Sublime

By banning public transportation, he had barred the poor from the state parks. In the same way, he was barring the poor from the best of the city parks, the big parks on the city’s outskirts such as Jacob Riis and Alley Pond. And now he was saying that he would not provide the poor even with small parks.

This ubiquitous principle is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially. The components of this diversity can differ enormously, but they must supplement each other in certain concrete ways. I think that unsuccessful city areas are areas wh

Imagine a downtown area with small-scale parks, nice shops, clean and safe streets, and signage that encourages exercise. This is the kind of place where a family wants to bring kids, where retirees and college students alike want to socialize, and where street entertainers naturally gravitate to perform and get paid. These places exist in many cit

Neighborhoods in cities need not supply for their people an artificial town or village life, and to aim at this is both silly and destructive. But neighborhoods in cities do need to supply some means for civilized self-government.

Attrition of automobiles operates by making conditions less convenient for cars. Attrition as a steady, gradual process (something that does not now exist) would steadily decrease the numbers of persons using private automobiles in a city. If properly carried out—as one aspect of stimulating diversity and intensifying city use—attrition would decre

When humble people, doing lowly work, are not also solving problems, nobody is apt to solve humble problems.

A project needs to be quite profitable to make it through that gauntlet—and it needs to be acceptable to its wealthy neighbors—and that pushes developers toward luxury condos.

Robert Moses had shifted the parkway south of Otto Kahn’s estate, south of Winthrop’s and Mills’s estates, south of Stimson’s and De Forest’s. For men of wealth and influence, he had moved it more than three miles south of its original location. But James Roth possessed neither money nor influence. And for James Roth, Robert Moses would not move th