Quote

There are fashions in building. Behind the fashions lie economic and technological reasons, and these fashions exclude all but a few genuinely different possibilities in city dwelling construction at any one time.

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
Reason
Possibility
Exclude
Different
Behinds
Genuinely
Time
Behind
Dwelling
Building
Technological
Fashion
Construction
Cities
Possibilities
Economic
Reasons
Lying
City
Fashions

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Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.
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The notion that you could discard the old world and now make a new one. This is what was so bad about Modernism.
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People who think of themselves as exiles, I find, can never really put their lives together, really.
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I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.
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Detroit is largely composed, today, of seemingly endless square miles of low-density failure.
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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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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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I don't think of the New Urbanism as an economic or political train wreck. I think of it as one of these great generational upheavals that's coming.
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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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Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities.
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I think that things are going to change just because people get too damn bored with what they have.
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There is no new world that you make without the old world.
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A border--the perimeter of a single massive or stretched-out use of territory--forms the edge of an area of 'ordinary' city. Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter-of-factly just as edges. However, a border exerts an active influence.
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There are still an awful lot of intelligent, clever constructive Americans and they are still doing clever constructive things.
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The best thing is not to think about [separatism]. [People in Alberta] don't even want to engage in talking pros and cons and why people feel this way.
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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.
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