Kevin Lynch interviewed by Anna Buttimer (1980)

This video is not a SCI-Arc event.

Kevin Lynch describes his childhood, his parents, and his education from Yale and MIT. He also talks about his influences from past teachers like Frank Lloyd Wright, and first experiences with urban planning.

Lynch discusses the Government Center Project in Boston as a means of conveying successful urban planning. Lynch describes typical urban development patterns and how those patterns helped him realize a concept for the commission. However, he goes through the steps of his design and how political interest and economics have the ultimate say in how urban plans take shape.

Lynch talks about his renovation ideas, as well as, the political and economic concerns for Boston's Faneuil Hall Markets and neighboring waterfront. Lynch discusses the political and economic conversations he had in order to complete those development projects. Lastly, he describes several more political give and takes, his suspicion of market forces, and the role of the developer.

Lynch discusses his ideas on how people perceive space through movement, memory, and recognition. He, also, talks about his influential theories and their contemporary impact on urban planning. Lynch describes his hopes for the future of city development and his fear that it will become an elitist contingent of the developer, reflecting only an interest in profit making. He reveals his hope for the resurgence of "neighborhood making" and how educational institutions are ultimately responsible for understanding and interpreting the dynamics and complexities of the urban environment.