Quotes About Urbanization

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

Such was life; everything passed away; the fields and woodlands of boyhood became built upon; streets and pavements and lamp posts arose where warblers and willow wrens had sung; nothing ever remained the same.

Ma koliko nastojali ljudi, kad ih se nekoliko stotina tisu?a skupi na jednom, nevelikom mjestu, da iznakaze tu zemlju na kojoj se stiš?u; ma kako sabijali kamenje u zemlju da ne bi ništa raslo na njoj; ma kako plijevili svaku travku što probije; ma kako dimili kamenim ugljenom i petrolejem; ma kako obrezivali drve?e i ma kako istjerivali sve životinje i ptice – prolje?e je bilo prolje?e ?ak i u gradu.

The technology which, in our culture, has released urban and even rural man from the quiet before his hearth log has debauched his taste. Man no longer dreams over a book in which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him through the pangs of youth and age. Today he is more likely to sit before a screen and dream the mass dream which comes from outside.

When people say they come from the country, they say it abjectly, apologetically. Unlike Londoners, Tokyoites do not drive out to the country at the weekend or yearn for a country cottage. Everyone, if they had the chance, would live in Tokyo. Four hours to the next train, while inconceivable in Tokyo, was only to be expected of inaka.

What I would suggest is that the most important agent in effecting the change from a decentralized village economy to a highly organized urban economy, was the king, or rather, the institution of Kingship. The industrialization and commercialization we now associate with urban growth was for centuries a subordinate phenomenon probably even emerging later in time :

Perhaps the best definition for the inhabitants of an early city is that they are a permanently captive farm population.

What was atrocious was the fact that, like every other building in the new towns, they were dumped almost at random; the leakage of escaping gas scented the so-called gas-house districts, and not surprisingly these districts frequently became among the most degraded sections of the city. Towering above the town, polluting its air, the gas tanks symbolized the dominance of 'practical' interests over life-needs.

The rain-cum-solar energy centre functioning in Chennai is a source of credible public information on rainwater harvesting and solar energy use. Such centres need to be replicated in all our cities, towns and block headquarters.

If you want to save the natural environment, you just use nuclear. You grow more food on less land, and people live in cities. It's not rocket science.

Yes, the car is still useful - for a few people it's essential. It would make a good servant. But it has become our master, and it spoils everything it touches.

The history of black people in Manhattan is a story of people getting pushed farther uptown as land acquires new uses and increases in value.

It's harder and harder to find a spot within a day's drive of Los Angeles with enough vacant grass or even sand or dirt to stake a tent on.

I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.

Sometimes it feels hard to remember that Silicon Valley is an actual place, a collage of parched suburbs, and not just the collective noun for information-technology companies.

The future is going to happen in Toronto or Berlin or Bengaluru and not necessarily in the Valley.

The interstate highway system was built to get people from point A to point B as fast as possible. And they knocked down mountains and filled valleys and made everything nice and big and flat, and they bypassed every town.

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.

Çepeçevre, binalar?n füme camdan cepheleri insan yüzlerine benziyorlar. DonuklaÅŸm?? yüzler bunlar. Sanki içeride hiç kimse yokmuÅŸ gibi, sanki yüzlerin gerisinde hiç kimse yokmuÅŸ gibi. Gerçekten de kimse yok. Ä°ÅŸte, ideal kent dedjÄŸin böyle olur.

El centro comercial no es nuestro verdadero hogar, ni un espacio público, aunque, a medida que desaparecen las librerías, los jardines, los parques, los museos y los polideportivos, la falsa amabilidad de los centros comerciales sea el único espacio que queda para muchos, aparte de las calles.

Les villes sont le gouffre de l'espèce humaine.

Most of us, myself included, have forgotten what real darkness is like. We live in a world where light is inescapable. It comes from street lamps, headlights, security floodlights, and even the faint glow of our alarm clocks.

I remember very much there in Falls Church there was a creek that was flowing down into 4 Mile Run. I believe it's now covered up where it goes under Columbia Street. I found a whole family of weasels down there.

Seoul and Shanghai, Jaipur and Jakarta; shining skyscrapers, pricey hotels, traffic-jammed streets ablaze with neon - all were built atop a foundation of laboratory-bred rice.