Urban Blight Quotes

“It's really just the memory of a river. All Southern California waterways have become like phantom limbs. We might feel that they're still there, but it's just an illusion cast in cement.”
― Jarrod Shusterman, Dry

“Gypsy cabs jostled and honked...Dollar vans lined the sidewalk and people piled in and out. As I walked down the slope, the buildings grew smaller and squalid. Trees vanished...and the heat picked up. Beyond the brick wall of the Navy Yard, the silver skyline of Manhattan glimmered in the distance like a mirage. The industrial remains of the flats were low and decrepit and mostly abandoned, though a few beeping forklifts unloaded trucks here and there. The storefronts were shuttered except for a bank busy with Orthodox Jews. The funk of a chicken processing plant contaminated the air.

I walked along the high brick wall that separated the Navy Yard from the street, frequently stepping over pulverized vials that sparkled like jewels on the sidewalk. There was no shade. I blinked away the dust.”
― Andrew Cotto, Outerborough Blues: A Brooklyn Mystery

“He was walking one wet night through a desolate region of the City. A wagon trundled by, drenching his legs with a fine spray. He turned aside, and a maze of dingy streets opened before him. The sky between the slanting rooftops hung black as a slab of jet. Then a waning moon rode clear of the storm clouds.

He had penetrated an old commercial sector of the City where winding lanes lay lampless, flanked by dilapidated warehouses. Every window was boarded up or shattered; too many doorways opened onto musty darkness. With every turn of the black road the same scene lay revealed: row upon row of grey, sagging eaves; scarred and battered gates; rusting fences; sickle moons in every shallow remnant of the rain. He seemed to be shedding the present with every step, moving backwards through time. It seemed that he was acting out some part prearranged, utterly without will.

"The White Road”
― Ron Weighell, The White Road