Boris Johnson Quote

The new conservative mayor of London, tapping into a sentiment against modern ugly towers. He knows that most people prefer to live in neighborhoods of brick townhouses:

...promised to protect London's traditional and historic buildings and streets from bulldozers and skyscrapers.

Mr Johnson said he would assure Londoners that "their gardens, their views, their neighbourhoods are not going to be dwarfed by high rise blocks or engulfed in a sea of identikit homes.

"What the average Londoner wants is a house with a garden and a front door.

But when I look at some of the plans for the 27 phallocratic towers that Ken wants to erect in the suburbs, I wonder whether we have learned anything from the experience of the last 50 years.

"We seem to be in the grip of barbarians who are determined to knock down venerable buildings - Victorian police stations and swimming baths - and put drab blocks in their place.

"You can have more houses without wrecking the garden city of London."

Commitment In A City

On the streets we two pass.
I do not know you.
I did not see
if you are -
fat/thin,
dark/fair
young/old.

If we should pass again
within the hour,
I would not know it.
Yet -
I am committed to
love you.

You are part of my city,
my universe, my being.
If you were not here
to pass me by,
a piece would be missing
from my jigsaw-puzzle day.

-Mararet Tsuda

From a children's book: This Place I Know, Poems of Comfort

Life Between Buildings

The following is a quote from a book I just checked out from the library. It is out of print and the library copy is a paperback with the pages falling out. The photos are also from the book.

The opportunity to see and hear other people in a city ... offer(s) valuable information about the surrounding social environment...

This is especially true in connection with the social development of children, which is largely based on observations of the surrounding social environment, but all of us need to be kept up to date about the surrounding world in order to function in social context.

 

Through the mass media we are informed about the larger, more sensational world events, but by being with others we learn about the more common but equally important detail. We discover how others work, behave, and dress, and we obtain knowledge about the people we work with, live with, and so forth. By means of all this information, we establish a confidential relationship with the world around us. A person we have often met on the street becomes a person we "know".

 

In addition to imparting information about the social world outside, the opportunity to see and hear other people can also provide ideas and inspiration for action.

We are inspired by seeing others in action. Children, for example, see other children at play and get the urge to join in, or they get ideas for new games by watching other children or adults.

 

The trend from living to lifeless cities and residential areas that has accompanied industrialization, segregation of various city functions, and reliance on the automobile also has caused cities to become duller and more monotonous. This points up another important need, namely the need for stimulation:

Experiencing other people represents a particularly colorful and attractive opportunity for stimulation. Compared with experiencing buildings and other inanimate objects, experiencing people, who speak and move about, offers a wealth of sensual variation. No moment is like the previous or the following when people circulate among people. The number of new situations and new stimuli is limitless. Furthermore, it concerns the most important subject in life: people.

Living in cities, therefore, ones in which people can interact with one another, are always stimulating because they are rich in experiences, in contrast to lifeless cities, which can scarcely avoid being poor in experiences and thus dull, no matter how many colors and variations of shape in buildings are introduced.
....
Wherever there are people ... it is generally true that people and human activities attract other people. People are attracted to other people. They gather with and move about with others and seek to place themselves near others. New activities begin in the vicinity of events that are already in progress.

 

In the home we can see that children prefer to be where there are adults or where there are other children, instead of, for example, where there are only toys. In residential areas and in city spaces, comparable behavior among adults can be observed. If given a choice between walking on a deserted or a lively street, most people will choose the lively street. If the choice is between sitting in a private backyard or in a semiprivate front yard with a view of the street, people will often choose the front of the house where there is more to see.
...

 

Both in areas with single-family houses and in apartment house surroundings, children tend to play more on the streets, in parking areas, and near the entrances of dwellings than in the play areas designed for that purpose but located in backyards of single family houses or on the sunny side of multi-story buildings where there are neither traffic nor people to look at.

