Latest Jane Jacobs Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I get absolutely ruthless in my own way about not doing anything else when I am trying to concentrate on writing a book. I have to stick to it and concentrate.

  Jane Jacobs

  Book, Writing, Trying

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• The Japanese are virtuosos. They make just the little accent that makes all the difference. So much there is so beautiful - just a shop window display is a work of art. Just the way they make all kinds of things out of bamboo that are so ingenious. Just the way this little bamboo drain or latch is so beautiful. The masonry around the streams to hold the bank are beautiful - and not all one kind and not just cement.

  Jane Jacobs

  Beautiful, Art, Differences

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• Maybe part of my animus against the English is the way they have always treated the Irish and they way they still think about the Irish.

  Jane Jacobs

  Thinking, Way, Animus

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• I am ambivalent about London because I am so ambivalent about England in general.

  Jane Jacobs

  London, England, Ambivalent

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• Never underestimate the power of a city to regenerate.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Underestimate, Never Underestimate

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• I don't think that you can dispose of the constructive and inventive things that America is doing - and say, "Oh we aren't doing anything anymore and we are living off of what the poor Chinese do." It is more complicated than that. There is the example of Detroit which was once a very prosperous and diverse city. And look what happened when it just specialized on automobiles. Look at Manchester when it specialized in those dark satanic mills, when it specialized in textiles. It was supposed to be the city of the future.

  Jane Jacobs

  Dark, Thinking, Cities

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• I think it is fatal to specialize. And all kinds of things show us that and that the more diverse we are in what we can do, the better.

  Jane Jacobs

  Thinking, Kind, Shows

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• You don't get new products and services out of sameness.

  Jane Jacobs

  New Products, Products, Sameness

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• There are still an awful lot of intelligent, clever constructive Americans and they are still doing clever constructive things.

  Jane Jacobs

  Clever, Intelligent, Awful

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• I basically don't think that the way we do things is that dependent on one resource, such as oil. There can be different kinds of engines for cars. I think that solar heating, wind heating can substitute for a lot of uses for oil. I'd like to see those things happen because they are more sustainable in any case. But I do not think that running out of oil is not going to bother us that much. I think we have got to be rescued by something or we really are going down a slippery slope.

  Jane Jacobs

  Running, Thinking, Wind

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• Nothing is so clear in history that is it happens for any one thing. It seems that a lot of things come together to make great changes.

  Jane Jacobs

  Together, Clear, Great Change

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• All my life I have been hearing that the oil was going to run out. It never happens. They keep discovering new oil fields. The world is apparently floating in oil fields.

  Jane Jacobs

  Running, Oil, Floating

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• 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.

  Jane Jacobs

  Thinking, People, Community

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• I think that things are going to change just because people get too damn bored with what they have.

  Jane Jacobs

  Thinking, People, Bored

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• I don't think of the New Urbanism as an economic or political train wreck. I think of it as one of these great generational upheavals that's coming.

  Jane Jacobs

  Thinking, Train Wrecks, Political

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• People who try to predict the future by extrapolating in a line of more of what exists - they are always wrong.

  Jane Jacobs

  People, Trying, Lines

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• The notion that you could discard the old world and now make a new one. This is what was so bad about Modernism.

  Jane Jacobs

  World, Modernism, Notion

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• There is no new world that you make without the old world.

  Jane Jacobs

  World, Old World, New World

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• The Victorian house and lots of other buildings weren't oppressive in themselves. They were often very airy and gingerbready and fancy. But they were associated with all this [Victorian] stuffiness.

  Jane Jacobs

  House, Fancy, Building

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• Modernism really started with people getting infatuated with the idea of "it's the twentieth century, is this suitable for the twentieth century." This happened before the First World War and it wasn't just the soldiers. You can see it happening if you read the Bloomsbury biographies. It was a reaction to a great extent against Victorianism. There was so much that was repressive and stuffy. Victorian buildings were associated with it, and they were regarded as very ugly. Even when they weren't ugly, people made them ugly. They were painted hideously.

  Jane Jacobs

  War, Ideas, People

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• By the end of the book, it is quite different than the way you thought it would be when you started the book - both in form and what it contains and what you think. Well, you tipped in a lot and you digested a lot - it wasn't pre-digested in your view. And it changed what you thought and how you see things.

  Jane Jacobs

  Book, Thinking, Views

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• 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.

  Jane Jacobs

  Taken, Thinking, Shopping

  Interview with James Kunstler for Metropolis Magazine, March 2001.

• There are two ways you encounter things in the world that are different. One is everything that comes in reinforces what you already believe and everything that you know. The other thing is that you stay flexible enough or curious enough and maybe unsure of yourself enough, or may be you are more sure of yourself - I don't know which it is - that the new things that come in keep reforming your world view.

  Jane Jacobs

  Believe, Views, Two

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• Everybody's got a worldview, whether they know they have it or they don't. They might even get it when they are little tiny kids. Suppose they get it when they are in college, which is often the case, or in high school, whatever. Everything they learn after that or every thing they see after that, they fit it into that worldview. And they are making coherence of what's good, what's bad, what will work, what won't work, what's noble, what's ignoble, and so on... all through this filter.

  Jane Jacobs

  School, Kids, College

  Source: www.metropolismag.com

• I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.

  Jane Jacobs

  Thinking, Intelligent, People

  Source: www.metropolismag.com