Urban Image and Urban Aesthetics: Urban Aesthetics in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Urban Image and Urban Aesthetics:
Urban Aesthetics in Cross-Cultural Perspective[1]

CHENG Xiangzhan

Statement: The revised version of the paper has been published formally in The Journal of Faculty of Letters (JFL), No. 2, 2008. Its PDF format in the journal can be reached at the following address:
http://www.edebiyatdergisi.hacettepe.edu.tr/eng/icindekiler.asp?y=2008&s=2



Abstract: Environments can be divided into natural environments and built ones. Urban environments are the most important and complex built environments. But, works about urban aesthetics are fewer and less comprehensive. The paper proposes that urban image is the object of urban aesthetics, which can response to the two fundamental questions of “what and how to aesthetically appreciate” proposed by Allen Carlson in his aesthetics of natural environment. The paper takes Kevin Lynch’s idea of city image as starting point and then focus on urban aesthetics mainly implied or reflected by the aesthetic characters of traditional Chinese cities and the design philosophy behind them. In his outstanding book The Image of the City, Lynch develops his theory of city image, concentrating on city “environmental image” and its three components: identity, structure, and meaning. The paper tries to apply Lynch’s theories of city image to the analysis of Chinese cities. Traditional Chinese cities were typically structured and shaped as squares and the basic orientation were sited north and faced south, with the North-South avenue as its axis. The paper traces the philosophical and cultural reasons for this kind of structure and its orientation, pointing out that the principle of traditional Chinese city design is “to imitate the images that cleave to Heaven and the forms manifested on Earth” (象天法地，Xiang-Tian Fa-Di). Ancient Chinese people thought that Heaven is round and Earth is square. The main reason for imitating the images that cleave to Heaven is to ensure the ideal orientation. With this cosmological symbolism, the city is perceived as having condensed and represented the world. Meanwhile, the ancient Chinese perceived the earth as a square checkerboard, the form of a square was obviously taken to be a prerequisite for the general morphology of an ideal capital city that would be a replica of the earth. The main goal of doing so is to establish a harmonious link between the world of man and the world beyond. Through the analysis of the goal’s metaphysical significance and the author’s two personal experiences of disorientation, the paper declares that it is impossible to appreciate environments aesthetically without metaphysical insight, and urban aesthetics viewed with metaphysical insight can be taken as the philosophical reflection of the crisis of modern urbanization.
Keywords: Environmental Image, Urban Aesthetics, City Image, Xiang-Tian Fa-Di, metaphysical insight

Biographical statement: Cheng Xiangzhan (1966- ), male, born in Xinye county, Henan Province, China. He is PhD of literature, professor of Shandong University, China. His academic interests include the history of Chinese aesthetics, today’s eco-criticism, environmental aesthetics and ecological aesthetics.

Address: 27 Shandanan Road, Jinan, Shandong, P.R. China, 250100
Contact: 86-531-82915233 (H)
Email: cxz333@gmail.com


Introduction

Theoretically speaking, environments can be divided into natural environments and built environments. The most important and complex built environments are urban environments, which are all kinds of cities and metropolitan regions. Correspondingly, what we call environmental aesthetics in general should include natural environmental aesthetics (or the aesthetics of nature) and urban aesthetics. Unfortunately, compared with many works about the former, works about urban aesthetics are fewer and less comprehensive. What is more important is that cross-cultural research on urban aesthetics has not entered sufficiently into our academic horizon.
Aiming at this situation, in my paper I will take Kevin Lynch’s idea of city image as my starting point and then focus on urban aesthetics mainly implied or reflected by the aesthetic character of traditional Chinese cities and the design philosophy behind them. The basic points are: 1) Urban image is the object of urban aesthetics, which can response to the two fundamental questions of “what and how to aesthetically appreciate” proposed by Allen Carlson in his aesthetics of natural environment. 2) With a kind of idea of “cross-cultural aesthetics” in mind, I will try to introduce the principle of traditional Chinese city design, which is “to imitate the images that cleave to Heaven and the forms manifested on Earth” (Xiang-Tian Fa-Di). Through the analysis of its metaphysical significance and two personal experiences of disorientation, I try to show that it is impossible to appreciate environments aesthetically without metaphysical insight, and urban aesthetics viewed with metaphysical insight can be viewed as the philosophical reflection of the crisis of modern urbanization.

