Review of City Image Study Based on the Uprising Urban Landscape Iconology

“Picture Era” has arrived for long and for sure, but as the progressing technology and information has been even more significant in the past one or two years, the urban landscape iconology study is obviously uprising. Because the form of image is closely related to people’s perception of the environment, and also because city image study is always closely related to mapping information, represented by cognitive mapping, the research of city image and iconology have an inherent inner unity. Borrowed from the theory of iconology, this paper divides city image study into three paradigms: the preicongraphic paradigm, the icongraphic paradigm, the iconological paradigm, and each is reviewed with literature and case studies of Dingxing, Lhasa and Dongsi. Finally, it points out that beyond explorations combined with iconology, we should also be aware of the historical value of the mappings of city image as graphic expressions of all types of city image study, that they are a new type of image, and could be a new type of records for the vicissitudes of urban landscape.