Imazhi i qytetit

This book is about the look of cities, and whether this look is of any importance, and whether it can be changed. The urban landscape, among its many roles, is also something to be seen, to be remembered, and to delight in. Giving visual form to the city is a special kind of design problem, and a rather new one at that. In the course of examining this new problem, the book looks at three American cities: Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles. It suggests a method whereby we might begin to deal with visual form at the urban scale, and offers some first principles of city design. The work that lies behind this study was done under the direction of Professor Gyorgy Kepes and myself at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was generously supported over several years by funds from the Rockefeller Foundation. The book itself is being published as one of a series of volumes of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, an agency which has grown out of the urban research activities of these two institutions. As in any intellectual work, the content derives from many sources, difficult to trace. Several research associates contributed directly to the development of this study: David Crane, Bernard v Frieden, William Alonso, Frank Hotchkiss, Richard Dober, Mary Ellen Peters (now Mrs. Alonso). I am very grateful to them all. One name should be on the title page with my own, if only he would thereby not be made responsible for the shortcomings of the book. That name is Gyorgy Kepes. The detailed development and concrete studies are my own, but the underlying concepts were generated in many exchanges with Professor Kepes. I would be at a loss to disentangle my ideas from his. For me these have been good years of association. KEVIN LYNCH