Ⅰ Kevin Lynch’s theories of city image
and the subject of urban aesthetics

It is reasonable to say that the beginning of today’s environmental aesthetics is a classic paper entitled “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty” by R. W. Hepburn. [1] From then on, natural world (natural environment or nature) become increasingly important in Western aesthetics. Compared with the appreciation of art, with some artistic models in mind, Canadian philosopher Allen Carlson tries to answer two questions of “what and how to aesthetically appreciate nature”. [2] Although I don’t agree with his “natural environmental model” based on scientific knowledge (because I think his main weakness is his confusion of the cognition of nature and the appreciation of nature), I think Professor Carlson’s two questions of “what and how to aesthetically appreciate” are insightful. Similarly, I want to ask two basic questions of urban aesthetics: in various kinds of urban environments, what and how to aesthetically appreciate?
With the teaching and advice of American philosopher Professor Arnold Berleant, I found an essential idea to answer the two questions, which is “the image of the city” (city image or urban image) discussed in detail by American city designer Kevin Lynch in his outstanding book The Image of the City. [3]This book was originally a book about city design, which is viewed “the most important and influential study of American urban design in the second half of the twentieth century”. [4] This book has had a significant impact on the development of anthropology, sociology, geography, and environmental psychology. Lynch explains his motives to write this book carefully in his paper entitled Reconsidering The Image of the City, they are: 1) An interest in the possible connection between psychology and the urban environment; 2) Fascination with the aesthetics of the city landscape, at a time when most U.S. planners shied away from the subject, because it was "a matter of taste" and had a low priority. 3) Persistent wonder about how to evaluate a city; 4) Hope of influencing planners to pay more attention to those who live in a place, to the actual human experience of a city, and how it should affect city policy. [5] The second motive, “fascination with the aesthetics of the city landscape” associates his work to urban aesthetics. Especially, he tells us the academic background of his study. He says, these motives found an early outlet in a seminar on the aesthetics of the city in 1952, which considered, among several other similar themes, the question of how people actually found their way about the streets of big cities. Various other unconnected ideas sprouted during a subsequent fellowship year spent walking the streets of Florence, which were recorded in his brief and unpublished paper entitled "Notes on City Satisfactions." These ideas matured during 1954, when he had the opportunity of working with his colleague at MIT, Gyorgy Kepes, on a Rockefeller grant devoted to the "perceptual form of the city."
According to my understanding, Lynch has two theories of city image. The first one maybe called “city image theory A” containing five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks, with which we are familiar. The second kind of image theory discusses three components of city image, which may be called “city image theory B”. Lynch himself introduces it very briefly in a short paragraph. Under the section entitled Structure and Identity in his The Image of the City, he says:

An environmental image may be analyzed into three components: identity, structure, and meaning. It is useful to abstract these for analysis, if it is remembered that in reality they always appear together. [6]

The key term here is “an environmental image”. It reminds us the title of the first Chapter in his book, which is “The Image of the Environment”. Lynch analyzes the environmental image from the perspectives of his three elements:

A workable image requires first the identification of an object, which implies its distinction from other things, its recognition as a separable entity. This is called identity, not in the sense of equality with something else, but with the meaning of individuality or oneness. Second, the image must include the spatial or pattern relation of the object to the observer and to other objects. Finally, this object must have some meaning for the observer, whether practical or emotional. Meaning is also a relation, but quite a different one from spatial or pattern relation.[7]

We can realize easily that this analysis is very different from the analysis of what we called image theory A, which consists of five elements. The key question here is: How to understand these three components and their relationship with five elements of image theory A? It is helpful to think about the basic idea of structuralism. Briefly speaking, structuralism is a theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material things in themselves. No single element in such a system has meaning except as an integral part of a set of structural connections. Its basic idea is: the whole equals more than the sum of its parts. So we can say that those five elements in Lynch’s image theory A are concrete, whereas the three components in his image theory B are abstract. Based on the basic idea of Structuralism introduced above, all the three components come from the intrinsic relationship among the former five elements. Structure and meaning exist in the structured whole.
Briefly speaking, city image and its two important components, structure and meaning, can become the basis of urban aesthetics in my mind. In other words, in research for urban aesthetics, we should concentrate on the spatial structure of city image and its meaning.


