Theoretical and Practical Influences of Kevin Lynch in China

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Kevin Lynch was a distinguished city designer and humanist whose thoughts, theories, and practices have had a far-reaching influence on planning across the world, including in China. Here we identify the impact of Lynch’s ideas on China’s urban development, design practices, and ideas about urban design education during the various stages of China’s urbanization. Our literature review, supplemented by interviews with Lynch’s former colleagues in China, reveals the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of his contributions. His thoughts on city construction, rooted in humanism and psychological analysis of how people perceive cities, have had a formative influence in the past 3 decades in the evolution of urban design methods and have helped accelerate the new profession of urban design and new systems of regulating urban development.Takeaway for practice: It is useful to understand how Lynch’s ideas, largely the product of American thought, have had influence in China as this country makes a transition to a more pluralistic and locally driven form of planning. China’s vast scale and tempo of urban development and planning provide an important example of the impact Lynch made. We can also learn much from the Chinese experience in large-scale urbanization that has relevance for other rapidly growing cities in the developing world.