Kevin Lynch, born in 1918, was a significant contributor to city planning and city design in the twentieth century. Kevin Andrew Lynch was educated at Yale University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and most notably, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, he went on to gain Professorship in 1963, and eventually earned professor emeritus status. Aside from research and teaching, Lynch was consultant to the state of Rhode Island, New England Medical Center, Boston Redevelopment Authority, Puerto Rico Industrial Development Corp., M.I.T. Planning Office, and other organizations. Throughout Lynch’s outstanding career, he produced seven books. In his most famous work, Image of the City(1960) Lynch describes a five-year study that reveals what elements in the built structure of a city are important in the popular perception of the city. In his experimenting, he used Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City as case studies. By analyzing the results of this work, Lynch figured he would be able to observe specifically what about a city’s built environment is important to the people who live there.

Different kinds of land uses are separated for functional efficiency, reduction of nuisance, improvement of health and safety, reduction of pollution, or to simplify planning.
Kevin Lynch, 1981