The fortunate and successful New Urbanists will be the ones who can find local infill projects in small towns and small cities associated with farming, water transport, (perhaps rail too) and water power. I do not believe personally that we will retrofit much of suburbia in the way many people wish we might. The capital won't be there, and I'm rather convinced that the population is headed down - though this will be a lagging effect, because even starving people have sex.

I am far less interested in serving as a change agent than in functioning as a prose artist, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

The industrial age is over. What follows will be life lived on a much smaller and finer scale.

The cities of the future will be much smaller than they are today.

I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses.

Detroit right now is virtually abandoned at its core to the degree that a lot of what had been slums thirty years ago are now wildflower meadows. The rebuilding of Detroit will occur a much smaller scale. It remains to be seen what will become of Detroit's vast suburbs.

If the Internet exists at all in the future, it will be on a much-reduced scale from what we enjoy today, and all the activities of everyday life are not going to reside on it.