An Introduction to Physical Typology of Urban Landmarks, Taken from the Citizens’ Cognitive Maps (Case Study: Yazd City)

The studies in the field of spatial cognition and legibility have grown steadily since the 1960s. Architects, urban planners, urban designer, psychologists and so on, have attempted from their different points of view, to characterize those attributes of spatial environments that constitute for them a great source of experience. These are highly multidisciplinary experiences dealing with the interaction between humans and their environments at many levels. The term as well as the concept of “landmark” have been first introduced by Lynch in his primitive work, named Image of the City. Landmarks are among of the components that Lynch hypothesized as contributing to imageability of cities. Landmarks support for structuring the environmental informations of cognitive conceptual units. They can potentially to identify uniquely pertinent intersections for route following, and they also disambiguate spatial situations at urban spaces. They are significant in one’s formation of a cognitive map of physical environment. Landmarks are defined in urban spaces as key characteristics, and this make them recognizable and memorable in the environment. This paper focuses on the use of landmarks in human navigation. Landmarks not only indicate position and orientation, but also contribute to the development of spatial knowledge. Therefore, an urban environment containing distinctive landmarks supports navigation by facilitating the acquisition and application of spatial knowledge. In order to create a clear image of urban environment in the residents’ minds, it is necessary to enable them to easily identify its components as well as its whole entity. Nowadays, the urban environment faces with major problems in providing various urban design qualities, especially legibility. The cause is rooted in imitative constructions of foreign patterns and forgetting native principles resulted in spaces with low legibility. So, using appropriate principles and improving urban environment to enrich legibility and facilitating integrated cognitive map formation for residents understanding can be helpful. Over the last few decades some new spread areas of Yazd City have faced with major problems in providing legibility. For solving them and enriching the legibility of new areas, the appropriate principles that have been extracted from inhabitants’ cognition and their expectations, should be used This study attempts to identify and evaluate different kinds of urban landmarks (as one of the most important elements that provides legibility) by using descriptive – analytical method and based on factors such as the reason of being distinctive, land use and function, exclusive form, the value of heritage, location in city and facade materials that residents of the City of Yazd use them in shaping their cognitive maps. The findings show that those landmarks in urban cognitive map of the City of Yazd have been more important were those which have had – at least – one of the following items:
- Having distinctive form in their surrounding;
- Locating along urban main streets or near their junctions;
- Being established in a historical fabric or having heritage value;
- Having land use such as religious, cultural, commercial and municipal functions such as urban elements or serving an important urban magnets.