You cannot want to live in Venice and at the same time want to own three cars.

Charles Correa, 2013

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

Niels Bohr

The city’s incompleteness gives it a capacity to mutate.

Saskia Sassen, 2013

In Canada you can say whatever you want but there is nothing much to say. In China, on the other hand, you have to be careful about what you say. Still, there is a lot to say.

A Chinese journalist who received his training in Canada, 2006.

Put switches on the street lamps, so lighting will be under public control.

Guy Debord, 1955.

Such (self-organizing) systems have several advantages over more traditional systems: robustness, flexibility, capability to function autonomously while demanding a minimum of supervision, and the spontaneous development of complex adaptations without need for detailed planning. Disadvantages are limited predictability and difficulty of control. […] Perhaps the most challenging application would be to design a complex socio-economic system that relies on self-organization rather than centralized planning and control.

Francis Heylighen

Cities bring change – for society and for individuals – and the status quo is no friend of those without food or health care or a future. The part of the world that is rural and poor moves glacially – only occasionally shocked by famine or civil war or, very rarely, something as helpful as the Green Revolution – while the part of the world that is urban and poor is changing rapidly. There is opportunity in change.

Edward Glaeser, 2011.

On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. Heraclitus, ca. 535 – 475 BC.

Things stay the same only by changing.

Darwinism stresses conflict and competition; that doesn’t square with the evidence. A lot of organisms that survive are in no sense superior to those that have gone extinct. It’s not a question of being “better than”; it’s simply a matter of finding a place where you can be yourself. That’s what evolution is about. That’s why you can see it as a dance. It’s not going anywhere, it’s simply exploring a space of possibilities.

Brian Goodwin, 1995.

Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone.

Zhuangzi, ca. 369-286 BC.