Design, it seems, is not only becoming more methodical but also more scientific. This is not surprising. Design as a discipline has moved from “product beautification” to being a central part of product development. It has incorporated methodologies from human-computer interaction, sociology, and anthropology as well as advertising and management. And with the rise of design thinking, a wider range of professional disciplines are using creative methods.
I don’t want to criticize design methodologies. But against the backdrop of an overly structured design process, it is important to remind our community that there is one fundamental aspect to design that cannot be formalized in a methodology. And that is intuition.
The contents of the city's images which are referable to physical forms can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.
Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moved.
Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries.
Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent.
Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which they are traveling.
Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain.