to contrast it with“vision” because of its retrograde, “revisionistic” connotations. Historical or heritage re-visitations, as discussed by Lowenthal and Frenchman, may result in reconstructions,reenactments, or interpretive programs that re-envision the past in a more or less accurate

fashion, based on more or less solid historical research.

5.6 Analytical summary of image terminology

Table 1 summarizes the contents of the paragraphs so far. I t shows all of the varioustypes of images discussed and qualifies them according to the dimensions defined as:externa l / in terna l referring to the locus of the image, whether it is stored in the mind or out inphysical reality; temporal i ty refers to whether the image depicts something that exists at thepresent moment (sometimes frozen for future consumption, indicated as “Present -> Future”),




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or that existed in the Past or will/may exist in the Future; dynamics distinguishes betweensingle still images or moving sequences of images; st ru ctur e/ act iv i ty indicates whether thisimage captures physical objects, human activity or both and to what degree (> Structuremeans both structure and activity are captured, but with a prevalence of Structure);Fiction/ Non-Fict ion reveals whether the image is to be consider a faithful reproduction of

reali ty or if it is a fictionalized portrayal of the real world.

External

/Internal

Temporality Dynamics Structure

Activity

Fiction

Non-

View External Present Moving Both Non

Spectacle External Present Moving > Activity Non

Scene External Present Moving > Activity Non

Vi sual Impr ession Internal Present->Future Both Both Both?

Fr ame/ Snapshot External Present->Future Still > Structure Non

M enta l M ap Internal Present Both Structure Non

Movie External Past/Present/Future Moving > Activity Fiction

TV Show External Past/Present/Future Moving >> Activity Fiction

Documentary External Present Moving Both Non

Visual izat ion External Past/Present/Future Both Structure Both

Vir tua l Real i t y External Future? Moving Both

(interactive)

Fiction

Vision External Future Sti ll Both Fiction

Revision External Past Sti ll Both Both

Table 1. A summary of some key characteristics of city images.

This table should be a useful starting point to see where a planner may be able to havean impact. For instance, if we take the typical role of a planner as a professional who deals

only with “real” stuff, in the present or for the future, and is primarily interested in thetransformation of the built environment, then the types of images he/she will probably have todeal with are Frames, Mental Maps, Documentaries and Visualizations. I f he/she is not sokeen on using moving images, he/she may drop the use of documentaries.

To become really useful, though, this table will need to be expanded and refined toinclude also the concepts that will be introduced in the following sections of this paper.

6 Image-Building and Imaging

I t may have become fairly clear from the above discussions that the construction of aninternal Image of a city and the convergence of individual mental Images toward a common“public Image” of a place are complex processes affected by a number of factors. The two mainmodes of image-building that emerge from the above discussion are:

?? Un-mediated, experiential exposure to real place?? Mediated exposure to surrogates of place




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I agree with Norberg-Schulz, and I am personally convinced that, the true essence of the“spirit” of a place can only be acquired through repeated and intimate exposure to the realplace in question. This process will lead to a more “true” Image since the only mediationwould come from our own internal biases and states of mind. As planners, we can affect thispath to the true Image by making the structures and activities of a city more “meaningful”,

that is more legible, more memorable and more significant. I f we are able to embed the“spirit” of the place in the physical structures, this embodied meaning should somehow beperceived by future citizens as well, thus giving the place a “strong identity”. The activitiesthat we are capable of promoting or discouraging with our policies, incentives and regulationsand the fit between form and actions will also contribute to such a “strong identity” that willgather meaning around it.

But whereas many of us have accumulated a rough I mage of many cities we have nevervisited, based exclusively on “depictions” (“reproductions” or “characterizations”) of thoseplaces, it is almost impossible for us to have a purely experiential I mage of a city, in this age of information overload. Some exposure to mediated imaging is probably inevitable nowadaysand this may affect even the purer and more direct experiential path toward the grasping of a

city’s essential character, spirit, identity and meaning.

6.1 Experiential Images

As Beinart put it: “A city is its own best advertisement”. Experiencing a city withoutinterposed filters will reveal to us its true nature in due time. A city’s identity will eventuallyemerge through the crusts of superimposed images. While no two people will have the sameexact experiences in a complex place, the meaning of a city’s structural make-up and of its webof human actions will produce some sort of a “common Image” of the place that will be sharedby a majority of long term residents. To put it in J enkins’ terms, a gemeinschaft will emerge. This “public Image” will carry negative or positive meaning and it will be subject to revision asthe city’s structures and activities change, making the fit between the two more or less

broadly acceptable.Familiarity will make the gaps between “individual city Images” less and less pronounced,

as each of us files away more and more meaningful information about the visual cityscapes weencounter in our habitation.

Visitors will not have the benefit of the long exposure that local citizens have, but they willstill have an opportunity to experience a city’s real identity first hand.

Both the lives of citizens and the visits of tourists will be enhanced by ephemeralexpressions of community values, such as festivals, celebrations and other such cyclical andnon-cyclical events.

In all of these experiential Image-building situations the planner can play a very importantand perhaps primary role, with image-savvy professionals relegated to a secondary and less

influential role. I t is at this level that a city’s true essence is revealed in spite of any attemptto alter the meanings through various media.

6.1.1 Habitation

As explained by Sennett, habitat ion is a fundamental image-building activity. Tosummarize my take on Sennett’s contribution to the Seminar, I would argue that all activitythat is not “rooted” in the locale, either because it does not cater directly to local citizens, orbecause it does not create local wealth and well-being that is reinvested in the city’s structure




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and services, will do nothing to improve the city’s identity and it will not therefore create orsustain an “embodied” meaning to its citizens.

The image and meaning perceived by outsiders may not be affected directly by this, dueto the interference of professional public relations and image-building experts.

Habitation is indeed central to good city form, but more so is the continued habitation

of the city on the part of those who actually carry out the urban and architectural design andthe building of the city structures. In other words, it would be great if planners and architectswere to dwell28 in the places for which they designed urban spaces. Citizens groups, likeNos

Quedamos in Birch’s account the development of the Bronx, have an important role to play inplanning the future of structures and activities in their neighborhoods because they are theones who hold the strongest Images of the place as a consequence of their habitation of theplace.

The Books of Prai se introduced by Beinart are attempts, on the part of rootedinhabitants, to convey the meaning of places to outsiders. He says that “wh at di st i ngui shes the exper i ence of a ci ty’s own i nh abi tan ts fr om t hose of out sid er s i s th e access th at ci ti zens have to

‘embodied’ m ean ing”. Such a meaning, he argues, needs to be made known to citizens through

the work of planners and designers, who “ar e th e tr ue cr aft smen of th e city’s form”.Martin and Bass-Warner, on the other hand, seem to find very little differentiation in

the visual landscape viewed by motorists moving around different Minneapolis/St.Pauldistricts. Here habitation, as experienced from the automobile, seems to take place in an“identityless” landscape of unremarkable visual stimuli. The public Images of thecommunities of Seward, Roseville and Eden Prairie would seem to thus be more or lesshomogeneous from the point of view of the car-driving citizens. This “downward equalization”of the Image of suburban and urban America may not be limited to the auto-scape, and itwould seem important for planners to explore other dimensions of the overall compositeImage of each neighborhood.

6.1.2 Visitation

Another form of experiential image-building is that of visitation. I t differs fromhabitation in its ephemeral nature and hence produces shallower I mages. Structure andactivity will engender visual impressions of varying intensity in the mind of the tourist. Thefilter in their mind will be probably quite different from that used by those steeped in the localculture. Thus the meaning of the composite Image may be quite different in visitors asopposed to inhabitants.

Only a small sliver of a city’s identity is revealed in the short span of a visit. Largenumbers of visitors alter the “activity” of a city and hence, in the long run, will alter the city’sidentity. Structural changes may be brought about to cater to visitors as well, furtherchanging the nature of the city. The identity of the city may eventually be affected to such an

extent that the shallow Images of the tourists, due to the sheer number of them, mayprogressively overwhelm and slowly obliterate the richer and deeper Image of the inhabitants,creating another opportunity for “downward equalization” similar to that noted by Martin andBass-Warner. In both cases, it seems that a mono-culture (the automobile culture or thetourist culture) is at the root of the problem. Planners should play an active role inpreventing such monothematic assaults on the diversity and rootedness of our cities.

28 As Norberg-Schulz intends the term “dwell ing”: “the total man -pla ce r ela t i onship ” , inGeniu s L oci , p. 19.




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The ideal of “visitation”, for the more sophisticated travelers, is that of blending in withthe locals and being largely inconspicuous. This allows one to experience the city for what itreally is and to take in all of its meanings in as unadulterated a form as possible.

Lynch’s Travel J ournals show his analytical mind at work in the way he tried toorganize his personal Image of the cities he visited in 1952-53 according to the following

“characteristic elements” of the cities’ identities: spaces (“including light and atmosphere”),ori entat i on, mi ddl e di stance pictur e (“the characteristic views seen in one fixing of eye, aheadand slightly above horizon, most often obliquely across the space, characteristically of streetfacades and 2nd and 3rd story one or two blocks down the street”), eye l evel detai l (“just aheador abreast of walker, seen in interrupted snatches”), floor (“visual texture and form and color,extension and levels as a place, feel to feet”), human act i vity, tr af f ic, noise and smell s.29 Theseelements are probably useful in the Image construction of both inhabitants and visitors andthey obviously include both structure and activity.

6.1.3 Ephemera

Ephemera are the ultimate experienceable phenomena. I t seems to me that public

events are made to be lived out and cannot be really mediated in any meaningful way. TheImage of the city, being composed of fragments of cognition about structure and action in acity, will definitely be strengthened by epehemera that express the spirit of a place and arenot mere make-believe ploys to attract visitors. The active participation of locals to ephemeralends them credibility. Well-attended festivals are truer reflections of a local culture thanmade-for-tourists costumed parades.

Festivals, parades, carnivals and other festive human activities can be aimed atreclaiming public space to make it “safe” and civilized (as Bonnemaison suggests), or they canbe means for local citizens to reaffirm their “nativeness” (as MacCannell purports). They mayindeed represent one of the final aims for our human toiling (as Harvey Cox proposes). Thereis truth in all of these statements. The main message in Schuster’s contribution to the

Seminar, though, seems to arc back to a notion of “spontaneous emergence”. The parallel is obvious to me: both permanent structures and ephemeral festivals are

more successful if they truly embody the spirit of a place and are products of a collectiveidentity in action. The erection of temporary structures seems to accompany the moresuccessful ephemera, but the truly significant and cyclical temporary urbanism seems to be aconsequence of the success of the ephemeral and not vice versa.