Ⅱ The spatial structure of traditional Chinese city image
and its metaphysical meaning

As a city designer, Lynch mainly limits his image theory to the value for orientation in the living space. However, Lynch is aware of the other functions of environmental image. In The Image of the City, he indicates that through skimming the references to the environmental image in various kinds of literatures, we can learn something about how such images “seem to play a social, psychological, and esthetic, as well as a practical, part in our lives.”[8] (p.123.). As we can understand, The Image of the City focuses mainly on the practical part of the city image, which is orientation and way-finding. What is more, its examples are three American cities, Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles. Here, I want to apply Lynch’s theories of city image to the analysis of Chinese cities, through which to develop a kind of cross-cultural perspective. In the following discussion, we will talk about how city spatial structure is shaped in China; then, we will seek the deep meaning behind the city spatial structure. [9]
Generally speaking, there are some important features which characterize typical city planning in China: four-sided enclosure with brick wall, gates at each side, clearly articulated and directed space, defensive projections, cardinal orientation and cardinal axiality, in which much greater significance was given to the main processional axis running from south to north, than to any avenue running from east to west. The following message is the most representative and most important city layout in ancient China, which is summarized more than two thousand years ago in a passage of the Kaogongji in one of traditional classics, Zhouli:

The artificers, as they built the capital, demarcated it as a square with sides of nine li, each side having three gateways. Within the capital there were nine north-south streets and nine east-west avenues, each of the former being nine chariot tracks wide. [10]

It is reasonable to conclude that most traditional Chinese major cities followed the layout pattern. What we should pay attention to is that the ideal model of the city is square. What is more, the city is sited north and faced south, and the orientation of the city is to the four cardinal points with emphasis on the north-south axis. Ancient Chinese emperors always placed their throne at the north and faced south, which indicates that the orientation of north-south is very important and is very meaningful metaphysically. The tradition continued for millennia and it did not come to an end until traditional Chinese society collapsed in the early 20th century. The most important examples are: Chang’an, the capital city of Tang Dynasty (618-907), today’s Xian in Shanxi Province; [11] Bianliang, the capital city of North Song(960-1127), today’s Kaifeng in Henan Province); Dadu, the capital city of Yun Dynasty(1271-1368), today’s Beijing.
We may reasonably ask two questions: why were traditional Chinese cities structured and shaped as squares? Why was the basic orientation sited north and faced south? The first reason is geographical feature. Most traditional Chinese capitals were built in the North China Plain, the nuclear area of Chinese civilization, where land is open and flat. The availability of flat sites made orientation to the cardinal points easy, and construction with pounded earth or mud brick was universal. But, the deeper and more important reason is philosophical conception of Heaven and Earth and of the principle of city design.
In order to understand this point, we may take Suzhou in Jiangsu Province as our example. Suzhou has a very long history. Originally, it was called Helu Dacheng built in 514 B. C. According to the history book entitled Wu Yue chunqiu, in 514 B.C., Wu Zixu (?-484 B.C.) was commissioned by the king of Wu to rebuild the Wu capital:

[Wu Zixu] imitated the images that cleave to Heaven and the forms manifested on Earth [Xiang-Tian Fa-Di], and then constructed the great city wall [dacheng].

What attracted us here is the design philosophy, which is Xiang-Tian Fa-Di, literally means “to imitate the images that cleave to Heaven and the forms manifested on Earth”. So, we may ask, what is the image of Heaven? What is the form of Earth? Why did Wu Zixu do so?
Amazingly, ancient Chinese people thought that Heaven is round and Earth is square. The main reason for Xiang-Tian - to imitate the images that cleave to Heaven - is to ensure the ideal orientation. In another word, the reason for Xiang-Tian is connected with the way of orienting. Then, how did ancient Chinese people orient? The answer may be found in the following paragraph from Kaogong ji:

They [the artificers] erect a post [at the center of the leveled ground], taking the plumb lines to ensure its verticality, and with it observe the sun's shadow [riying].

