...frequent streets and short blocks are valuable because of the fabric of intricate cross-use that they permit among the users of a city neighbouhood. — Jane Jacobs
One cannot make architecture without studying the condition of life in the city — Aldo Rossi
Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design. — Jane Jacobs
The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy. — Le Corbusier
EMBRACING THE EXISTING Japanese perspective on urban history and context — Kengo Kuma
Great design is a multi-layered relationship between human life and its environment. — Naoto Fukasawa
Streets and their sidewalks-the main public places of a city-are its most vital organs. — Jane Jacobs
[Urbanization] is the inevitable outcome of the processes of growth and the processes of modernization. — Manmohan Singh
You cannot separate the buildings out from the infrastructure of cites and the mobility of transit. — Norman Foster
London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design. — Renzo Piano
By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities. — Socrates
Architecture can't force people to connect, it can only plan the crossing points, remove barriers, and make the meeting places useful and attractive. — Denise Scott Brown
Livable neighborhoods with a vibrant street life will stimulate our economic life as well. — Gavin Newsom
Intricate minglings of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos. On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form of order. — Jane Jacobs
We all need the living green or we'll shrivel up inside. To make the modern city livable is the task of our times. — Jens Jensen
Urban Planning Quotes
Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves. — Urie Bronfenbrenner
Do not try to make circumstances fit your plans. Make plans that fit the circumstances. — George S. Patton
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
Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.
Architects and engineers are among the most fortunate of men since they build their own monuments with public consent, public approval and often public money. — John Prebble
A plan that everyone dislikes for different reasons is a success. A plan everyone dislikes for the same reason is a failure. A plan that everyone likes for the same reason is an act of God! — Richard Carson
Poor planning or poor execution of plans is simply to let some force other than reason shape reality. — Robert McNamara
Good design is obvious, great design is transparent.
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
Nothing's dangerous if you know what you're doing. — Johnny Unitas
A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending. — James Howard Kunstler
The key words of violent economics are urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, speed. . . . The problem of evolving a nonviolent way of economic life [in the West] and that of developing the underdeveloped countries may well turn out to be largely identical. — E. F. Schumacher
As Spengler observed, all urbanized societies seem to develop a subconscious death wish, making individuals indifferent to the survival of their families and their race. — Revilo P. Oliver
I'm completely taken and impressed by the planning authority of Singapore and its Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). It's the most cutting-edge agency in the world. They have very effective guidelines for development, and they review design as it evolves. — Moshe Safdie
Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak
His [Donald Trump] urban policy is stop and frisk, law and order. And we need investment and development. — Jesse Jackson
The idea of the chickens with the multiple breasts and thighs came from an urban legend that some fast-food places had developed chickens with four thighs. It wasn't true, but it is a suggestive rumor. — Margaret Atwood
Unlike the urban development that I see taking over and swallowing up our precious soil, when we interact with our environment in a way that allows for regeneration and natural spaces, the outcome can be beautiful. — Cory Trepanier
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Strengthening local airports in Iowa is important for economic development and improving the quality of life our rural areas and urban communities — Chuck Grassley
I feel however, that we architects have a special duty and mission... (to contribute) to the socio-cultural development of architecture and urban planning. — Kenzo Tange
In North America, hip-hop and urban music are much more developed than it could be in Europe, except for a couple of markets like France, for example, or Germany, they're a little bit more aware. — K-Maro
The slurbs, urban sprawl, and the infinite number, of housing developments of the postwar boom have contributed to the architecture of entropy. — Robert Smithson
Urban Landscape Quotes
The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque. — Susan Sontag
I don't think of myself as a rebellious artist, a lot of people have said that about me because I came from Cornwall and choose to paint people in what they considered to be an urban style instead of Cornish landscapes. I've never agreed with them. It's bullshit. — Danny Fox
What I wanted to try and figure out was, okay, in contemporary 21st century life the alienation between the self and the land around you or the self and even the urban landscape. You name it. — DJ Spooky
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan.
