Bill Bryson Quotes

To me, Los Angeles was the invention of the suburb. They figured it out and perfected it and created a city that was dependent on the automobile.

I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of community in malls.

I was attracted to the concept of Hollywood and the lifestyle here. But I've grown to mistrust it because it has changed. I didn't bargain for digital access parking in some concrete structure. Real heaven for me was to drive somewhere and park right in front. Now the city is going vertical.

The suburbs of yesterday do not look at all like the suburbs of today.

London is the greatest city in the world, but we're at a crossroads. Ordinary Londoners have been priced out of our city because of the housing crises. We're a city that's growing in population, but the infrastructure can't cope with the growth.

The thing you gotta understand about L.A. is that everything is suburbia. Los Angeles isn't set up like San Francisco or New York.

Strip malls are history.

A lot of times, L.A. is desaturated, and cement and freeways, and downtown.

The electronics industry expanded rapidly and the seeds for the semiconductor and software revolution were planted. The postwar period also saw the suburbanization of America, the rise of the homeowner, the build-out of the interstate highway system, and the rise of automobile culture. Credit availability expanded dramatically.

Fifty years ago people were talking about Sydney's sprawl, but nobody does anything about it.

Discount air fares, a car in every parking space and the interstate highway system have made every place accessible - and every place alike.

The thing that overwhelms me when I go out now is the sprawlation of America.

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

Business was bound to come; light industries were already shopping for land. The quiet country farms were already going, and developments would take over... Eventually, of course, we will have to have some sort of plan to guide future development.

These days malls are the cathedrals of the modern world, and old buildings that had character are gone to allow for econo-worship and peso-pilgrimages.

The United States was born in the country and has moved to the city.

With increased growth in the U.S. population, especially in urban areas, transport bottlenecks will only become more frequent and severe.

The social and physical construction of suburban America really was quite complex. It was a very elaborate system, and clearly a massive social engineering project that has changed U.S. society enormously.

We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup holders. Most of it has to do with urban sprawl. What began as pleasure ends up in necessity, as so many things do.

Dublin dwindles so beautifully; there is no harsh separation between it and the country. It fades away, whereas London seems to devour the country; an army of buildings come and take away a beautiful park, and you never seem to get quite out of sight of a row of houses.

Detroit in its heyday - let's say, 1920s to the '60s - was never a huge downtown-living thing. People lived in the neighborhoods.

It is very difficult to say nowadays where the suburbs of London come to an end and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country have turned the countryside into a city.

I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl.

It's not just NYU. There are days when I feel like I'm stranded in some upscale mall in Pasadena. Don't even get me started on the insidious transformation of Bleecker Street!