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Locating Placeby: Grethe Ullrich


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Cities are often criticized because they representthe basest instincts of human society. They are builtversions of Leviathan and Mammon, mapping thepower of the bureaucratic machine or the socialpressures of money. We who live in cities like to thinkof culture as the antidote to this crass vision. TheAcropolis of the urban art museum or concert hall, the

trendy art gallery and caf, restaurants that fuse ethnictraditions into culinary logos cultural activities aresupposed to lift us out of the mire of our everydaylives and into the sacred spaces of ritualized pleasures.

Yet culture is also a powerful means of controllingcities. As a source of images and memories, itsymbolizes who belongs in specic places. Asa set of architectural themes, it plays a leadingrole in urban redevelopment strategies based onhistoric preservation or local heritage. With thedisappearance of local manufacturing industries andperiodic crises in the government and nance, cultureis more and more the business of cities the basis oftheir tourist attractions and their unique, competitiveedge. The growth of cultural consumption (of art,food, fashion, music, tourism) and the industries thatcater to it fuels the citys symbolic economy, its visibleability to produce both symbols and space.

In recent years, culture has become a more explicitsit of conicts over social differences and urban

Preface

fears. Large numbers of new immigrants and ethnicminorities have put pressure on public intuitions, fromschools to political parties, to deal with their individualdemands. Such high culture institutions as artmuseums and symphony orchestras have been drivento expand and diversify their offerings to appeal toa broader public. These pressures, broadly speaking,

are both ethnic and aesthetic. By creating policies andideologies of multiculturalism, they have forcedpublic institutions to change.

On a different level, city boosters increasingly

compete for tourist dollars and

nancial investmentsby bolstering the citys image as a center of culturalinnovation, including restaurants, avant gardeperformances, and architectural design. These culturalstrategies of redevelopment have fewer critics thanmulticulturalism. But they often pit the self-interestof real estate developers, politicians, and expansion-minded cultural institutions against grassrootspressures from local communities.

At the same time, strangers mingling in public spaceand fears of violent crime have inspired he growth ofprivate police forces, gated and barred communities,and a movement to design public spaces for maximumsurveillance. These, too, are a source of contemporaryurban culture. If one way of dealing with the materialinequalities of city life has been to aestheticize

diversity, another way has been to aestheticize fear.Controlling the various cultures of cities suggests

the possibility of controlling all sorts of urban ills,from violence and hate crime to economic decline.That this is an illusion has been amply shown bybattles over multiculturalism and its warring factions ethnic politics and urban riots. Yet the cultural power

to create an image, to frame a vision, of the city hasbecome more important as publics have become moremobile and diverse, and traditional institutions bothsocial classes and political parties have become less

relevant mechanisms of expressing identity. Thosewho create images stamp a collective identity. Whetherthey are media corporations like Disney Company,art museums, or politicians, they are developing newpaces for public cultures. Signicant public spaces ofthe late 19th and early 20th century such as CentralPark, the Broadway theater district, and the top ofthe Empire State Building have been joined byDisney World, Bryant Park, and the entertainment-based retail shops of Sony plaza. By accepting thesespaces without questioning their representatives orurban life, we risk succumbing to a visually seductive,privatized public culture.


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ContentsChapter 1 North AustinChapter 2 East Austin

Chapter 3 South AustinChapter 4 West Austin


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North | 12 North | 13

by itself, but always in relation to itssurroundings, the sequences of eventsleading up to it, the memory of pastexperiences. Every citizen has had longassociations with some part of this city,and his image is soaked in memoriesand meanings. Moving elements in acity, and in particular the people andtheir activities, are as important asthe stationary physical parts. We arenot simply observers of this spectacle,but are ourselves a part of it, on thestage with the other participants.Most often, our perception of the cityis not sustained, but rather partial,fragmenta ry, mixed with other concerns.Nearly every sense is in operation, andthe image is the composite of them all.

Looking at cities can give a specialpleasure, however commonplace thesight may be. Like a piece of architecture,the city is a construction in space, butone of vast scale, a thing perceived onlyin the course of long spans of time. Citydesign is therefore a temporal art, butit can rarely use the controlled andlimited sequences of other temporalarts like music. On different occasionsand for different people, the sequencesare reversed, interrupted, abandoned,cut across. It is seen in all lights and allweathers.

