Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life may grow.

This is something everyone knows: A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe.

Detroit is largely composed, today, of seemingly endless square miles of low-density failure.

People who think of themselves as exiles, I find, can never really put their lives together, really.

I have been dwelling upon downtowns. This is not because mixtures of primary uses are unneeded elsewhere in cities. On the contrary they are needed, and the success of mixtures downtown (on in the most intensive portions of cities, whatever they are called) is related to the mixture possible in other part of cities.

Unity, like so many good things, is good only in moderation.

I am ambivalent about London because I am so ambivalent about England in general.