Power is supposed to be so corrupt. I don't think it's so much corrupt, in the usual sense of the word, as stupid and unrealistic. The more power a person has, the further he gets from reality. Jane Jacobs More Quotes by Jane Jacobs More Quotes From Jane Jacobs Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities. Jane Jacobs drug tvs community The trouble with paternalists is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means for doing so. Jane Jacobs want profound mean Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves. Jane Jacobs traffic vehicle people Unity, like so many good things, is good only in moderation. Jane Jacobs moderation unity good-things Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda popon stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: "This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn't be on the street!" That judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home. Jane Jacobs party drinking home Does anyone suppose that, in real life, answers to any of the great questions that worry us today are going to come out of homogeneous settlements? Jane Jacobs real cities worry Today barbarism has taken over many city streets, or people fear it has, which comes to much the same thing in the end. Jane Jacobs taken cities people [Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers. Jane Jacobs definitions cities way As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense. Jane Jacobs urban-renewal cities years In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the city everyone does not-only those you choose to tell will know about you. This is one of the attributes of cities that is precious to most city people. Jane Jacobs cities doe people New ideas often need old buildings. Jane Jacobs old-buildings ideas needs To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder. Jane Jacobs awe-and-wonder tree water Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence. Jane Jacobs life order art There are still an awful lot of intelligent, clever constructive Americans and they are still doing clever constructive things. Jane Jacobs awful intelligent clever 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. Jane Jacobs vandalism support cities 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. Jane Jacobs valentine play sweet We expect too much of new # buildings , and too little of ourselves. Jane Jacobs building too-much littles Everyone is aware that tremendous numbers of people concentrate in city downtowns and that, if they did not, there would be no downtown to amount to anything--certainly not one with much downtown diversity. Jane Jacobs cities numbers people observation of realities has never, to put it mildly, been one of the strengths of economic development theory. Jane Jacobs economics development reality poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes. Analogically, heat is a result of active processes; it has causes. But cold is not the result of any processes; it is only the absence of heat. Just so, the great cold of poverty and economic stagnation is merely the absence of economic development. Jane Jacobs poverty causes development
