CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 151Urban Design and Spatial AnalysisGeographic Information Systems StudiesSpatial Cognition and Navigation

A computational approach to ‘The Image of the City’

Open access
Filomena, Gabriele, Verstegen, Judith A., Manley, Ed·2019·Cities
DOI 10.1016/j.cities.2019.01.006
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

In The Image of the City Lynch describes how individuals perceive and recall features in urban spaces. The most distinctive elements in the urban landscape - categorised in paths, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks - give shape to individuals' mental representation of the city. Lynch’s approach has stimulated research into spatial cognition, urban design and artificial intelligence, and it still represents an essential pillar in the analysis of urban dynamics. Nevertheless, an explicit link between The Image of the City and GIScience has not been completely explored yet. In this paper, a computational approach to The Image of the City is proposed. Different perspectives in spatial cognition and GIS research are integrated to obtain a complete Image of the City, in which the most salient elements are shared by a large part of citizens. Nodes, paths and districts were identified through network science techniques. Methods drawn from the information approach to The Image of the City are used to detect landmarks, integrating the complexity of points of reference in their visual, structural and semantic components, as conceptualised by Lynch and successive research. The methods were applied to the central area of Boston and built using freely available spatial datasets. Results were compared to Lynch’s maps to evaluate the methodology: besides a considerable discrepancy with regard to landmarks, a good correspondence for paths, nodes, edges and districts was found.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.cities.2019.01.006

Cites

107 of 107 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • In a more recent computational study, the original sketch map of Boston consisting of elements collectively described by its residents was recreated using graph-network indices such as betweenness centrality, incidence angle of vertices and modularity optimization.

    “In a more recent computational study, the original sketch map of Boston consisting of elements collectively described by its residents, was recreated using graph-network indices such as betweenness centrality [G], incidence angle of vertices and modularity optimization 34 .”

    From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [34]

  • Graph-theoretic measures of street networks have been used to operationalize the essential urban elements that characterize a city form, as theorized by Kevin Lynch.

    “Graph-theoretic measures of street networks have also been used to operationalize the essential urban elements that characterize a city form, as theorized by the urban theorist Kevin Lynch 33,34 .”

    From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [34]

  • A city street network is transformed into a network of lines using its topological properties.

    “First, a city street network is transformed into a network of lines using its topological properties 34,[173][174][175] .”

    From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [34]

  • These statistical commonalities of mobility patterns characterize the underlying structure of a city and navigational behaviours, and provide support for the notion of a spatial schema for an environment with key elements that can be generalized to other environments that belong to a superordinate category.

    “Given that these statistical commonalities of mobility patterns characterize the underlying structure of a city 41,43 and navigational behaviours 34,117,178,179 , they provide support for the notion of a spatial schema for an environment with key elements that can be generalized to other environments that belong to a superordinate category 159 .”

    From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [34]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Figueiredo, L., & Amorim, L. (2005). Continuity lines in the axial system. 5th International Space Syntax symposium (pp. 161-174). Delft.
  2. Haken, H. (1983). Synergetics: An introduction. Nonequilibrium phase transitions and self- organization in physics, chemistry, and biology. Berlin: Springer.
  3. Haq, S., & Girotto, S. (2003). Ability and intelligibility: Wayfinding and environmental cognition in the designed environment. In J. Hanson (Ed.). Proceedings, 4th interna- tional space syntax symposium (pp. 68.1-68.20). London.
  4. Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  5. Zipf, G. K. (1949). Human behaviour and the principles of least effort. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Filomena, G., Verstegen, J. A., & Manley, E.
Affiliations
  • University of Münster (DE)
  • The Alan Turing Institute (GB)
Corresponding author
Filomena, Gabriele
ORCID
Venue
Cities
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-06
Volume
89
Pages
14-25
ISSN
0264-2751 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.cities.2019.01.006
OpenAlex
W2912721175
Cited by
151
References
107
Citations by year
2026: 30 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 2
FWCI
9.88
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Cities (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Urban Design and Spatial Analysis
  • Social Sciences › Geography, Planning and Development › Geographic Information Systems Studies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
Keywords
The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch, spatial cognition, urban landmarks, urban districts

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review