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We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.

Where a city is only focused on one aspect, it becomes a city without a soul, not a city people want to live in.

A city is a state - of mind, of taste, of opportunity. A city is a marketplace - where ideas are traded, opinions clash and eternal conflict may produce eternal truths.

All cities are impressive in their way, because they represent the aspiration of men to lead a common life; those people who wish to live agreeable lives, and in constant intercourse with one another, will build a city as beautiful as Paris.

Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness.

Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable.

One city can look at other cities relative to their city and learn something. It's a matter of sharing the patterns of what exists in one society based on landscape or cultural values versus other cities.

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.

It's a difficult task to deal with cities. But with some original ways of getting things done, with some basic commandments, you can really get cities to be a great, great place to live.