| Good City Form | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 124385
Category: Book
Author: Kevin Lynch
Publisher: The MIT Press
Studio: The MIT Press
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
Label: The MIT Press
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 524
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0262620464
Dewey Decimal Number: 307.7601
EAN: 9780262620468
ASIN: 0262620464
Publication Date: February 23, 1984
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
With the publication of The Image of the City in 1959, Kevin Lynch embarked upon the process of exploring city form. Good City Form is both a summation and an extension of his vision, a high point from which he views cities past and possible. First published in hardcover under the title A Theory of Good City Form
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| Customer Reviews:
The power of practical urban design theory June 12, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As one who straddles the two worlds of practice and scholarship with great ease and comfort, I am struck by that rare work of craft which is at once profoundly thoughtful as well as clearly directed. Most serious scholars bend over backwards to embrace the myth of "objectivity", while most practitioners salivate over superficial "best practices". Kevin Lynch's masterpiece, Good City Form, avoids both traps while offering a template for judging the effectiveness of different types of urban form and providing a guide for successful urban design projects. His starting points, a masterful overview of models of urban form throughout history and a sensitive ode to humanist values, help establish a foundation for performance dimensions to measure "good city form": Vitality, Sense, Fit, Access, Control, Efficiency and Justice. I would highly recommend this book to reflective practitioners, scholars interested in the practice of urban design, and others simply interested in shaping the future of our cities. In addition, the book works well with two others as an excellent advanced introduction to the field of urban design: "The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History" by Spiro Kostof, and "Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form" by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Tridib Banerjee.
Good City Form July 24, 2001
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
In the world of urban design, obsessed with spectacular novelty and superficial aesthetics, this ambitious and profound work of Kevin Lynch is refreshing, yet enduring. He suggests a theory of urban design based on fundamental human values and examines how such values lead to the notion of a "good city form". His performance dimensions (e.g. access, fit, vitality) are broad enough to be interpreted and re-interpreted for specific contexts and sites. And the appendix, which briefly summarizes other theories of city form, is a tour-de-force by itself. A masterpiece which deserves greater attention and consideration, especially by those under the illusion that urban design is more or less architecture writ large!
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