Erosion Of Cities Or Attrition Of Automobiles?

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.

Dull, Inert Cities, It Is True, Do Contain The Seeds Of Their Own Destruction And Little Else. But Lively, Diverse, Intense Cities Contain The Seeds Of Their Own Regeneration, With Energy Enough To Carry Over For Problems And Needs Outside Themselves.

It May Be That We Have Become So Feckless As A People That We No Longer Care How Things Work But Only The Kind Of Quick, Easy Outer Impression That They Get.

Cities Need Old Buildings So Badly It Is Probably Impossible For Vigorous Streets And Districts To Grow Without Them.... For Really New Ideas Of Any Kind--no Matter How Ultimately Profitable Or Otherwise Successful Some Of Them Might Prove To Be--there Is No Leeway For Such Chancy Trial, Error And Experimentation In The High-overhead Economy Of New Construction. Old Ideas Can Sometimes Use New Buildings. New Ideas Must Use Old Buildings.

That The Sight Of People Attracts Still Other People, Is Something That City Planners And City Architectural Designers Seem To Find Incomprehensible. They Operate On The Premise That City People Seek The Sight Of Emptiness, Obvious Order And Quiet. Nothing Could Be Less True. The Presences Of Great Numbers Of People Gathered Together In Cities Should Not Only Be Frankly Accepted As A Physical Fact... They Should Also Be Enjoyed As An Asset And Their Presence Celebrated.