Quotes from Ray Oldenburg

The course of urban development in America is pushing the individual toward that line seperating proud independence from pitiable isolation.

The development of an informal public life depends people finding and enjoying one another outside the cash nexus.

So I took to the road with an accomplice and set off to the golden South, the new land of opportunity, North Carolina. Here, with the help of a partner I had only just met (and on the back porch of a rural farmhouse, to boot!), I was going to simultaneously live my version of the great American dream and enrich the lives of the residents of Raleigh, North Carolina.

1) Remain silent you share of the time (more rather than less). 2) Be attentive while others are talking. 3) Say what you think but be careful not to hurt others' feelings. 4) Avoid topics not of general interest. 5) Say little or nothing about yourself personally, but talk about others there assembled. 6) Avoid trying to instruct. 7) Speak in as low a voice as will allow others to hear.

America's professional and managerial elites have little interest in the broad middle class of our society and have weak ties to nation and place.

our postwar residential areas are extremely hostile to strangers, outsiders, and new residents of the area.

Philip Langdon's A Better Place to Live is a painstaking examination of how to "retrofit" American suburbs and when we come to the necessary matter of re-writing the building and zoning codes, this book should be one of the primers.

Currently and for some time now, the course of urban growth and development in the United States has been hostile to an informal public life;

Suburban zoning has replaced "public characters" with the retailers and their employees in the malls and out on the strips.

calling a subdivision a "community," for that is precisely what it is not.

We have become a suburban nation—the only one in the world.

zoning ordinances were copied and enforced all over the land, prohibiting the stuff of community from intrusion into residential areas.

urban planning which meets the needs of children and the elderly will be nice for everybody, but truer words are rarely written

citizen participation in planning and well understands that that can happen only at the neighborhood level.

How many Americans having "surfed" all the channels and, bored by it all, wouldn't like to slip on a jacket and walk down to the corner and have a cold one with the neighbors? Ah, but we've made sure there's nothing on the corner but another private residence . . . indeed, nothing at all within easy walking distance.

We are an open mixing place for the general public, but we are strongly committed to bringing together people who may not normally spend time together in the hope that they will become friends, seeking deeper relationships with each other and with the community. A sign I once saw in an old café window proclaimed, "There are no strangers here, just friends who haven't met," and that pretty much captures what we're about.

It is estimated that American industry loses from $50 billion to $75 billion annually due to absenteeism, company-paid medical expenses, and lost productivity.17 Stress in the lives of the workers is a major cause of these industrial losses.