Urban Development Quotes

“The course of urban development in America is pushing the individual toward that line seperating proud independence from pitiable isolation.”
― Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community

“Inexpensive Progress

Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead.”
― John Betjeman, Collected Poems

“Municipalities that do not budget and plan for infrastructure upgrades will eventually become unlivable.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“In 35 years, 50 percent of our population will live in our cities. Most other countries will be in a similar situation. We need to start preparing now to ensure everyone has the opportunity to live meaningful lives, and our cities are places that will allow that to happen.”
― Sir Fazle Hasan Abed

“Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from
here?
And he ssid: Well, just take a right
where they're gonna build that new
shopping mall,
go straight past where they're gonna
put in the freeway,
take a left at what's gonna be the new
sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place
where they´re thiinking of
building that drive-in bank. You can't
miss it.
And I said: This must be the place.”
― Laurie Anderson , United States Reprint edition by Anderson, Laurie (1984) Paperback

“Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from
here?
And he said: Well, just take a right
where they're gonna build that new
shopping mall,
go straight past where they're gonna
put in the freeway,
take a left at what's gonna be the new
sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place
where they´re thinking of
building that drive-in bank. You can't
miss it.
And I said: This must be the place.”
― Laurie Anderson , United States Reprint edition by Anderson, Laurie (1984) Paperback

“Banks banked and distributed capital, ventures were ventured in boom and bust extravagance and fortunes could not help being made. By the law of trickle down economics, unnecessaries were invented and marketed as essentials such as opaque glass and third party defamation insurance, gossip being quite valuable as one high court judge pointed out in a famous settlement case where lemon tarts and bitter acrimony were involved.

The need, it was inevitably suggested, was for quality and style in a tired-looking town full of disused miners and the fashion circuit was born. Exclusive ranges of shops fronted by gold-sprinkled walkways took possession of land earmarked originally for schools and hospitals and neighbourhoods soon felt the need to push themselves closer to such richness. (Chapter 4)”
― Martyn X Brown