To truly make good public space, you have to erase the distinctions between architecture, urbanism, landscape, [and] media design. — Liz Diller
I enjoy places that have mystery and atmosphere, perhaps a patina of age, a suggestion rather than a description, a question or two. I look for memories, traces, evidence of the human interaction with the landscape. Sometimes I photograph pure nature, sometimes urban structures. — Michael Kenna
So he [Sigmund Freud] called this "the uncanny" and he also referred to cities as well, like the idea of walking through the city and the way the urban landscape could lead you to a sense of disorientation and to a kind of, you know, sense of repetition. And the way a city can unfold as you walk. — DJ Spooky
Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because the idea wasn't theirs.
The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness. — Eckhart Tolle
Walkman was the precursor to the cell phone, in terms of your strategy for getting through the urban landscape and the modern experience. Insulate yourself from it with your own soundscape. — Douglas Rushkoff
Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species. — David Suzuki
Urban Environment Quotes
Urbanization is not about simply increasing the number of urban residents or expanding the area of cities. More importantly, it's about a complete change from rural to urban style in terms of industry structure, employment, living environment and social security. — Li Keqiang
I find it striking that the quality of the urban habitat of homo sapieans is so weakly researched compared to the habitats of gorillas, elephants, and Bengal tigers and panda bears in China…you hardly see anything on the habitat of man in the urban environment. — Jan Gehl
Human civilization has been changing the Earths environment for millennia, often to our detriment. Dams, deforestation and urbanization can alter water cycles and wind patterns, occasionally triggering droughts or even creating deserts. — Jamais Cascio
Good design is as little design as possible.
Unlike a child in a totally urban environment, my friends and peer group were not only other children, but also wild and domesticated animals, plants of every sort, brooks and waterfalls, rocks and sand. — Freeman Patterson
There's an aesthetic theme, which is cities at two o'clock in the morning. Not cities packed with people going out to clubs and dancing but desolate, empty streets. It's off-putting but there's a strange comfort to it as well, that desolate urban environment. — Moby
I wanted to improve the suburban office building; to create a great urban space in a suburban environment with all that implies about interaction, collaboration and creativity. — Helmut Jahn
Although you should respect venomous snakes and approach them with caution, most snakes you encounter in an urban environment are harmless and beneficial because they eat insects, mice and other rodents. — Robert Pierce
The dining room is a building; the bathroom is a building. If we scatter this single-program architecture inside of a domestic environment, we can link an interior urbanism in a way similar to a village or a township of tiny houses. — Jimenez Lai
The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It's constantly stimulating, it's like a slap in the face. — Carter Burwell
City Planning Quotes
The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach. — Le Corbusier
Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. — Eliel Saarinen
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
Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.
I have a bold plan to break from the Bloomberg years, and end the 'Tale of Two Cities' by providing real opportunity to all New Yorkers, no matter where they live. — Bill de Blasio
In a city where you walk around, it's impossible to plan your day and your life as accidents will happen, you'll overhear things, bump into people, and take unexpected turns. — Jason Schwartzman
Ronda is the place where to go, if you are planning to travel to Spain for a honeymoon or for being with a girlfriend. The whole city and its surroundings are a romantic set. ... Nice promenades, good wine, excellent food, nothing to do. — Ernest Hemingway
Design is thinking made visual.
We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. — J. B. Priestley
You don't see no city when you look at me cause country's all I am. I love runnin' barefoot through the old cornfields and I love that country ham. Well you say I'm made just to fit your plans but there's a barnyard shovel pick your hands. If your eyes are on me you're lookin' at country. — Loretta Lynn
The fact that an Englishman has an Argentinian as an idol is very rare. I keep watching my [title-winning] goal against QPR and every time I get more emotional. My plan is to stay here because I'm convinced Manchester City will be at the same level as Real Madrid and Barcelona. — Sergio Aguero
We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins — Ellen Ullman
Urban Life Quotes
I live a very quiet life, although I'm very urban and a diehard New Yorker — Armand Assante
Gang violence in America is not a sudden problem. It has been a part of urban life for years, offering an aggressive definition and identity to those seeking a place to belong in the chaos of large metropolitan areas. — Dave Reichert
I am a person that believes in different emotions with music. Music can bring about different vibes on the field, off the field, urban life, going to church, leaving church. Everything the world may bring, there's a song for it to put you in the right frame of mind. — Cam Newton
Luck is the residue of design.
