Quotes from Charles Montgomery

Semenza had his own special interest in getting people together. The story of his introduction to the geography of loneliness is worth remembering.

casual encounters (such as, say, the kind that might happen around a volleyball court on a Friday night) are just as important to belonging and trust as contact with family and close friends.

Southern California's most convivial street, which, in a sad commentary on the state of American public space, sits beyond the fare gate at the entrance to Disneyland.

Many North American cities are just waking up to the fact that they have been engaging in a massive urban Ponzi scheme, with new development creating short-term benefits in development fees and tax revenues but even bigger long-term costs that pile up faster than cities' ability to pay them off.

Ample, easy parking is the hallmark of the dispersed city. It is also a killer of street life. A cruise through Los Angeles illustrates the dynamic. The city's downtown has been said to contain more parking spaces per acre than any other place on earth, and its streets are some of the most desolate.

the obvious solution to congestion—building more roads—simply produces more traffic, creating a hedonic treadmill of construction and frustration.

What followed was "a new kind of mass death," says urban historian Peter Norton, who charted the transformation in America's road culture during the 1920s. More than two hundred thousand people were killed in motor accidents in the United States that decade. Most were killed in cities. Most of the dead were pedestrians. Half were children and youths.

we all live in systems that shape our travel behavior. And most of us live in systems that give us almost no choice in how to live or get around. Americans have it worst.

low-rise, mixed-use buildings of two or three stories—the kind you see on an old-style, small-town main street—bring in ten times the revenue per acre as that of an average big-box development.

How much does social time matter? One more survey: a 2008 study by the Gallup Organization and Healthways found a direct relationship between well-being and leisure time. The more people hung out with family and friends in any particular day, the more happiness and enjoyment they reported, and the less stress and worry. It's no surprise that it's good to hang out with people we like.

Despite all we have invested in this dispersed city, it has failed to maximize health and happiness. It is inherently dangerous. It makes us fatter, sicker, and more likely to die young. It makes life more expensive than it has to be. It steals our time. It makes it harder to connect with family, friends, and neighbors.

This is the true nature of home—it is the place of peace: the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt and division … —John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies

Thomas 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.

met in a harborside convention center in Vancouver to figure out how to save the world's exploding cities from disaster. The world had little inkling of the great recession slouching on the horizon, yet the prognosis was bleak. The problem? On the one hand, cities were pumping out most of the world's pollution and 80 percent

Meanwhile, dispersal starves the budgets of cities forced to spend sales tax dollars on roads, pipes, sewage, and services for the distant neighborhoods of sprawl, leaving little for the shared amenities that make central-city living attractive.

It is tempting to believe that the job of fixing cities is the untouchable terrain of distant authorities whom the state has deemed responsible. It is a terrible mistake to give in to this temptation.

We're living an experiment," he finally yelled back at me as he pocketed his cell phone. "We might not be able to fix the economy. We might not be able to make everyone as rich as Americans. But we can design the city to give people dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier." There it was, the declaration I have seen bring tears to so many eyes with its promise of urban revolution and redemption.

What's amazing is how, despite their love of liberty, Americans have embraced the massive restriction of private property rights that the separated city demands. Once a neighborhood is zoned and built, it gets frozen like a Polaroid from the day everyone moves in.

With about half the world's population, cities are responsible for three-quarters of energy consumption and 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and the dispersed city is the most wasteful of them all.

Helliwell and his team have run several iterations of the World Values Survey and the Gallup World Poll through their statistical grinders and have found that when it comes to life satisfaction, relationships with other people beat income, hands down. For example, these polls asked people if they had a friend or relative to count on when needed. Just going from being friendless to having one friend or family member to confide in had the same effect on life satisfaction as a tripling of income.

The sustainable city has got to promise more happiness than the status quo. It has got to be healthier, higher in status, more fun, and more resilient than the dispersed city.

Self-acceptance, or how well you know and regard yourself Environmental mastery – your ability to navigate and thrive in the world Positive relations with others Personal growth throughout life Sense of meaning and purpose Feelings of autonomy and independence

Paleolithic landscape:

1950s nuclear family,