Cities

"A city is … an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone. It is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a spiritual sense."

"To anyone growing up in any large city, the immediate neighborhood becomes the world. The street on which one lives provides a kid with local identification somewhat similar to being branded by national origin. Streets have a status. They grow, get old and change in character. In large coastal cities, immigration has an effect on the profile of a street altering it as each new group enters, stays a while, assimilates and then moves away. Streets seem to have a discernible life. Some start out ostentatiously and gradually descend into slums while others begin as poor the disreputable neighborhoods and rise to ostentation through what city planners call gentrification."

"My troops are bound to me as a cow is bound to its calf; but like a son who, hating his mother, leaves his city, my princely sister holy has run away from me back to brick-built Kulaba. If she loves her city and hates me, why does she bind the city to me? If she hates the city and yet loves me, why does she bind me to the city?"

"Latin America is particularly susceptible to pockets of crime because of its speedy urbanization. Its cities grew faster than in most other parts of the world during the past 50 years, according to the Economist. By 2000, three-quarters of the population lived in towns and cities. That is about double the proportion in Asia and Africa. As the Economist explains, “that move from the countryside concentrated risk factors for lethal violence — inequality, unemployed young men, dislocated families, poor government services, easily available firearms — even as it also brought together the factors needed for economic growth.”"

"For the man of antiquity, the image of the city expressed a supreme reality. Particularly for Greek thought, the clearly ordered, limited area was more highly appreciated than unpatterned limitlessness. It pictured even the totality of existence not as an endless All, but as cosmos, the beautifully shaped and controlled universe. For the Greek, then, the city was more than endless masses of land and people. The city, with her environs, her various buildings grouped harmoniously within the clear-cut borders of her walls; busy, flourishing stronghold regulated by a wise and just government — this image symbolized the goal of all Christian striving, redeemed existence."

"The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city."

"How can we define the "city"? And what is a village? And where is the dividing line between a city and a village? The number of the inhabitants is certainly not the criterion, for we know of villages in Hungary with forty, fifty, and even sixty thousand inhabitants. To a large extent it is therefore the occupation of its residents which causally determines the character of a settlement. The village lives in closest contact with the land, the inhabitants are mostly peasants who work on their fields, meadows, pastures, and woods; homework is only supplementary. Except for the looms and dairies, the village has no collective working places, no factories, and no offices. It lacks a proletariat (apart from a few paupers) and an intelligentsia, with a few necessary exceptions such as the priest, doctor, and teacher."

"Friends and loves we have none, nor wealth, nor blest abode But the hope, the burning hope, and the road, the lonely road. Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind, For we go seeking cities that we shall never find."

"Not so long ago, I examined some maps showing juvenile delinquency, diptheria, tuberculosis and murder quotients in a number of cities from New Orleans to Los Angeles. The maps all looked alike. Disease, crime and delinquency were invariably grouped in the same parts of the cities — in the slum districts. That is the cause of crime, not the motion picture."

"No town has greater right on you than the other. The best town for you is that which bears you."

"I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture."

"When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life."