In my hometown of Venice, temporary bridges are constructed and dismantled on twooccasions during the year: one for the Festival of theRedentore (celebrating the end of theplague of 1575) and one for theSalute fest (celebrating the end of the next big plague in 1639).Not surprisingly, “natural” catastrophes seem to truly bring people together. These tworeligious festivities continue to reassert the true “Venetianity” to this day and are most

beloved by the natives. Temporary architecture is also involved in theRegata St ori ca when profuselydecorated floating barges are lined up along the Grand Canal for the boat parade and for theboat races. Venetians reclaim their nativeness on this occasion too, but tourist involvement ismore massive. Venetians set themselves apart from visitors by being on boats whereastourists are stuck on the ground. The boat races are also a purely internal affair embodying

29 Banjeree and Southworth, ed.,Cit y Sense and Cit y Design , p. 118.




December 13, 1998. 21

competition between local rowing clubs, like in theH ead of th e Char l es . Carn iva l , on theother hand, despite the fact that its recent revival originated from a spontaneous synergyamong young people (including me) in the late 70’s, who reclaimed the city and brought funback to the then-stale celebrations, is not viewed by Venetians with the same fondness assome of the other festivals.

The feeling is that Carnevale is now controlled by outsiders (marketers, politicians, themedia) and hence not a genuinely Venetian affair. I t is important for ephemera to be “real”local events for them to be truly successful with the citizenry.

Lynch placed ephemera in the same basket of Ident ity in his Good Ci ty Form , under theperformance dimension of Sense , where he equated the “sense of place” provided by a clearspatial identity with the “sense of occasion” of events with a clear social identity.30 Here,lynch obviously confirms the inextricable dichotomy between structure and activity that givesrise to place identity.

6.2 Mediated Images: Imaging

The main subject of the Seminar was “the role of media in city design and development”,hence this section finally addresses the more specific issues of “Imaging the City”. Imagingoccurs for a variety of reasons and attempts to affect the Image of a City, through a variety of channels. Frequently, imaging efforts are concerned with fabricating an Image of a placewithin a specific dimension. Place promotion ads, as found in trade magazines such asExpansion Management, “seek to change [people’s mental images] and, in doing so, to changebehavior”, Holcomb states in her contribution to the Seminar. The Image being manipulatedhere is the city’s Business Image, which is more specific than a city’s overall Image. The lattercan also be the target of manipulation – for instance through such media as the P.R. pamphletby Mayor Menino, bragging about the ratings Boston received in many national rankings, asil lustrated by J ohn DeMonchaux during his presentation – but more frequently the imagingefforts are much more focused on specific aspects of a city’s operation, such as its housing

market, its cultural vitality, its educational prowess and so on.

I suggest there are several ways for non-experiential images to be propounded to targetaudiences, through the tweaking of the multisensory inputs that reach each of us through allthe media:

?? Orchestrated display of selective snippets of I dentity, through:?? Selective structural features of a city?? Selective activities in the city, or both

?? Manipulation of Identity through visualizations, visions or revisions of structureand activity

?? Manipulation of meanings through narrative?? Manipulation of meanings through associations

Moreover, one needs to be clear about who is controlling the imaging, to whom themediated images are directed and for what purpose imaging is being used. So we have, forexample:

30 Lynch, Good Ci t y Form, p. 131-132.




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?? An Outsider’s Image of a City (like that of a visitor or an urban critic)?? An I nsider’s Image (prettied up to attract outsider’s)?? Political Images for local consumption (negative ads and boasting ads)?? Informative Images to aid in decisions (planners’ visualizations)?? Heritage Images to evoke links to the past (preservationists’ revisions)?? Guided Visits (mediated experiences)

In the following sections I will look at some of the main types of mediated images thatemerged from the Seminar.

6.2.1 Place Promotion

First of all , I would clearly differentiate between messages intended for tourists and forbusiness. While the former may add some value to the latter, an ad would generally bedirected towards one or the other of these major target audiences. I think the marketing of places to either tourists or businesses provide a very intriguing venue of research to someone

who’s interested, as I am, in discovering what it really is that people like or dislike aboutcities.

I would then divide the “claims to fame” that appear in place-ads into two fundamentalclasses: funct ional claims and qua l i t y claims. Funct ional claims are (more) factual,quantitatively measurable (to some extent) and – I would argue – almost necessary to providea “real” basis for an ad campaign. Qua l i t y claims reach into the intangible (and perhapsephemeral) and are best related with photographs and evocative prose than with numbers andfacts.

Functional claims include: infrastructural assets (highways, harbor, rail connections,etc.), inexpensive labor, cheap land/office space, tax incentives and “centrality” claims amongothers. I cannot see how an ad campaign could successfully attract new business to an area

without significant functional benefits being put on the table. At a more personal level, thedecision on the part of employees as to where exactly to relocate to, once the company hasdecided to move to a new place, is also often based on very functional criteria such as: qualityof education, cost of houses, distance from work. Function is much less of a factor in tourism,although gateway cities prosper with visitors simply because of their position.

Quality claims reach deeper into the subconscious and try to “strike a cord” with someof our most intimate feelings. This is where the concept of beauty resides, as well as sereneconcepts such as community, tranquillity, safety and pleasure. More dynamic characteristicsare also associated with quality-places, for instance: arts, music, lively street life both day andnight, a variety of entertainment possibilities, great culinary experiences, and other “cultural”aspects. Both structure and activity are what create positive or negative images. Quality

claims must therefore select the “most attractive” urban streetscapes coupled with the mostappropriate activities, based on the target audiences. The really interesting question is: arethere certain stereotypical “positive” images that are commonly peddled as high quality?What do the “good” buildings and streetscapes look like? What are the people doing? Whatare the activities?

As Beinart shows us, outsiders were attracted to ancient cities because of their“contents” or “activities”, and only in part because of their “container”, i.e. the structure itself. The lack of pictorial representations in the travel books and books of praise testifies to the




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difficulty in giving meaning to a city’s identity through such an experiential medium as itsstructure. All of the Campaigns and Initiatives, as well as the Oral Histories and the TravelBooks focused primarily on the “content” of a city. Campostela, Rome, J erusalem and otherholy cities were targeted by religious tourists because of their Saints, Churches, Mosques andSynagogues.

The structure of the city did not figure prominently in the traveler’s mind. Thecommunion with holiness and all of its beneficial consequences (indulgences, cures, miracles,etc.) was the primary motivator there. Olympic cities and World Fair cities are boosted by theevents they “host”. The structural aspects are secondary and if anything they are meant to beimproved in the course of these “image” events. Another example in which structure supportsand is a consequence of activity.

So, Beinart is right when he concludes that “a well-formed city is its own bestadvertisment”. What I would add is a city’s “activity” is the best “engine” for the developmentof its form. Whether the city becomes well -formed as a consequence of this activity is anotherstory, one that Ruskin has written very insightfully about. This is where “meaning” becomesimportant. The making of good city form to me is a meaningful synthesis of activity and

structure, in which the identity of a place emerges almost spontaneously from the milieu of forces that operate within and around it.

Good City Form carries meaning with it automatically – gra t is – and is a result of adeep identity rooted in the labor of the people who lived in it and who constructed theirplaces of work, their churches, their civic buildings and their dwellings in it. Whenarchitecture and urban design are not the product of this rootedness, the resulting identitywill not be as strong and the need to “crystallize meanings into recognizable and transferablepackages of identity” will emerge.

In the end, however, image building for cities of today and of the past probably atteststo a widespread yearning for “better” cities. Why would we advertise our town, if everythingwas already great and everyone was well-off? Who needs tourists anyway?

6.2.2 Boosterism, Boasterism and Basherism

Boosterism is very akin to place promotion, but it is always generated by insiders and itis not necessarily meant to attract outside visitors or businesses. Very often, boosterism hasvery local political aims. I t’s an insider-to-insiders deal. Cleveland’s Vision 2000, as well asmany other such initiatives around the world, are visions used to boost a sagging localeconomy or a decaying downtown.

Praise Books fall in this general category, but are of a very different nature. They boastabout a city out of civic pride and seem to be exempt from ulterior motives. There’s noboosting necessary for the towns depicted in the Praise Books. They’re doing just fine, thank

you. Many of the PR campaigns by city hal ls around the country combine a good dose of boasting about the idyllic qualities of the place with a modicum of bragging about the greatbusiness base and infrastructure, all for the sake of boosting the image of the current mayor.I f the promotional materials attract some additional business to town, great! But as long as allthe local voters receive the brochure, the mayor will be guaranteed reelection.

The opposite of boasterism is basherism, of course, so as soon as the mayor releases thePR materials, an opposition group puts out its own pamphlet pointing out all of the failures of




December 13, 1998. 24

the current administration. Intense imaging techniques are employed in bashing efforts.Pictures of urban squalor are often used to bring the point home.

Planners should pay attention to the type of images that are used to represent successas well as failure. We should strive to produce successes and obliterate images of failure fromthe real world. We should however be careful about such I maging efforts, since they have the

potential of altering our meaning of successful places. Perhaps the new buildings that look sogood on a brochure and are touted as great achievements are not after all such greatcontributions to habitation. We should always find out what the local inhabitants think of the“trophy building”. This is one of the areas where imaging has the greatest potential forcausing real damage to urban fabric.

Trophy architecture, like the massive skyscrapers of Asia that Larry Ford presented tous, generally looks good only at the scale of a skyline view, thus making it excellent foriconographic branding and inciting boosterism through massive changes in the structure of thecity. Meanwhile these “totemic buildings” are usually miserable failures at the street-level,where they generally negate human habitation and discourage communal activity. I t is thisnegative feedback loop that needs to be broken to prevent more and more “signature

skyscrapers” from going up simply to become the new “symbol” of a city, while the livability of the sidewalks is gradually destroyed by massive cementification (usually to provide parkingfor the patrons of the signature building), and by the proliferation of bland and boring façadeswherever these concrete giants meet the earth within the urban fabric.

Planners would do well to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of identity (structures andactivities) and let “facts boast for themselves”.

6.2.3 Media Portrayals

The media plays a semi-impartial role in the mediation of images, but its power topersuade is far greater than self-promotion or marketing, as Birch, J enkins and the Clevelandcase showed us. When national media gives a city a boost, the effects are powerful, as in the

case of theFortune magazine for Cleveland. Movies, documentaries, TV programs and TV adsreach broad audiences and can feed large amounts of image-building materials to viewers.

I t would seem to me that the strength of the Images produced by popular media is insome ways proportional to the number of people exposed to them as well as to the strength of the message. Movies and TV sitcoms may send out subliminal clues, but many successive coatsof such clues will paint permanent stereotypes in the minds of regular viewers.

Planners should be aware of these stereotypes and work toward eliminating negativeones by acting on the real world of structure and activity, in concert with other public andprivate agencies. All of the news media are concerned with facts and planners should makesure that “good facts” are produced in the urban realm, by designing good plans and producinggood habitable places. Planners should also make sure that success stories are reported in the

news media to produce honest boosting and boasting materials that will benefit the citizens.6.2.4 Informative Images

This category of mediated images brings us to planners territory, where informativeimages are produced, based on solid research and careful planning. Visualizations, drawings,plans, graphs, tables, navigation maps, GIS electronic maps, aerial views and analytical mapsall fall within this category and they all have an effect on decisions about the urbanenvironment.




