Robert Hormats Quotes

Urban design as a discipline barely exists in most American and Canadian cities. In Singapore, there are innovative transportation strategies at work.

I was inspired to see leaders from Paris, New York City, San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C. rolling up their sleeves to create clean and safe transportation systems; make homes and buildings efficient, comfortable and affordable; and ensure more of our energy comes from clean sources like wind and solar.

Every few decades, we have an opportunity to make a drastic change to the way we live our lives. We get a chance to design the building blocks of our daily routines, the infrastructure that will support and accompany us for the years to come - from the trains and trams we ride, the offices we work in, to the energy that powers our homes.

Stockholm is surely an urban planner's dream. Everything works. Everything looks good.

Cities are not problems. They are solutions.

Every time you think of a city, you have to think green, green, green. Every time you see concrete jungle, you must find open spaces. And when you find open spaces, make it so people can get to them.

The challenge of global warming should stimulate a whole raft of manifestly benign innovations - for conserving energy and generating it by 'clean' means (biofuels, innovative renewables, carbon sequestration, and nuclear fusion).

If managed well, urbanization can create enormous opportunities: allowing innovation and new ideas to emerge, saving energy, land and natural resources, managing climate and the risk of disasters.

We are very proud of our design for the Transbay Transit Center. This will be a beautiful, functional and sustainable building for San Francisco.

I think America understands that energy security is a very important part of our national security. But if we are going to address energy security in a meaningful way going forward, we need to do it in a new manner. We cannot just be doing the same old thing.

Our nation has abundant clean energy resources, and tapping them will generate jobs, make the air safer to breathe, and tackle climate change - the greatest environmental crisis of our time.

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm just not optimistic about the skyscraper as a building typology that is suited for the future.

Nuclear power will help provide the electricity that our growing economy needs without increasing emissions. This is truly an environmentally responsible source of energy.

I'm completely taken and impressed by the planning authority of Singapore and its Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). It's the most cutting-edge agency in the world. They have very effective guidelines for development, and they review design as it evolves.

Cities generate most of the global economy, and most of its energy use, resource demands and climate emissions. How we build cities over the next decades will largely determine whether we can deliver a bright green future.

What we need to do is really improve energy efficiency standards, develop in full scale renewable and alternative energy and use the one resource we have in abundance, our creativity.

A greater focus on design in all new homes would make the best use of land, create homes and public spaces, and reinforce the structures of urban life.

New technologies such as solar systems or hybrid cars aren't created overnight. By extending these tax credits we are giving this industry time to grow, branch out and succeed.

Americans increasingly understand that clean energy is more than just an environmental issue. It is crucial to reducing our dangerous dependence on foreign countries.

In the urban areas, we have focused on infrastructure roads, telecommunications, power.

I think the cost of energy will come down when we make this transition to renewable energy.

Energy and environmental regulation, transportation, and broadband policy all benefit when legislators have a basic grounding in the technical concepts behind business models, products, and innovation.

The United States should pursue a more robust agenda for U.S. competitiveness and innovation focused on a lower-carbon economy, including investments in education, basic research and development, infrastructure, retraining, retirement security, and universal health care.

We must move away from our dependency on fossil fuels, and I am glad that GM has invested over $1 billion in hydrogen fuel cells cars to meet this goal.