Kevin A. Lynch - The Image of The City

Lynch's most famous work, The Image of the City published in 1960, is the result of a five-year study on how observers take in information of the city. Using three disparate cities as examples (Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles), Lynch reported that users understood their surroundings in consistent and predictable ways, forming mental maps with five elements:

• paths, the streets, sidewalks, trails, and other channels in which people travel;
• edges, perceived boundaries such as walls, buildings, and shorelines;
• districts, relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or character;
• nodes, focal points, intersections or loci;
• landmarks, readily identifiable objects which serve as external reference points.

In the same book Lynch also coined the words "imageability" and "wayfinding". Image of the City has had important and durable influence in the fields of urban planning and environmental psychology.