The notion that you could discard the old world and now make a new one. This is what was so bad about Modernism.

To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.

Why did I become a Canadian citizen? Not because I was rejecting being a U.S. citizen. At the time when I became a Canadian citizen, you couldn't be a dual citizen. Now you can. So I had to be one or the other. But the reason I became a Canadian citizen was because it simply seemed so abnormal to me not to be able to vote.

observation of realities has never, to put it mildly, been one of the strengths of economic development theory.

Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination.

Nothing is so clear in history that is it happens for any one thing. It seems that a lot of things come together to make great changes.

Reactions [on my 1979 Massey lectures] were from Anglophones. I'm one. But I'm terrible at French. In fact, there was practically no reaction.