George Vecsey Quotes

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

The more you densify a city, the more congestion will increase, however technology changes... cities so packed that they will no longer function... vertical sprawl.

Anyone who has grown up in Delhi knows it's horrible.

Rio is an energetic, vibrant place, full of beauty and nature. But we face the kinds of problems any developing metropolis does - with pollution, traffic congestion, poverty. Distribution of green areas, for example, is not uniform. Madureira, the heart of the suburb in Rio, is a concrete jungle.

Delhi came as a shock. There were so many people, and oh, the traffic.

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

L.A. I could live without.

I don't like concrete jungles.

Traffic is only one of the side effects of growth.

The automobile, both a cause and an effect of this decentralization, is ideally suited for our vast landscape and our generally confused and contrary commuting patterns.

Urban and suburban sprawl is somewhat like pornography. Most people have great difficulty defining it, but they think they know it when they see it. Sprawl has been with us since the dawn of history.

The city of gardens [New Delhi] has become the city of garbage.

In most slums and cities in developing states, population growth is outpacing the ability of the growth in pollution and sewage. Such unmet expectations in over-crowded cities can be the catalyst for civil conflict.

The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside.

Cities are spreading like a cancer of the planet.

Our cities are not polluted or congested because they have to be. They are what they are because that's how we made them.

I don't want to live in Los Angeles. The city depresses me! It is too flat. There are too many cars.

It could be so beautiful here if the Americans themselves had not made it so ugly with their big buildings, their millions of cars, and noise.

We're creating these massive urban areas in the Third World. It's like you take the entire population of California and put it in one city. Then you remove basic sanitation and medical services, and you have a ticking biological time bomb.

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.

L.A. to me is not really an attractive place.

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life.

I live up Laurel Canyon, and if I want to walk with my son, I have to drive to the park, which is so insane to me.

If we allow more development, it will bring housing affordability.

The relentless invisible storm of radio signals and electronic particles, the hustle and bustle, and the billions of petrol explosions in the engine blocks of trucks and cars seem to churn up the molecules of life and heaven so violently that the beautiful fogs are unable to hold together like they once did.