December 13, 1998. 25

Hayden and MacLean showed us the potential usefulness of aerial views which could aidour understanding of edge sprawl. Martin and Bass-Warner showed us a collection of imagesand descriptions of travel routes within urban and suburban landscapes.

Many of us have had personal experiences with drawings, plans, spatial analyses on GI S,photographic documentation, census data and many other useful tools to convey information

to decision makers and to the public. The images used by planners and architects can be both objective, i.e. based on facts, or

they can be speculative, based on hypotheses and opinions. I t is important that both of thesetypes are handled with care so that our work is accurate and rational, since planners’ imagesare in the end the ones that really make change happen in the “real” city, modifying structureand consequentially activity, thus re-imaging the essential identity of a place.

6.2.5 Imaging in Education

Although no presenter really touched upon this topic, I wanted to add one more importantsource of images that shape the construction of the Image of a City. To me, architecture andplanning education is a major source of mediated images that have affected, consciously or not,

the minds of generations of planners and architects who then went out into the real world toproduce places with more or less imageable identities.

I t is hard to build a Good City if we cannot agree on what it is or what it looks like. Trophy architecture may have originated in the halls of academia, more so than in someMadison Avenue office. Many of the ills of our cities may be traceable to our great institutionsof learning. I t would be appropriate for some of us to have the courage to rummage throughour own closets to see what skeletons may be hidden there.

Scholastic imaging is an area that deserves serious and unbiased scholarly attention.

7 Rating “Place”

The rating of places is probably an old habit, as de Monchaux points out, and I agree thatthis habit seems to have turned into “a national pastime” lately. I t is clear, as both J ohn deMonchaux and Terry Szold emphasized, that the role of a planner/designer is to make placesbetter and that striving to be the “best” is a distortion of the planner’s credo . In fact, placeratings differ rather substantially from the planner’s mission of “improving” the quality of place and hence the quality of life of a place since they extend the “relative” concept of improvement of a place from its former state to a new – presumably better – condition. Placeratings compare different places on a fictional “absolute” scale in a specific instant in time. I tis hard to argue therefore that place-ratings are a natural extension of the urge to improveone’s lot.

I t is also hard to imagine who might really put these place-ratings to good use. I canhardly imagine a family deciding where to move to based on thePlaces Rated Al man ac ,although some companies might consult it as one of the many factors influencing a corporaterelocation, but probably a very minor factor indeed. There are many other, vastly moreimportant reasons that force such choices, such as fiscal policies, proximity to naturalresources or to major communication hubs, etc. An amalgamated index might include some of these factors, but the real decisions are made on much more place-specific and company-specific parameters.




December 13, 1998. 26

Macro-migrations, such as those between the major metropolitan areas rated in theA lmanac completely miss the point as far as individuals or families are concerned. A specific job offer from a specific company located in a certain metropolitan area will induce a family tolook for a house in such area. The main decision is made by “higher” authorities. Once therelocation has been so decided, a family would search for a home, based on town-specific

factors (such as the quality of the schools, the tax rate, etc.), but also based on availablehousing stock, preferences for “country” rather than for “urban” settings, and many otherpersonal tastes and needs that are too fine-grained to be captured by aggregate indexes suchas those in the Almanac or other similar publications.

I think the main use of these ratings is political. As Mayor Menino’s brochure on Boston’sratings clearly indicates, the rating business provides ammunition for “boosterism” and“boasterism” when the ratings are positive. When they are negative, they may becomeinstruments for “basherism” by opposition parties who will campaign on such negative factors. The fact is that there are so many ratings going around that every political faction, dependingon whether it is in power or on the sidelines, will probably be able to selectively pick andchoose from the list of plusses and minuses. Occasionally, a negative rating in one category

may actually spark remedial action, which may be one of the more positive effects of theratings, but overall it seems that the real power of these ratings is not much different fromthat of the plethora of opinion polls that are conducted daily on every possible topic.

7.1 Measuring the change of “Place” over “Time”

There is one thing that emerges from this discussion that reconciles the apparent riftbetween place-raters and planners/designers. I t is the urge to measure change and evaluateit. We may not agree with the methods used to arrive at these ratings, but we all feel thatsome means for evaluating “before-and-after” a planning intervention would certainly beuseful, especially if comparable across different interventions on different places. Suchmeasures may not be possible at all, but, as J ohn De Monchaux suggests, they should certainly

be explored by researchers in the planning profession. Kevin Lynch certainly tried to pointthe way in Good Ci ty Form and the “Dimensions of Performance” that he presented wereaimed at this worthy goal: vi ta l i ty, sense, fi t, access, and control plus the “meta-criteria” of efficiency and justice. Most of these measures are what I would call “functional”, pertaining toinfrastructure for activity or to other measurable aspects of “li fe” instead of aspects of “place”.

Qual it y of Place , which De Monchaux and Landis and Sawicki find to be missing fromthese ratings, is so elusive that even Lynch couldn’t quite nail it down. He did a better jobthan most, in that he identified performance dimensions that “reflected” quality of place, butthese dimensions were really still act ivity dimensions reflecting st ructural dimensions, butthey did not tackle structureper se .

I think, in keeping with Lynch’s indications in What T im e is Th is Place? , we should strive

to come up with measurable performance indicators to evaluate “the change of place overtime”.But if place is space with an identity and identity is made up of structure plus activity,

then what we need in order to measure the qualities of place is to come up with somepotentially useful performance indicators for measuring performance both in the physicalworld of structure and in the social world of human activity. Many of these measurabledimensions can be gleaned from Lynch’sGood Ci ty Form , but many others may need to bedeveloped, especially to measure visual preferences for certain streetscapes and buildings in




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order to arrive at measures of “pleasantness” or “visual satisfaction” and other such fuzzyconcepts31, that are usually avoided, but are essential, in my view, in the assignment of meaning to place experiences.

8 Designing Good City Identities: Planners and Imaging

The lengthy discussion above may prove to be too cumbersome a framework in which toanalyze the contributions to the Imaging the City seminar, but it has helped me identify majorthemes within this broad field and to determine the possible roles of planners in this milieu.

The bottom line is that the true Image of a City, the collective Image that will emergespontaneously from a process of habitation is built upon successive exposures to the physicalenvironment of the city and to the variety of activities that take place in this environment on adaily basis. The planner and architect still continue to play a major role in the shaping of thetwo basic constituents of place: structure and activity. I am not too sure that we have done anadequate job at that.

Unfortunately, imaging seems to have the power to substantially modify and somehowalter our perception of I dentity and even to reshape our concept of meaning in such a way asto make even the direct experience of place no longer purely unmediated. Preconceivednotions about certain places predate our visitation of such places and guide our image-building even in the immediacy of the real world. Although habitation wil l generally allow usto tap into the embodied meanings of place, breaking through the layers of imaging, thepervasiveness of media is making it more and more difficult to have an unadulteratedexperience of place.

In fact, the role of imaging in the modification of the attitudes of architects and plannersmay be one of the more worrying suspicions that has emerged from this seminar, in my mind.Besides being primary actors in the production of visualizations, visions and revisions,

planners and architects are also the first to be exposed to “brainwashing” through the imagingthat they are subjected to in college.Distorted notions of meaning may be nesting inside most of us because of what we “learnt

in school”. Perhaps we should be the first to re-inhabit our towns and cities so we can purgeour minds of affected images an re-learn the intuitive process of experiential image-construction. Although we should become well-aware of the pros and cons of the various typesof images, and we shall study them carefully and scientifically, we must remember that ourprimary role is that of shapers of city identity and not that of direct manipulators of meaning.“We may even be wi se to concent r ate on th e physi cal cla r i ty of the im age and to all ow meani ng to

devel op w it hout our di r ect gui dan ce”, as Lynch suggests32.Informative imaging, like visualization and the like, should be a tool in our repertoire, but

we should not let ourselves get sucked into the “business of imaging”. Instead of becoming

Image Mediators, we should improve our skills at being “Immediators”33 of sensate experience,providing venues for the immediate perception of embodied meanings in structures andactivities, so that “shared meanings” will spontaneously emerge in the process of habitation.

31 I have personally dabbled with such issues in past papers, using such tools as “Visual Preference Experiments” and “Fractal

Analysis” of facades (from Bovill, 1996).32 Lynch, Th e I mage of the City , p. 8.33 I like this term because it conveys the double notion of “Non-mediation” and “Immediacy”.




December 13, 1998. 28

9 Bibliography

D. Appleyard, K. Lynch, J . R. Myer, The Vi ew fr om the Road , Cambridge: MIT, 1964 (3rd printing, 1971).

R. Arnheim, Towar d a Psychology of Ar t , Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1966. T. Banerjee, M. Southworth, ed., Ci ty Sense and Ci ty D esi gn , Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.R. Barthes, Semi ology and U rbani sm , VIA I I , 1973, p. 155-157.M. Batty and P. Langley,Th e fractal sim ul at ion of urban structur e , Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Inst.

Of Science and Technology, Dept. of Town Planning, in Papers in Planning Research, N.92, 1985.

S. Bonnemaison, City Poli t i cs and Cycli cal Events , Design Quarterly, 1990, 147: 25-32.C. Bovill, Fr actal Geometry i n A r chi tectur e and Design , Boston: Birkhäuser, 1996.K. Lynch, The Ima ge of th e Cit y , Cambridge: MIT press, 1960.

K. Lynch,What T im e is Th is Place? , Cambridge: MIT press, 1972.K. Lynch,M anagi ng t he Sense of a Region , Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976.K. Lynch,Good Ci ty Form , Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.D. MacCannell, Staged A ut heti ci ty: Ar r angement s of Soci al Space i n T our i st Sett i ngs, American

J ournal of Sociology, 1973, 79 (3): 589-603.C. Norberg-Schulz, Geni us L oci , towar ds a Phenomenology of Ar chi tectu r e , New York: Rizzoli,

1979. English translation in 1980, reprinted in 1984.A. Rossi, The Ar chi tectu r e of th e Ci ty , Oppositions Books, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982. J . Ruskin, The Stones of Ven i ce , ed. J . G. L inks, New York: Da Capo, 1960. J . Ruskin, The Seven L amps of Archi tectur e , New York: Dover, 1989. (Unabridged

republication of second edition, 1880).

W. Rybczynski, Ci ty L i fe , New York: Touchstone, 1995.R.L . Solso, Cognit i on and t he Vi sual A rt s , Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.A. Tzonis and L. Lefaivre, Kevi n L ynch and the Cogni t i ve Theory of th e Ci ty , in Design Book

Review 26, Cambridge: MIT Press, Fall 1992.A. Whittick, Ruskin ’s Veni ce , London: Watson-Guptill, 1976.




