If I went to somewhere busy, I wouldn't last very long. I can't go to a museum - I'll last 10 or 15 minutes in a museum. The problem is that when one person asks for a photograph, then someone sees a flash goes off, then everyone else sort of... it's sort of like a domino effect.
I really don't like going out anymore. I used to love it, but now it's not fun. I'd rather have friends come over and hot have to worry about crazy people taking pictures.
I'm not the kind of person who enjoys big crowds very much.
In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.
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.
Most of the job on DDP was already done by the time I became mayor. So was Gwanghwamun Square, described by many architects as the city's worst architectural creation, and the new city hall. I did not think that redoing them would be the right approach as that would only create new problems.
Web publishing can create common spaces; it all depends on how we, the readers and sometimes the producers, react to technological change. If we sort ourselves into narrow groups, common spaces will be in big trouble. But there's no reason not to have common spaces on the Internet. There are lots of them out there.
When I was about 16, I got my ball taken off me by the police for playing in the street - which is pathetic really.
The Italians have long known what makes a livable town or city.
What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.
I mean, if you want to hurt yourself, go ahead. It's like, if you want to jack off, go ahead, just don't 'spoo' on a public bus or something . Do whatever you want to do. Just don't get it in somebody else's face.
The government is trying to now close the Lincoln Memorial for any kind of large gatherings.
The importance of pedestrian public spaces cannot be measured, but most other important things in life cannot be measured either: Friendship, beauty, love and loyalty are examples. Parks and other pedestrian places are essential to a city's happiness.
A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn't go.
National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.
'Negative liberty' is a political science term meaning a liberty from government action. It is not a liberty to anything - like the liberty to meaningfully contribute to public debate or to have ample spaces for speech.
In the house, and on the street, how many, many feet you meet.
You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.
The diversity, individualism and mobility that characterize developed economies -- especially in the era of globalization -- mean that more of our lives is spent among strangers …. in a developed country such as Britain is that we not only live among stranger citizens but we must share with them. We share public services and parts of our income in the welfare state, we share public spaces in towns and cities where we are squashed together on buses, trains and tubes, and we share in a democratic conversation .… All such acts of sharing are more smoothly and generously negotiated if we can take for granted a limited set of common values and assumptions. But as Britain becomes more diverse that common culture is being eroded.
If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.
The city of Rio de Janeiro is setting an example to the world of how to recover quality urban spaces through drastic intervention and the creation of cultural facilities such as the Museum of Tomorrow.
The public library is the most dangerous place in town
I love walking down the street and seeing faces and drama and happiness and sadness and dirt and cleanliness.
There is no way in Israel that a street will be closed to women, there is no such thing. There never was and never will be.
To leave the world better than you found it, sometimes you have to pick up other people's trash.
