One of our troubles is that we try to make municipalities that are totally different from each other all act as if they were the same kind of creature, with the same kinds of possibilities.

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.

By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.

People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other.

Redundancy is expensive but indispensable.

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.

[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.