Enrique Penalosa Quotes

Parks are as essential to the physical and emotional health of a city as the water supply.

You can’t throw a park down and think everybody is going to mix and be happy and share picnic tables and sing songs together.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.

When Barcelona came out of the Franco dictatorship in 1975, the first thing city officials did was to make 200 public squares where people could meet and talk to each other as a sign that democracy had returned.

A community is a group of people who have come together, and they work and they live to try and improve the standard of living and quality of life - and I don't mean money.

It's about getting a more democratic Wales for the purpose of improving our economic performance, for improving the delivery of health care, for raising educational standards.

As a longtime former resident of 15 years in Washington, I wish that everybody would stay off the Mall with their political cause so that we can get out there, you know, and play flag football or Frisbee, or walk the dog or something - you know, which is, you know, what the National Mall should be for, in my personal opinion.

The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.

On the show, we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables; we are not trying to get people to become Democrats. We are basically trying to encourage people to get involved with public life so that politics isn't left to the wealthy and privileged.

I believe that architecture is fundamentally a public space where people can gather and communicate, think about the history, think about the lives of human beings, or the world.

The work of popular education, the temperance movement, the peace movement, are to a great extent carried on by the young. Their meetings show that the young understand one of their tasks: that of bringing together the different classes through social intercourse.

We seek to create a united Democratic and non-racial society.

My town hall meetings are with friends and neighbors, fellow Americans. We engage.

We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith.

Without equality there can be no democracy.

The city where 7 million people live in peace and enjoy the benefits of democracy.

Given the fragility of contemporary civil and urban life … our problem is to solve the puzzle of how to live together in healthy, diverse communities.

Government requires bringing people together and genuinely hearing their issues. It requires the establishment and strengthening of community.

I think I bring a perspective that local communities are what make this country great, and they are the laboratories of democracy.

It is this desire to see civil society remain a strong and united force within the U.K. that has encouraged me to chair Citizens U.K. Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life.

I heard that Hubballi-Dharwad is going to be a Smart City. But it should ensure the sense of community and love is not lost.

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

Cities are those laboratories of democracy that states used to be.

Familiarity breeds democracry.

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.