Community Revitalization Quotes

We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.

Enterprise Washington is economic development in areas of high unemployment around the state of Washington.

I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs.

What the federal government can do, especially as it relates to urban, inner-city America, is invest resources that would help create jobs.

If we are to succeed, we must recognize that the community redevelopment is not solely the rehabilitation of housing, or putting a mall in the business strips.

But look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

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.

There may have been a time when preservation was about saving an old building here and there, but those days are gone. Preservation is in the business of saving communities and the values they embody.

My top priority if elected mayor is matching Portland with economic opportunity.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

Former brownfields, depressed urban areas, and hard-hit rural towns blossom as eco-industrial parks, green enterprise zones, and eco-villages. Farmers' markets, community co-ops, and mobile markets get fresh, organic produce to the people who can't afford to shop at health-food stores.

We have to invest in our kids, we have to invest in our communities, we have to create jobs. We have to make certain that kids are not dropping out of school and hanging out on street corners.

Every city in the world can be improved in less than three years.

We will have a peace dividend to spend on rebuilding America, beginning with our American inner cities. We're going to rebuild them, for once and for all.

With a little leadership, you'd get it in here very quickly, and it could be put to use on the inner cities and lots of other things, and it would be beautiful.

We must invest in infrastructure development and rebuilding communities to create jobs.

Either we stay at home and become pillars of the community or we go out and tour. We couldn't really find any communities that still needed pillars.

We can never get a re-creation of community and heal our society without giving our citizens a sense of belonging.

A lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.

The current administration has made the decision to cut dollars going for community development block grants, for various incentives to bring cities back.

You look at public education system, charter schools, infrastructure, in so many ways New Orleans has come back stronger.

Only an approach combining tough law enforcement with physical, moral and educational revitalization of high-crime areas offers the prospect of a safer America.

In the case of European towns, the passing of centuries provides an enhancement; in the case of American towns, the passing of years brings degeneration. It is not simply that they have been newly built; they were built so as to be renewable as quickly as they were put up, that is, badly.

Columbia Heights was a poor, messed up area, and the church was in the middle of it. What happened inside was a reflection of the community. I actually saw my first rock concert on the altar of that church [St. Stephen's].

My take on gentrification and change is it's usually always a better thing, because when you see all these businesses open and flourishing, that means there are more jobs.