A Quote by Rebecca Solnit

In great cities, spaces as well as places are designed and built: walking, witnessing, being in public, are as much part of the design and purpose as is being inside to eat, sleep, make shoes or love or music. The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship -- around participation in public life.

Rebecca Solnit

Quote Topics

Around Being Built Cities Citizen Citizenship City Design Designed Eat Great Great Cities Ideal Inside Life Love Make Much Music Organized Part Participation Places Public Public Life Purpose Shoes Sleep Spaces Walking Well Word

Quote Author

Rebecca Solnit
American - Writer
Born: June 24, 1961

By rebuilding transportation so that you're not owning this thing that just sits there all the time, you get to rebuild cities in the process. If we do this right as a country, we have a chance to re-create our cities with the people, rather than cars, at the center. Our cities today have been built for the car. They've been built for car ownership. Imagine walking around in the city where you don't see any parking lots and you don't need that many roads.

John Zimmer

In a Society becoming steadily more privatized with private homes, cars, computers, offices and shopping centers, the public component of our lives is disappearing. It is more and more important to make the cities inviting, so we can meet our fellow citizens face to face and experience directly through our senses. Public life in good quality public spaces is an important part of a democratic life and a full life.

Jan Gehl

The measure of any great civilization is its cities and a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, its parks and squares.

John Ruskin

I photograph in public and semi-public spaces that date from various epochs. These are spaces accessible to everyone. They are places where you can meet and communicate, where you can share or receive knowledge, where you can relax and recover. They are spas, hotels, waiting rooms, museums, libraries, universities, banks, churches and, as of a few years ago, zoos. All of the places have a purpose, as for the most part do the things within them.

Candida Hofer

I love cities, I spend most of my life talking about cities. And the design of cities does have an effect on your life. You're lucky if you can see trees out of your window and you have a square nearby, or a bar, a cornershop, a surgery. Then you're living well.

Richard Rogers

Cities could open up their property and assets to sharing economy apps that make it easier to find parking spaces or homes for rent. By aligning private-sector incentives with the public good, cities will create confidence among taxpayers.

Pierre Nanterme

Chicago is a beautiful city. It's one of those places that people around the world see and say, 'Maybe one day.' There's so much excitement in the city about what you can accomplish and what you can be. We get this stigma, and rightfully so, because of the killings, but it's one of the best cities in the world. I'm biased, but I think it's a great city. Not only to be from, but to go to.

Dwyane Wade

When we think of design, we usually imagine things that are chosen because they are designed. Vases or comic books or architecture... It turns out, though, that most of what we make or design is actually aimed at a public that is there for something else. The design is important, but the design is not the point. Call it "public design"... Public design is for individuals who have to fill out our tax form, interact with our website or check into our hotel room despite the way it's designed, not because of it.

Seth Godin

I've spent most of my life in cities, and so I've always lived with the curiosity about what makes for city cultures and how peoples live in cities, how peoples anywhere manage to co-exist, the public life and the private life.

W. S. Di Piero

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don't think I'm as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people - which is why I think I did so well.

Kevin Hart

I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life.

Antony Gormley

Obviously as a mayor, I'm in competition with my neighboring cities as well as cities around the country.

Wayne Messam

I don't like going to cities. I don't mind maybe being in a city sometimes for a few hours, but I pretty much don't like cities. I don't even like passing through them.

Will Oldham

In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection. We built walls around them with slits through which to fire arrows at scary, cross-eyed rural people, and brought our food and family inside because they were the safest places to be.

Giles Coren

Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.