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.

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

Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.

My mother used to say when we were children, 'When a boy gets a stick in his hand, his brains run out the other end of it.' Power is a stick in the hand, and I have never heard of anybody who wielded a very big stick of power whose brains did not run out the other end. As a nation, our brains are running out the other end of our power right now.

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

All my life I have been hearing that the oil was going to run out. It never happens. They keep discovering new oil fields. The world is apparently floating in oil fields.

This is what a city is, bits and pieces that supplement each other and support each other.