James Howard Kunstler Quotes

Copenhagen has done a remarkable job creating streets that are focused on bicycles and pedestrians.

The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.

From the Berlin tenement reform law of 1897 to H. P. Berlage's plan for Amsterdam South of 1917, designers and theorists in Germany and Holland moved toward the development of a perimeter residential block that would preserve the plastic continuity of the street while opening up the resultant courtyard for use as an enclosed semi-public space.

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.

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.

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

It would be great to take one city street and turn it into a pedestrian corridor and see what kind of effect it has on the businesses in that area - It's the future I think.

I think it's evident that expensive neighborhoods in Seattle are surrounded by natural beauty. That elevates city life. So if we can make cities more attractive in the long run, we can be smarter about issues like development, zoning and economics.

A city of homes should not be built as a business center.

Pedestrians and cyclists are squeezed by planners into narrow and often dangerous spaces - the afterthoughts of urban design.

In 1970, Los Angeles became the first place where the total acreage used for roads and parking exceeded the amount of space given over to habitation.

Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeless land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs-by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots. And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air.

Design does matter. And not necessarily in a way that people realize. A lot of what you do, people take for granted - that a park has always been here, that a bicycle lane has always been there, that the street is safe or clean.

Building places that are worth living in and worth caring about require a certain attention to detail, and of a particular kind of detail that we have forgotten how to design and assemble. And that involves the relationship of the buildings to each other, the relationship of the buildings to the public space, which in America, comes mostly in the form of the street. Because it's only the exceptional places in America that have the village square or the New England green. You know. The street is mostly the public realm of America. And we have to design these things so that they reward us.

Say no to parking lots!

Most of the job on DDP was already done by the time I became mayor. So was Gwanghwamun Square, described by many architects as the city's worst architectural creation, and the new city hall. I did not think that redoing them would be the right approach as that would only create new problems.

Cities are complex and contain just about any thing or concept ever invented by humans. How the city is built, its topography, and how close you live to your work and a grocery store affects your mobility.

Our streets should be inviting and safe so anyone can feel comfortable choosing to ride a bike, walk, or take transit, and so it is clear which space is for which mode of travel.

I love driving around Hancock Park. I think it was designed in the 1920s, and it still has that feel. The streetlamps and trees that line the streets are all the same. It's beautiful and peaceful, and it's right in the middle of L.A.

When Welwyn Garden City was planned, the workers homes were placed in the east, downwind from the factories in the middle, whilst the bosses got the larger westside homes in Handside. This sort of social engineering, including the absence of a pub, would not be acceptable today.

The infrastructure at Union Station is antiquated. High-speed is going to come in eventually. We need to upgrade that system. Every day the Metro comes in, the Amtrak comes in, and they idle their engines for hours, spewing poisonous toxins - all that crap - into the air.

I'm kind of against car culture - I've always been a cyclist.

I think, in our modern cities, there are a lot of boxes; there are a lot of straight lines. They often deal with efficiency, the function, the structure.

The essence of the conflict today, really, is cars versus people…We can have a city that is very friendly to cars, or a city that is very friendly to people. We cannot have both.

You can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.