Jeff Rich Quotes

You cannot save wonderful towns. You can only save wonderful towns by building new ones.

But there is so much more to do for the city we love... a Dallas with roads as strong as our businesses, parks as beautiful as our children, a downtown as tall as our imagination.

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.

There has been much talk referencing what I consider conceptual reports like the Landscape of Choice and documents created as a result of the Great Valley Center.

Those in the metro-Atlanta area know how crucial the investments in our infrastructure and transportation systems are to improving our communities.

There are many beautiful and resource-rich areas all over the Philippines that are still undeveloped or under-developed. These areas offer opportunities for better master-planning and the emergence of better communities as well as cities.

One great building does not make a great city.

I have realized after all these years that a city that has a good quality of life attracts jobs. People don't want to invest in places if there is no quality of life.

This urbanization that's taking place around the world is very real. But if it's people that are seeking an urbanized environment out of desperation, that's not going to be helpful long term.

Urban development in India... will be the biggest sunrise industry that any country has seen in any part of the world.

Brazil will change when its cities change.

Why should we build very large spaces when they are not necessary? We can design halls spanning several kilometres and covering a whole city, but we have to ask, what does it really make? What does society really need?

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.

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

By 2050, the Australian population is expected to grow from 22 million to 36 million. That increase alone will put huge pressure on our towns and our cities. We will need more homes, more roads, more rail lines, more hospitals, more schools, just to accommodate so many Australians.

I want to make Seoul more attractive. I want to make it a good investment.

What the mayors care about is, 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work, lower the unemployment rate, provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments in our children from an education standpoint?'

As architects we are often involved in the concrete-steel-and-glass aspect of it, but cities are social structures, and to be involved in imagining the future of cities and the type of relationships and the types of places that we're making is something that intrigues me very much.

Human settlements are like living organisms. They must grow, and they will change. But we can decide on the nature of that growth - on the quality and the character of it - and where it ought to go. We don't have to scatter the building blocks of our civic life all over the countryside, destroying our towns and ruining farmland.

As the population of Georgia increased dramatically, so did development.

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.

Build a roof over a capital and you have the best of all universities.

… growth is necessary to meet the requirements of social and national progress

Has our society reached the limit of its resources or the maximum of its wealth and prosperity?

When one deals with urban issues, one never deals with clear black-and-white issues; they're all trade-offs. Important urban issues present conflicting values.