Jane Jacobs

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody only because and only when they are created by everybody.

The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

Being human is itself difficult and therefore all kinds of settlements except dream cities have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance because they have people in abundance.

Detroit is largely composed today of seemingly endless square miles of low density failure.

Le Corbusier's dream city was like a wonderful mechanical toy. But as to how the city works, it tells nothing but lies.

Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements just as some belles when they are old ladies still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth.

Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves.

Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth.

Design is people.

Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches.

Almost nobody travels willingly from sameness to sameness and repetition to repetition, even if the physical effort required is trivial.

Streets and their sidewalks-the main public places of a city-are its most vital organs.

Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.

When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Planners are guided by principles derived from the behaviour and appearance of suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs and imaginary dream cities - from anything but cities themselves.