Jane Jacobs

“The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

“The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.”

“There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.”

“New ideas must use old buildings.”

“Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life may grow.”

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

“Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination.”

“To be human is to be curious.”

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

“Intricate minglings of different uses in cities are not a form of chaos. On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form of order.”

“When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense.”

“The public peace of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.”

“By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.”

“The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts.”

“There is no magic in simply being old. There is magic in conserving the life and variety that have accumulated in old neighborhoods.”