December 13, 1998. 29

APPENDICES




December 13, 1998. 30

OverviewIntroduction: Imaging After Lynch

Nearly forty years after the publication of Kevin Lynch's landmark volume, The Image of the

City (1960), city design and development practitioners still grapple with ways to measure andnurture "good city form." [1] Lynch's early work emphasized the perceptual characteristics of the urban environment, stressing the ways that individuals mentally organize their ownsensory experience of cities. Increasingly, however, city imaging is supplemented andconstructed by exposure to visual media, rather than by direct sense experience of urbanrealms. In the "hyper-visual"[2] contemporary city, the whole question of city image and cityimaging warrants renewed scrutiny. Lynch's famous study deliberately de-emphasized themeanings that places hold for their inhabitants, yet this aspect remains central.[3] City imagesare not static, but subject to constant revision and manipulation by a variety of media-savvyindividuals and institutions. In recent years, urban designers (and others) have used the ideaof city image proactively-- seeking innovative ways to alter perceptions of urban, suburban,

and regional areas. The word image can mean many things. An image can be a physical likeness, and it can be amental representation, or even a symbolic and metaphorical embodiment. The term imag ing as it is understood here involves actors and actions concerned with transforming all of thesekinds of meanings. City imaging, in this sense, is the process of constructing visually-basednarratives about the potential of places. This media-enriched image-building process involvesnot only place-based and form-based visions but also strategies for economic opportunity andenvironmental stewardship. Place promotion transcends economics-grounded efforts toattract new investment; it is also a strategy for reinforcing (or reconstructing) city image. Assuch, it always matters who builds these images, for which reasons, and for whom. Image-building efforts encompass not only changes to the built environment but also encode broad

conceptual orientations; image-making is about finding new ways (and new technologies) torepresent and promote cleaner environments, better communities, and socio-economicprogress, yet images may also serve to mask or perpetuate existing inequalities. Images maybe promoted in service of some broad "public good," but they are also subject to extrememanipulation by market forces that resist any such wider efforts to plan. As Ward and Goldput it,Economic instability, restructuring and an acceleration of the international mobility of capitalhave caused many regions to lose the traditional sources of employment that gave them theirprimary identity. At the same time, individual national governments have retreated fromtheir former interventionist strategies. Taken together, these forces have fragmented thetraditional planning approach as the main agency shaping and managing the processes of

spatial change and left a vacant policy niche within which local promotional activity hasflowered (Ward and Gold, 1994, p. 8). This "policy niche" provides many opportunities for urban designers who, together with mediaprofessionals, are devising new ways to change public attitudes toward urban places. The 1998 DUSP Faculty Colloquium examines emerging directions for city imaging, issues thatseem to bridge the concerns of physical planners, media professionals, and city developers inways that affect planning practice throughout the United States and abroad. If the imaging(and re-imaging) of districts, cities, and regions is indeed at the heart of contemporary urban




December 13, 1998. 31

development practice, it is essential that urban designers and planners understand thephenomenon. Only then will they be able to work more effectively within its constraints or todevise alternative frameworks.

Constructing Urban Identity

In recent years, there has been a growing acknowledgment of the ways that the media and thebuilt environment work together to shape and alter public perceptions of places.[4] Fordecades, urban sociologists have noted how community identity is socially constructed notonly by local residents but also by a wide variety of outsiders, including newspaper reportersand editors, civic boosters, developers, realtors, marketing firms, and city officials (J anowitz,1952; Suttles, 1972; Weiss, 1987). Such castings and portrayals can have both positive andnegative connotations. Sometimes, as is vividly conveyed in Mike Davis' (1992) account of thecontradictions of twentieth century Los Angeles, the mythmaking of the boosters has its owndarker counterpart vying to capture the public imagination. While some critics, such asMichael Sorkin, may regard L.A. as "...the most mediated town in America, nearly unviewablesave through the fictive eyes of its mythologizers" (cited in Davis, 1992, p. 20), Los Angeles is

hardly alone. All cities, and the neighborhoods within them, are constructed and interpretedby many forces; we learn about places not only from the people who live in them but also fromthe built environment in which social life takes place and from the media environment(including the reportage of "pseudo-events"[5]) that helps to edit and alter our perceptions.Media portrayals and urban development ventures each make judgments about the worth andpotential of people and the places they inhabit. For example, Hollywood producers anddirectors seek out distressed urban communities from South Central Los Angeles to Detroit toset their nightmarish portrayals of inner city l ife, images that often serve to confirm or extendnegative stereotypes. On television, the situation seems similar, although exceptions such asMTV's "The Real World" annually seek out urban settings intended to forge the very definitionof what's cool . Still, the most popular television dramas focus on inner-city crime-fighting or

chronicle the 'incoming wounded' of urban emergency rooms. Even the 1990s spate of urban TV comedies, epitomized by the nine-year run of "Seinfeld," tend to confirm stereotypes of "avibrant city that is quirky and diverse but not very nice" (Grunwald, 1997). The metro-media nexus occurs not only within the realms of film and television (not tomention older media forms); increasingly, urban images are conveyed through newer digitalmedia. Popular computer-based games such as Simcity 2000 provide participants to direct thedevelopment of a metropolis, and encode a myriad of assumptions about how cities can bestructured. Other alternative cyberworlds, also use physical cities as metaphors for creatingnew interactive social realms that allow those with computers to experience urbanism-at-a-distance.Even as new communications technologies mediate the experience of the city through thecreation of parallel fictional worlds, city imaging efforts also continue to thrive in the builtworld of urban real estate development. Here, too, the old values of "location, location,location" that drive urban redevelopment initiatives have gained new media partners.Increasingly, flagship development projects take on the trappings of staged ventures, in whichimage-building is at the head of the agenda.In the effort to shift and lift public (or investor) confidence, places get named or re-named toconvey future hopes-- as with Detroit's Renaissance Center-- or to convey a more upscale orpastoral image. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that seems to be diversifying and




December 13, 1998. 32

accelerating. At mid-century, tenements and slums were replaced by public housing projectswith names like "Orchard Park" and "Elm Haven;" in the late 1990s, many failed housingprojects are themselves being torn-down and rebuilt as New Urbanist mixed-incomecommunities, again with new identities and new names, not to mention new glossy brochuresand promotional videos. Baltimore's notorious Lafayette Courts project is reimaged as

Pleasant View Gardens; Atlanta replaces Techwood Homes with Centennial Place; Chicagotries to bury the infamy of Cabrini-Green in a billion dollar new neighborhood.[6] Similar re-imaging occurs in other parts of American cities: now-seedy areas get recast as Arts Districts,and abandoned 19th century industrial landscapes become resuscitated as centers of HeritageInterpretation, Historic Preservation, and (it is hoped) Economic Development. Twenty-five years ago, Kevin Lynch called on designers and planners to help city officials andcity dwellers develop a clearer sense of the passage of time in urban areas. Now, however, hisintriguing question "What Time is This Place?" (Lynch, 1972) is being answered by calculatedefforts to select and highlight certain past eras of the city's culture and ambiance, whilebypassing less marketable elements, periods (and persons)[7]. Everything from thestreetscape and the architecture of new and renovated facilities to the typeface of tourist

brochures and signage attempts to recapture a lost piece of heritage in a way intended toportend a new post-industrial economic viability. Redevelopers of Tampa's Ybor City, forexample, seek to attract tourists and reinvestment dollars by harkening back to the late 19thcentury days when the neighborhood marked the global center of cigar manufacturing andserved as a nexus for I talian, Cuban, and Spanish immigrant culture-- even though theneighborhood is now home to a predominantly African-American population.Re-imaging also occurs at the level of the city as a whole. Places such as Pittsburgh andCleveland-- not long ago widely stereotyped as the epitome of 'rust belt' decline, are now re-interpreted as the poster children of rust belt renaissance. To accomplish this image change,city leaders have long recognized that tangible evidence of economic growth is not sufficient;what matters is both high profile physical redevelopment and the skillful marketing of such

efforts at visible change. The New Cleveland Campaign, for instance, is premised on equaldoses of urban development and public relations. Other cities, in the United States andelsewhere, stage elaborate promotional campaigns in the attempt to attract national andinternational events such as major conventions or the Olympic Games.In many places, the process of image making has extended beyond city limits to encompass thebroader regions in which metropolitan homes and workplaces are increasingly found. InLynch's terms, this is about "managing the sense of a region," in ways that enable residents toidentify-- and to identify with-- a wider set of jurisdictions (Lynch, 1976). Progress on regionalimage-making has been sporadic and slow, especially in areas of high racial and ethnic spatialpolarity between inner city and outer suburbs. For every vague notion of "Chicagoland," thereare many cities where personal identification ends strictly at the city line. Sti ll, there aremore promising counter-trends, from Portland Metro-- where regional government and

ecologically-sensitive management seem to have made significant gains-- to the burgeoningrails-to-trails open-space networks that cut across political jurisdictions in regions throughoutthe United States.

Assessing the Images and the Image-Makers

Most of those who have begun the assessment of re-imaging efforts have attacked them assuperficial and divisive, yielding Disneyfied cities that are more racially and economically




December 13, 1998. 34

The seminar is therefore structured into two major sections. The first part, entitled "TheMediated City," explores the burgeoning interconnections between urban development andnew media, while the second part, entitled "Imaging Cities: Opportunities for UrbanDesigners," identifies arenas where urban designers can intervene to help re-image cities inpositive ways, as well as methods by which such involvement can take place.

Endnotes

[1] See also Lynch (1981).[2] For a discussion of "the hyper-visual American city," see Boyer (1996, pp. 138-150).[3] In an essay written near the end of his life that reflected on the strengths and weaknessesof The Image of the City, L ynch observed that "the original study set the meaning of placesaside and dealt only with their identity and their structuring into larger wholes." Yet, as hecandidly notes, "It did not succeed, of course. Meaning always crept in, in every sketch andcomment. People could not help connecting their surroundings with the rest of their lives. Butwherever possible, those meanings were brushed off the replies, because we thought that a

study of meaning would be far more complicated than a study of mere identity" [Lynch (1985)in Banerjee and Southworth, 1990, p. 252].[4] For a somewhat different account of this relationship, focusing on its implications forpublic housing redevelopment, see Vale (1995).[5] The pseudo-event concept, coined by Daniel Boorstin (1961, pp. 11-12), refers to ahappening that is 1) "not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, planted,or incited it," 2) is "planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced," 3) has an "ambiguous... relation to the underlying reality of thesituation," and 4) is usually "intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy."[6] These public housing transformations are being carried out with support from HUD'sHOPE VI program.[7] At the same time, however, countervailing efforts seek to highlight the contributions of previously marginalized groups. See, for example, Hayden, 1995.[8] See also J ackson (1995), and Paddison (1993). While the Anglo-European literature hastaken a decidedly critical tone, the origins of the place promotion literature are largelyAmerican, dating back to a 1938 volume entitled How to promote community and industrialdevelopment (McDonald). Such work focuses on how to market successfully, rather than onthe more complex cultural questions about what such place-marketing means.

