Something that I noticed in “Pattern Language” and “the Image of the City”. these two readings especially, and from the understanding of Jane Jacobs is that the people are the most important part of the city. I think that getting an understanding of the cities by interviewing some of its inhabitants was a very smart way of going through it and makes you start to think about what is coming across to different people and how they are moving through their environment differently depending on which city they are in. From the “Image of the City”, I liked the idea of visibility and clarity of the city that they were trying to explain. I think by asking people their experience of the city they were able to overlay and compile their responses to get a more clear understanding of the workings of the center of the city as a whole. A quote that really stuck out to me was towards the end that “[the city] must invite its viewers to explore the world” (Lynch, 1960). It seems like such a simple and clear idea, but looking back at the interviews of Jersey City and Los Angeles, it seems that those cities failed to meet that idea, as people lacked clarity in their descriptions of the city center in LA, and were generally unenthusiastic about the city in Jersey City.
I liked reading through the “Pattern Language”, I think it is an interesting point to try and follow a kind of formula through each project. I also thought that the example of building a porch was very interesting because even when just reading the titles of each section, I imagined something very different from what was later described, so it very clearly showed to me how these elements can be adapted to various situations. Overall, I was very interested in this idea of breaking projects down into smaller parts, so in a way, it was looking at a kind of bigger picture, but the way it was implemented feels more bottom-up as an approach.
Alexander, Christopher, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa. A Pattern Language . Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Lynch, Kevin A. The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960.