At every instant, there is more thanthe eye can see, more than the ear canhear, a setting or a view waiting tobe explored. Nothing is experienced


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Not only is the city an object whichis perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) bymillions of people of widely diverseclass and character, but it is the productof many builders who are constantlymodifying the structure for reasonsof their own. while it may be stablein general outlines for some time, it isever changing in detail. Only partialcontrol can be exercised over its growthand form. There is no nal result, onlya continuous succession of phases. Nowonder, then, that the art of shaping

cities for sensuous enjoyment is anart quite separate from architecture ormusic or literature. it may learn a greatdeal from these other arts, but it cannotimitate them. A beautiful and delightful

city environment is a oddity, somewould say an impossibility. Not oneAmerican city larger than a village is ofconsistently ne quality, although a fewtowns have some pleasant fragments.It is hardly surprising, then, that mostAmericans have little idea of what it canmean to live in such an environment.They are clear enough about the uglinessof the world they live in, and they arequite vocal about the dirt, the smoke,the heat, and the congestion, the chaosand the monotony of it. But they arehardly aware of the potential value ofharmonious surroundings, a world whichthey may have briey glimpsed only astourists or as an escaped vacationer.

They can have little sense of what a


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setting can mean in terms of daily delight,or as a continuous anchor for their lives,or an an extension of the meaningfulnessand richness of the work.

Although clarity or legibility is by nomeans the only important property of abeautiful city, it is of special importancewhen considering environments at theurban scale of size, time, and complexity.To understand this, we must consider notjust the city as a thing in itself, but thecity being perceived by its inhabitant s.

Structuring and identifying the

environment is a vital ability amongall mobile animals. Many kinds of cuesare used: the visual sensations of color,shape, motion, or polarization of light, aswell as other senses such as smell, sound,

touch, kinesthesia, sense of gravity, andperhaps of electric or magnetic elds.Psychologists have also studied thisability in man, although rather sketchilyor under limited laboratory conditions.Despite a few remaining puzzles, it nowseems unlikely that there is any mystic

instinct of way-nding. Rather thereis a consistent use and organization ofdenite sensory cues from the externalenvironment. This organization isfundamental to the efciency and to thevery survival of free-moving life.

To become completely lost is perhapsa rather rare experience for most peoplein the modern city. We are supported bythe presence of others and by special way-nding devices: maps, street numbers,

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route signs, bus placards. But let themishap of disorientation once occur, andthe sense of anxiety and even terror thataccompanies it reveals to us how closelyit is linked to our sense of balance andwell-being. The very word lost in ourlanguage means much more than simplegeographical uncertainty; it carriesovertones of utter disaster.

In the process of way-nding, thestrategic link is the environmental image,the generalized mental picture of theexterior physical world that is held by

an individual. This images is the productboth of immediate sensation and of thememory of past experience, and it is usedto interpret information and to guideexperience, and it is used to interpret

information and to guide action. Theneed to recognize and pattern oursurroundings is so crucial, and has suchlong roots in the past, that this image haswide practical and emotional importanceto the individual.

Obviously a clear image enables oneto move about easily and quickly: tond afriends house or a policeman or a buttonstore. But an ordered environmentcan do more than this; it may serve asa road frame of reference, an organizerof activity or belief or knowledge. On

the basis of a structural understandingof Manhattan, for example, one canorder a substantial quantity of facts andfancies about the nature of the worldwe live in. Like any good framework,

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of emotional security. She can establishan harmonious relationship betweenherself and the outside world. This isthe obverse of the fear that comes withdisorientation; it means that the sweetsense of home is strongest when home isnot only familiar but distinctive as well.Although life is far from impossible inthe visual chaos of the modern city, thesame daily action could take on newmeaning if carried out in a more vividsetting. Potentially, the city is in itself thepowerful symbol of a complex society. If

visually well set forth, it can also havestrong expressive meaning.

It may be argued against theimportance of physical legibility that thehuman brain is marvelously adaptable,

such a structure gives the individual apossibility of choice and a st arting-pointfor the acquisition of further information.A clear image of the surroundings is thusa useful basis for individual growth.

A vivid and integrated physicalsetting, capable of producing a sharpimage, plays a social role as well. It canfurnish the raw material for the symbolsand collective memories of groupcommunication. A striking landscape isthe skeleton upon which many primitiveraces erect their socially important myths.

Common memories of the home townwere often the rst and easiest point ofcontact between lonely soldiers duringthe war. A good environmental imagegives its possessor an important sense


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East | 28 East | 29

that with some experience one can learn to pick ones way through themost disordered or featureless surroundings. there are abundant examplesof precise navigation over the trackless wastes of sea, sand, or ice, orthrough a tangle maze of jungle.

