Quotes About City

So I got up, went down to the number 1 train, and rode in a car full to brimming over with commuters going from the jobs that they didn't want back to the lives they hadn't bargained for.

You know what they say; if you're tired of London, you're tired of life.

I'm sorry. Is that too harsh an observation for you? Does that sound too much like the Truth? Fuck you. If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about Truth, this wouldn't be happening.

You people don't know what the truth is! It's there, just under the bullshit, but you never look! That's what I hate most about this fucking city-- Lies are news and truth is obsolete!

Yesterday, here in the middle of the City, I saw a wolf turn into a Russian ex-gymnast and hand over a business card that read YOUR OWN PERSONAL TRANSHUMAN SECURITY WHORE! STERILIZED INNARDS! ACCEPTS ALL CREDIT CARDS to a large man who had trained attack cancers on his face and possessed seventy-five indentured Komodo Dragons instead of legs. And they had sex. Right in front of me. And six of the Komodo Dragons spat napalm on my new shoes.

If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about Truth, this wouldn't be happening.

The City went to me in a LANDSLIDE, and you know why? Because all it wants is decent television, a bit of spare change for booze, and a blowjob every Saturday night.

Garden City: Dreams in a Kansas Town

The city is not merely a repository of pleasures. It is the stage on which we fight our battles, where we act out the drama of our own lives. It can enhance or corrode our ability to cope with everyday challenges. It can steal our autonomy or give us the freedom to thrive. It can offer a navigable environment, or it can create a series of impossible gauntlets that wear us down daily. The messages encoded in architecture and systems can foster a sense of mastery or helplessness.

Enrique Peñalosa with a big and simple idea: that urban design should be used to make people happier.

Part of the problem is that sprawl's wide streets and big lots take up so much space that cities can't afford to build fire stations close by, so it takes fire trucks longer to reach each blaze.)

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 farther away the parking, the livelier the street.

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

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.

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.

It is not certain that we can all make the leap to universal empathy, but what is clear is this: as a social project, the city challenges us not just to live together but to thrive together, by understanding that our fate is a shared one.

The city is a means to a way of life. It can be a reflection of all our best selves. It can be whatever we want it to be. It can change, and change dramatically.

You cannot separate the social life of urban spaces from the velocity of the activities happening there.

The city that acknowledges and celebrates our common fate, that opens doors to empathy and cooperation, will help us tackle the great challenges of this century.

the government establishes an inquiry office as a guide to the city and a complete stranger refuses to use its services, he is to blame if he gets lost.