Site Planning Kevin A. Lynch

[Derrick Drescher]

Thedocument discusses site planning and analysis of natural factors for site selection. It describes analyzing a site's geology, geomorphology, hydrology, vegetation, wildlife and climate. Key aspects of the natural analysis include examining a site's topography and slopes through tools like contour maps and slope maps. These maps are used to understand drainage, soil composition and erosion potential to determine suitable land uses and site design.Read less

This new edition of Kevin Lynch's widely used introductory textbook has been completely revised; and is also enriched by the experience of Lynch's coauthor, Gary Hack. For over two decades, Site Planning has remained the only comprehensive source of information on all the principal activities and concerns of arranging the outdoor physical environment. Now, new illustrations double the visual material and one hundred pages of new appendixes cover special techniques, provide references to more detailed technical sources, and put numerical standards in a concise form.

Kevin Lynch (1918-1984) studied with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin and later obtained a Bachelor of City Planning degree from MIT. After a long and distinguished career on the faculty of the MIT School of Architecture and Urban Planning, he was named Professor Emeritus of City Planning.

Gary Hack has studied, taught, and practiced site planning for more than forty years in the United States, Canada, and other countries. He is Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at MIT, where he headed the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Professor at Tsinghua and Chongqing Universities.

A student of architect Frank Lloyd Wright before training in city planning, Lynch spent his academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, teaching there from 1948 to 1978. He practiced site planning and urban design professionally with Carr/Lynch Associates, later known as Carr, Lynch, and Sandell.

Lynch was born as the youngest child of an Irish-American family on January 7, 1918.[1] He was raised on Chicago's North Side.[2] After graduating from the Francis Parker School in 1935, Lynch matriculated at Yale University intending to study architecture.[3] Finding its pedagogy too conservative, he left to study under Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Scottsdale Arizona.[4] Lynch later stated that Wright was a great influence, but disagreed with his individualistic social philosophy.[5] Leaving Wright after a year and a half, he enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York to study engineering in 1939, but did not complete the program and went to work for Chicago architect Paul Schweikher. In 1941, Lynch married Anne Borders, a fellow graduate of the Parker School.[6]

Three weeks after his wedding, Lynch was drafted into the Army Corps of Engineers, serving in the siege of Peleliu, the Philippines and Japan through January 1946.[7] After the war, he completed his undergraduate education at MIT and received a Bachelor's degree in city planning in 1947.[8]

After graduation, Lynch began work in Greensboro, North Carolina as an urban planner but was soon recruited to teach at MIT by Lloyd Rodwin. He began lecturing at MIT the following year, becoming an assistant professor in 1949, a tenured associate professor in 1955, and a full professor in 1963.[8]

Lynch provided seminal contributions to the field of City Planning through empirical research on how individuals perceive and navigate the urban landscape.[12] His books explore the presence of time and history in the urban environment, how urban environments affect children, and how to harness human perception of the physical form of cities and regions as the conceptual basis for good urban design.

Lynch's most famous work, The Image of the City (1960), is the result of a five-year study on how observers take in information of the city. Using three American 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:

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.

Anne Borders Lynch and Kevin Lynch were married in 1941 and had four children.[6] The Lynches were long-term residents of Martha's Vineyard, where Anne continued spending her summers until her death in 2011.[6]

Since 2000, under the direction of Eran Ben-Joseph, and later on Mary Anne Ocampo the class has incorporated hands-on, client-based projects dealing with an array of prevailing environmental and site systems planning issues. These include: hurricane devastated areas in Biloxi, MS the retrofitting of housing developments in Tama, Japan and the transformation of contaminated waterfront sites in Bronx, NY.

The students of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 2021 Site and Environmental Systems Practicum (11.304j) created four interactive pamphlets for the East Boston community as tools to support their participation in planning processes.

This Site and Environmental Planning workshop investigated resiliency strategies for Pellestrina, Italy, a barrier island that separates the Venetian Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea and protects the world heritage city of Venice and lagoon islands from storm events. Since the flood of 1966, the most devastating historic event that flooded Venice with more than three meters of water, the Italian State has been focusing on planning initiatives to protect urban areas from high waters, safeguard the coastal islands from storm events, restore lagoon ecosystems, and plan for socio-economic development on the islands within the 550 km2 area that makes up the lagoon area. Pellestrina, an island of fishing and agricultural villages spread along the 11 km coastline, has always acted as part of the larger infrastructure protecting Venice and the Lagoon, but how is Pellestrina being protected?

As Austin embarks on a potential new land development code to accommodate its rapid growth, an exploration of the city's planning processes and appropriate mix of housing typologies questions the role of current community-based approaches to urban design.

Beginning in the summer of 2015, students from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT began working with residents of the Emancipation Park neighborhood, a historically African-American community in Houston, Texas. The first group of students helped the Emancipation Economic Development Council establish a set of working groups to study key community issues. A second group of students prepared a report building on previous work and a practicum in the Spring of 2016.

In January 2015, a group of MIT students and professors traveled to Manila for a two-week site visit that included extensive fieldwork, stakeholder interviews, community meetings, and design charrettes. Students from MIT and UP worked collaboratively to understand the history and present context of development, settlement, and natural disasters in relation to informailty and vulnerability and then brainstromed approaches to addressing these complex challenges.

The MIT Site and Urban System class (11.304/4.255) worked with the City of Boston Director of Bicycle Programs and Toole Design Group to develop a comprehensive and integrated bicycle plan and street design that enhance a livable public realm, are shared by all modes of travel equitably, and are responsive to environmental conditions.

The Spring 2009 Site Planning studio is a continuation of a long-term research project initiated in the summer of 2008 and followed by the Advanced Japan Design Workshop of Fall 2008. The research project rethinks the future of housing development within the context of developing a prototype for sustainable urban community. It utilizes Tama New Town outside Tokyo as a reference for the work. The Studio was funded and conducted in part in collaboration with the staff and resources of Sekisui House Ltd. of Japan.

Weston Nurseries comprises +/- 700 acres of land (more than 5% of the total land area of Hopkinton). For the last several years the owners of the property have been investigating ways to extract value from the land to enable the business to re-invent itself for the next generation of the family. Most recently, there has appeared in the marketplace an offering of 615 acres of nursery property for sale.

This offering presents Hopkinton with an enormous opportunities and challenges. What and how much should be developed? Which areas should be preserved? What is the right development? What are the pros and cons of the possible uses and the future costs associated with it?

Due to the size, location and landmark significance of the Weston Nurseries property, the Town wishes to identify and explore all commercially reasonable means to acquire the Site, including but not limited to an outright purchase by the Town or formal or informal partnerships with developers, land conservation groups, and other interested organizations.

The idea of site plan is to locate objects and activities in space and time. These plans may concern a small cluster of houses, a single building and its surrounding ground, or something as extensive as a small community built in a single operation (Luna, 2021).

The form of a particular site is of importance to the site planner as it helps in laying out the ground work. Ground slope is considered as one of the important aspects of topography of a site since use and maintenance of the further site is dependent on it. The form of a site is critical to how it may be used. Ground slope is one of the more important aspects of the topography, since use and maintenance are dependent on it. This relationship will vary according to the pattern of activity, but there is a general classification worth remembering. Slopes under 4% (rising 4 feet in 100 feet of horizontal distance) seem flat and are usable for all kinds of intense activity. Slopes between 4 and 10% appear as easy grades, suitable for informal movement and activity. Slopes over 10% seem steep and can be actively used only for hill sports or free play. Gradients over 10% require noticeable effort to climb or to descend (Lynch, Site Form and Site Ecology, 1972).

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