Europe is a very different place from my native country of Colombia and my children are growing up in a very urban setting which is nothing like when I was growing up and would be able to play barefoot in the street. But we have a very good life. — Shakira
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. — Charles Lamb
I probably lead a very spoiled life, because I travel from people interested in permaculture to people interested in permaculture. Some of them are tribal, and some of them are urban, and so on. — Bill Mollison
Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life. — Alan Dundes
In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion. — Jane Smiley
I'm a kid from New York, so urban life reflected into art and music was around me and accessible and tangible. — Zoe Saldana
the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. ... At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style. — Ada Louise Huxtable
Urban Quotes
History shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence. — Camille Paglia
The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights. — David Harvey
All urbanization, pushed beyond a certain point, automatically becomes suburbanization.... Every great city is just a collection of suburbs. Its inhabitantsdo not live in their city; they merely inhabit it. — Aldous Huxley
If the Chinese population were to be given a free vote, the unity of the Han might begin to crack, or, more likely, the countryside and urban areas would come into conflict. — Tim Marshall
San Francisco lags behind other communities in providing a vital, vibrant and ecologically sustainable urban canopy, as well as open space in the city. — Gavin Newsom
People who live in SoHo want to be close to the energy, culture, and eccentricities of New York's most charming neighborhoods. — Jared Kushner
Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. — Annie Jacobsen
The real problems are cultural. The problems of the people who take drugs as a cultural trap - I think there's a real problem there, the crack stuff, the hopelessness of the junkie. The urban angst. — Jerry Garcia
Meth is a major problem not only in our urban areas, but in most of the rural areas of Colorado. No region has been immune from this scourge and it is getting larger. — Ken Salazar
The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. — David Harvey
Architectural Design Quotes
Chandeliers are marvels of drop-dead showiness, the jewellery of architecture. — Peter York
A dress is a piece of ephemeral architecture, designed to enhance the proportions of the female body. — Christian Dior
One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again. — Renzo Piano
I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do. — Frank Gehry
The Sun does not realise how wonderful it is until after a room is made. — Louis Kahn
Nothing in this world is more simple and more cheap than making cities that provide better for people. — Jan Gehl
The room is there for the human being - not the human being for the room. — El Lissitzky
I like ruins because what remains is not the total design, but the clarity of thought, the naked structure, the spirit of the thing. — Tadao Ando
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities. — Walter Gropius
Urban Areas Quotes
Strengthen the rural areas and you will find less people migrating to urban areas. You give them opportunity, self respect & self confidence, they will never go to an urban slum. — Bunker Roy
However, don't let these statistics mislead you, gang violence is not limited to California and or big urban areas - that might have been true a while ago but it is no longer the case today. — Bob Filner
The premature migration of very large numbers of people from rural areas to urban areas can give rise to a lot of strains to the urban infrastructure, which can also create problems of crime - law-and-order problems. — Manmohan Singh
Because they [Americans] want to be thought of as a rich nation, they are very ashamed of this place [Appalachia] that has come to represent poverty, even though poverty exists all over the country, and exists as much in urban areas as it does in rural, if not more. — Silas House
Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it. — Ridley Scott
I don't write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City. — Richard Price
Many health care providers, particularly physicians in rural and urban areas, are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates. — Ron Wyden
The disadvantages of a decentralized, spread out urban area are tremendous, and the environmental damage of urban sprawl cannot be ignored. As a large city, Tokyo must be used more efficiently and the population density increased. — Minoru Mori
You can put the greatest seafood restaurant next to an average steak house in an urban area, and that steak house will do more business than the seafood place. If you go to the water, you can put an average seafood place next to the greatest steak house, and people are going to eat seafood. — Tilman J Fertitta
