Urban Renewal Quotes

There is no such thing as a 'good' gentrifier, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren't.

I found Rome built of bricks; I leave her clothed in marble.

We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.

Reggie Campbell and Kathleen Goldsmith are participants in an American success story, the unprecedented boom of home-buying by African-Americans in the 1990s. Only he is black and she is white. When he moved into the neighborhood, she moved out.

I'm amazed every time I come back to Vancouver at how much it's changed. You go away for a month and there's three more skyscrapers.

The Buckeye Build will have a lasting impact on Cleveland, and it is an honor to be a part of it.

When I lived in Delhi, it was burdened with so many futures - fast roads, malls, flyovers - that one felt almost obliged to be hopeful. Now that hope has diminished, you can feel the city going into a frenzy to reinvent itself. I miss living there.

I think Newark has been in the crosshairs in every generation of the fight to achieve America. And I think Newark is a city that's at that crossroads still.

The suburban cycle which began a hundred years ago is nearly over. We are in for a period of contraction and economic hardship.

Neither of my parents live in Oakland anymore. They both got priced out.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

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?

Before 2000, everything was about being contextual, and buildings were supposed to be good citizens.

When I grew up, I lived in a neighborhood that had social clubs. It's never delightful to glamorize one's youth. My neighborhood was poor. But people felt part of the neighborhood. This was in Rockaway Beach, Long Island.

Even in New York, there are a lot of very attractive girls pedaling around. That just happens to be one of the nice sights in our city, seeing a young woman on a bike.

I am Chicago. I'm from Chicago. I bleed Chicago. I really think I can help the city. I think I can save the city.

I propose for the sake of the city I love an effective way of cleaning the streets.

Hackney gets a bit of a bad rap, but it's the only place I've ever lived that felt like a community. I know my neighbours.

I want to make Seoul the front line of the new South Korea. Seoul is sleeping, and I want to wake it up.

When I was just a twenty-something, I came to Newark, and I found a connection to the city in a spiritual way. I found a connection here and people here that reminded me so much of my roots and my own family.

I believe in the city as a natural human environment, but we must humanize it. It's art that will re-define public space in the 21st Century. We can make our cities diverse, inspirational places by putting art, dance and performance in all its forms into the matrix of street life.

Look what we have built ... low-income projects that became worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.

Most of the job on DDP was already done by the time I became mayor. So was Gwanghwamun Square, described by many architects as the city's worst architectural creation, and the new city hall. I did not think that redoing them would be the right approach as that would only create new problems.

In 2011, I started a nonprofit organization, Venture for America, to help bring talented young entrepreneurs to create thousands of jobs in Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Birmingham, Baltimore and other cities around the country.

I play to lift a city, and raise a banner.