Sorry for the abundance of quotes recently but I’ve been hard at work on my thesis and making good progress. I’ve crossed the 8500 word mark and should breeze past 10,000 shortly on my way to somewhere in the 12,000-15,000 range. Anyway, on to tonight’s quote. This one is about urban planning, actually, and the fact while cities appear on the surface to be chaotic, they are really just extremely complex systems of relationships and repeat behaviors.

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intimacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance–not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.”

-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of the Great American Cities

Filed under: life, missions by Jonathan