Richard Rogers Quotes

We're producing spaces that accommodate human activity. And what I'm interested in is not the styling of that, but the relationship of that as it enhances that activity. And that directly connects to ideas of city-making.

The city of the future is a city that cares about its citizens and integrates its citizens.

It's not about doing over the living room of someone who has bad taste in color. This is about restoring historic buildings and instilling pride in a community, which can be done through designing new public spaces and social gathering spots.

A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, concerts and lectures. Yet you can partake of all these experiences and never say hello to anyone new. And one of the things that all religions do is take groups of strangers into a space and say it is OK to talk to each other.

Portable designs have the power to transform unused public spaces into dynamic environments that build and invite communal experiences.

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

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.

People are renovating places and opening ambitious new venues. That's one thing that music does. It gets people out of their houses, and gets them hanging out together.

Adding a social layer to any platform immediately increases its effectiveness.

Volunteering is a way to quickly become part of your new community, make connections, and start to feel at home. That doesn't just benefit the individual. It benefits the company, too.

People need meeting places. You need places where ideas get exchanged and you see each other's faces once in a while.

We want to bring the kids, the parents, the grandparents and grandkids together, we want them to have a shared viewing experience. We want the kids to talk about it in the playground, dad to talk about it down the pub, grandma to talk about it while she's out shopping.

People are tweeting, texting, and e-mailing - and not connecting. There are very few ways for communities to come together. It happens at concerts and at sporting events.

We help kids and fans of all ages find their social scenes. Find their place. Find their demeanor.

What we do is provide a suggestion. We say, 'We're queer. We're going to do this; we're going to open up the space to queer thought.' People don't have to show up, but they do.

I'm very connected to my neighbourhood. If I could, I'd take the entire Peri Garden neighbourhood to form a Jardim Peri in Manchester.

Look, I'm 41 with a six-year-old son, and even though I live in a building with a million kids, he doesn't have one friend there because there's no context for making that happen. I think there's a huge market for a connected building where I could broadcast to other parents that I want to set up a playdate for my child.

Some communities are formed through schools, churches, workplaces. But much of how we learn about one another as a society comes from physically being together in places like skating rinks.

Neapolitan people are always outside. They are not in front of the television.

The times in my life I've felt the most alive is when I'm having a connection with people. We need to hack cities in a way to bring back that community culture.

There's nothing more fun than just walking through town or maybe going to a community-based festival. How much does that cost? Nothing!

Our policies should be to help develop civil society and increase contacts with people.

People love to go closer to nature and other people, so we need to create environments that let people have these emotional connections.

If you can figure out a way for people at all different stages of life to believe that they're all meaningful to each other, then yes, WeLive can work anywhere.

In 'Palaces for the People,' Eric Klinenberg offers a new perspective on what people and places have to do with each other, by looking at the social side of our physical spaces.