Yet even the sea has the sun and stars, the winds, currents, birds, andsea-colors without which unaided navigation would be impossible. Thefact that only skilled professionals could navigate among the PolynesianIslands, and this only after extensive training, indicates the difcultiesimposed by this particular environment. Strain and anxiety accompaniedeven the best-prepared expeditions.

In our own world, we might say that almost everyone can, if attentive,

learn to navigate in Jersey City, but only at the cost of some effort anduncertainty. Moreover, the positive values of legible surroundings aremissing: the emotional satisfaction, the framework for communicationor conceptual organization, the new depths that it may bring toeveryday experience. These are pleasures we lack, even if our present cityenvironment is not so disordered as to impose an intolerable strain onthose who are familiar with it.

It must be granted that there is some value in mystication, labyrinth,or surprise in the environment. Many of us enjoy the House of Mirrors,and there is a certain charm in the crooked streets of Boston. This is so,however, only under two conditions. First, there must be no danger of


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losing basic form or orientation, of never coming out. The surprise mustoccur in an over-all framework; the confusions must be small regions in avisible whole. Furthermore, the labyrinth or mystery must in itself havesome form that can be explored and in time be apprehended. Completechaos without hint of connection is never pleasurable.

But these second thoughts point to an important qualication. Theobserver himself should play an active role in perceiving the world andhave a creative part in developing his image. He should have the powerto change that image to t changing needs. An environment which isordered in precise and nal detail may inhibit new patterns of activity. A

landscape whose every rock tells a story may make difcult the creation

of fresh stories. Although this may not seem to be a critical issue in ourpresent urban chaos, yet it indicates that what we seek is not a nal but anopen-ended order, capable of continuous further development.

Building the Image Environmental images are the result of a two-wayprocess between the observer and his environment. The environmentsuggest distinctions and relations, and the observer with great adaptabilityand in the light of his own purposesselects, organizes, and endows withmeaning what he sees. The image so developed now limits and emphasizeswhat is seen, while the image itself is being tested against the lteredperceptual input in a constant interacting process. Thus the image of agiven reality may vary signicantly between different observers.


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East | 36 East | 37

temperament, or familiarity. Each individual creates and bears his ownimage, but there seems to be substantial agreement among membersof the same group. It is these group images, exhibiting consensusamong signicant numbers, that interest city planners who aspire tomodel an environment that will be used by many people.

The systems of orientation which have been used vary widelythroughout the world, changing from culture to culture, and fromlandscape to landscape. the world may be organized around a setof focal points, or be broken into named regions, or be linked byremembered routes. Varied as these methods are, and inexhaustible as

seem to e the potential clues which a man may pick out to differentiate

his world, they cast interesting side-lights on the means that we usetoday to locate ourselves in our own city world. For the most partthese examples seem to echo, curiously enough, the formal types ofimage elements into which we can conveniently divide the city image:path, landmark, edge, node, and district.

Structure and Identity An environmental image may be analyzedinto three components: identity, structure, and meaning. It is useful toabstract these for analysis if it is remembered that in reality they alwaysappear together. A workable image require rst the identication of anobject, which implies its distinction f rom other things, its recognition asa separable entity. This is called identity not in the sense of equality with


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something else, but with the meaning of individuality or oneness. Second,the image must include the spatial or pattern relation of the object tothe observer and to other objects. Finally, this object must have somemeaning for the observer, whether practical or emotional. Meaning isalso a relation, but quite a different one from spatial or pattern relation.

Thus an image useful for making an exit requires the recognitionof a door as a distinct entity, of tis spatial relation to the observer, andits meaning as a hole for getting out. these are not truly separable. Thevisual recognition of a door is matted together with it s meaning as a door.

It is possible, however, to analyze the door in terms of its identity of

form and clarity of position, considered as if they were prior to its meaning.

Such an analytic feat might be pointless in the study of a door, but notin the study of the urban environment. to begin with, the question ofmeaning in the city is a complicated one. Group images of meaning are lesslikely to be consistent at this level than are the perceptions of entity andrelationship. Meaning, moreover, is not so easily inuenced by physicalmanipulation as are these other two components. If it is our purpose tobuild cities for the enjoyment of vast numbers of people of widely diversebackground and cities which will also be adaptable to future purposes wemay even be wise to concentrate on the physical clarity of the image andto allow meaning to develop without our direct guidance. the image ofthe Manhattan skyline may stand for vitality, power, decadence, mystery,


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South | 44 South | 45

congestion, greatness, or what youwill, but in each case that sharp picturecrystallizes and reinforces the meaning.