References

AlSayyad, N., ed. (1992). Form s of d omi nan ce: On th e ar chi tectu r e and ur bani sm of t he coloni al

enterprise. Aldershot, UK: Avebury.

Ashworth, G.J . and Voogd, H. (1990).Sel l i ng th e ci ty: Mar keti ng appr oaches i n pu bli c sector

urban p lann ing . London: Belhaven Press.Boorstin, D. (1987, 1961 original). The im age: A gu i de to pseud o-event s in Am er i ca. New York:Vintage.Boyer, M.C. (1996). CyberCi t i es: Vi sual Per cepti on i n t he Age of El ectr oni c Commun icati on . New York: Princeton Architectural Press.Davis, M. (1992). Ci ty of quar tz: Excavati ng th e fut ur e in L os Angel es . New York: Vintage.




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Gold, J .R. and Ward, S.V., eds. (1994). Place pr omoti on: The use of publ ic i ty and m arket ing to

sel l towns and r egions . Chichester, UK: J ohn Wiley.Grunwald, M. (1997). America's living rooms lose a laugh: Quirky TV show epitomized NYC,yadda, yadda, yadda. Boston Gl obe . December 27, p. 1.Hayden, D. (1995). The power of pl ace: Ur ban l and scapes as publ i c hi story . Cambridge: MIT

Press. J ackson, E. (1995).M ar keti ng an im age for mai n str eet: H ow t o devel op a compel l i ng message

and i dent i ty for d ownt own . Washington, D.C.: National Main Street Center, National Trust forHistoric Preservation. J anowitz, M. (1952).Th e Comm uni ty press in an u rban sett i ng . Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.Kearns, G. and Philo, C., eds. (1993).Sel l i ng pl aces: Th e cit y as cul tu ral capi tal , past an d present .. Oxford: Pergamon.King, A.D., ed. (1996). Re-present i ng th e ci ty: eth ni ci ty, capi tal , and cul tu r e i n t he 21st cent ur y metropolis . New York: New York University Press.Lynch, K. (1960).The im age of the ci ty . Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lynch, K. (1972).What t im e is thi s place? Cambridge: MIT Press.Lynch, K. (1976).M anagi ng t he sense of a regi on . Cambridge: MI T Press.Lynch, K. (1981).Good ci ty form .. Cambridge: MI T Press.Lynch, K . (1990). Reconsidering The im age of the city(1985). In Tridib Banerjee and MichaelSouthworth, eds., Ci ty sense and ci ty design: Writings and projects of Kevin Lynch.Cambridge: MIT Press.McDonald, F. H. (1938). H ow to promote comm uni ty and in dustr i al development . New York:Harper and Row.Neil l, W.J .V. and Fitzsimons, D. (1995). Reim aging th e pari ah city: Ur ban d evelopment in

Belfast and Detr oit . Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.Paddison, R. (1993). City marketing, image reconstruction, and urban regeneration. Urban

Studies 30(2).Smyth, H. (1994).M ar keti ng th e cit y: The role of flagship d evel opment s i n u r ban r egener ati on .London: E & FN Spon.Sorkin, M. ed. (1992). Var iat ions on a theme park: Th e new Ameri can city an d t he end of publ ic

space . New York: Noonday.Suttles, G.D. (1972). The soci al constr uction of comm un it ies . Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.Vale, L.J . (1992). Ar chi tectur e, power, an d nat i onal id ent i ty . New Haven: Yale UniversityPress.Vale, L.J . (1995). The imaging of the city: Public housing and Communication. Communicat ion

Resear ch . 22 (6).Weiss, M. A. (1987). The r ise of the commun i ty bui ld ers . New York: Columbia University Press.

Wright, G. (1991). Th e poli t i cs of d esign in Fr ench coloni al ur bani sm . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.




December 13, 1998. 36

Beinart

The draft paper convincingly demonstrates that image construction accompanied cities fromthe dawn of civilization. Beinart reminds us of the three basic components of the image of a

city, according to Lynch: structure, identity and meaning. I must confess that I am a bitpuzzled by this triad, especially the “meaning” component, which seems the most elusive of the three. I t seems obvious that structure is an essential element, a condi ti o sine qua non forthe rest of the triad to exist. Identity comes from structure, in my mind, but not only from it.I think “activity” is a major component of identity building. The physical look and the human feel of a city are what give it an identity. Structure alone isnot sufficient. As a matter of fact, it is “activity” that engenders structure. Flourishingeconomic activity is what made possible the construction of most of the beautiful medievalcities and towns in Europe. A peasant society will, on the contrary, build a vernacular villageand its identity will derive from its humble origins.I am not sure what meaning has to do with all this. I tend to believe that meaning is a

“modern” adjunct to the real triad of structure, activity and identity. Meaning should be“built-into” a city that has constructed its own identity through the labor of its citizens whichwas in turn reflected in its structures. The meaning of a city to its citizens was the meaning of their l ives, not an abstract concept. Both of the aforementioned types of cities – the walledmedieval cities of Europe and the present-day peasant villages of Africa – have “meaning”, areal meaning that emerged from their own resourcefulness, the skills of their artisans and thelocal landscape (Geni us Loci ) and geology (materials).Outsiders may not understand such a meaning, unless they traveled there. As Beinart showsus, outsiders were attracted to ancient cities because of their “contents” or “activities”, andonly in part because of their “container”, i.e. the structure itself. The lack of pictorialrepresentations in the travel books and books of praise testifies to the difficulty in giving

meaning to a city’s identity through such an experiential medium as its structure.Al l of the Campaigns and Initiatives, as well as the Oral H istories and the Travel Booksfocused primarily on the “content” of a city. Campostela, Rome, J erusalem and other holycities were targeted by religious tourists because of their Saints, Churches, Mosques andSynagogues. The structure of the city did not figure prominently in the traveler’s mind. Thecommunion with holiness and all of its beneficial consequences (indulgences, cures, miracles,etc.) was the primary motivator there. Olympic cities and World Fair cities are boosted by theevents they “host”. The structural aspects are secondary and if anything they are meant to beimproved in the course of these “image” events. Another example in which structure supportsand is a consequence of activity.So, Beinart is right when he concludes that “a well-formed city is its own best advertisment”.What I would add is a city’s “activity” is the best “engine” for the development of its form.

Whether the city becomes well-formed as a consequence of this activity is another story, onethat Ruskin has written very insightfully about. This is where “meaning” becomes important. The making of good city form to me is a meaningful synthesis of activity and structure, inwhich the identity of a place emerges almost spontaneously from the milieu of forces thatoperate within and around it.Good City Form carries meaning with it automatically – gra t is – and is a result of a deepidentity rooted in the labor of the people who lived in it and who constructed their places of work, their churches, their civic buildings and their dwellings in it. When architecture and




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urban design are not the product of this rootedness, the resulting identity will not be as strongand the need to “crystallize meanings into recognizable and transferable packages of identity”will emerge.In the end, however, image building for cities of today and of the past probably attests to awidespread yearning for “better” cities. Why would we advertise our town, if everything was

already great and everyone was well-off? Who needs tourists anyway?Venice, my home town, is reaching (probably already has passed) the maximum carryingcapacity for tourists. Venice needs no advertising. As a matter of fact, the city government istrying to cash in on the marketing of its image by charging advertisers who use its gondolas,canals, bridges, campos and churches to sell everything from liquor to cars, to perfumes. Youwon’t find many ads to invite you to Venice. Not ads produced by the city itself anyway. Thefact is, a well-formed city “naturally” attracts visitors. Venice now needs to “deter” visitors astheControinformazione pamphlet tried to do for Bergamo. Venice too is suffering from aworld-wide rush from “outsiders” to buy a second home there. Venetians are the ones beingpushed out. The population of Venice has declined from close to 200,000 inhabitants afterworld war I I to less than 68,000 today. Clearly, Venice is losing its “lifeblood”. The structure

is still gorgeous, but its “human activity” is degenerating, catering more and more to touristsrather than to its citizens, failing also to express its own potential in other fields of endeavor.Not surprisingly, the qualitative loss of meaningful activity is creating an identity crisis inVenetian society. Are we all just souvenir peddlers, profiting from the sale of “packets of identity” to outsiders? What identity are we packetizing? Certainly not our current one.Venice is an example of a gradual loss of identity and meaning, despite the preservation of structure, because of the gradual decline in spontaneous and meaningful activity.I taly is gearing up for the Year 2000 J ubilee. Yes, the old sale of indulgences is still a majorbusiness today. I talian infrastructure is being revamped for what is expected to be a year-longstream of visitors to Rome, Venice, F lorence and all the other major historic and religiouscities in I taly. I t is an event that will probably bring more people to I taly than a Soccer World

Cup, the Olympic games and a World Fair combined. Will this major event bring as lot of money to I taly? Yes. Will it add meaning? Probably not. As Beinart correctly points out,“embodied” meaning is to be extracted only by those who linger in a place long enough to “takeit all in”. I f anything, a continuous stream of strangers through your own neighborhood altersthe “embodied” meaning in a very negative way.Creating new urban beauty is certainly the realm of city designers, who must indeed becraftsmen of city form as Ruskin would have strongly advocated. But craftsmen must knowtheir materials and techniques well. City Form craftsmen must dwell in the cities they try toform, to know the “material”: the existing forms, local building materials, specific indigenoustechniques, is short all of the elements that make up a “rooted” identity and thereforespontaneously generate “embodied meaning”.Preserving meaning in historic cities may be another venue for City Designers to engage in, to

prevent irreversible changes of identity due to the pervasive presence of activity catering tothe outsiders’ false perception of the true image of the city.