They take it as the determinator of the shadows of the sun at its rising and setting and discern their midpoint [indicating the true north]. In the daytime, they consult the sun's shadows at noon; in the nighttime, they study the pole star, so that [the orientation of] true east and west, [and south and north] is precisely fixed. [12]

The pole was connected therein with a background of microcosmic-macrocosmic thought and thus corresponded to the position of the emperor on earth, around whom the vast system of the bureaucratic agrarian state naturally and spontaneously resolved. This was metaphorically stressed in a passage in The Analects of Confucius:

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place while all the stars turn round it. [13]

With this cosmological symbolism, the city is perceived as having condensed and represented the world in order to establish a link between the world of man and the world beyond. Briefly speaking, since the ancient Chinese perceived the earth as a square checkerboard, the form of a square was obviously taken to be a prerequisite for the general morphology of an ideal capital that would be a replica of the earth. The city of Helu based on the principle of Xiang-Tian Fa-Di can be viewed as the archetype of Chinese major cities.
In summing up, the typical Chinese city’s spatial structure is a square with the North-South avenue as its axis; and its metaphysical significance is to imitate the images that cleave to Heaven and the forms manifested on Earth, through which to keep a kind of harmonious order in nature. To this extent, any environmental aesthetics is natural environmental aesthetics: what is called urban environment is nothing but an intrinsic part of the whole natural system, and the basic way to design and to create a built environment is to put it into whole universe.

Ⅲ Urban experiences: the conflicts between various images
and disorientation

We have discussed the questions of “what and how to aesthetically appreciate” above: to appreciate urban image, and to analyze urban image’s structure and meaning. But, it is far from adequate. In reality, for inhabitants or travellers, how could they form or create urban environmental image? Lynch researches this question under the title of “Formation of the Image” in his The Image of The City:

The creation of the environmental image is a two-way process between observer and observed. What he sees is based on exterior form, but how he interprets and organizes this, and how he directs his attention, in its turn affects what he sees. The human organism is highly adaptable and flexible, and different groups may have widely different images of the same outer reality.[14]

In discussing this idea, Lynch mentions “cultural differences” and their impacts on the observer. What is more, in the following section entitled “Directions for Future Research”, Lynch asks some questions, such as “How does the public image of a village differ from that of Manhattan?” “How do the different major groups tend to image their surroundings?” “How does a stranger build an image of a new city?” “How does an image adjust to change, when does the image break down, and at what cost?” and so on.[15]
From the viewpoint of cross-cultural research for urban aesthetics, we can abstract or sum up three dichotomies from Lynch’s work: dichotomy of village image and city image, implying urbanization; dichotomy of traditional city image and modern city image, implying modernization; and dichotomy of Chinese city image and the Western city image, implying globalization. Only by a detailed analysis of the three dichotomies, can we understand the nature of urban experience. Let’s take my own personal experiences as our raw materials for research, which are two occasions of disorientation in cities.
I was born in a village named Chengzhuang in the southwest part of Henan Province, the central part of China. Cheng is my family name and Zhuang literally means little village. To all the villagers, a city was a kind of land of dreams. In 1985, fortunately enough, I passed the frightening college entrance examination and was matriculated by Zhengzhou University. On my way to Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan Province, I became disoriented. I lost my orientation completely for the next four years of my stay at Zhengzhou. Everyday, the sun rose not from the East, but from the West. In 1989, I went to Shandong University in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong, to study for my Master’s degree and Ph. D. At that time I thought, if I became disoriented in Jinan again, I would not stay there any more after I graduated. Luckily, I did not lose my orientation again. Sine then, I lived in Jinan for 17 years. Invited by Harvard University, my family moved to Boston in August, 2006. Unfortunately, even though I enjoy my stay at Harvard very much, I have lost my orientation again. Every morning, when I send my son to go to his school, the sun rises from the northern sky.
Now, based on three dichotomies introduced above, from the perspective of the conflicts among various types of environmental images, let me try to analyze the reasons for my two times of disorientation. My hometown Chengzhuang is a very small and poor village. In 1970s, there were only about 70 families in it. It extended no more than 200 meters from west to east. All the major houses are sited north and faced south. As we know, one of the most important elements shaping an environmental image is a path, which has many functions, 1) to give the existential space a particular structure; 2)to act as an organizing axis for the elements by which it is accompanied; 3)to divide human environment into areas; 4) to lead to a particular goal. For my village, the basic spatial structure is a cross in the center, consisting of the north-south axis and the west-east axis. The basic shape of my village is a square. As we know, since remote times the door has been one of the important symbolic elements of architecture. All the major houses are sited north and faced south, which means that the direction of the door is faced south.
What I want to emphasize here is direction or orientation, which is neglected in Lynch’s image theories. In order to name our existential space, the direction or orientation plays a fundamental role. The names of the paths and fields of Chengzhuang show the importance of orientation very clearly: the northern channel, the southern ditch; the eastern field, the northern field, the western field and the northern field. What is more, the central north-south path acts as the boundary to distinguish two main domains of dwelling, the two families of Cheng and Ma, west group and east group. In fact, one domain is a family tree, the relationship is blood tie, which differs from that of in cities.
I was born in the beginning year of the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) led by Chairman Mao Zedong. During that special political period, the most popular and most important song was one glorifying Mao entitled The East is Red. It spread every corner of China and everyone could sing it. It reads like this:

