Quotes from Charles Montgomery

land zoning that excludes apartments and affordable housing from neighborhoods also constitutes a form of segregation.

six-story mixed-use building produced more than thirteen times the tax revenue and twelve times the jobs per acre of land than the Walmart on the edge of town.

living in low-density sprawl puts residents at greater risk of arthritis, chronic lung disease, digestive problems, headaches, and urinary tract infections.

result from living in communities that force people to drive. Just living in a sprawling city has the effect of four years of aging.

The more TV you watch, the fewer friendships you are likely to have, the less trusting you become, and the less happy you are likely to be.

immobility is to the human body what rust is to the classic car.

I don't understand why this isn't enough for you. Why the world isn't enough for you. Why you are so obsessed with magic when you have all the wonder of humanity around you.

The farther away the parking, the livelier the street.

As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert.

By spending resources and designing cities in a way that values everyone's experience, life can get easier and more pleasant for everyone. We can make cities that are more generous and less cruel. We can make cities that help us all get stronger, more resilient, more connected, more active and more free. We just have to decide who our cities are for. And we have to believe that they can change.

Unfortunately, when choosing how to live or move, most of us are not as free as we think. Our options are strikingly limited, and they are defined by the planners, engineers, politicians, architects, marketers, and land speculators who imprint their own values on the urban landscape.

The biggest danger is, by its nature, the least exciting. It is the sickness that comes from doing nothing. Public health experts have even invented a new word—obesogenic, or fat-making—to describe low-density neighborhoods like Weston Ranch. This is one of the reasons that, aside from sedentary Saudi Arabians and some South Pacific Islanders, Americans are now the fattest people on the planet.

use, mixed income, density, and transit.

Sometimes it takes an entire generation to see the life lost between freeway off-ramps.

We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality.

People here are trying to use angels like they once used their ancestral spirits. They are still trying to accumulate and direct mana like their ancestors did. There is almost no reference in this to Christ at all. Christianity is not about wielding power. It's not about personal charisma. It's not about mana. It is about meekness. Jesus gave up his power in order to die, weak and helpless, on the cross.

It's about the realization of talent and potential, and the feeling that you are able to make the most of your abilities in life.

First is a reckoning on energy. It will probably never again be inexpensive to fill a gas tank. There is too little easy oil left in the ground, and there are too many people competing for it.

Britton is one of those people whose ideas seem too theoretical, too pie-in-the-sky to matter, until suddenly they change the world.

engines of wealth; they must be viewed as systems that should be shaped to improve human well-being.

In 2010 Miami, Florida, became the first major city to toss out its entire zoning book in favor of a homegrown form-based code.

Anyone with faith in economic man would think that people would put up with the pain of a long commute only if they enjoyed even greater benefits from cheaper housing or bigger, finer homes or higher-paying jobs. They would weigh the costs and benefits and make sensible decisions. A couple of University of Zurich economists discovered that this simply isn't the case.

Jefferson convinced his fellow Founding Fathers of the American republic to adopt the Roman grid barely four years after their victory against the British Empire.

the most important psychological effect of the city is the way in which it moderates our relationships with other people.