“Americans are too impatient. They expect instant beauty. But they forget that cities are not built in one day. We may spend years agonizing over a renewal project and then we expect the city to be rebuilt instantly. Can you imagine what Paris must have looked like when Baron Haussmann finished with it? The social and cultural shock must have been tremendous. It’s like surgery; it takes a long time for the tissue around a wound to heal. The city has to echo life. If our life is rough and tumble, so is the city. I’ve always felt that ugliness with vitality is tolerable. The great danger our cities face today is that their vitality will be sapped by too much concern for instant beauty. New York is not a beautiful city. It may even be ugly, but it is exciting. It draws beauty from its vitality. If you drove all the residents out and made it a gleaming commercial center, it would only be beautiful in a narrow sense. It would be lifeless, and therefore intolerable.”

- I.M. Pei, consulting architect of OKC’s 1965 Urban Renewal Plan

(via Steve Lackmeyer)

“MAPS 3 will be great for Oklahoma City. But some things are more important than public improvements, especially maintaining an open and honest government. If it takes the disintegration of the latter, in order to obtain the former, then the city overall is taking a step backwards.”

- Blair Humphreys

Please note: I am not keen on the idea of quoting myself, but it was necessary due to the lack of commentary available elsewhere.

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Architecture by its nature creates public space: a wall goes up, there’s now a wall to the outside as well as the inside. When the inside and outside disconnect, neither works. It’s so elementary I can’t imagine anyone could argue it.”

- Mary, commenter at PPS.org

“Amateurs accustomed to emulation made great places. It is the professionals of recent decades that have ruined our cities and our landscapes with their inventions.”

- Andres Duany

“If we can develop and design streets so that they are wonderful, fulfilling places to be – community-building places, attractive for all people – then we will have successfully designed about one-third of the city directly and will have had an immense impact on the rest.“

- Allan Jacobs