Sennett




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This draft paper confirms my opinion regarding the importance of “activity” as a primaryelement of the construction of a city’s image.As I already expressed in my reflections on Beinart’s paper, I believe that the physical lookand the human feel of a city are what give it an identity. Structure alone is not sufficient. Asa matter of fact, it is “activity” that engenders structure. Flourishing economic activity is

what made possible the construction of most of the beautiful medieval cities and towns inEurope. A peasant society will, on the contrary, build a vernacular village and its identity wil lderive from its humble origins. Both of these cities wil l make their citizens feel at home,because they both sprang from deeply rooted local mores. To summarize my take on the Sennett paper, I would argue that all activity that is not“rooted” in the locale, either because it caters directly to local citizens, or because it createslocal wealth and well-being that is reinvested in the city’s structure and services, will donothing to improve the city’s identity and it will not therefore create or sustain an “embodied”meaning to its citizens. The image and meaning perceived by outsiders may not be affecteddirectly by this, due to the interference of professional public relations and image-buildingprofessionals. Eventually, though, especially if the structure of the city is not so well formed

to start with, the placelessness of modern corporate operations will result in a loss of localidentity and meaning, if such types of businesses prevail in a certain urban setting.Habitation is indeed central to good city form, but more so is the continued habitation of thecity on the part of those who actually carry out the urban and architectural design and thebuilding of the city structures. What I read into Sennett’s mention of people’s “retro” taste forneo-palladian symbols and other such clear, fixed icons of stability and rootedness is a need torecapture the “time” and “labor” that used to be put into dwellings, civic buildings and otherurban structures. The work most people do keeps them away from and makes them incapableof designing and building their own structures. Vernacular architecture on the other hand ismade up of many individual, perhaps amatorial, constructions that express and give body tothe local identity of the people who build, live and work in those communities. In our world,

we delegate such an important aspect of human life – the act of building – to a caste of “specialists” composed of architects, urban designers, planners and construction workers. Today’s capitalistic mode of construction aims primarily at reducing labor content to keepcosts down. Materials are selected for the same reason: ease of construction hence laborsavings. Design is simplified to modularize work as much as possible, thus making specializedlabor unneeded. Craftsmanship is on the brink of extinction in capitalistic society. Craftsmenare anti-economical. They cost too much. Their labor is not considered worthy. The almostcomplete elimination of labor content in buildings has not prevented buildings from beingconstructed. Capitalists look at the number of units of dwelling constructed and don’t seem tocare about the “feel” of such dwellings. The fact that they lack identity and meaning escapesthem. People will pay for them, so that’s what counts. Only the rich can afford to pay theextra money needed to hire craftsmen (usually from foreign countries where the skills are still

alive) to produce truly beautiful structures, both inside and outside.Unfortunately, the educational system that trains those whom we delegate to create urbanform for us (architects, planners and builders) has gradually severed the link between theseprofessionals and the “places” for which they are called to create forms. International stylesare learnt in school, as well as the works of the most famous architects of this century (Wright,Le Corbusier, etc.). Less and less do we look at the works produced in antiquity, or in themiddle ages, or in today’s vernacular societies. But it is there that we should look to re-




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acquire the taste for the “philosophy” of architecture that sustained the great works of thepast.We all make the mistake of looking at the great works of antiquity for their formal stylisticqualities, which we would all abhor and make fun of if someone were to reproduce them “t a l i s qua l is ” today, even in an amusement park. What we fail to do, it seems, is to look more deeply

into the web of relations that made those buildings “emerge” out of the respectivecivilizations, through the enlightened work of some ancient architects and through the hardlabor of hundreds of skilled workers, all of whom knew how to shape the local materials usinglong-refined techniques and especially how to put their harts into the work to make it the bestthey could, so they could all be proud of the final result. I t is only such a mentality that willspontaneously produce good city form. Only by re-creating these essential preconditions andby recasting the mental processes of the new generations of architects, planners and builders,will we ever be able to produce consistently habitable places with unique identities, where theimage of the city will spring naturally from the embodied meanings that are rooted in the localculture.

Jenkins

Henry J enkins emphasizes, with numerous examples, the ambivalent nature of thefilmographic representation of the city (Manhattan in particular, but it could apply anywherereally).On the one hand there is the holistic, all-encompassing, apersonal view, in which people are ablurry mass moving blood-like through the city’s arteries. An equalizing view devoid of individuals, as one would observe from atop a skyscraper, as De Certeau fittingly remarks.On the other hand is the city of individuals, the many-threaded weave of human tapestry,which in the aggregate gives life to the city. At this viewing level the city is fragmented into amyriad of rivulets of personal narrative, sometimes crossing, most times not… The

Gemeinschaft of small neighborhoods – sometimes limited to a city block or a single tenementhouse – is certainly easier to deal with cinematically than theGesellschaft of the totalizing,rhythmically incoherent simultaneous activities that concurrently coexist in a metropolis. Yetthe tension between these two facets of urban life is there, palpable, and perceivable by urbandwellers before it ever became the subject of films. The big question for urban students and planners is whether there is any way to ease thetension between the individual and the multitude, to make cities gemeinschafts by design.One issue that immediately comes to mind is that it seems probable that the sheer size of anurban population destroys a town-wide gemeinschaft and automatically results in a de-humanizing gesellschaft. “Limits of Growth” concepts come to mind, as adopted in Portland,Oregon. Perhaps a population of 10,000 would be the upper limit of meaningful gemeinschaft,as some proposed in the past? Perhaps it is only a matter of rootedness and true “habitation”

on the part of the population and size has nothing to do with it… Perhaps some degree of gesellschaft is healthy, but where do we draw the line and how?I was intrigued by the “third view” of the city introduced by Lefebre. The semi-celestial, semi-earthbound middle ground provided by windows and balconies. Here the detachment ismeasurable and participation in the street-life is optionally available, while maintaining somedegree of separation. I t’s a happy mediation between the too big and impersonal sky-view andthe too small and chaotic - but still largely impersonal – ground view. In planning terms thisbrought about thoughts about the importance of “scale” in urban streetscapes and the probable




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benefits of limiting building heights and favoring the use of windows and balconies, forexample by making it possible to “open” them to participate in the outside world, a feat that isno longer taken for granted in today’s architecture.

Campanella & BeamishI found the two papers interesting and full of informative tidbits. On the whole, though, Icame away without a clear picture of the presumed consequences of digital media technologyon the urban environment.While the two papers on the surface seemed to represent antithetical points of view, in thefinal analysis they were more similar than expected. Perhaps it would have been better i f Anne and Tom had polarized their views more pointedly, to better explore the extremeconsequences for the built environment – both positive and negative – of the proliferation of digital technology.Both Anne and Tom seem to agree on the inevitability of the city, regardless of the prevailingtechnology. Tom says “the city of bricks appears to be in no danger of obsolescence” and Anne

states “We simply cannot duplicate the physical world in all its richness with the presenttechnology”. Nor do we want to, I think.So, what I actually got from both papers was a feeling that, despite a perhaps prevailingcultural undercurrent of anti-urbanism reflected in the writings of Thomas J efferson, HenryAdams and Henry J ames and an innate yearning for “nature” as epitomized by Thoreau andEmerson, the existence of cities continues to be guaranteed by the social, cultural andeconomic attractions of urban agglomerations, that William J ames had pragmatically acceptedas an “inescapable part of America”.I t doesn’t seem likely that digital technology will dramatically alter this eternal ambivalencebetween city and country. People can telecommute from their home in the city just as well asthey can from their suburban retreats. I t is unlikely that personal choices regarding the

location of one’s dwelling will be drastically altered by the availability of any new technology,be it the phone, the fax or the internet.Bricks and mortar will still provide the containers from which one will launch into the ether.Will the containers be drastically different? I doubt it. Will the automobile be renderedobsolete? No way says Patricia Mokhtarian.What might happen is that perhaps we will disengage ourselves from the less important urbanactivities that take up a lot of our time – such as running errands – by taking care of themfrom our home PC, and perhaps we will have more time to enjoy our physical and socialcommunity because of this. Perhaps we will begin to pay more attention to the beauty andpleasantness of our community if we spend more “quality time” in it and this may guide thedesign of our streetscapes. Those of us who thoroughly enjoy the activities that make a neighborhood, a town, a village or

a city “alive” will continue to seek out these activities. Those who prefer to commune withothers through the internet will at least do more communing than they would probably dootherwise. The image of the city that is portrayed by the various digital worlds out there isnot going to directly affect the “real” image of “real cities”. Only engaged habitation andenlightened urban design and architecture will improve our physical urban environments andour l ives in them. Bad designs will continue to happen unless and until those responsible forthe “look and feel” of streetscapes reconnect themselves with the spirit of the place.




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Digital technology is an important tool for the management of cities, as proven byGeogr aphi cal I nform ati on Systems and the like. Cyberworlds and cities may be useful as well,but we should look for other benefits in them, different from those provided to us by GIS andterritorial databases. Cyberworlds may be useful tools for the exploration of the essence of social interactions in urban environments and may provide useful lessons about the need for

community that they demonstrate, but they probably will never affect the built environment asPlanning Support Systems and other digital computer technologies already are.

Schuster

This highly readable and enjoyable paper was warming, fuzzily suggestive and subliminallyinspiring. The topic is intriguing and appears to be hiding some portentous truth abouthuman co-habitation that I find irresistible. What can an Urban Designer, Architect orPlanner extract from the various points brought out in Mark Schuster’s paper? After aneloquent and well-documented review of many pertinent issues, Mark ends the paper withthis question unanswered. I would like to find out what Mark may propose as practical steps

toward educating urban designers and planners for their involvement in the “impractical, theextravagant, the extraordinary, the useless, the ephemeral”.I applaud Mark for having included in the paper’s epilogue my favorite of all of Calvino’sI nvi sibl e Cit i es – Sophronia – whose story I have always cherished. I could always recite thestory by heart, but I never really paid much attention to its meaning. I always liked thestructure of the story, with its surprising final twist that blows your mind away. After readingMark’s paper, I have begun to form an urbanistic interpretation of Calvino’s tale.As I have often asserted in my writings, I believe that “good” architecture and urban designare generally associated with intimate knowledge of a locale and are spontaneously generatedby a culture. I find there are some important truths in Norberg-Schultz’sGeni us Loci . In theabsence of heavy machinery, materials are necessarily obtained within a small radius of a

building site, hand labor is the only mode of construction, designs are simple and time-tested,constructions techniques are well established and change happens only gradually to the builtlandscape, through a Darwinian selection of the “fittest” architecture at any particular time. This seems to have generally produced “pleasant” results and continues to do so in some partsof the world. Although this principle definitely applies to “vernacular’ architecture – bothpast and present – I think that the best “high architecture” (monumental architecture), whilemore flamboyant, also follows an evolutionary and “grounded” progression. This is no longerthe case in most of the industrialized world.International architectural styles propounded by an internationalized architecturaleducational system have made it difficult for “space designers” to be truly attuned to the finernuances of real places and to build pleasant streetscapes, with congruous buildings andhuman-scaled details compatible with local traditions while innovative and exciting.