I know that New York City remains the highest density urban area in the country and by far dedicates more of its own funds to fighting terrorism than any other municipality. — Jose Serrano
The fundamental failure of most graphic, product, architectural and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good. — Richard Saul Wurman
The design of the building addresses the public nature of both the urban context and the internal program. In order to reinforce the building's associative or mimetic qualities, the facades are organized in a classical three-part division of base, middle or body, and attic or head. — Michael Graves
Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes. — Jamais Cascio
When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't. — Frank Gehry
Any town that doesn't have sidewalks doesn't love its children. — Margaret Mead
One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before. — Frank Gehry
Urban design as a discipline barely exists in most American and Canadian cities. In Singapore, there are innovative transportation strategies at work. — Moshe Safdie
The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing. — Thomas Huxley
The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation. — Albert Einstein
Urban design is where the number are and easy size of installation plus the fast lessons to extend out to larger design acreage. — Geoff Lawton
From 50 centuries, we can learn about the close relationship between garden design and urban design, because both arts involve the composition of buildings with paving, landform, water, vegetation and climate. — Tom Turner
Urban public space is a stage for viewing the field of graphic design in its diversity. A mix of voices, from advertising to activism, compete for visibility. — Ellen Lupton
Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency. — Jeffrey Eugenides
In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasília very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasília — Oscar Niemeyer
To implement a true urban renaissance, you first need a Grand Design elaborated by strong leadership . — Minoru Mori
I did Urban Zen for myself, to make clothes for me and my friends, a similar philosophy to when I started Donna Karan. Except this time I hope it will stay that way so that I will be able to support young designers and mentor them. — Donna Karan
Detroit is an urban hell. But even in this city of the dying auto industry, there is reason to hope, if they manage to combine the creative forces of designers and other intellectual "suppliers" in other ways. — Charles Landry
Generally biobanking is really designed more for urban areas, with the offsets being offered in non-urban areas. It may be able to help in some circumstances, but it depends a lot on what we're talking about here. But biobanking does allow for offsets in relation to a specific species, as well as specific ecological communities as well as land. It's quite a flexible tool. — Frank Sartor
As the world's "most dynamic" cities seek to manage their own urban growth, American state and local officials have much to offer. Our mayors can share their experiences in urban design, clean energy projects, Smart Grids, codes for energy efficient buildings, transportation safety, and innovative environmental solutions. — Robert Hormats
I do quite like Gehry's Guggenheim. But where in Bilbao it's seen as an outgrowth of years of investment in urban design and engineering, in Britain it's seen as the catalyst for urban regeneration rather than the icing on the cake. — David Chipperfield
My girlfriend is a fashion designer. She has her own company called Rachel Antonoff. She is doing a collaboration with Urban Outfitters right now, a shoe collaboration with Bass. She sells to Barneys, stuff like that. — Nate Ruess
Permaculture offers a radical approach to food production and urban renewal, water, energy and pollution. It integrates ecology, landscape, organic gardening, architecture and agro-forestry in creating a rich and sustainable way of living. It uses appropriate technology giving high yields for low energy inputs, achieving a resource of great diversity and stability. The design principles are equally applicable to both urban and rural dwellers — Bill Mollison
In the planning and designing of new communities, housing projects, and urban renewal, the planners both private and public, need to give explicit consideration to the kind of world that is being created for the children who will be growing up in these settings. Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children both older and younger than themselves. — Urie Bronfenbrenner
The new architecture and urban design of segregation could be called Calvinist: they reflect a desire to live in a world of predestination rather than chance, to strip the world of its wide-open possibilities and replace them with freedom of choice in the marketplace. — Rebecca Solnit
In Conclusion
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