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Streets and their sidewalks-the main public places of a city-are its most vital organs.

Jane Jacobs

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Jane Jacobs
Age: 89 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 4
Died: 2006
Died: April 25
Author
Economist
Journalist
Sociologist
Urban Planner
Writer
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Jane Butzner
Jane Butzner Jacobs
Places
City
Streets
Cities
Sidewalks
Public
Sidewalk
Organs
Vital
Main

More quotes by Jane Jacobs

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I think it is fatal to specialize. And all kinds of things show us that and that the more diverse we are in what we can do, the better.
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When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Because this is so, there is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with cities: a city cannot be a work of art.
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There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.
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When we deal with cities we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense. Planners are guided by principles derived from the behaviour and appearance of suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs and imaginary dream cities - from anything but cities themselves.
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People who try to predict the future by extrapolating in a line of more of what exists - they are always wrong.
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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.
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We expect too much of new # buildings , and too little of ourselves.
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Americans don't really think that other places are as real as America.
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New ideas often need old buildings.
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It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.
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Backward cities, or younger cities, or newly forming cities in supply regions, have to develop to a great extent on one another's shoulders. This is one of the terrible things about empires.
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I still have a lot of family in America. I still have a lot of friends there. There is a lot that I admire there very much. When I find America getting too much criticized outside America, I want to tell them how many things are good about it.
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Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.
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The salient mystery of Dark Ages sets the stage for mass amnesia. People living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. How and why can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture that it becomes vitally lost?
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There were lots of programs over the course of the two referendums and the general tenor of them was that if Quebec were to separate, then Canada would disintegrate.
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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
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Unfortunately [René] Lévesque had so little self confidence in Quebec and in the people themselves, that he fell for that and, yes, he'd say, you know, it might be ruinous for us economically.
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I was so grateful to be independent of the academic establishment. I thought, how awful it would be to have my future hinge on such people and such decisions.
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I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.
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I get absolutely ruthless in my own way about not doing anything else when I am trying to concentrate on writing a book. I have to stick to it and concentrate.
Jane Jacobs