City Diversity Represents Accident And Chaos.

Americans Have Got It So Dinged Into Them That They Are The Most Fortunate People On Earth, And That The Rest Of The World - The Sooner It Copies What America Is Like, The Better.

The Notion - And I Tell You This One Even Worries Me That It Extends Into New Urbanism - The Notion Of The Shopping Center [as] A Valid Kind Of Downtown. That's Taken Over. It's Very Hard For Architects Of This Generation Even To Think In Terms Of A Downtown Or A Center That Is Owned By All Different People, With Different Ideas.

The Entrepreneurial Investors Of The Time Just Want To Repeat Themselves Indefinitely And Don't Know When To Stop. You Can't Do That. And So Finally The Housing Boom, Or The Auto Boom, Or Whatever It Is That's Been Carrying Things Along, Runs Out Of Customers.

It May Be That We Have Become So Feckless As A People That We No Longer Care How Things Do Work, But Only What Kind Of Quick, Easy Outer Impression They Give. If So, There Is Little Hope For Our Cities Or Probably For Much Else In Our Society. But I Do Not Think This Is So.

I Think That Part Of The Growing Popularity Of The New Urbanism Is Not Simply Because It Is So Rational, And Not Simply Because People Care So Much About Community Or Even Understand It, Or The Relation Of Sprawl To The Ruination Of The Natural World. But They Just Don't Like What Is Around. And They Will Be Ruthless With It.