-Life Between Buildings, Jan Gehl 1971

Extended Families

Why are so many Americans so unhappy..? All manner of plausible causes present themselves, but the master cause may be the most elemental: Homo sapiens, a familial animal like the wolf or hyena rather than asolitary like the bear, is genetically unequipped to live without the emotional suppport of uncles, aunts, first cousins, and second cousins, in addition to siblings, parents, and children....Periodic gatherings for the ceremonies of birth, marriage, and death; the much more frequent celebration of birthdays, name days, anniversaires and seasonal feasts; as well as webs of less-formal socializing, all serve to keep the machinery of human families in working order. That is how people live all over the world in village, town, or city - but not in comtemporary America.

-Edward N. Luttwak, as found in The Sun.

Doing Nothing, and Growing Up

"Where are we going?" said Pooh, hurrying after him, and wondering whether it was to be an Explore or What-shall-I-do-about-you-know-what.

"Nowhere," said Christopher Robin.

So they began going there, and after they had walked a little way, Christopher Robin said:

"What do you like doing best in the world Pooh?"

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best---" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. And then he thought that being with Christopher Robin was a very good thing to do, and having Piglet near was a very friendly thing to have; and so, when he had thought it all out, he said, "What I like best in the whole world is Me and Piglet going to see You, and You saying 'What about a little something?' and Me saying, 'Well, I shouldn't mind a little something, should you, Piglet,' and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing."

"I like that too," said Christopher Robin, "but what I like doing best is Nothing."

"How do you do Nothing?" asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.

"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, What are you going to do, Christopher Robin, and you say, Oh, nothing, and then you go and do it."

"Oh, I see," said Pooh.

"This is a nothing sort of thing that we are doing now."

"Oh, I see," said Pooh again

"It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

"Oh!" said Pooh.

.....

...Christopher Robin, who as still looking at the world, with his chin in his hands, called out "Pooh!"

"Yes?" said Pooh.

"When I'm--when----Pooh!"

"Yes, Christopher Robin?"

"I'm not going to do Nothing any more."

"Never again?"

"Well, not so much. They don't let you."

Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again.

"Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully.

"Pooh, when I'm--you know---when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?"

"Just me?"

"Yes, Pooh."

"Will you be here too?"

"Yes, Pooh, I will be, really. I promise I will be, Pooh."

"That's good," said Pooh.

"Pooh, promise you won't forget about be, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred."

Pooh thought for a little.

"How old shall I be then?"

"Ninety-nine."

Pooh nodded.

"I promise," he said.

Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw.

-The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne, 1928

Quote - how Robert Moses Got-r-Done

If ends justified means, and if the important thing in building a project was to get it started, then any means that got it started were justified. Furnishing misleading information about it was justfied; so was underestimating its costs.

Misleading and underestimating, in fact, might be the only way to get a project started...But what if you didn't tell the officials how much the projects would cost? What if you let the legislators know about only a fraction of what you knew would be the projects' ultimate expense?

Once they had authorized that small initial expenditure and you had spent it, they would not be able to avoid giving you the rest when you asked for it. How could they? If they refused to give you the rest of the money, what they had given you would be wasted, and that would make them look bad in the eyes of the public. And if they said you had misled them, well, they were not supposed to be misled. If they had been misled, that would mean that they hadn't investigated the projects thoroughly, and had therefore been derelict in their own duty...Once a Legislature gave you money to start a project, it would be virtually forced to give you the money to finish it.

-The Power Broker by Robert Caro, on Robert Moses
(via Andrew Sullivan)

Indicator Species

"Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people."

– Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogata, Colombia 1998-2001

Jane Jacobs quote #1

It is futile to try to evade the issue of unsafe city streets by attempting to make some other features of a locality, say interior courtyards, or sheltered play spaces, safe instead. By definition again, the streets of a city must do most of the job of handling stangers for this is where strangers come and go. The streets must not only defend the city against predatory strangers, they must protect the many, many peaceable and well-meaning strangers who use them, insuring their safety too as they pass through. Moreover, no normal person can spend his life in some artificial haven, and this includes children. Everyone must use the streets.

-from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, page 35-36.