Urban Character Quotes

When you think about Boston, Harvard and M.I.T. are the brains of the city, and its soul might be Faneuil Hall or the State House or the Old Church. But I think the pulsing, pounding heart of Boston is Fenway Park.

Apparently, the city of Delhi is a 'character' in my novels. I'd argue that it's a ... city... in my novels.

If you go to Florence, it has all surface beauty, but like Venice, it's simply a museum of Renaissance times. Los Angeles is raw, uncouth and bizarre, but it's a place of substance. It has more new horizons than any other place.

Let Toronto become Milan. Montreal will always be Rome.

Too many architects are just trying to make all of their buildings look like a brand, and that may be good for business, but that is terrible for the cities because they lose character. If I go to Paris, I go to see the beauty of Paris and the coherence of Paris.

Cities are like gentlemen, they are born, not made. You are either a city, or you are not, size has nothing to do with it. I bet San Francisco was a city from the very first time it had a dozen settlers. New York is "Yokel", but San Francisco is "City at Heart".

It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed.

Mixed use is what cities are all about. If you don't have mixed use, you don't have cities.

Omaha is a little like Newark, without Newark's glamour.

Brooklyn is a very weird borough.

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.

I don't want San Francisco to be just a place where people just move for opportunities.

I find the aristocratic parts of London so unattractive and angular; the architecture is so white and gated. But in New York, it's different - even uptown it's really grand, and there's no real segregation there. It's all mixed up.

Atlanta is just different. It's the music city.

Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

You can't have a single design for all cities. The look and feel of the streetlights are very important.

The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different.

I don't think you ever think of a big city as sweet or community, but there are cities that I think of as charming and particular and interesting cities. I live in one now, Charleston.

I'm playing my first urban character in 'Thirudan Police.' It's an important film because I'll be breaking the stereotype that I'm only fit for rural characters with this role.

I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.

There's no point in us designing synthetic laboratories that could just as well be in Dusseldorf or Helsinki. San Francisco has its light, which must be used.

If I were to choose one single thing that that would restore Paris to the senses, it would be that strangely sweet, unhealthy smell of the M&#233tro, so very unlike the dank cold or the stuffy heat of subways in New York.

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

I hate people thinking their city is unique, but there is a certain aura about Los Angeles; it's not necessarily a beautiful thing, but it's part of Harry Bosch.

Every city has a sex and age which have nothing to do with demography.