City Planning Quotes

• Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.

  Daniel Burnham

  Motivational, Leadership, Dream

  Quoted in Collier's, 6 July 1912

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

  Daniel Burnham

  Noble, Architecture, Remember

  Commercial Club of Chicago, Daniel Hudson Burnham, Edward Herbert Bennett (1970). “Plan of Chicago”, Da Capo Pr

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the planning and designing of new communities, housing projects, and urban renewal, the planners both private and public, need to give explicit consideration to the kind of world that is being created for the children who will be growing up in these settings. Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children both older and younger than themselves.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Children, Growing Up, Opportunity

  Urie Bronfenbrenner (1973). “Two worlds of childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R.”, Pocket

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.

  William H. Whyte

  Urbanization, Cities, Space

  William H. Whyte (2012). “City: Rediscovering the Center”, p.109, University of Pennsylvania Press

  78 Copy quote

  Show source

• Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Children, Opportunity, Urban Renewal

  Urie Bronfenbrenner (1973). “Two worlds of childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R.”, Pocket

  164 Copy quote

  Show source

• The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Garden, Land, Cities

  My Summer in a Garden "SixteenthWeek" (1870)

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Urban Renewal, Years

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.13, Vintage

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've often thought that if planners were botanists, zoologists, geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.

  William O. Douglas

  People, Zoologist, Earth

  15 Copy quote

• In city planning, there is no limit to be fixed.

  Willis Polk

  Cities, Limits, Fixed

  4 Copy quote

• The materials of city planning are: sky, space, trees, steel and cement; in that order and that hierarchy.

  Le Corbusier

  Space, Order, Sky

  401 Copy quote

• As a result of reading science fiction when I was eight, I grew up with an interest in music, architecture, city planning, transportation, politics, ethics, aesthetics on any level, art...it's just total! It's a complete commitment to the whole human race on all the Earth. That's what science fiction is about.

  Ray Bradbury

  Art, Reading, Commitment

  Source: www.tangentonline.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Architecture is a slow business, and city planning even slower.

  Richard Rogers

  Cities, Planning, Architecture

  17 Copy quote

• City planning finds its validation in the intuitive recognition that a burgeoning market society can not be trusted to produce spontaneously a habitable, sanitary, or even efficient city, much less a beautiful one.

  Murray Bookchin

  Beautiful, Validation, Cities

  11 Copy quote

• You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

  Gore Vidal

  Writing, Cities, Perfect

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.137, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building.

  Jane Jacobs

  Disappointment, Cities, Causes

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.7, Vintage

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

  Toni Morrison

  Cities, People, Black

  Toni Morrison, Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (1994). “Conversations with Toni Morrison”, p.258, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't.

  Frank Gehry

  School, Cities, Ideas

  Interview with David Sheff, www.playboy.com. March 1, 2011.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The peoples of the old world have their cities built for times gone by, when railroads and gunpowder were unknown. We can have cities for the new age that has come, adopted to its better conditions of use and ornament. We want, therefore, a city planning profession.

  Horace Bushnell

  Cities, Age, Gunpowder

  6 Copy quote

• The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball.

  Martin Nolan

  Baseball, Stars, Quilts

  9 Copy quote

• The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.

  Martin Filler

  Cities, League, House

  4 Copy quote

• Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense.

  Jane Jacobs

  Sweet, Valentine, Play

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.112, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

  Show source