The east is red, the red Sun is rising.
The Savior is born in China, who is Mao Zedong.

Without doubt, this song strengthened my awareness of orientation. Interestingly, the word “orientation” comes from Orient, means “the direction of sunrise”. So, my orientation was shaped firmly by my childhood life experience.
My first time to be disoriented was my move from a small village to a modern city: from Chengzhuang to Zhengzhou. For a youth who had never experienced city life, the city was too big to recognize as a whole image, and the environmental complexity made everything unfamiliar and strange. What is more, the streets in Zhengzhou are not regular straight north-south or west-east. So, the major feeling of my first four year of city life in Zhengzhou was alienation. This may be viewed as the conflict between village image and city image.
Compared with Zhengzhou, the city of Jinan is more regular in orientation. Jinan literally means “the city in the south of Ji river”. Historically speaking, Ji river is today’s Yellow River. During the past hundreds of years, the Yellow River has changed its way to go to sea many times because of big flood in summers. When Jinan was initially constructed in about 313, Ji river was not conquered by Yellow River, so, according to the traditional Chinese way to give names, the city in the south of Ji river was named Jinan (nan literally means south). The city of Jian was a standard square, just the same shape of ancient capitals in China. In the 1950s, most of the city wall was demolished and the city itself was overspreading and sprawling very fast. But, because of the age of the city, the basic structure and orientation are traditional style, just the same as my hometown village. So, I did not lose my orientation when I arrived at Jinan in 1989.
For me, the visit at Boston is the first time to go abroad. I became disoriented for the second time in my life. I guess the layout of Boston must based on the Western tradition of city design. So, my disorientation at Boston may be viewed in relation to the cultural shock between China and the West, the conflict between Chinese city image and that in the West.
Environmental image refers to existential space, symbolizing man's being in the world, in Heidegger's words. We may be “at home”, “away” or “astray”. The term, “lost” expresses that we have left the known structure of existential space. From here, we can understand the relation of orientation to environmental aesthetic appreciation. As we discussed above, to some extent, environmental appreciation aesthetically means to create environmental image with “aesthetic imageability”. Lynch gave a definition of imageability in his book:

that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. It is that shape, color, or arrangement which facilitates the making of vividly identified, powerfully structured, highly useful mental images of the environment. It might also be called legibility, or perhaps visibility in a heightened sense, where objects are not only able to be seen, but are presented sharply and intensely to the senses.”[16]

