We are also interested in street design because good streets mean lively neighborhoods. According to Kevin Lynch, a street becomes a real path if it is suitable for pedestrians to walk along at ease, if it has a clear sense of direction, or if it is endowed with character; for example, by the concentration of a distinctive type of commercial activity, or a special type of paving or facade. Banerjee, Tridib; Southworth, Michael (eds.). City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12143-3. He suggests that urban inhabitants should be able to actively form their own stories and create new activities. He presents his work as an agenda for urban designers. They should design the city in such a way that it gives room for three related ‘movements’: mapping, learning, shaping. First, people should be able to acquire a clear mental map of their urban environment. Second, people should be able to learn how to navigate in this environment by training. Third, people must be able to operate and act upon their environment. For Lynch, the benefit of using such elements in design was to create a more coherent spatial organisation at large scale, so that new types of city could also have ‘sensuous form’. This hints at an interesting aspect of the book. While Lynch’s research was conducted at a time when specialist, scientific methods were becoming increasingly familiar on both sides of the Atlantic, and city planning and design was becoming more technocratic, Lynch retained an interest in people - the city user as he called them - and the reader can still see a poetic and romantic point of view. Lynch retained a belief in urbanism as art, and accords importance to the emotions of individuals and city users. Reconsidering the Image of the City". In Banerjee, Tridib; Southworth, Michael (eds.). Cities of the Mind: Environment, Development, and Public Policy. Springer. pp.151–161.

After graduation, Lynch began work in Greensboro, North Carolina as an urban planner but was soon recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin. He began lecturing at MIT the following year, becoming an assistant professor in 1949, a tenured associate professor in 1955, and a full professor in 1963. [8]MIT Press began publishing journals in 1970 with the first volumes of Linguistic Inquiry and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Today we publish over 30 titles in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology. Landmarks are those reference points that one can remember with closed eyes and that any child would draw on a map of his city or neighborhood.

Michael Batty, from his vision of the “syntax of space” argues that, if the city is a superposition of networks (transport, sanitation, social, etc.), it is at the points of exchange (nodes) that architecture is produced. Thus, the construction of a market would be the architectural consequence of the existence of a place suitable for commercial exchange. Paris, Hong Kong, New York, and…where??? What makes one city very obvious and recognisable, and another nondescript and difficult to navigate? the most successful node seemed both to be unique in some way and at the same time to intensify some surrounding characteristic" [1] :77

The Image of the City

These three components vary in its objectivity (identity) to being completed subjective (meaning). Therefore, each person’s ‘image of the city’ differs considerably, depending on how we relate to the environment, and especially the meanings we attribute through experience. You can test the legibility of your environment yourself — think of where you live, and how you might direct someone to get to the local shops. What mental map do you form in your head? What paths do you travel along? What landmarks do you see? What environment do you arrive at?