Cultural values of cityscape

ENThe urban cultural landscape is formed because of human intervention with its scenery, which is a specific and unique urban landscape. This shape creates an urban image that can be used as its identity. Urban cultural landscape is a reflection of the physical and cultural conditions in the region, which occurs due to political, economic and social influences starting from the past, and continuing in the present and future. So it can be said that urban morphology occurs because of urban cultural landscape (Rosmalia, Martokusumo, 2012). We would like to trace back the values that are represented as a symbolic form in the material built spaces of European cities, with a similar methodology to that used by Kevin Lynch (1960) to study three American cities. Kevin Lynch established that urban images were linked to: “landmarks”, as points of reference and memories for most of its citizens, usually buildings or public open spaces near them; “nodes”, between areas or neighbourhoods; “districts”, medium or large areas in the city, with common features; “edges” either real such as city walls or shorelines, or just perceived by inhabitants; “paths”, as streets, railways, canals or other spaces through which people move or travel (Lynch, 1960).We will add some other basic elements that have been established in the 21st century by UNESCO, as part of the concept of “Historic Urban Landscape, HUL” (UNESCO, 2011). We will try to give an approach to those values, relating our studies to three European cities, with different sizes and locations: Bialystok (Poland), Madrid (Spain) and Klaipeda (Lithuania).