Kevin A. Lynch

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See Kevin Lynch for other people with this name.

Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984 Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts), American urban planner and author.

Lynch studied at Yale, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and briefly under Frank Lloyd Wright before graduating from MIT in 1947, becoming a professor of urban planning in 1963 and staying until his death almost 35 years later.

Lynch's most famous work, "The Image of the City" published in 1960, is the result of a five-year study on how users perceive and organize spatial information as they navigate through cities. 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; and
landmarks, readily identifiable objects which serve as 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.

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