opens into view. Added to this, the remnants of
fortifications (as in Dubrovnik) provide a perimeter route
around the town as well as attractive terminations to
many of the alleyways.
Grand cities such as Paris, Washington or Turin contain
wide tree-lined boulevards that are rather like linear
squares. Here many different types of activity can be
accommodated within the broad space of the street –
pavement cafés, room for parking, tram routes, through-
traffic, central promenades and shaded areas for gossip.
Largely the result of nineteenth-century highway
engineering, the boulevard sought to bring beauty and
ventilation to the heart of congested cities. Today they are
worthy subjects for sketching as long as they are treated
fairly broadly (attempts to include too much of their detail
would defeat the average artist).
For routes to uphold their civic responsibilities they
should be legible places: streets need to be landmarked
along their route and perhaps terminated at their ends.
Yet the enjoyment of towns depends upon a balance
between legibility and mystery. The narrow spaces of
lanes and alleyways provide mystery and spatial
complexity to set against the right angles and open
spaces of the major streets and squares. How the parts
are put together is largely the result of history – towns
normally represent their economic or cultural origins in
the present layout of their streets. For the artist, a good
street map, a willingness to explore on foot, and the use
of the sketchbook as a tool for urban investigation are all
equally important. Urban design is best taught in the field,
by employing the freehand drawing to record and analyse.
Our towns are a shared responsibility – their well-being is
momentarily in our hands when we draw and plan them.
The much-overlooked visual language of cities resides not
only in what we can see and experience from the routes
we take, but in how we elect to represent it and thereby
protect it.12.7
The network of lanes, steps and footpaths in this stretch of an
Italian hill town provide the basic urban structure around which
more recent houses are grouped. Walls are an important element
where abrupt changes of level occur.104 Understanding architecture through drawing