145 Quotes by Jane Jacobs

Does anyone suppose that, in real life, answers to any of the great questions that worry us today are going to come out of homogeneous settlements?

Writing, printing, and the Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture.

poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes. Analogically, heat is a result of active processes; it has causes. But cold is not the result of any processes; it is only the absence of heat. Just so, the great cold of poverty and economic stagnation is merely the absence of economic development.

A region is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution.

Unity, like so many good things, is good only in moderation.

observation of realities has never, to put it mildly, been one of the strengths of economic development theory.

it is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.

Today barbarism has taken over many city streets, or people fear it has, which comes to much the same thing in the end.

To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.