Gregor Smith

“In any artistic rendering of the city theme alienation is a constant. Given the anonymity the city provides, it could hardly be otherwise. Artists, especially writers, have recognised this dichotomy, and that cities have always proved a source of freedom by providing anonymity, notwithstanding the estrangement and isolation that goes with it. Indeed, the city's impetus towards modernity is to be found in that narrow zone between loss of community and discovery of self.”
― Robert Drewe, The Penguin Book Of The City

“Such a suspicion of metanarratives was evident in the destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe Project which had promised much, based on modernist stories of emancipation, progress, and reason, and had failed. At a grander level it can be seen in many post-WW2 responses to the failures of science (the atom bomb, the green revolution), Marxist political movements (the Soviet Union, China), or capitalism (the free market, development). Grand claims for "reason" and "rationality" had often led to horrendous consequences.”
― Tim Cresswell, Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction

“In Iowa the land is flat and the people are fat. Like petrol-driven bowling balls they roll across the plains, occasionaly slotting into the groove of a roadway, then rattling to a halt at fast-food joints where they are served with paper cups of 7 Up or Coke the size of oil drums, haystack hamburgers and stooks of fries.”
― Will Self, Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place

“Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers and managers are called to join the empire. They must ponder whether to answer the imperial call or to remain loyal to their state and their people. More and more choose the empire.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind