Jane JacobsThinkers

The Car is much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at urban planning.

The Car is the cause of traffic congestion, not people in themselves.

The Car is the chief destroyer of American communities (rather than television or drugs).

The City is an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.

The City is bits and pieces that supplement each other and support each other.

The City is capable of providing something for everybody, but only because and only when it is a city that is created by everybody.

The City is life at its most complex and intense which results in a basic aesthetic limitation on what can be done with cities: A city cannot be a work of art.

The City is life at its most complex and intense. Planners are guided by principles derived from the behavior and appearance of suburbs, tuberculosis sanatoria, fairs and imaginary dream cities from anything but cities themselves.

The City is not a denser version than the suburbs. It is fundamentally different, not least in that the city is, by definition, full of strangers.

The City is precious in that in contrast to small towns in which everyone knows your affairs a place where only those you choose to tell will know about you.

The City is successful when people take a modicum of responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. This is a lesson that is not taught, but learned in the city from the experience of having other's with no ties take a modicum of responsibility for you.

The City has the seed of its own destruction when it is dull and inert. On the other hand, lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.

The City is the intricate minglings of different uses that together do not create a form of chaos. On the contrary, they represent a complex and highly developed form of order.

The City needs old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. . . . For really new ideas of any kind-- no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be-- there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

The City 1s 2iversity represents accident and chaos.

The City 1s 2uccess is intimately linked with the success of societies. Where societies have flourished rather than stagnated, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon. Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together.

The City is absent any logic. None can be superimposed on it. People make the city, and so it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.

The City is life at its most complex and intense.