Week One - The Image of the City

Cluttered claustrophobic collections of streets are listed again and again. I am overwhelmed with imagery I can't see and have no memory of. Yes I have been to the gold dome court house. But I was young, maybe 8 when my parents took me along with them. Otherwise I have no sense of Beacon Hill, and the entire section frankly puts me to sleep and feels lost on me. I want to see the city in my minds eye, taste the environment, but I can't. The way its described is too technical, too dry. I feel like I have a mouth full of cotton in my mind. I think Lynch is trying too hard in some ways to capture the area he looks into. I like that he talks about the topography, that helps me get some sense of a visual hold on the place, and the kind of buildings that color it. I like that he talks to people, because I think that people of an area are the major defining aspect of its presence. Still, I wish he would just slow the heck down, describe it, make me see it, not just feel the shape of the hill and a overwhelming panorama of words that are chained to it like the prisoner and the dungeon wall.

I have a much easier time grasping the feel when we get to the section of Scollay Square. I'm not sure if I've really been there before, but Lynch sort of nails a better overall picture together in my opinion when describing Scollay Square. I think I might have walked around here a little once while following my girlfriend on a trip, but I am not sure. Either way the image described comes to life so much easier in this part: the dilapidation that is easily found hiding among the nooks of Boston; the terrible traffic that flows around and over the sound of civilization; the absolutely messy street organization despite proper planning (supposedly). This actually almost feels more like the image of the city that Beacon Hill I think. I know what this place looks like without ever having been there, and I know its people, cars, shops, roads, and life. Still, I wish he talked to the people more, asked them why they live there, what they like about being there, what they don't like. Not just what they notice walking through it, which is apparently not that much in comparison with that iconic gold dome.