Paul Goldberger Quotes

Most old cities are now sclerotic machines that dispense known qualities in ever-greater quantities, instead of laboratories of the uncertain. Only the skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.

The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age. ... Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect.

Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet.

I think cities are the primordial forests of our time. We evolve faster as a species in cities. Cities are chaotic, liminal places where the many aspects of human potential, good and/or bad, are most readily magnified.

Shanghai set out to take over from Hong Kong and I think it's done that. It's got the most amazing futuristic skyline which rivals and even betters Tokyo.

It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today.

In my opinion, further consideration of those views will help us find a way out of the current impasse, and reveal to us the kinds of buildings and cities required by the informational society.

Cities have made the transition from industrial to service economies.

I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples.

We as mayors have the opportunity to push the envelope and get people thinking, even when it is not politically popular. Cities hold the key.

As far as inner cities, I was very strong on the inner cities during the campaign, I think it's probably got me much higher percentage of the African American vote than lot of people thought I was going to get. We did much higher than people thought I was going to get. I was honored by that.

The city [ LA] is kind of going through an interesting transition; sort of renaissance time where there is so much going on here. I think it's really exciting to be here.

My observation is China is thinking more as a global player than regionally, in both politics and economics.

Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the Skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.

Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?" Yes." My dear fellow, who will let you?" That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun.

The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.

the search for the ultimate skyscraper goes on. ... At worst, overbuilding will make urban life unbearable. At best, we will go out in a blaze of style.

People tend to think of gentrification in terms of race because it's presented that way, and I think it's presented that way because in poor cities that's what's really going on. Beyond that, I think it's presented that way as a way for the people who are really pushing it to make it just a black problem, so people don't care.

I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.

It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.

Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city.

But let us not forget that cities are like human beings. They are born, they go through childhood and adolescence, they grow old, and eventually they die

I love going to the river not only to enjoy nature, but to think about the Los Angeles River's place in our city's history and to envision its great place in our future.

The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai.