Majora Carter Quotes

Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense.

To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.

Our cities need to change, fast. Tactical Urbanism is a guided tour of solutions created when local people decide they can't wait for politics to catch up before they improve their neighborhoods. This weathervane book deserves a place on any urbanist's bookshelf.

By far the greatest and most admirable form of wisdom is that needed to plan and beautify cities and human communities.

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

I was a little lacking in vision as mayor - I failed to understand the significance that housing and the revitalization of housing means for a city.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes, 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

If we are to succeed, we must recognize that the community redevelopment is not solely the rehabilitation of housing, or putting a mall in the business strips.

I remember someone once asked Jack Kennedy why he was paying such close attention to the renovation of the square across from the White House, and he said, 'It may be the only thing my presidency is remembered for.'

We haven't had an agenda for American cities probably since at least Jimmy Carter. We have left cities to fend for themselves.

Planning cities is a necessary but risky business.

Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.

The city ... is involved in the fight for its life. One of the critical battlegrounds is the struggle to preserve middle class residential neighborhoods.

The Buckeye Build will have a lasting impact on Cleveland, and it is an honor to be a part of it.

My father was into fame and leaving his mark. He was a city planner, sort of a genius in that world, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. He was on the cover of 'Time' once, and I remember going to his office and seeing, like, two hundred copies, which he would hand out to people.

What's wrong with Hell's Kitchen? You don't change a neighborhood by changing its name. You change it by building a school.

Habitat for Humanity is making Cleveland better every day.

I want to buy up a gang of properties in my neighborhood and give people the chance to live in new buildings. We should make our areas nice.

I used to walk in the burnt up Harlem of the '80s, and I'd look at brownstones that were dilapidated or apartment buildings, thinking 'Whoever designed this and built this did not want it to look like this.' So, I used to visualize one day being able to contribute and build in Harlem.

I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without removing people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs.

City planning finds its validation in the intuitive recognition that a burgeoning market society can not be trusted to produce spontaneously a habitable, sanitary, or even efficient city, much less a beautiful one.

Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance.

If we were redesigning around people instead of around automobiles, which I think the market is more or less going to do, although too slowly, than I'd be a lot cheerier.

Philanthropy is lost. The human spirit is suppressed. Most people want a legacy; they want to give something back, a library, a hospital wing, a donation to their church. This is a form of socialism that must go.