2,405 Quotes About Cities

Toward the end of the Second World War, anew consciousness arose amongst the publicand policy makers of the Western World. Afterten years of crippling economic depressionand another five at war, the public demandedsomething new from their disintegratingurban environments.

You came to tell us that the great cities are in favour of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile plains. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy out farms and the grass will grow in the city...You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

Different cities visit us daily, they exist in the clouds.

If each community clean it's surroundings, the country will be clean.

Whose maps are we trying to read? And what are we trying to draw? It's so common to live in a place without truly knowing its history, its systems, and the people who are different from you and who move through different versions of the city.

...Why are corporations so fleeting?...Instead of imitating the freewheeling city, these businesses minimize the very interactions that lead to new ideas. They erect walls and establish hierarchies. They keep people from relaxing and having insights. They stifle conversations, discourage dissent, and suffocate social networks. Rather than maximizing employee creativity they become obsessed with minor efficiencies.

I realized during the research of High Altitude Observatory Disease (HAOD) that the outcome would be bad for not only astronomy, but for Space, airlines, frequent fliers, sky divers, mountaineering, ski resorts, high altitude cities, military, insurance, and so on.

I had the sense that cities were yielding, that they moved over and made room.

Overnight, the city managed to procure thousands of cardboard boxes, fifteen hundred hard hats, a few thousand rolls of packing tape, and the services of Eric Lundquist, a mechanical engineer and former popcorn distributor who had reinvented himself as a expert in drying out wet things. The notion of putting the books in with groceries didn't faze Lundquist, since he'd freeze-dried his first salvaged books alongside a summer's worth of peas and carrots from his garden.