This class this past week we have
been discussing the structure of a city and its role in cinema. That a city is
a problem of organized complexity, neither a simple relationship between ratios
and statistics nor a completely random system but something based on more
complicated relationships. In answering what problem a city represents we
delved into the components of the problem, first noting that cities can be read
and therefore have legibility. The elements of cleanliness and architectural
design, population and liveliness allow those living in a city to find their
way in it and know what areas to avoid or seek out. The legibility is made of
many parts, the paths used for travel, the districts that define the structure
of the city and edges that mark boundaries between them, the nodes that form
around path crossings and social hangout spots, and the landmarks that guide
people on the paths through nodes. We finished the week discussing how the city
environment is perceived both in media, such as movies, and by people that are
unused to it. How a city is thought of as a scary and uninviting place by those
that live in the country and vice versa.
In this
article it discusses how city legibility can be measured and improved depending
on how regular or irregular of the paths and landmarks of a city are. In
specific the article focus on a study conducted between three cities. In order
of decreasing regularity they are: Saltaire, Sheffield, and Runcorn. It was
found that local Englishmen could navigate and remember the cities with the
most amount of regularity the best. The resulting map cross reference between
all study participants was known as the group image. The group image was most
accurate and contained the most information in Saltaire, due to its high amount
of regularity. The study went on use group density of movement, pathway
configuration and the location of significant spatial elements to track the social
aspects of the city and related them to the maps of the study participants. Unsurprisingly
it found that city elements that were highly used regular showed up far more regularly
in the group image. These elements were calculated as intelligible, it was
found that Saltaire was the most intelligible while Runcorn was the lowest. It was
further found that physical visibility is not linked to the importance of spatial
element in group images.
