Legibility and Aesthetics in Urban Design

This paper presents a philosophical analysis of two central concepts and ‘principles’ of urban design, namely, ‘legibility’ and ‘aesthetics’, and then an argument about their respective importance for urban design. After a summary of Kevin Lynch's seminal work on legibility, the paper compares the nature of the human perception of urban legibility and aesthetics, emphasizing that, whereas the perception of urban legibility is essentially cognitive, environmental aesthetic perception is crucially affective as well as cognitive. The paper then argues that, on its own, mere legibility is not as significant a criterion of the perceptible quality of townscapes as the aesthetic quality of townscapes. Aesthetics therefore emerges as a more important consideration in urban design than legibility. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the alleged subjectivity of aesthetic perception and judgement, which might seem to threaten the argument of the paper.