ancient cities

478 Lynch, Kevin
was supported by the works of Rawls, which he
discussed. The apparent convergence of Lynch’s
normative philosophy of good city form and
Sen’s moral theory of human functioning, capability,
and freedom remains an area of future
scholarly explorations.
Practice of City Design
While making such theoretical, if normative
contributions to our understanding of the human
purposes and consequences of urban form, Lynch
was also engaged in the practice of city design
throughout his career. He began his career as a
city planner in Greensboro, North Carolina,
before he was recruited by MIT to join the faculty
of city planning. During his academic career, he
never lost touch with practice and as a scholar–
practitioner always combined pedagogy with
research and clinical experiences. He often tried to
apply his normative views in practice, while drawing
from his practice in his teaching and writings.
Some of the more notable examples of his
projects include a plan for Boston’s waterfront
development, a campus plan in Cleveland, a development
scheme for the Rio Salado corridor in
Phoenix, a plan for the future development of the
San Diego metropolitan region (with Donald
Appleyard), and a conservation plan for Martha’s
Vineyard. Lynch’s projects were often collaborative
and participatory but never deterministic or
definitive. He often emphasized the process that
can accommodate change and, rather than proposing
a concrete scheme, almost always preferred
broad guidelines, design rules, and illustrative
possibilities.
Lynch had his share of detractors. While appreciating
his intellectual contributions, social scientists
found his work lacking rigor—they questioned
the size and selection of samples for The Image of
the City, for example—and full of assertions or
speculations. Others found his writing imprecise
and containing ambiguities and contradictions.
Practitioners found his writings too visionary or
unrealistic. Because Lynch never offered concrete
images of the good city form he advocated, many
found his work inspiring but difficult to translate
into practice. His work did not lead to the kind of
paradigms—new urbanism, for example—on
which practitioners often rely.
Biographical Background
Lynch was born in Chicago, and grew up in the
northern part of the city near the shores of Lake
Michigan. He attended the progressive Francis
Parker School where the curriculum was influenced
by John Dewey’s philosophy of learning
by doing. His early years were influenced by major
world events—the Spanish War, the Great Depression,
and the rise of communism. In high school, he developed
an interest in architecture and went to Yale to
pursue this interest. Soon, he was disillusioned by the
rigid Beaux-Arts tradition of Yale’s architecture program.
He was intrigued by Frank Lloyd Wright’s
work and contacted Wright about the possibility of
studying architecture with him.
With encouragement from Wright, Lynch left
Yale and joined Taliesin in Wisconsin. As Wright
chose to move to Arizona, Lynch, along with
other apprentices, accompanied him. He did not
stay there too long, however, finding Wright’s
authoritarian style stifling. He went on to study
biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in
New York. In 1941, he married Anne Borders
and soon was inducted by the U.S. Army and sent
to the South Pacific, Japan, and the Philippines as
a member of the Army Corps of Engineers.
After he came back, he went to MIT under the
G.I. Bill and finished a bachelor’s degree in city
planning in 1947. He joined the MIT planning faculty
in 1948 and began his early explorations on the
visual form and images of the city with Gyorgy
Kepes, a renowned expert on visual arts, and a colleague
at MIT. A study grant from the Ford
Foundation gave him the opportunity to spend a
year in Italy, based mainly in Florence. His flânerie
in European cities—not unlike Walter Benjamin’s
wanderings in Paris—was inspirational for him and
helped him to conceptualize his seminal work, The
Image of the City. After retiring from MIT in 1978
he became fully engaged in practice with the
Cambridge, Massachusetts–based firm of Carr
Lynch Associates, and he remained active in writing
and practice until his unexpected death in 1984.
His students remember him as a kind, supportive,
and affectionate mentor who always tried to
inspire his students to explore new ideas and
branch out to do original thinking. He appreciated
creativity, unconventional views, and even
wit and humor in student proposals. Many of his