Urban Nature Quotes

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that's completely typical of Seattle. You can't quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back?

New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

Research suggests that exposure to the natural world - including nearby nature in cities - helps improve human health, well-being, and intellectual capacity in ways that science is only recently beginning to understand.

When I had my dogs, I used to spend a lot of time in Central Park, which is a great place to be alone among a lot of people.

In Reykjavik, Iceland, where I was born, you are in the middle of nature surrounded by mountains and ocean. But you are still in a capital in Europe. So I have never understood why I have to choose between nature or urban.

I do as much outdoor stuff as I can. What I've done is I bought a house in the middle of Hollywood, but I live in the forest. I literally live in an area that looks kind of like where I camped as a kid, but in the middle of Hollywood. It's called Laurel Canyon.

The thing I love about Norwegian cities is that you often have nature right at your doorstep - you don't need to go that far. That makes it a lot easier to just get out.

Near my house in Los Angeles is a waterfall. I love to take the wife and kids, but it's also near a sketchy neighborhood. So there's a lot of gang members that hang out at the waterfall. It's like somebody took an Ansel Adams photo and then put a Cypress Hill video inside it.

On pavements and the bark of trees I have found whole worlds.

I love Chicago for several reasons, but one of the best is that I was so intrigued that you have wild rabbits running around in the city. I never had seen bunnies in such a large urban environment before.

I never really lived outside of the city growing up, but I'm always looking in between the lines of the city, and I magnetize over to the green spots.

I'm trying to express nature in big cities.

Sound sounds are terrible in the city, but it's great to listen and to walk and listen to people talk to each other. There are birds. You hear spring. I like listening to the city.

There are natures that go to the streams of life in great cities as the hart goes to the water brooks.

When it comes to Washington, most people tend to think first of politics. But Washington is also a geographic and physical place. It is, for instance, one of the few cities of the world where you can talk endlessly about trees.

I grew up in a haunting postindustrial landscape where prehistoric ferns grew among tens of railway tracks surmounted by brilliant arc lights where birds nested and sang in the dead of night, because for them, it was day.

In Vancouver, you have to lock your doors - not for strangers, but for bears.

In traditional cities like Beijing, Nanjing, and Hangzhou, nature was a very important part of urban planning - not only as a landscape but a part of daily life.

People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement.

I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly.

One of the great things about New York is this wonderful park we have.

Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard - or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.

If you have a lot of nature in your city, it becomes a more enjoyable place. That's my own feeling about it.

There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.

I love the Park. I like to walk on the East River, too, up at Gracie Square, but Central Park is my favorite part of the city.