27 February 2009

Misc Urbanism Quotes

The present idea of the street must be abolished: DEATH OF THE STREET!DEATH OF THE STREET! – Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (1933), p. 124
Also in the same article:
... the use of streets for children’s play (for example) can seem obviously wrong, and thus the departure of children from streets with the arrival of automobiles can seem an obvious and simple necessity. Only when we can see the prevailing social construction of the street from the perspective of its own time can we also see the car as the intruder. Until we do, not only will we fail to understand the violent revolution in street use circa 1915-1930, we will not even see it. This is why the full scale of the wave of blood, grief, and anger in American city streets in the 1920s has eluded notice. - Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic, p. 2


The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one inter-related community-building challenge. ~ Preamble, Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism

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