Urban Sprawl Quotes

“All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together,looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“New Rule: America has every right ot bitch about gas prices suddenly shooting up. How could we have known? Oh, wait, there was that teensy, tiny thing about being warned constantly over the last forty years but still creating more urban sprawl, failing to build public transport, buying gas-guzzlers, and voting for oil company shills. So, New Rule: Shut the fuck up about gas prices.”
― Bill Maher, The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass

“Imagine having a city full of things that no other city had.”
― Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

“A democracy is understandably boisterous and subject to the prevailing social and economic whims of the nation’s bulging populous. Politics based upon mass appeal reveals an unseemly side, and a degree of pronounced vulgarity permeates American social and political culture. Make no mistake, Americans are loud, brash, and biased. The constitutional right to free speech and the established right to assemble enable pornography shops to do business wherever they please and allow virtually any organization to parade downtown. Part of what makes America beautiful – the right for people to do and say anything they please – also contributes to that distinctly Americana crust of crudeness. American cities reflect American’s propensity for vulgarity. Most of the cities built to satisfy America’s capitalistic needs are either boring or an outright eyesore. America’s cities contain oversized high-rises, sprinkled liberally with drab shopping malls, and dotted with ugly concrete edifices that stifle nature’s beauty. A nation’s functional architecture reflects the populations’ intrinsic values. Corporate conglomerates undertook most of the expensive new construction in America, and its boxy steel and glass structures are utilitarian in nature. Recent attempts at city planning and urban renewal cannot erase the tackiness and blockiness that accompanies so much of America’s tedious urban sprawl.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Spending ten days in a subway station search for a four-year-old boy was an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Not merely because of the desperation that gripped me every minute of those ten days, but especially because of my sense of helplessness in the face of a city so huge that it could swallow up anything, anyone, without explanation, as if they had never existed. Amidst the most absolute indifference. Even a little boy that you had seen playing until just a few hours ago.”
― Massimo Carlotto, Il fuggiasco

“Like Robert frost, my heart ached to be in the pastoral countryside. On the Interstate, you really never leave the city. The two asphalt slabs are always surrounded by a continuous, homogeneous channel of pavement, cables and wires, and urban sprawl.”
― Dan Grajek, The Last Hobo: A Clueless Detroit Kid Hitchhikes Across America the Summer the Seventies Ran Out of Gas

“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