Quotes About Urban

That is why urban evolution can proceed so rapidly: the animals and plants that need to adapt to whatever new feature humans release in their urban environment do not need to wait for the right mutations to come along. Mostly, the necessary gene variants are already there, waiting in the wings of the standing genetic variation. It only takes natural selection to bring them out into the limelight, and give them a chance to shine.

As we have seen before, cities are like mad scientists, creating their own crazy ecological concoctions by throwing all kinds of native and foreign elements into the urban melting pot.

What she means is that cities exchange not only species, but also the human inventions that make those cities tick and that urban organisms must adapt to.

Parakeets in Paris … It could be the name of a hypnotic Matisse painting, but since the 1970s it has been a very realistic image for the French capital. In fact, the ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri) is one of the birds that has been most successful in invading cities in Europe (on a smaller scale, also in Japan, North America, the Middle East, and Australia).

HitchBOT made it as far as Philadelphia, where the doll was dismembered and left in a dark alley.4

Los Angeles wasn't a sun-splashed utopia anymore—it was an alienated, smog-choked sprawl rife with racial and class tensions, recession, and stifling boredom.

In many ways, we are the city that the New Deal built. Because that's who built all of our infrastructure. Before that, we were a hardscrabble town.

In New York City, a lot of people think 'the great outdoors' is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.

No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.

buggies outside of cafés, that you aren't worried they will get stolen …

New York City is a place where everyone lived on top of each other, and that was exactly how Sabrina liked it. Living out in the middle of nowhere was dangerous and suspicious.

O'Neill jumped out into the road, jammed a note into the driver's hand, and dodged another motorcyclist as he made his way past the endless huddle of peep shows and Chinese restaurants into a narrow, Dickensian alley piled high with rubbish.

The London Underground

I feel this evening that I am too hopelessly and happily corrupted by the richness of London life to ever be right for Dorset, or vice-versa.

Chicago rising out of the Midwest like huge metallic cornstalks...

Rush hour was under way; her car became one more pair of headlights in a glittering daisy chain of commuters.

The thing about New York is you can leave your house without a plan and find the day. You can't do that in Los Angeles. You need to get in your car, all this, you can't just drive around like a lunatic. In New York, you can literally walk outside, and wind up anywhere.

De stad heeft zo'n 2100 kilometer riool... Ongeveer 1300 mijl. Maar maak je geen zorgen. Verdwalen zullen we niet. De meeste hebben hun eigen straatnaambord. - Machiavelli, over Parijs

Against Benioff's suggestion that San Francisco's homeless population is heavily comprised of families with children, the research finds that far more homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area are adults without families than in other parts of the United States. Whereas families make up 32, 53, and 65 percent of the homeless in New York City, Chicago, and Boston, they make up just 9 percent of the Bay Area's homeless population.

While some homeless are attracted to San Francisco for housing and services, many of San Francisco's most visible homeless people don't use them. When I visited the Tenderloin with Tom Wolf, he pointed to the doorway to a building. "I slept here," he said, "because I was such an addict that I didn't want to walk the five blocks to the shelter. I wanted to be right near the dealers.

The best thing to be in a city was anonymous. Failing that, however, notoriety would do.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

The suburbs are a scary place. I'm glad I live in New York City, where crime is more predictable.

I will meet you in the dirtiest city you can dream of. We will drink cocktails so sweet they pucker our cheeks, as we perch on cracked leather bar stools. I will buy you plates of calcium and protein and we will run through the streets in excellent danger.