However far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.

My dear Bradley—indeed, I recall the phantasm from which you wept upon waking. I was descending once more to the terrestrial plane. Kindly forgive the perturbation as my return was in earnest, not spectral. I regret the sorrow my passage stirred in your slumbering soul.

like: Pittsburgh
love: Manhattan
overrated: Washington, D.C.
underrated: Manhattan
I feel most myself in: Manhattan
I still need to visit: Lübeck
I dream of living in: Manhattan
Most inspiring city today: Venice
Favorite city of all time: Manhattan

specialized human aptitudes, specialized instruments, give rise to sonorous results which, neither in volume nor in quality, could be achieved by any single piece.

Through its complex orchestration of time and space, no less than through the social division of labor, life in the city takes on the character of a symphony:

…increases with civilization: “Nature” as a system of interests and activities is one of the chief creations of the civilized man.

The influence of the land is sometimes looked upon as significant only in primitive conditions of life. With the coming of “civilization,” that is to say, trade and manufacture and organized cities, the land is supposed to diminish in importance. As a matter of fact, the importance of the land…

…to present a picture, dramatic but not distorted, of the results of displacing large neighborhood populations to facilitate large-scale rebuilding.

A few years ago, Mrs. Jacobs stepped into prominence at a planners’ conference at Harvard. Into the foggy atmosphere of professional jargon that usually envelops such meetings, she blew like a fresh, offshore breeze…

…and apparently automatic processes that promise power or profit to those who promote them.

The fact is that twentieth-century planning still lacks a fresh multidimensional image of the city, partly because we have not discussed and sorted out the true values, functions, and purposes of modern culture from many pseudo-values...

…are more important than any benefits to be derived from the constant use of the automobile. To accomplish this improvement, we must devise a fundamental change in the city’s whole pattern.

Instead of maximizing facilities for motorcars, we should maximize the advantage of urban life. Parks, playgrounds, and schools, theaters, universities, and concert halls, to say nothing of a quiet night’s sleep and a sunny outlook when one wakes up…

If it is only now that we belatedly recognize this distinctive feature, it is perhaps because there are widespread indications in contemporary art and politics and technics that man may be on the point of losing it—becoming not a lower animal, but a shapeless amoeboid nonentity.

Every manifestation of human culture, from ritual and speech to costume and social organization, is directed ultimately to the remodeling of the human organism and the expression of the human personality.

But if the pedestrian is to come back, it is necessary, for both his safety and his health, to insulate his promenades from the traffic thoroughfare…to keep motor cars from entering areas where they do not belong and to provide for their swift movement through areas where they do belong….

The replanning of New York so that the pedestrian may again have a real place in the urban economy would have seemed fantastic only a generation ago.

The time has come to reconsider the whole process of urban design. We must ask ourselves what changes are necessary if the city is again to become architecturally expressive and economically workable without our having to sacrifice its proper life to the mechanical means for keeping that life going.

…”Babylonish brick-kiln” of New York. Not merely was I a city boy but a New Yorker, indeed a son of Manhattan, who looked upon specimens from all other cities as provincial—especially Brooklynites.

I was a child of the city, and for the first thirty years of my life I knew the country only as a visitor, though the occasional summers I spent on a Vermont farm before 1910 had first and last an influence on me that offset my long incarceration in what Melville called the…