City Planning Quotes

Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building. ~ Jane Jacobs

As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense. ~ Jane Jacobs

Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense. ~ Jane Jacobs

In city planning, there is no limit to be fixed. ~ Willis Polk

That's Manhattan today - all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis. ~ Andrew Vachss

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people. ~ Toni Morrison

It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished. ~ William H. Whyte

Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves. ~ Jane Jacobs

You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. (Robert Moses) ~ Robert A. Caro

You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have. ~ Gore Vidal

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence. ~ Daniel Burnham

Boulevards are like people: similar in their youth, they undergo gradual change according to what ferments in them. ~ M. Ageyev

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations. ~ Jane Jacobs

Town-planning," Geddes once wrote, "is not mere place-planning, nor even work-planning. If it is to be successful it must be folk-planning. This means that its task is . . . to find the right places for each sort of people; places where they will really flourish." These places, of course, are not really to be found, but have to be made. From his earliest designs for a botanical school garden and urban renewal work in Edinburgh to his latest building initiatives in Montpelier in southern France, Geddes pursued the creation of such places. He perceived himself as a gardener ordering the environment for the benefit of life. ~ Volker M. Welter

To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts four conditions are indispensable:
1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two ...
2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.
3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.
4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there ... ~ Jane Jacobs

The peoples of the old world have their cities built for times gone by, when railroads and gunpowder were unknown. We can have cities for the new age that has come, adopted to its better conditions of use and ornament. We want, therefore, a city planning profession ... ~ Horace Bushnell

Nobody strolled and laughed on the sidewalks as relaxing burghers would in sweet, mellow, rotting Europe. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy. ~ Le Corbusier

Architecture is a slow business, and city planning even slower. ~ Richard Rogers

You may discover that the very aspects which make it most unendurable are what gives New York its meaning. Its inconsistencies and anonymity, its seeming indifference to you and every other individual is really what makes it a safe haven for individuals everywhere (Maeve Brennan) ~ Elizabeth Winder

I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while. ~ Billy Bob Thornton

Human sympathy has its limits, and we were contented to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community;13 the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia;14 the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself. As these institutions and ideals become ends in themselves, they become the objects of idolatry. The shalom of God - which is to say, the presence of God himself - is the antithesis to all such imitations. ~ James Davison Hunter

I want to live in a city where immigration is seen as a new source of strength. ~ Martin Firrell

So many lights you'd think we were living in a constellation ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago. ~ John Maynard Keynes

If we look at the way an industrial producer creates new products, we see a long list of trials and errors and eventually improvement in quality at a lower cost. Urban policies and strategies, by contrast, often do not follow this logic; they are often repeated even when it is well known that they failed. For instance, policies like rent control, greenbelts, new light rail transports, among others, are constantly repeated in spite of a near consensus on their failure to achieve their objectives. A quantitative evaluation of the failure of these policies is usually well documented through special reports or academic papers; it is seldom produced internally by cities, however, and the information does not seem to reach urban decision makers. Only a systematic analysis of data through indicators allows urban policies to be improved over time and failing policies to be abandoned. But as Angus Deaton wrote: 'without data, anyone who does anything is free to claim success. ~ Alain Bertaud

I will veto any spending bill that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, facilities that perform abortion and all government family planning schemes. ~ Ron Paul

I don't care what town you're born in, what city, what country. If you're a child, you are curious about your environment. You're overturning rocks. You're plucking leaves off of trees and petals off of flowers, looking inside, and you're doing things that create disorder in the lives of the adults around you. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

eat, baby.
eat.
chew.
please.
I know it hurts. I know it doesn't feel good.
please.
I know your hunger is different than mine.
I know it doesn't taste the same as mine.
imagine you could grow up all over again
and pinpoint the millisecond that you started
counting calories like casualties of war,
mourning each one like it had a family.
would you?
sometimes I wonder that.
sometimes I wonder if you would go back
and watch yourself reappear and disappear right in front of your own eyes.
and I love you so much.
I am going to hold your little hand through the night.
just please eat. just a little.
you wrote a poem once,
about a city of walking skeletons.
the teacher called home because you
told her you wished it could be like that
here.
let me tell you something about bones, baby.
they are not warm or soft.
the wind whistles through them like they are
holes in a tree.
and they break, too. they break right in half.
they bruise and splinter like wood.
are you hungry?
I know. I know how much you hate that question.
I will find another way to ask it, someday.
please.
the voices.
I know they are all yelling at you to stretch yourself thinner.
l hear them counting, always counting.
I wish I had been there when the world made you
snap yourself in half.
I would have told you that your body is not ~ Caitlyn Siehl

He did not fear such enemies, nor a dozen armies like them. He was khan of the sea of grass and they were just city men, soft and fat for all their bluster and sharp swords. He would cut them down. ~ Conn Iggulden

Skullcrack City messes with your mind the way William Burroughs or a bellyful of hallucinogens will do. I'm a longtime fan of Johnson. A master of derangement, he's been bringing it for years. This time, though, it's different. He's burst into the clear and is taking seven-league strides across the literary landscape. ~ Laird Barron

There are jokes about breast surgeons.
You know-- something like-- I've seen more breasts in this city than--
I don't know the punch line.
There must be a punch line.

I'm not a man who falls in love easily. I've been faithful to my
wife. We fell in love when we were twenty-two. We had plans. There
was justice in the world. There was justice in love. If a person was
good enough, an equally good person would fall in love with that
person. And then I met-- Ana. Justice had nothing to do with it.

There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was
married to a nurse. He loved her-- immeasurably. One day Halsted
noticed that his wife's hands were chapped and red when she came back
from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is
one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between
inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.

