City Infrastructure Quotes

The first Care in building of Cities, is to make them airy and well perflated; infectious Distempers must necessarily be propagated amongst Mankind living close together.

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.

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.

Stockholm is surely an urban planner's dream. Everything works. Everything looks good.

An interesting thing about New York City is that the subways run through the sewers.

Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense.

We will primarily focus on affordable housing, water supply and transport infrastructure, as these are critical for Mumbai. Infrastructure deficit is an issue in all urban areas.

We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.

New York seems to be thriving, which I'm grateful for. But I would hope that they would figure out how to negotiate the traffic and limit the pedicabs, because it seems to me that it's becoming a more chaotic city.

Cities are obvious metaphors for life. We call roads 'arteries' and so forth.

When I was in L.A., the structure wasn't up to par as I wanted it to be.

You cannot separate the buildings out from the infrastructure of cites and the mobility of transit.

Half the world’s people fail to receive the level of water services available in many of the cities of ancient Greece and Rome

The bigger the city is, the less infrastructure you need per capita.

Geneva is a city where the living conditions and hospitality provided by both the population and authorities of Geneva - at all levels - are exemplary and greatly facilitate the work and daily life of WHO employees.

[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin.

I loved couriers. You had this transfer of physical information happening throughout the city and the world. Someone picking up the package, putting it in a bag, going somewhere, taking it out of the bag, giving it to someone else. I thought that was so cool. I wanted to map it, to see that flow on a big screen.

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.

Detroit is really the most perfectly laid out city one could imagine, and such an enchanting park and lake, - infinitely better than any town I know in Europe. It ought to be a paradise in about fifty years when it has all matured.

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

I'm in love with cities. I find them amazing, the quiet co-ordination of thousands of people, going about what we're trying to do, and that organism of the city nurturing human aspiration, and the actual city fabric itself being a special thing rather than just infrastructure.

Paris is a city of centralisation--and centralisation and classification are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups rises one whole or central point. We see radiating many long arms with innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears sensitive to hear--and a voracious mouth to swallow.

This rapid transit underground road is necessary for the accommodation and comfort of new York City residents.

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