More importantly, as Ruskin emphasized 150 years ago34, labor content in buildings – both of mind and of hand – has drastically diminished over the years and the heart and spirit that isassociated with hand labor is ostensibly lacking in a lot of modern architecture. Much of oururban and especially suburban landscapes are not inviting nor pleasant. At best, a modern

34 In both Th e Stones of Venice and theSeven L am ps of Ar chitectur e .




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building works only by itself 35 and at only one scale36 or only in one dimension37 – if at all – andoften visually clashes with adjoining property, clearly remarking the separation from itself and surrounding buildings, thus making public space around it uninviting.Street furnishing , urban landscaping, on-street parking, brick sidewalks, stone curbs, cast-iron street lights, wood benches and other public improvements can do a lot to enhance the

street experience of both pedestrians and motorists, but in the end streetscapes aredominated by individual “archifacts” which may or may not contribute positively to the gestalt of the place. Often they don’t. I t depends on how well they embody an intelligible meaningand reflect a distinct identity of the place. I t depends on who designs them and builds them,on how well the designers and builders embody local culture and transpose it onto well-fittedbuildings that maintain some continuity with pre-existing ones.Mark generalizes ephemera to hyperbolic extents by including such events as the moving vansbringing students back to school in September, or Haley’s comet. While one may generallyagree with the importance of all ephemeral happenings, which therefore may include sunsets,full moons and may other natural cyclical or non-cyclical events, I would first of all draw theline between “natural” and “human” events, since it seems that only the latter could be

affected by planners and urban designers. Planners should nevertheless take into account“natural” cycles in the organization of public events (like Solstice Festivals) or even in thedesign of places (like the Aztecs’ architects that lined up their temples to coincide withparticular astronomical alignments). As Mark suggests, a city may even celebrate the returnof students in the fall, with some sort of festival. All these are examples of what K evin Lynchcalls celebrations of time.Festivals, parades, carnivals and other festive human activities can be aimed at reclaimingpublic space to make it “safe” and civilized (as Bonnemaison suggests), or they can be meansfor local citizens to reaffirm their “nativeness” (as MacCullan purports). They may indeedrepresent one of the final aims for our human toiling (as Harvey Cox proposes). There is truthin all of these statements. The main message in Mark’s paper, though, seems to arc back to my

notion of “spontaneous emergence”. The parallel is obvious to me: both permanent structuresand ephemeral festivals are more successful if they truly embody the spirit of a place and areproducts of a collective identity in action. The erection of temporary structures seems toaccompany the more successful ephemera, but the truly significant and cyclical temporaryurbanism seems to be a consequence of the success of the ephemeral and not vice versa.In my hometown of Venice, temporary bridges are constructed and dismantled on twooccasions during the year: one for the Festival of theRedentore (celebrating the end of theplague of 1575) and one for theSalute fest (celebrating the end of the next big plague in 1639).Not surprisingly, “natural” catastrophes seem to truly bring people together. These tworeligious festivities continue to reassert the true “Venetianity” to this day and are mostbeloved by the natives. Temporary architecture is also involved in theRegata St ori ca whenprofusely decorated floating barges are lined up along the Grand Canal for the boat parade

and for the boat races. Venetians reclaim their nativeness on this occasion too, but touristinvolvement is more massive. Venetians set themselves apart from visitors by being on boats

35 As for example the Bilbao Guggenheim building. I have run some preliminary experiments to explore the relationship

between buildings and contexts with very interesting results.36 I have also begun to explore the way a pedestrian’s interest is retained by building façades at various scales, using fractal

techniques, with more interesting results.37 The functional dimension often prevails over aesthetic or visual considerations when families decide to relocate to suburbia.




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whereas tourists are stuck on the ground. The boat races are also a purely internal affairembodying competition between local rowing clubs, like in theH ead of th e Char l es . Carn iva l ,on the other hand, despite the fact that its recent revival originated from a spontaneoussynergy among young people (including me) in the late 70’s who reclaimed the city andbrought fun back to the then-stale celebrations, is not viewed by Venetians with the same

fondness as some of the other festivals. The feeling is that Carnevale is now controlled byoutsiders (marketers, politicians, the media) and hence not a genuinely Venetian affair. I t isimportant for ephemera to be “real” local events for them to be truly successful with thecitizenry.

And so it is that I have finally realized what it was in the relationship between the perpetualand the ephemeral in Sophronia that so intrigued me. Distinctive architectures and signatureephemera both spring spontaneously from within an “active” population that “inhabits” a placeand affirms a common identity through its actions. Both are “shaped by citizens and passedalong by local practices, customs and word of mouth” (as Mark says). So they are one and thesame, in a sense. Or rather they are complementary facets of human co-habitation, which

together make urban life complete38 and, I would add, more pleasant.

Holcomb

I think the topic is definitely interesting, and I find it very closely related to J ulian Beinart’spaper earlier in the series. I don’t think the treatment of the subject by Holcomb was asinspiring as Beinart’s though. While the array of examples is interesting and informative,Holcomb’s conclusions are not fully satisfying to me. I find them a bit shallow and uninspired.So what if place marketers selectively highlight the rosier images of a city? That’s whatthey’re supposed to do! Certainly they will ignore the blighted areas and turn massive socio-economic hardships into assets, such as “inexpensive labor” or “flexible workforce”. I t’s their

job. Leave the critiques about the social inequalities to urban critics. Place marketers dowhat they’re supposed to do. Some do it better than others, but you can’t blame them formaking a place look as good as possible as long as they don’t engage in blatant frauds.I don’t think these types of intentional misrepresentations are necessarily bad, as long as themotives behind these promotional campaigns are worthy. I f we paint a rosier-than-realpicture of a place to create employment for a disadvantaged labor force, I think the end justifies the means. I f the fabricated picture produces positive physical urban improvements –however limited to certain privileged neighborhoods – these would still be better than nophysical improvements at all and definitely better than further degradation and decay of thebuilt environment. Unfortunately Holcomb falls short of providing real ammunition to gaugethe effectiveness of these promotional campaigns, especially in terms of the lower classes of citizens in the targeted locales. We just don’t know if these tools are making life better for the

average urban dweller.I f we were to discover that these ad campaigns only benefit big-money businesses and donothing to improve the lot of the inhabitants, then we should definitely come down hard onthose who mischievously deceive the multitudes for the benefit of the few. I f they did not

38 Notice how Calvino clearly indicates, in his last sentence, that l ife without permanent or ephemeral structures would be

incomplete…




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looks good only at the scale of a skyline view, thus making it excellent for iconographicbranding. Meanwhile these “totemic buildings” are usually miserable failures at the street-level, where they generally negate human habitation and discourage communal activity. I t isthis negative feedback loop that needs to be broken to prevent more and more “signatureskyscrapers” from going up simply to become the new “symbol” of a city, while the livability of

the sidewalks is gradually destroyed by massive cementification (usually to provide parkingfor the patrons of the signature building), and by the proliferation of bland and boring façadeswherever these concrete giants meet the earth within the urban fabric.In short, my main concern with this whole business of place marketing is that it mayencourage bold, and awkwardly monumental, architectural super-icons that will provide aplace-recognition at the expense of true development of an urban identity within the human-scaled confines of neighborhoods and districts where people enjoy living and working.

Birch

I found this paper and its verbatim presentation not very inspiring. I honestly cannot think of

major issues that emerged from this paper that are truly related to the colloquium’s agenda. Ithink it is a case of a paper that was simply “made to fit” the bill as opposed to being moldedaround the lines of inquiry that Larry Vale had suggested the author explore.As interesting as any account of a locale’s planning history may be, the events detailed in thepaper do not seem to shed any light on the role of images in this slow process. Here we have acomplex case of the classic interaction between institutions, politics, residents and planners.De Caro’s book on Robert Moses is full of these examples.Images certainly were part of the 20 year history of the Bronx, but so they are part of anything that happens in cities… There are glimpses of potentially interesting image-relatedissues in the paper, specifically the mention of the design guidelines, which seem to reflectsome sort of image of the “neighborhood’s historic fabric” (p.18) and the cursory mention of

Michael Kwartler’s planning exercise using simulations of actual design details overlayed onexisting buildings. Very intriguing, but barely touched upon in the paper. The only image-related conclusion that Genie Birch presented (conclusions are not in thepaper draft) was to say that there are several levels of images: those created by the Media, bythe Planners, by Institutions, by Citizens, by Outsiders, by Urban Designers and by theBusiness community. A bit too little too late… Disappointing!I suggest that Larry Vale force Prof. Birch to drastically revise her paper to include imagingevery step of the way throughout the paper, although I am not sure if this will lead to a moreinteresting and stimulating paper, unless the two aforementioned issues of potentialrelevance to imaging are given a much more prominent emphasis.

Lowenthal/Frenchman This dual presentation (no papers yet available) was advertised as a duel between tworadically opposite views of Heritage, but upon close inspection of the excerpts fromLowenthal’s book and based on the presentations, I must admit that I saw no such duality. Ithought Lowenthal would be adamantly opposed to the sort of re-invention of heritage sitesthat Dennis Frenchman is professionally engaged in. I see no such opposition in his writing,although the excerpts of his book only marginally touch upon the built environment. Thefeeling I get is that L owenthal accepts the “noble lies” of heritage-mongers as a human




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necessity and throughout his writing he seems to admire fabricated heritage for its better-than-real character, which serves human needs better than the most accurate history evercould.I found the numerous examples in the book chapters entertaining and enlightening. Theyclarified the role of heritage vs. that of history and made it apparent that we need to re-invent

the past in the service of the present as Dennis does. “Sites willfully contrived often serveheritage better than those faithfully preserved”, Lowenthal says. “Heritage departs fromhistory in what it sees, what it stresses, and what it changes”. Frenchman’s interpretation of J amestown seems to try to strike a balance between historical accuracy and technologically-supported fabrication. The two views of heritage (Lowenthal’s and Frenchman’s) seem highlycompatible to me.Heritage is a celebration of the past, and a very subjective celebration, based on the self-interest of a nation, a community, an elite or – sometimes – of a tyrant. Heritage is historysimplified and perfected. The narratives that sustain heritage parks such as Lowell and J amestown are modern – possibly more democratic – interpretations of a complex historicalpast. They are (or will be) successful inasmuch as they reflect the “image” that the general

public wants to have of a New England mill town or of an early settlement, purified of all thenegativity associated with such sites (like child labor, slavery, mistreatment of indigenouspeople, etc.).I was pleased to hear Dennis reaffirm my creed in the importance of “activity”, when hedefined “place” as “structure plus action”, as opposed to “space”, which is just structure. Ireally think this is the key to creating an identity. I guess, if one were to blend my formerdefinition with Dennis’s, one could say that “place” is “space with an identity”. Once anidentity is created it will act as “a scaffolding to which multiple meanings can be attached”,according to Dennis’s interpretation of Lynch’s views on the subject. I t seems obvious to methat only spaces with identity can produce “images” in one’s mind, hence be the repositories of meanings.

