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I was moving through the terrain of inner urban sprawl, a geography of sensory deprivation, a zone of duel carriageways and petrol stations, business parks, and sign posts to Heathrow, CCTV cameras crouched over warehouse gates, the traffic signals presided like small-minded deities over their deserted crossroads; the entire defenceless landscape was waiting for a crime to be committed. J G Ballard, Kingdom Come, 2006
Primarily, I am a city fellow. I like pavement, the sound of my shoes on pavement, stuffed windows, all-night restaurants, sirens in the night, sinister but alive. Truman Capote, cited Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation, Capote
American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash – all of them – surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered in rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
So much of what humankind has achieved over the past three millennia has come out of the remarkable collaborative creations that come out of cities. We are a social species. We come out of the womb with the ability to sop up information from people around us. It’s almost our defining characteristic as creatures. And cities play to that strength. Cities enable us to learn from other people. They enable us to become better, in a sense, by leveraging the talent of the crowds around us. When you think about all the great inventions that human beings have made – from Athenian philosophy to Henry Ford’s Model T’s, to Facebook – they were always collaborative. There was always situations in which one person borrowed an idea from someone else and then another idea was borrowed and then all of a sudden something absolutely magical occurred. Cities make all of that possible. And that’s why I think they’re are not only mankind’s greatest invention, but also our best hope for the future. Kai Ryssdal, Harvard University economist, cited Marketplace online
The biggest man-made structure on Earth … That’s what the Western Front was: a vast twentieth-century military city of encampments and trenches and dug-outs and barbed-wire. With its complex infrastructure of roads, railways, ammunition dumps, factories, hospitals, brothels and morgs, the Western Front was a linear city extending 450 miles from the Swiss Frontier to the English Channel, and with a population to match. By 1917 this was the most culturally and ethnically diverse place in Earth. David Olusoga, The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire II: Martial Races, BBC 2014
Cities have the capacity of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, Jane Jacobs, author The Death and Life of Great American Cities, BBC 2017
In opposition to the homogenising clarity of [Robert] Moses was Jane Jacobs. ibid. expert
We didn’t understand how high the price was. ibid. expert
I just loved coming to New York. It was inexhaustible. Just to walk around its streets and wonder at it. So many streets different. So many neighbourhoods different. So much going on. ibid. Jane Jacobs
Marvels of dullness and regimentation … This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities. ibid. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
It’s all a great network in the city. ibid.
Many different kinds of enterprises, many different kinds of people, mutually supporting and supplementing each other. ibid.
I live not in mself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me,
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture. Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. (Earth & City & London) William Wordsworth, on Westminster Bridge, 1807
To none more grateful than me; escaped
From the vast city
Where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner. William Wordsworth, The Prelude 1850
Rome is the most advanced city in the world. Apartment blocks up to six stories high. Mankind: The Story of All of Us III, History 2012
The number of city dwellers triples … The industrial mega-city is chaotic. Mankind: The Story of All of Us X: Revolutions
A city is stones and a city is people. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 3/13: The Grain in the Stone, BBC 1973
What is a city? It is a community which lives on a base of agriculture. ibid.
Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday’s and today’s school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did. Malcolm X
Ancient cities lost for centuries. Treasures hidden deep under water. And secret chambers buried under the great Egyptian Sphinx. Ancient Aliens s3e4: Aliens and Temples of Gold
A great city in the dead of night. Underworld 1927 starring Clive Brook & Evelyn Brent & George Bancroft & Fred Kohler & Helen Lynch & Larry Emon & Jerry Mand, director Josef von Sternberg, caption
The city can be lonely too. On Dangerous Ground 1952 starring Robert Ryan & Ida Lupino & Ward Bond & Charles Kemper & Anthony Ross & Ed Begley & Ian Wolfe & Sumner Williams & Gus Schilling et al, director Nicholas Ray, her to him
Without the army and an organised government, the cities decayed. Bettany Hughes, Seven Ages of Britain 43 A.D.- 410 A.D. Channel 4 2002
The city was a Roman alien thing. Bettany Hughes, The Roman Invasion of Britain III: Dominion, History 2009
But once we really run out of the basic resources we need to sustain human life those cities become ghost towns. Professor Daniel Gilbert, Harvard University
They had invented the modern city. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians: Painting the Town: Their Story in Pictures, BBC 2009
They had pioneered the age of steam. They made more than half the world’s industrial goods, and three-quarters the world’s trade was carried in British ships. But despite this success Victoria’s cities were pits of poverty and deprivation. Empires: Queen Victoria’s Empire III: The Moral Crusade, PBS 2000
The cities of Britain were modernising and expanding haphazardly into the countryside. Heritage! The Battle for Britain’s Past II: The Men From the Ministry, BBC 2013
There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living, whose reason for being might be geographical but whose growth is based on industry, jobs. Detroit has its natural attractions: lakes all over the place, an abundance of trees and four distinct seasons for those who like variety in their weather, everything but hurricanes and earthquakes. But it’s never been the kind of city people visit and fall in love with because of its charm or think, gee, wouldn’t this be a nice place to live. Elmore Leonard