Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.

When you hear that China is overcrowded, that's an understatement. I was shocked at the number of people. Even in the rural areas. I was also shocked at the poverty and at the living conditions.

Traffic is only one of the side effects of growth.

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.

Gentrification always makes me laugh. People complain about traffic. Live in Atlanta! You can't have it both ways; you can't live in an incredible city and not expect it to get congested.

What is New York? A straightforward answer: seven million people crushed onto an island originally settled by the Dutch. But it's more than that. These are seven million who were, mainly, not even born here.

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.

India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization that sparkles not only in our magnificent art, but also in the enormous creativity and humanity of our daily life in city and village.

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.

Urban America is like a foreign country in a sense.

The city has become a serious menace to our civilization... It has a peculiar attraction for the immigrant.

Istanbul is a vast place. There are very conservative neighbourhoods, there are places that are upper class, Westernised, consuming Western culture.

A great American city is fighting for its life.

Cities are 2% of the earth's crust, but they are 50% of the world's population.

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

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

By 2050, seven out of ten people will live in cities, which will account for six billion people living in urban areas. That phenomenon is central to all the challenges humanity faces. If there is an issue to be addressed, then it is certainly happening in cities and therefore must be considered on an urban scale.

The world's major metropolitan cities are more or less the same.

Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed.

Cities are spreading like a cancer of the planet.

Bangkok is a toilet without a flush.

All Western cities face significant challenges on social integration. Our populations are booming, but social integration is not keeping pace. Rapid growth is a sign of our success, but it also puts stress on housing, infrastructure - and on communities.

As populations continue to increase, and the climate continues to deteriorate, and as people flock in ever increasing numbers to large, underdeveloped cities, the threat of multiple protracted mega-emergencies has become reality.

Our metropolises are blighted by two problems: a lack of public transport and a lack of public loos.

Cities are important because that's where the majority of the world's population lives and an even bigger share of the global economy resides.