Urban Design Quotes

• Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspiring, Business, Work

  Steve Jobs (0101). “Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs”, p.37, Prabhat Prakashan

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• The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.

  Albert Einstein

  Past, Thinking, World

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• 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

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• Any town that doesn't have sidewalks doesn't love its children.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Towns, Sidewalk

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• Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration.

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  Technology, Design, Absence

  "Infographics and marketing: the good, the bad and the ugly" by Freddie Ossberg, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2013.

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• 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.

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• When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Beautiful, Niece

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• From 50 centuries, we can learn about the close relationship between garden design and urban design, because both arts involve the composition of buildings with paving, landform, water, vegetation and climate.

  Tom Turner

  Art, Garden, Water

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• Urban design is where the number are and easy size of installation plus the fast lessons to extend out to larger design acreage.

  Geoff Lawton

  Numbers, Design, Lessons

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• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

  Edward Abbey

  Inspirational, Nature, Cancer

  Quoted in Reader's Digest, Jan. 1970

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• What you see is what you see.

  Frank Stella

  Cheer, Gossip Girl, Love Life

  Stephanie Rosenthal, Ad Reinhardt, Haus der Kunst München, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella (2006). “Black paintings”

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• Urban design as a discipline barely exists in most American and Canadian cities. In Singapore, there are innovative transportation strategies at work.

  Moshe Safdie

  Cities, Discipline, Design

  "Toronto should be more like Singapore, Moshe Safdie says". Interview with Lisa Rochon, www.theglobeandmail.com. April 08, 2011.

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• When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Creativity, Thinking

  "The Universal Book of Mathematics". Book by David Darling, p. 34, November 8, 2004.

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• The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mistake, People, Making Mistakes

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays”, p.166, tredition

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• The fundamental failure of most graphic, product, architectural and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good.

  Richard Saul Wurman

  Badass, Bad Ass, Design

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• Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.

  Lewis Mumford

  Funny, Witty, Flower

  Quote Magazine 8 Oct. 1961

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• The new architecture and urban design of segregation could be called Calvinist: they reflect a desire to live in a world of predestination rather than chance, to strip the world of its wide-open possibilities and replace them with freedom of choice in the marketplace.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Choices, Design, Desire

  Rebecca Solnit (2001). “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”, p.194, Penguin

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• London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.

  Renzo Piano

  Design, World, London

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• In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasí­lia very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasí­lia

  Oscar Niemeyer

  Beautiful, Art, Simple

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• A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

  Douglas Adams

  Inspirational, Funny, Fake People

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.690, Pan Macmillan

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• Americans are in the habit of never walking if they can ride.

  Louis-Philippe I of France

  Urban, Planning, Habit

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• More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

  Woody Allen

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Hope

  Side Effects "My Speech to the Graduates" (1980)

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• As the world's "most dynamic" cities seek to manage their own urban growth, American state and local officials have much to offer. Our mayors can share their experiences in urban design, clean energy projects, Smart Grids, codes for energy efficient buildings, transportation safety, and innovative environmental solutions.

  Robert Hormats

  Smart, Cities, Safety

  "Seizing the Opportunities of Global Urbanization: The New Frontier in America’s International Economic Policy" by Robert Hormats, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 25, 2013.

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• Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes.

  Jamais Cascio

  Design, Energy, May

  Jamais Cascio “Hacking the Earth”, Lulu.com

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• One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.

  Frank Gehry

  Hero, Men, Design

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

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