In trading with each other cities can't be in too different stages of development, and they can't copy one another. Backward cities, or younger cities, or newly forming cities in supply regions, have to develop to a great extent on one another's shoulders. This is one of the terrible things about empires. Empires want them only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.
Jane JacobsThat the sight of people attracts still other people, is something that city planners and city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible. They operate on the premise that city people seek the sight of emptiness, obvious order and quiet. Nothing could be less true. The presences of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact... they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated.
Jane JacobsThe ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.
Jane Jacobsit is immoral for powerless people to accept this powerlessness. They may not succeed in getting power but they can fight for it, and if enough fight for it, it makes it very difficult for the people with the big sticks.
Jane Jacobs