Building Quotes by Jane Jacobs

10 Building quotes by Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs’s ten brief reflections on building illuminate her focus on vibrant neighborhoods, human‑scale design, and the social fabric of cities. The collection is small, yet each line carries her insightful, ground‑level perspective.

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New ideas often need old buildings.

Jane Jacobs

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New ideas must use old buildings

Jane Jacobs

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We expect too much of new # buildings , and too little of ourselves.

Jane Jacobs

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Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.

Jane Jacobs

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“There are fashions in building. Behind the fashions lie economic and technological reasons, and these fashions exclude all but a few genuinely…

Jane Jacobs

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There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that…

Jane Jacobs

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The Victorian house and lots of other buildings weren't oppressive in themselves. They were often very airy and gingerbready and fancy. But…

Jane Jacobs

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Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them… for really new…

Jane Jacobs

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Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning.…

Jane Jacobs

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Modernism really started with people getting infatuated with the idea of "it's the twentieth century, is this suitable for the twentieth century."…

Jane Jacobs

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More by Jane Jacobs

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

Jane Jacobs

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My mother used to say when we were children, 'When a boy gets a stick in his hand, his brains run out the other…

Jane Jacobs

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Design is people.

Jane Jacobs

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To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting…

Jane Jacobs

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Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them… for really new ideas of…

Jane Jacobs

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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

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Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design.

Jane Jacobs

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“Development isn't a collection of things but rather a process that yields things. Not knowing this, governments, their development and aid agencies, the World…

Jane Jacobs

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“Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect.”

Jane Jacobs

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Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole

Jane Jacobs

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Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the…

Jane Jacobs

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“I tis hopeless to try to convert some borders into seams. Expressways and their ramps are examples. Moreover, even in the case of large…

Jane Jacobs

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