The American city (n.) is marked by a contrast between the formidable power, the inexhaustible abundance of what is called the 'American Colossus ' and the puny insignificance of those little houses that line the widest roads in the world . In this contrast, there is no clearer indication that America is not finished, that her ideas and plans, her social structure and her cities have only a strictly temporary reality.
The American city (n.) is not something its inhabitants are familiar with; once the American is ten blocks away from his home, he is lost.
The American city's (n.) most striking aspect is the vertical disorder.
The American city (n.) is built in such a way where a road originally served as a kind of spinal column to the town, splitting it, with streets marked out like vertebrae, perpendicular to it.
The American city (n.) is a future. For Europeans, a city is, above all, a past.
The American city (n.) is where it is custom for the fashionable neighbourhoods to slide from the centre to the outskirts or the city; after five years the centre or town becomes 'polluted'.
The American city (n.) is different from the European city in this: we Europeans change within changeless cities, and our houses and neighbourhoods outlive us; American cities change faster than their inhabitants do, and it is the inhabitants who outlive the cities.
The American city (n.) is everything it has not yet become and everything it can be.
The American city (n.) is perfectly straight and rudimentary, without organization. It is rather like a big earthworm that might be chopped into twenty pieces.