Alguns modelos de forma urbana segundo Kevin Lynch
[fonte: LYNCH, K. A boa forma da cidade. Lisboa: Edições 70, 1999, p. 397]
Anne Vernez Moudon: First of all, I do not ask myself this question, I think it is a rhetorical question that is kind of silly. It’s silly in the sense that a city itself is not an entity that you can ask what is good or bad about it. When Kevin Lynch asked this question, I think he did so in a romantic sort of way. He was being allegorical. I am not a romantic person, so I cannot tell you what a good city is. To address the question, Kevin Lynch talks about processes that are very abstract. I love to read the book, but I think it is impossible to actually apply the ideas in an operational way. I don’t know what people mean or think when they say they can make a good city after reading “Good city form.”
AFR / DSP: But it still has a lot of influence on the Urban Design…
AVM: Oh, absolutely, but that influence feeds the persistent notion that designers can “change the world,” that dreaming about our role in making a good place, or a good city. First of all what city are we talking about? You have here Seattle, you have Londrina, Tel-Aviv, they are very different cities, extremely different. The same person with the same money can live in Tel-Aviv or in Seattle in many different ways. Which one is the good city for that person? Why? Let’s say a good city is where people like living, this would be a very simple definition. Try to make this happened as an urban designer, this is not easy.
AFR / DSP: But here in the University of Washington, in many courses, also in Israel and Brazil, a lot of people are still talking about Kevin Lynch, because he opened a door with this romantic side approach for urban design, and if you don’t apply this for us to try to built or design better cities as a professional or as a technician there is no more definition or no more role for us, what is our role? For example “visibility”, a subtle concept, but you can try to explain in your words, he just opened the door and he were not closing doors. He is not focusing on “you have to do that!”
AVM: Yes, Lynch’s work is an inspiriting force and the writing is beautiful. My preferred book by the way is “What time is this place” (1976), but the difference I make is, I guess, I don’t need Kevin Lynch to develop my professional thoughts and skills. I like some of the concepts he offers, I like reading the books as works of literature, but I don’t find them very helpful in the every day of my professional life.
AFR / DSP: You used to think of them? Let’s say 20 years ago...
AVM: Lynch’s writings were likely less influential for me than Umberto Ecco’s, both however were inspiring pieces of literature. The other thing I have with Lynch is I see both his interpretation and his vision of the city as primarily Anglo-Saxon and protestant. I find him “different” and interesting, but I don’t think I can apply his advice to my questions.
Did you read the chapter in “Good city form” that talks about his idea of the future city? His vision to me is not that of a city at all, with a bustling life, mix of people, domestic and commercial life, movement, trade, etc., but a pastoral landscape for a highly ordered society. I see Lynch’s vision as akin to that of an ideal and idealized contemporary suburb. I don’t like this personally, but that’s irrelevant, what is relevant is that vision does not match 90% of the cities in the world today! Further, I suspect that that vision is ill fitted for an earth with 8 or 9 billion people. We just do not have enough space and resources for this kind of good city.
AFR / DSP: Maybe he had the ability to make the city visible to everyone, also he gave us a way to think of a city not as an object or a way to think of a city as a sensation, and you can feel, and if you can feel you can design better it is not to much quantitative but more qualitative approach to the city. It is not really an easy book and as we said, the book open ideas…
AVM: Let me go back. For me, Kevin Lynch’s thought are those of an English, protestant romantic man. And so I read his books in this way, with a great pleasure, but with obvious distance. I do not learn much from them that apply to my profession, I learn about how his part of the world sees about my profession. For me William Whyte is more accessible, for instance. His book “The Organization Man” and his film “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” teach me more at the professional level. It is interesting because he is an American man of the mid 20th century, but the way he sees the world teaches me more.
What I perceive as the over-use of Lynch (and Jane Jacobs for that matter) is related I think to a certain intellectual laziness in our profession. Lynch was a good thinker and a good writer and we should refer to him. But there are lots of other authors with interesting writings! Why don’t we use them as well? This is why I did “A Catholic Approach to Organizing What Urban Designers Should Know” (1992). I did this not because I don’t like Kevin Lynch but because he is not the only one! We need to stop identifying or going being the identification of single idols. The world is complex, and we need to embrace this complexity in the works we reference. Interestingly, Lynch himself was an extremely modest person, and he wrote about his frustration with people from every walks of life quoting and specifically misquoting him! He wanted less the limelight than the discussions and new work that would emerge from his own work. Lynch’s work benefited from the MIT connection and the popularity of the institution. Lynch himself benefited from being a student when psychology studies of place first started and the Ford Foundation supported these efforts at MIT.
