Kevin Lynch’s seminal work The Image of the City continues to inform urban analysis through its clear methodological framework and perceptual categories that simplify the complex urban experience. His classification of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks offers a structure to decode how individuals mentally map their environments, fostering legibility and orientation. However, while Lynch’s approach gained significant academic traction, it has also faced criticism for its tendency toward oversimplification and its reliance on visual order as the primary axis of urban understanding. The contemporary dialogue repositions Lynch’s ideas in a post-contemporary context, arguing that urban complexity today demands a broader sensorial and sociocultural engagement with space. The authors emphasize the necessity of interdisciplinary perspectives—merging architecture, psychology, and sociology—to grasp the evolving dynamics of urban identity formation. An illustrative case arises in the teaching of architecture, where Lynch’s categories are still used to map urban perceptions; yet, these exercises often lack critical depth and fail to incorporate factors like social fragmentation or symbolic dissonance, revealing the limits of a purely visual methodology in today’s heterogeneous and contested urban spaces.
Saga, M. and Fernández Ramírez, B., 2017. Debate interdisciplinar. #Leer la ciudad: la imagen de la ciudad. URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 7(1), pp.125–136
