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Problem, research strategy, and findings: Cognitive-environmental urban planning and design began with Kevin Lynch's (1960) The Image of the City. Scientific and technological developments, including discoveries in brain physiology and cognitive psychology, the psychosocial determinants of health, and the spread of navigation and information technologies, have increased the pertinence of cognitive-environmental research to planning. Re-engagement in contemporary debates about brain function and cities can help address long-standing humanistic challenges in planning as well as new challenges arising from emergent urban technologies. We systematically review scholarly work that cites Lynch or invokes cognitive mapping and synthesize cognitive-environmental concepts and methods from fields outside planning. We propose how planning and design practice can align with a cognitive-environmental framework. Cognitive-environmental research engages issues such as the need for equitable access, codes and rules that create good urban form, planning data and information systems, and participatory planning imbued with local knowledge and civic engagement. Urban planners and designers can use cognitive-environmental approaches to work toward more just and humane cities, even as they are transformed by new technologies. Lynch's ideas, particularly his insistence on an engaged approach to learning the city, remain highly relevant. Takeaway for practice: Insights from cognitive-environmental research identify specific priorities and methods for planning, including participant-generated urban information, community engagement and learning, revisions to urban codes and regulations related to neurological differences in the experience of the built environment and technological changes in wayfinding and navigation, and health-focused urban planning initiatives, particularly related to mental wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Here we examine the legacy of Kevin Lynch in Los Angeles (CA). We begin by describing his contributions to planning at the city and regional scales. We then focus on Los Angeles's central core because of its prominence as a case study in The Image of the City. Specifically, we ask how Lynch's ideas influenced planning efforts for Los Angeles's downtown. We use a mixed-methods approach comprising expert interviews and analysis of archival documents, news stories, oral histories, plans, and reports. Although it is impossible to attribute the evolving physical form of Los Angeles to Lynch, we can see the effects of his thinking in the empowerment of local citizens and in the sensibility of planners and urban designers. Lynch's contribution occurred at both the city and district scales, first as a consultant for the general plan and the visual studies that led to its creation, and second by inspiring the work of planners tasked with remaking Los Angeles's downtown. Takeaway for practice: A principal aim of Lynch's work was for planners to engage with citizens and to understand how the public experiences the city. Planners and urban designers in Los Angeles were inspired by his ideas and were able to use at least some of his vision to navigate the thicket of the planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Kevin Lynch was a distinguished city designer and humanist whose thoughts, theories, and practices have had a far-reaching influence on planning across the world, including in China. Here we identify the impact of Lynch's ideas on China's urban development, design practices, and ideas about urban design education during the various stages of China's urbanization. Our literature review, supplemented by interviews with Lynch's former colleagues in China, reveals the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of his contributions. His thoughts on city construction, rooted in humanism and psychological analysis of how people perceive cities, have had a formative influence in the past 3 decades in the evolution of urban design methods and have helped accelerate the new profession of urban design and new systems of regulating urban development. Takeaway for practice: It is useful to understand how Lynch's ideas, largely the product of American thought, have had influence in China as this country makes a transition to a more pluralistic and locally driven form of planning. China's vast scale and tempo of urban development and planning provide an important example of the impact Lynch made. We can also learn much from the Chinese experience in large-scale urbanization that has relevance for other rapidly growing cities in the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]