When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention. ~ Sarah Ruhl

Not only does the proportion of the poor increase with the growth of the city, but their condition becomes more wretched. ~ Josiah Strong

A home that nourishes life embraces the little moments and appreciates the rhythmic seasons of life, including the time necessary to cook real food from scratch...It doesn't have to take too much time, however, with efficient menu planning and wisely planned trips to the grocery store and farmers' market.
The payoffs are astronomical - better health, good stewardship of our environment, and setting a good example for our children are just a few of the benefits. It also fosters an appreciation of the ebbs and flows of seasons because you'll be using fresh ingredients that are more readily available (and of higher quality) when they are in season. If you feel too busy to cook from scratch, then I argue that you're too busy, period. Reevaluate your priorities and commitments. If you want to live a healthy, long life and to pass the same luxury on to your children, then you MUST take the time to cook real food ~ Tsh Oxenreider

It was a funny thing, he thought, that when you live all your life in a place, you almost never do the things that tourists go there to do - like walk on the beach or go swimming in the ocean. He couldn't remember the last time he went swimming. He wasn't even sure he still owned a bathing suit. It was like something he had heard about New York - that half the people who live in the city never go to the top of the Empire State Building or visit the Statue of Liberty. ~ Peter Benchley

Instead of focusing the traditional planning cycles where companies benchmark their businesses against existing competition, teams need to be developed to foster internal change and disruption. Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel. ~ Jay Samit

So the Juárez/El Paso area before the recent drug violence was not a bilingual, bi-national, bicultural Zion, but it was one world. One entity. One place. One city where you could live in between worlds, and have the hope of creating something new. A third way to be, not along the border, but on the border.

That is what the violence has destroyed, that unity, however tenuous it ever was. It has destroyed the idea of that unity and the reality of living so uniquely astride an international border. This 'real idea' was always a work-in-progress, and for the moment it is lost. Yet that real idea of unity had great value. ~ Sergio Troncoso

Sex in the City was a different kind of phenomenon because of the show itself is a phenomenon and to me that's successful because to resonate with women across the board for six years and have only one African-American actor pass through for one episode. ~ Blair Underwood

Whether you are just entering the workforce or nearing retirement age, planning for the future is critical. ~ Ron Lewis

Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a "holiday" in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over. ~ Monica Ali

Everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut. ~ Fred Allen

Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people implying, with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren't smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody that would build a city
5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can't swim is a genius. ~ Larry The Cable Guy

My theory was that a city without a newspaper is a city without a soul. ~ Luis A. Ferre

She taps the Bronx. "This part of the city gets hit the hardest by everything. Gangs, real estate scams, whatever. Hard people, too, if they came through any of that . . . so in a lot of ways, this is the heart of New York. The part of itself that held on to all the attitude and creativity and toughness everybody thinks is the whole city. ~ N.K. Jemisin

In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon describes the scene of Romans fleeing the city of Nisibis in A.D. 363 after it was handed over to the Persians......Gibbon could have been describing a photograph from the 1994 genocide in Rawanda or the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. He could have been describing any number of forced migrations that have occurred all over the world in the last ten years, even the last five. The picture has not changed much since the fourth century. ~ Charles London

The consulships were not the only ornamental offices in Roman society: the Eternal City was filled with the comings and goings of impotent men - senators, magistrates, bustling administrators of all kinds - performing meaningless duties. ~ Thomas Cahill

The Empire had no political cohesion, no capital city, no common laws, common finances, or common officials. It was the relic of a dead ideal. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body ... my liver ... okay, my brain ... went. ~ Dennis Hopper

In the mornings when they were in the city, they had breakfast on a card table in Jeffrey's study ~ John P. Marquand

Care of my heart won't you, Sophie? It's a little odd having it outside my body - but I'm planning to steal yours to make up for it. - Handwritten note from Max to Sophia ~ Nalini Singh

I'm excited about Los Angeles because I believe in her. I believe in her destiny. I think that the fact that we have so many different people from so many parts of the world is a big reason why L.A. is the city of America's promise. ~ Antonio Villaraigosa

I forgot that's what gets you all hot and bothered, Jace, girls killing things."
"I like anyone killing things, especially me." he said with a smile. ~ Cassandra Clare

The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open to them. And it's your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you ~ Christopher Hitchens

Everyone says they want change. They want their lives to change, they want their nations to change, they want this whole world that we live in to change. And perhaps rightfully so. I respect that. But what everyone forgets is that change entails CHANGE. For anything to change, things must in fact CHANGE! Now, these very same people are hard pressed to make any drastic changes in their own minds and in their own ways and when you cannot make drastic changes in your own mind, you cannot make drastic changes in your community, city, state, nation, this world. Then nothing will ever change. Remember: in order for things to change, they must in fact CHANGE. ~ C. JoyBell C.

A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork over the door.
Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of sheer deadly menance.
"This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off."
Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows. A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one arm. His other hand held it by the tail. The rioters watched it, hypnotized.
"Now I know what you're thinking," Vimes went on, softly. "You're wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y'know, I ain't so sure myself ... "
He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon's ears, and his voice buzzed like a knife blade: "What you've got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky? ~ Terry Pratchett

We're all doing time. As soon as we get born, we find ourselves assigned to one little body, one set of desires and fears, one family, city, state, country, and planet. Who can ever understand exactly why or how it comes down as it does? The bottom line is, here we are. Whatever, wherever we are, this is what we've got. It's up to us whether we do it as easy time or hard time. ~ Bo Lozoff

The I shall have London," - Sebastian Morgenstern ~ Cassandra Clare