So various are the individual meaningsof a city, even while its form may beeasily communicable, that it appearspossible to separate meaning from form,at least in the early stages of analysis.This study will therefore concentrate onthe identity and structure of city images.

If an images is to have value fororientation in the living space, it musthave several qualities. It must besufcient, true in a pragmatic sense,allowing the individual to operate withinhis environment to the extent desired.The map, whether exact or not, must begood enough to get one home. It must

be sufciently clear and well integratedto be economical of mental effort: themap must be readable. It should be safe,

with a surplus of clues so that alternativeactions are possible and the risk offailure is not too high. If a blinkinglight is the only sign for a critical turn,a power failure may cause disaster.the image should preferably be open-ended, adaptable to change, allowingthe individual to continue to investigateand organize reality: there should beblank spaces where he can extend thedrawing for himself. Finally, it should insome measure be communicable to otherindividuals. The relative importance ofthese criteria for a good image willvary with different persons in different

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situations; one will prize an economicaland sufcient system, another an open-ended and communicable one.

Since the emphasis here will be on thephysical environment. as the independentvariable, this study will look for physicalqualities which relate to the attributesof identity and structure in the mentalimage. this leads to the denition of whatmight be called imageability: that qualityin a physical object which gives it a highprobability of evoking a strong image inany given observer. It is that shape, color,or arrangement which facilitates themaking of vividly identied, powerfullystructured, highly useful mental imagesof the environment. It might also becalled legibility, or perhaps visibility in a

heightened sense, where objects are notonly able to be seen, but are presentedsharply and intensely to the senses.

Half a century ago, Stern discussedthis attribute of an artistic object andcalled it apparency. While art is notlimited to this single end, he felt thatone of its two basic functions was tocreate images which by clarity andharmony of form fulll the meed forvividly comprehensible appearance. Inhis mind, this was an essential rst steptoward the expression of inner meaning.

A highly imageable (apparent,legible, or visible) city in this peculiarsense would seem well formed, distinct,remarkable; it would invite the eyeand the ear to greater attention and


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participation. The sensuous grasp uponsuch surroundings would not merelybe simplied, but also extended and

deepened. Such a city would be one thatwould be apprehended over time as apattern of high continuity with manydistinctive parts clearly interconnected.The perceptive and familiar observercould absorb new sensuous impactswithout disruption of his basic image,and each new impact would touch uponmany previous elements. He wouldbe well oriented, and he could moveeasily. He would be highly aware of hisenvironment. The city of Venice mightbe an example of such a highly imageableenvironment. In the United Stat es, one istempted to cite parts of Manhattan, San

Francisco, Boston, or perhaps the lakefront of Chicago.

These are characterizations that

ow from our denitions. the conceptof imageability does not necessarilyconnote something xed, limited, precise,unied, or regularly ordered, although itmay sometimes have these qualities. Nordoes it mean apparent at at glance, obvious,patent, or plain. The total environmentto be patterned is highly complex, whilethe obvious image is soon boring, andcan point to only a few features ofthe living world. The imageabilityof city form will be the center of thestudy to follow there are other basicproperties in a beautiful environment:meaning or expressiveness, sensuous


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delight, rhythm, stimulus, choice. Ourconcentration on imageability does notdeny their importance. Our purpose is

simply to consider the need for identityand structure in our perceptual world,and to illustrate the special relevance ofthis quality to the particular case of thecomplex, shifting urban environment.

Since image development is atwo-way process between observer andobserved, it is possible to strengthenthe image either by symbolic devices,by the retaining of the perceiver, or byreshaping ones surroundings, You canprovide the viewer with a symbolicdiagram of how the world ts tother: amap or a set of written instructions. Aslong as he can t reality to the diagram,

he has a clue to the relatedness of things.You can even install a machine forgiving directions, as has recently been

done in New York. While such devicesare extremely useful for providingcondensed data on interconnections, theyare also precarious, since orientationfails if the device is lost, and the deviceitself must constantly be referred andtted to reality. Moreover, the completeexperience of interconnection the fulldepth of a vivid image, is lacking.

You may also train the observer.Brown remarks that a maze throughwhich subjects were asked to moveblindfolded seemed to them at rst tobe one unbroken problem. On repetition,parts of the pattern, particularly the


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beginning and end, became familiar andassumed the character of localities. Finally,when they could tread the maze without

error, the whole system seemed to havebecome one locality. DeSilva describesthe case of a boy who seemed to have

automatic directional orientation, butproved to have been trained from infancy(by a mother who could not distinguishright from left) to respond to the east sideof the port or the south end of the dresser.

