(The psuedoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.)

The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

The trouble with paternalists is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means for doing so.

When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Planners are guided by principles derived from the behaviour and appearance of suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs and imaginary dream cities - from anything but cities themselves.

Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance.

Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities.

[ René Lévesque] didn't understand why things do collapse. It's usually a very banal reason why things do collapse. It's not a grand reason, why they collapse economically, at least in the West.