Daily Message
The majority of the sprawl in this country is produced by those who are fleeing from sprawl. --Alex Krieger
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It is often assumed that children play in the streets because they lack playground space. But many children play in the street because they like to. -- William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
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What is wanted is not to restore a vanished, or revise a vanishing culture under modern conditions, but to grow a contemporary culture from the old roots. --T.S.Eliot
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Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thought, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. --Søren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher
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The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins. --Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Italian author, critic. Invisible Cities (1972, trans. 1974).
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To understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena. -- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities. ~Lewis Mumford
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For all its flexibility, the car is not the best possible way to get to or move around in very busy places.” --Henry Ford “America’s Motorcracy, “ The New York Times. Nov 28, 1973, p.45.
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The City is organized complexity. --Jane Jacobs
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I have met but one or two people who understand the art of walking.
--Henry David Thoreau, American Philosopher
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I represent what is left of a vanishing race, and that is the pedestrian.... That I am still able to be here, I owe to a keen eye and a nimble pair of legs. But I know they'll get me someday. ~~Will Rogers
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Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. ~~H.G. Wells
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. --E.B. White
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A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again. --Margaret Mead (1901-1978), U.S. anthropologist. World Enough, ch. 2 (1975).
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The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears—as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk- happy. --Frank Lloyd Wright, "Earth," (1958).
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When a village ceases to be a community, it becomes oppressive in its narrow conformity. So one becomes an individual and migrates to the city. There, finding others likeminded, one re- establishes a village community. Nowadays only New Yorkers are yokels.--Paul Goodman "Winter and Spring 1956-1957"
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God made us walking animals—pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy. - Enrique Penalosa
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Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happy as possible. --Socrates
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Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life! --Robert Browning, British Poet
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Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.- Edward Abbey, writer, essayist, novelist (1927-1989).
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Democracy, in any active sense, begins and ends in communities small enough for their members to meet face to face. -Lewis Mumford.
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A road is attribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time. -Milan Kundera
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It is the first obligation of all building to place itself in relationship to the city. -Voltaire 1827.
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Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones of them.
- Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome (121-180 AD)
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You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
- Yogi Berra, baseball catcher
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In our profession, a plan that everyone dislikes for different reasons is a success. A plan everyone dislikes for the same reason is a failure. And a plan that everyone likes for the same reason is an act of God.
- Richard Carson, Pacific Northwest planner and writer.
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Charles Darwin wrote, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." Urban areas can be viewed as a living organism. In this case, the quote applies to cties, too!
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"Smart Growth" is a code word for whatever the user of this term wants to achieve... In spite of its diverse and often conflicting meanings, all parties superficially endorse "smart growth" because it is clearly superior to the alternative: "dumb growth." - Anthony Downs, writer
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Let the river roll which way it will, cities will rise on its banks.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet (1803-1882)
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A hundred years after we are gone and forgotten, those who never heard of us will be living with the results of our actions.
- Oliver Wendell Homes, U.S. Supreme Court justice
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Americans are in the habit of never walking if they can ride.
Louis Philippe, Duc d'Orleans (1798)
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By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.
- Socrates, Greek philosopher and dramatist (469-399 BC)
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The suburb is a place where a developer cuts down all the trees to build houses, and then names the streets after the trees.
- Bill Vaughn
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The outcome of the city will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy.
- Frank Lloyd Wright, architect
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Parking is a narcotic and ought to be a controlled substance. It is addictive, and one can never have enough. - Victor Dover
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Suburbanization is the biggest threat to cities in North America. -Paul Bedford, Toronto Planning Director
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Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf. - Lewis Mumford
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The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves. -Toni Morrison, U.S. novelist
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Regional growth patterns require regional governance.
--Anthony Downs
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... city areas with flourishing diversity sprout strange and unpredictable uses and peculiar scenes. But this is not a drawback of diversity. This is the point ... of it.
--(Jane Jacobs (b. 1916), U.S. urban analyst. The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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A hundred years after we are gone and forgotten, those who never heard of us will be living with the results of our actions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
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The outcome of the city will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy. - Frank Lloyd Wright
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In a quality city, a person should be able to live their entire life without a car, and not feel deprived. - Paul Bedford
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The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity. - Lewis Mumford
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The point of cities is multiplicity of choice. - Jane Jacobs
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A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again. - Margaret Mead
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Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happy as possible. - Socrates
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If what you market is privacy and exclusivity, then every new house is a degradation of the amenity. If what you market is community, then every new house is an enhancement of the asset. - Vince Graham
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It is the first obligation of all building to place itself in relationship to the city. - Voltaire
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What is wanted is not to restore a vanished, or revise a vanishing culture under modern conditions, but to grow a contemporary culture from the old roots. -T.S. Eliot
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Every city in America has some special resources that it is not using. If cities were using these resources, they could achieve a potential not now being realized. - James Rouse
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We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us. - Sir Winston Churchill
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The future is not so much to be predicted but to be chosen. American Planning Association
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We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans. - Reubin Askew
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We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past. - Madame Chiang
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A community is like a ship: everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. - Henrik Ibsen
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Growth is inevitable and desirable, but destruction of community character is not. The question is not whether your part of the world is going to change. The question is how. Edward T. McMahon
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Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark. - Theodore Parker
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The trouble with land is that they're not making it anymore. Will Rogers
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The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith. - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. - Hugh White
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Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us. - Richard I. Winwood
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Planning of the automobile city focuses on saving time. Planning for the accessible city, on the other hand, focuses on time well spent. - Robert Cervero
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Green architecture without good urban design is like cutting down the rainforest using hybrid-powered bulldozers.- Dan Malouff
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