I am a sur le motif painter, always in-the-field, with a French easel that folds up into a box, with backpack straps on it. Many of the sites I haunt are desolately beautiful. Few other people go there. I am gloriously alone, unmolested, and absorbed in attempting to see what I am looking at.

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to continue running what we're running, the way we're running it.

I think a lot of things will be self-correcting, even in America. After all, human societies are essentially self-organizing emergent systems. The catch is, how much disorder will we have to endure while this re-self-organizing process occurs.

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

The twentieth century was about getting around. The twenty-first century will be about staying in a place worth staying in.

I think water transport will see a revival. However, we're not going to replay the 20th century. The industrial city of that era will not be revived. Our cities are going to contract. Many of them will contract as a whole but densify at their core.