In the end, though, I feel much more attuned to J ulian Beinart’s view on this whole subject, ashe expressed in the discussion period (quite aside from the fact that he used St. Mark’s squareas an example). The issue is not so much about the fabrication or design of heritage as bothLowenthal and Frenchman interpret it, but the creation of built forms that wil l engenderheritage claims for future generations. I think the overall discussion was too slanted toward“monumentalized” heritage: single, usually rather small, sites or individual buildings. The attention in these two presentations (and I assume in the upcoming papers) wasdedicated to fabricating heritage based on past relics. I am more interested in the issue of how to design and build new city forms that would embody the same popular sentiment as thatwhich guides heritage fabrication, but in today’s gemeinschaft. In other words, how do wemake the leap between the restitution of past heritage to the creation of narratives of habitation in today’s physical world? What kind of structures and activities should we

encourage in today’s cities that wil l distill, in a few generations, into a coherent and enrichingheritage narrative? Are historical events necessary to create heritage sites? Or is beauty of forms and pleasantness of surroundings the real spark that puts heritage fabrication inmotion?Many of the sites for which heritage narratives are fabricated owe their rebirth and re-invention not so much to the “story” that they embody but on the forms that they display in thefirst instance. Structure comes before all else. I f we have good looking forms, or remnants of such forms, we can “build” the narrative of “action” that gives them full identity. The Lowell




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mills were just sitting there, abandoned. They embodied a “story” which was obfuscated bythe disrepair of the structures and demise of the industrial activity. The restoration of thebuildings made the story come alive again. The same happened in Williamsburg. There are indeed instances in which the process is reversed, as in the case of J amestown,where only a mangled tower remains, but the weight of the story is what gives the whole

heritage fabrication its momentum. “Activity” – in this case the early settlement – is the mainfactor here, and “structure” will follow – whether it is unearthed with archeology or fabricatedwith virtual technologies.

The bottom line is that in the fabrication or design of heritage sites both “structure”and “activity” are necessary for success. Not surprisingly these are the same ingredients thatgive identity and meaning to today’s cities as well…

DeMonchaux

The rating of places is probably an old habit, as de Monchaux points out, and I agree that thishabit seems to have turned into “a national pastime” lately. I t is clear, as both J ohn de

Monchaux and Terry Szold emphasized, that the role of a planner/designer is to make placesbetter and that striving to be the “best” is a distortion of the planner’s credo . In fact, placeratings differ rather substantially from the planner’s mission of “improving” the quality of place and hence the quality of life of a place since they extend the “relative” concept of improvement of a place from its former state to a new – presumably better – condition. Placeratings compare different places on a fictional “absolute” scale in a specific instant in time. I tis hard to argue therefore that place-ratings are a natural extension of the urge to improveone’s lot.I t is also hard to imagine who might really put these place-ratings to good use. I can hardlyimagine a family deciding where to move to based on the Places Rated Almanac , althoughsome companies might consult it as one of the many factors influencing a corporate relocation,

but probably a very minor factor indeed. There are many other, vastly more importantreasons that force such choices, such as fiscal policies, proximity to natural resources or tomajor communication hubs, etc. An amalgamated index might include some of these factors,but the real decisions are made on much more place-specific and company-specific parameters.Macro-migrations, such as those between the major metropolitan areas rated in theA lmanac completely miss the point as far as individuals or families are concerned. A specific job offerfrom a specific company located in a certain metropolitan area will induce a family to look fora house in such area. The main decision is made by “higher” authorities. Once the relocationhas been so decided, a family would search for a home, based on town-specific factors (such asthe quality of the schools, the tax rate, etc.), but also based on available housing stock,preferences for “country” rather than for “urban” settings, and many other personal tastes andneeds that are too fine-grained to be captured by aggregate indexes such as those in the

Almanac or other similar publications.I think the main use of these ratings is political. As Mayor Menino’s brochure on Boston’sratings clearly indicates, the rating business provides ammunition for “boosterism” when theratings are positive. When they are negative, they may become instruments for oppositionparties who will campaign on such negative factors. The fact is that there are so many ratingsgoing around that every political faction, depending on whether it is in power or on thesidelines, will probably be able to selectively pick and choose from the list of plusses andminuses. Occasionally, a negative rating in one category may actually spark remedial action,




December 13, 1998. 48

which may be one of the more positive effects of the ratings, but overall it seems that the realpower of these ratings is not much different from that of the plethora of opinion polls that areconducted daily on every possible topic.I think J ohn’s review of the shortcomings of the ratings would benefit from the addition of hisopinion on “remedial” actions to correct the shortcomings and make these measures more

reflective of a planner’s concerns.Leaving all that aside, though, there is one thing that emerges from this discussion thatreconciles the apparent rift between place-raters and planners/designers. I t is the urge tomeasure change and evaluate it. We may not agree with the methods use to arrive at theseratings, but we all feel that some means for evaluating “before-and-after” a planningintervention would certainly be useful, especially if comparable across different interventionson different places. Such measures may not be possible at all, but, as J ohn suggests, theyshould certainly be explored by researchers in the planning profession. Kevin Lynch certainlytried to point the way in Good Ci ty Form and the “Dimensions of Performance” that hepresented were aimed at this worthy goal: vi ta l i ty, sense, fi t, access, and control plus the:meta-criteria” of efficiency and justice.

Under the heading sense , Lynch propounds his “formal components” of Ident i ty (which heterms “the simplest form of sense”) and Structure . As I repeatedly pointed out before, I trulythink that Ident ity is produced by the conflation of st ructure and act ivity . And it seems to methat the place-ratings authors, as well as Lynch to a large extent, concentrate on the latterinstead of the former. Most of the measures are what I would call “functional”, pertaining toinfrastructure for activity or to other measurable aspects of “li fe” as opposed to “place”.Lynch’s dimensions of performance are also of this type, in my view. Qual it y of Place , whichde Monchaux and Landis and Sawicki find to be missing from these ratings, is so elusive thateven Lynch couldn’t quite nail it down. He did a better job than most, in that he identifiedperformance dimensions that “reflected” quality of place, but these dimensions were reallystill act ivity dimensions reflecting st ructural dimensions but they did not tackle structure per

se .As I indicated before, my personal interest is in vi sua l percepti on of places and in thepreferences that people somehow build up in their (sub-) conscious mind about places. I amattempting to make a contribution to the definition of Quality of Place, looking at the visible,physical structure of cityscapes. The issues brought out by this paper reinforce my resolve to continue to pursue this mostelusive line of inquiry, which may lead us to more complete (and accurate?) assessments of theeffects of planners’ and designers’ interventions on city form.

Hayden & MacLean

As interesting as the presentation was (no paper yet), I found that it to be rich in images but

otherwise lacking in image-theorethical content. As Hayden stated at he beginning of thepresentation:

There are books that focus on the historical and policy end; there are books by architectsthat focus on the physical planning; but there is no book which combines the two to create anew kind of cultural landscape history.

And then later:




December 13, 1998. 49

The camer a can tell power ful stori es about th e pr odu cti on of space wi th th e camer a, but w e wan t

to combi ne them wi th cul tur al hi story.

Well, I did not find the lecture to be a success, as measured by the “cultural history” meter.

The most interesting part of the evening was the definition of the 5-part typology of suburbia:

1) Borderland.2) Picturesque enclave.3) Streetcar Suburbs.4) Single-family mass produced automobile suburb.5) Edge sprawl.

Perhaps the most poignant remark was the assertion that none of these typologies reallyever disappear, but they remain with us… But so what?Alt hough H ayden and M acL ean w ere “interested in how old cores turn into suburban areasand become something peripheral” nothi ng t r ul y new seemed to emer ge fr om t hei r pr esent ati on

to expla in th is tr end (beyond th e fact that spraw l fol lows tra nspor tati on routes and oth er in frastru ctur al amenit i es as is al ways th e case).

I don’t agree completely with the assertion that “M ost im port ant of all is that the

fasci na ti on began w i th th e l andscape and t hen focused exclu sivel y on t he house. The house i s

i deal i zed, not th e bl ock, nei ghborhood, or th e commun i ty”. I differ on the first sentence. I thinkthat the only thing that justifies the clear and continuing trend toward the single-family homewith a garden is precisely an ambivalent attitude that combines the desire for “space” (andlandscape) with the desire for an isolated “home” within such space.

As Eran Ben-J oseph appropriately pointed out, a more interesting tack would havebeen to explore the usefulness of aerial imaging as visual aid to decision-making and planningand most importantly – I would add – to explore the relationship between aerial images and

ground-level images. I t may well be that what looks like blatantly obvious sprawl from the air,may be mitigated so well with screen plantings and concealed by careful site selection (e.g.away from heavily traveled suburban roads or away from residential areas) that such sprawlmay not be perceivable on the ground…

Many interesting issues would emerge if one were to undertake the task of comparingaerial with ground images.

Martin & Warner

I t was refreshing to see a more “down to earth” approach in Martin’s and Warner’s paperand presentation. The “view from the road” approach was interesting, but fell short of

providing documented facts about the Images of Commonplace Living. I t seems that the mainthrust of the paper was to demonstrate that, as seen from a car, the three neighborhoodsinvestigated (Seaward, Roseville and Eden Prairie) were not very dissimilar, despite the factthat they were respectively defined as: Center City (Seaward), Inner Ring Suburb (Roseville)and Outer Ring Suburb (Eden Prairie). The most intriguing conclusion may indeed be that there is a suburbanization of the inner citygoing on. However, I found the three examples a bit hard to read especially because of thelack of much-needed maps to guide our “mental images” of the three places, as the various




“modal blocks” were analyzed. I think the term “modal block” should have been better definedtoo…

In particular, referring to the four characteristics that “stand out” from this study,described in the beginning of the paper, I wonder to what extent the conclusions, especially asthey relate to Seaward, were a mere consequence of the methodology adopted. I f one looks at

the neighborhoods purely from a car, then characteristics 1 (sameness of images) and 2 (littlesocial interaction) are almost inevitable. I suggest that the main difference between a “true”inner city district and any suburbia would be precisely the ability to use “other modes” of motion, especially walking, but also public transport, which may be unavailable in the suburbs. Thus the “downward equalization” that seems to emerge from the paper is a sort of self-fulfi ll ing prophecy in this particular framework.I think that, given the theme of the seminar and the Lynchean quotes at the beginning of thedocument, the paper would have greatly benefited from a detailed analysis of the three“districts” and the chosen “paths”, using an integrated approach that blends the View fr om the

Road and I mage of th e Cit y techniques into a uniform method. I have tried this in one of myearl ier papers and have examples to show how this could be done. I f this was attempted, even

just basing the diagrams on the authors themselves, one may have been able to discern thereal differences in the “images” that residents utilize to navigate the different neighborhoods.“Landmarks” may be smaller in the inner city (maybe not as small as a doorknob…) and“edges” may be tighter. Nodes may be stronger toward the downtown and become weaker asone moves outward… Who knows?I think it may also be useful to think in terms of performance dimensions that may guide thechoice of living location for both outsiders and local movers. I am not sure that “the regionremains a distant abstraction for those seeking a home” if these people are already living inthe metro area and are simply upgrading their house… Such indexes as: school quality, openspace access, access to cultural centers, theaters, access to large retail complexes, access tosport events, etc. should clearly show the real differences between neighborhoods. These

differences will not be visible to the naked eye necessarily, nor will they show up in censusdata. I also suspect that some structural differences should be visible in the physical worldtoo, as long as one chooses to look at paths (modal blocks?) that go beyond the automobilelandscapes chosen in the study.

the image of a good city

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