John Bytheway Quotes

What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? ... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia. What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable. The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.

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. They are all pedestrian-friendly with shops, entertainment, restaurants and pubs within easy walking distance.

Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.

I know well the opportunities and the challenges of maintaining and improving infrastructure and providing good transportation choices.

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

Every city has to deal with the problem of cars and public transport.

It makes no sense to make people drive cars.

We had to build a city not for businesses or automobiles, but for children and thus for people. Instead of building highways, we restricted car use. We invested in high-quality sidewalks, pedestrian streets, parks, bicycle paths, libraries; we got rid of thousands of cluttering commercial signs and planted trees. All our everyday efforts have one objective: Happiness.

If you design communities for automobiles, you get more automobiles. If you design them for people, you get walkable, livable communities.

The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.

So here's my advice to city planners. Make your city runnable. Runners are the first wave of troops bringing human activity back to the urban core of any city. Where we go, others will follow. The connection between runnability and livability is so clear (at least to me), that it's surprising that new developments consistently leave pathways out of the plans.

I was almost impeached for getting cars off sidewalks which car owning upper classes had illegally appropriated for parking.

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

I like a walking culture; I need to be in a city where you can walk everywhere.

As cities have grown rapidly across the nation, many have neglected infrastructure projects and paved over green spaces that once absorbed rainwater.

Cities offer us powerful leverage on our most stubborn, wasteful practices. Long commutes in our cars, big power bills from our energy-hogging buildings, shopping trips to buy stuff that'll spend a few short months in our homes and long centuries in our landfills.

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

A limit on the automobile population of the United States would be the best of news for our cities. The end of automania would save open spaces, encourage wiser land use, and contribute greatly to ending suburban sprawl.

If we're talking about transportation, the best thing a city can do is densify as quickly as it can. That needs to be said every time this issue comes up, because it's the only universal strategy that works.

Everywhere I go, I see incredible examples of communities that have a vision for transportation and how it will impact the quality of life, mobility, economics and opportunity.

What Paris has done right is to make it awful to get around by car and awfully easy to get around by public transportation or by bike.

Any urbanist has to appreciate New York City and the way it works. The public transit is astonishing.

Parallel parking is desirable for two reasons: parked cars create a physical barrier and psychological buffer that protects pedestrians on the sidewalk from moving vehicles; and a rich supply of parallel parking can eliminate the need for parking lots, which are extremely destructive of the civic fabric.

Our congressional district is the fastest growing in the state. Nowhere is there a greater need for new and improved roads and transit systems that will spare us the hours we spend each day in traffic.

Bike lanes - I put that now in the category of things you shouldn't discuss at dinner parties, right? It used to be money and politics and religion. Now, in New York, you should add bike lanes.