Urban semiotics is the study of meaning in urban form as generated by signs, symbols, and their social connotations.

Overview

Most urban semiotic theory is based on social semiotics, which considers social connotations, including meanings related to ideology and power structures, in addition to denotative meanings of signs. As such, urban semiotics focuses on material objects of the built environment, such as streets, squares, parks, and buildings, but also unbuilt cultural products such as building codes, planning documents, unbuilt designs, real estate advertising, and popular discourse about the city, such as architectural criticism and real estate blogs. Theorists who take a social semiotic approach to urban semiotics define their discipline in opposition to the methods of

behavioral geography Behavioral geography is an approach to human geography that examines human behavior by separating it into different parts. In addition, behavioral geography is an ideology/approach in human geography that makes use of the methods and assumptions of ...

, beginning with the work of Kevin Lynch in ''The Image of the City'', which they criticize for being limited by its exclusive focus on the denotative level of communication (recognition of spatial elements, such as paths, as conceptual objects), ignoring the connotative meanings associated with urban forms; instead, urban semioticians argue that urban structures often become recognizable because they have symbolic meaning beyond their functional meanings. The social semiotic approach to urban semiotics also grew out of a critique of architectural semiotics, which was perceived to be overly attached to linguistic models of semiosis and thus unable to adequately consider the social connotations of signs. Some theorists have used semiotic models in empirical studies of the construction of meaning in urban environments. Raymond Ledrut has used questionnaires and interviews about viewers' responses to sets of photographs in order to examine the role of class in shaping mental models of the city.

Martin Krampen Martin Krampen (March 9, 1928 in Siegen – June 18, 2015 in Ulm) was a leading German semiotician, semiotics Professor in Göttingen. Biography The son of a Protestant pastor, Krampen was born on March 9, 1928 in Siegen and was raised in Wuppert ...

conducted studies of photograph recognition in order to discover the level of facade detail required to identify building types, and to examine the role of socioeconomic status in shaping preference for building styles.Krampen, M. ''Meaning in the Urban Environment''. London: Pion, 1979.

Associated authors

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...

Francoise Choay

Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of th ...

Mark Gottdiener

Algirdas Julien Greimas Algirdas Julien Greimas (; born ''Algirdas Julius Greimas''; 9 March 1917 – 27 February 1992) was a Lithuanian literary scientist who wrote most of his body of work in French while living in France. Greimas is known among other things for th ...

Alexandros Lagopoulos
Raymond Ledrut

Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of s ...

Overview

Associated authors

References

Further reading