Shiptons account of the reconnaissancefor the ascent of Everest offers a dramaticcase of such learning. ApproachingEverest from a new direction, Shiptonimmediately recognized the main peaksand saddles that he knew from the northside. But the Sherpa guide accompanying

him, to whom both sides were longfamiliar, had never realized that thesewere the same features, and he greeted

the revelation with surprise and delight.Kilpatrick describes the process

of perceptual learning forced on anobserver by new stimuli that no longert into previous images. It begins withhypothetical forms that explain the newstimuli conceptually, while the illusionof the old forms persists. The personalexperience of most of us will testify tothis persistence of an illusory imagelong after its inadequacy is conceptuallyrealized. we stare into the jungle an seeonly the sunlight on the green leaves buta warning noise tells us that an animal ishidden there. the observer then learns to


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interpret the scene by singling out give-away clues and by reweightingprevious signals. the camouaged animal may now be picked up by thereection of this eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire patternof perception is changed and the observer need no longer consciouslysearch for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. he hasachieved an image which will operate successfully in the new situation,seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appearsamong the leaves, as plain as day.

In the same way, we must learn to see the hidden forms in the vastsprawl of our cities. We are not accustomed to organizing and imaging

an arti

cial environment on such a large scale; yet our activities are

pushing us toward that end. Curt Sachs gives an example of a failure tomake connections beyond a certain level The voice and drumbeat of theNorth American Indian follow entirely different tempos, the two beingperceived independently. Searching for a musical analogy of our own, hementions our church services, where we do not t hink of coordinating thechoir inside with the bells above.

In our vast metropolitan areas we do not connect the choir andthe bells; like the Sherpa, we see only the sides of Everest and not hemountain. to extend and deepen our perception of the environmentwould be to continue a long biological and cultural development whichhas gone from the contact sense to the distant sense and from the distant


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senses to symbolic communications. Our thesis is that we are now able todevelop our image of the environment by operation and on the externalphysical shape as well as by an internal learning process. Indeed, thecomplexity of our environment now compels us to do so.

Primitive man was forced to improve his environmental image byadapting his perception to the given landscape. He could effect minorchanges in his environment with cairns, beacons, or tree blazes, butsubstantial modications for visual clarity or visual interconnectionwere conned to house sites or religious enclosures. Only powerfulcivilizations can begin to act on their total environment at a signi cant

scale. The conscious remolding of the large-scale physical environment

has been possible only recently and so the problem of environmentalimageability is a new one. Technically, we can now make completely newlandscapes in a brief t ime, as in the Dutch polders. Here the designers arealready at grips wit the question of how to form the total scene so thatit is easy for the human observer to identify its parts and to structurethe whole.

We are rapidly building a new functional unit, the metropolitan region,but we have yet to grasp that this unit, too, should have its correspondingimage, Suzanne Langer sets the problem in her capsule denition ofarchitecture : it is the total environment made visible.

It is clear that the form of a city or of a metropolis will not exhibit some


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gigantic, stratied other. It will be a complicated pattern, continuous andwhole, yet intricate and mobile. It must be plastic to the perceptual habitsof citizens, open-ended to change of function and meaning, receptive tothe formation of new imagery. It must invite its viewers to explore theworld. True enough, we need an environment which is not simply wellorganized, but poetic ad symbolic as well. It should speak of the individualsand their complex society, of their aspirations and their historical tradition,of the natural setting, and of the complicated functions and movements ofthe city world. But clarity of structure and vividness of identity are rststeps to the development of strong symbols. By appearing as a remarkableand well knit place, the city could provide a ground for the clustering and

organization of these meanings and associations Such a sense of place initself enhances every human activity that occurs there, and encouragesthe deposit of a memory trace.

By the intensity of its life and the close packing of its disparate people,the great city is a romantic place, rich in symbolic detail. it is for us bothsplendid and terrifying, the landscape of our confusions, as Flanagancalls it. Were it legible, truly visible, then fear and confusion might bereplaced with delight in the richness and power of the scene.

In the development of the image, education in seeing will be quite asimportant as the reshaping of what is seen. Indeed, they together forma circular, or hopefully a spiral, process: visual education impelling the


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citizen to act upon his visual world, and this action causing him to seeeven more acutely. A highly developed art of urban design is linked tothe creation of a critical and attentive audience. If art and audience growtogether, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions oftheir inhabitants.


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Photo CreditsAbbas DeidehbanMargo Sivin

Lindsey DavenportShaun MartinCorine Brunet


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