Richard Lamm Quotes

In urbanization, you think big because you are thinking decades ahead.

One great building does not make a great city.

What kind of town do we want in the future, and how are we going to plan on that?

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

Urban design as a discipline barely exists in most American and Canadian cities. In Singapore, there are innovative transportation strategies at work.

My provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious, scientific theory of cities and scientific theory means quantifiable, relying on underlying generic principles that can be made in a - put into a predictive framework. That's the quest.

As a planning board commissioner, I have to review the applications for development throughout the city, and the bulk of those applications have been for the waterfront. I think the progress the waterfront has made is amazing.

Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process.

We do not build speedways, but roads which correspond to the character of the German landscape.

Besides infrastructure, there is a huge opportunity in housing and urbanisation of cities - not only building new ones, but also renewing the infrastructure of old cities to make them more livable. This provides tremendous scope for large investments to fuel growth.

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.

I hope that any expansion of London will learn from the planning examples of some of its most desirable areas such as Chelsea, Notting Hill, Belgravia and Mayfair. All are characterised by high density and a generosity of green spaces.

A city grows like an organism. It is a structure of living and working together a mix of functions.

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.

Every city is either vibrant these days or is working on a plan to attain vibrancy soon. The reason is simple: a city isn't successful - isn't even a city, really - unless it can lay claim to being 'vibrant.'

In the big picture, architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives.

As mayor of San Francisco, I will provide the vision and work hard to make San Francisco a beautiful, well-planned city with excellent housing and transportation options.

The government only makes restrictive rules, they don't show you what to do so you know, OK, here's where we need this many apartments, with open space, playgrounds, kindergartens.

Incentives and infrastructure should encourage development and that development needs to contain the right types of housing in the right places.

I think that continuity is the most important way to create a city that functions properly and has a competitive edge in the international era.

Transit builds a city that people choose to live in.

Bridges and stations are very strongly related to the development of a city.

We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city.

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.

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.