ABSTRACT
Scholars often compare cities to text (Short, 1996, 390). A favoured metaphor likens the existing city to a palimpsest, the name given a piece of parchment or other writing-material written upon twice, on which the original script has been erased to make way for the second. This occurred because parchment, in particular, was expensive and capable of re-use, but the process of erasure was often incomplete. Close examination of the parchment allows the trained eye to discern at least traces of the original writing. Applying that idea to cities, urbanists have shown that it is possible to trace previous stages in the city’s development despite the overlayering of the present. Another popular, and related, metaphor envisages the city as a book. Kevin Lynch (1960), for instance, wrote about the city’s ‘legibility’, which he defined as the ease with which individuals can organise the various elements of urban form into coherent mental ‘images’. Writing from an architect’s perspective, he argued that cities varied in the extent to which they evoke a strong image – a quality he termed ‘imageability’. Lynch argued that
‘imageable’ cities were places that could be apprehended as patterns of high continuity with interconnected parts. In other words, a city was likely to be ‘imageable’ if it was also ‘legible’. On a related theme, David Harvey (2001, 128) reported that: ‘A city centre . . . is a great book of time and history’. Its buildings, individually and in groupings, contain important information as to what the city is currently about and what it has been. What is necessary is to learn how to read the signs and to incorporate them into a convincing explanatory narrative. One area in which these skills are invaluable is in interpreting the way that powerful groups in society have moulded the urban landscape of their day.