My purpose in putting a determiner “aesthetic” before the key word “imageability” is to transfer it from the practical purpose of way-finding into the aesthetic purpose of appreciation. Because of different cultural background and various life experiences, although in the same environment, the environmental images with “aesthetic imageability” created by different perceivers are very different. We could image how strange it is to form an urban image of Boston with the sunrise from the North and with the sunset in the Sorth, which just are my urban experiences during my stay at Boston.
From the perspective of natural science, sunrise or sunset is only the result of natural law. But, in an environmental aesthetician’s eyes, the sunset can suggest “the possibility of combining a human identity for the city with recognizing its place in a series of orders”, it can tell us “that the city retain its own character while being integrated into a series of natural orders, utilizing and responding harmoniously to the forces, rhythms, conditions, and opportunities of nature.”[17] If we associate the statement here with the principle of traditional Chinese city design introduced above, we can realize why traditional Chinese city design philosophy emphasizes the harmonious relation between city and natural order, and what kind of metaphysical implication and significance it may convey. So, for me, disorientation means the disorder of nature, means the alienation from nature, means the greatest shocks happen in different life styles and different cultures.
In the light of the environmental crisis shown mainly by increasingly global urbanization, we can realize that modern man to a large extent has lost the level of nature. We are living a kind of modern “alienated” living. A book entitled “Urbanization without city” shows the main trend of worldwide urbanization clearly: urban areas are sprawling and overspreading without design and control. Lynch expressed a kind of worry about the growing metropolitan region half a century ago, thinking it “seems hopelessly beyond our perceptual grasp”, [18] which may mean that the big scale of urbanization can no longer be given concrete expression in an environmental image.
So, in the face of the increasing featureless and sprawling urbanization global, we should ask a question based on urban aesthetics, which is: what we should demand in order to make the environment a satisfactory part of human existence? I’d like to end this paper with the following wisdom:

Man cannot plan the world without designing himself.[19]

[1] The paper is proposed for International Colloquium “Environment, aesthetic engagement and public sphere: the stakes in landscape”, May 9, 10 and 11, 2007, Paris.




[1]Hepburn, R. W. ‘Wonder’ and Other Essays. Edinburgh University Press, 1984. pp.9-35.
[2] Carlson, Allen. Aesthetics and the environment: the appreciation of nature, art and architecture. London; New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp.41-53.
[3] I am very grateful to Professor Arnold Berleant for his helpful academic information and insightful advices. We began correspondence October 2006. In answering my questions about urban aesthetics, he sent me a list of reference he collected, Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1960) is at the top of the list. Professor Berleant says it “is the classic source in this area. The entire book is an insightful development of the experiential aspect of the urban environment.” My research for urban aesthetics began with my reading this book and my basic ideas also came from it, so the subtitle of the paper should be “To read Lynch’s The Image of The City from the viewpoint of Aesthetics”. After reading the draft of my paper, an invited lecture at University of Cincinnati in this February, Professor Berleant gave me some further advices, such as “to explain the relation of image or orientation to environmental appreciation”, which is one of the improvements in my paper today.
[4] Gosling, David. The evolution of American urban design: a chronological anthology. West Sussex: Wiley-Academy, 2003. p.59.
[5] Lynch, Kevin. City sense and city design: writings and projects of Kevin Lynch. edited by Tridib Banerjee and Michael Southworth. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990. p.247.
[6] Lynch, Kevin. The image of the city. Cambridge, Mass. Technology Press, 1960. p.8.
[7] Ibid., p.8.
[8] Ibid., p.123. The following notes marked as “Ibid.” are from Lynch’s same book.
[9] I’m very grateful to Dr. John Gay for his advices, encouragement and help. He suggested me to introduce Chinese cities and Chinese urban aesthetics in my paper instead of introducing those in the West. This suggestion changed my direction of this research.
[10] Rites of Zhou Dynasty, written in 770-476 B.C.
[11] Dimensions of Chang’an: north-south, 8651.7 meters, west-east, 9721 meters; population, 1 million at its peak; north-south (latitudinal) streets, 11, the middle one is the north-south axis, its width is 150-155 meters; east-west (longitudinal) streets, 14.
[12] In Zhou li, Vol. 41.
[13] In The Analects of Confucius (551 B.C.-479 B.C.), Vol. 2.
[14] Ibid., p.131.
[15] Ibid., pp.156-158.
[16] Ibid., pp.9-10.
[17] Berleant, Arnold. The Aesthetics of Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. p.77.
[18] Ibid., p.157.
[19] Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Existence, space & architecture. New York, Praeger, 1971. p.15. My paper benefits a lot from this book.