We are making great progress, but we are going in the wrong direction. There is no greater form of subsidized social engineering than the interstate highway, which hastens the flight out of the city without doing much to ease traffic congestion. It's now a code violation all over America. The pedestrian is the design imperative. If you are an elected official lacking in courage and leadership, and you face even a peep of opposition to a project, fall back on perfectionism to find a flaws so that you can shoot down the project.
Perfectionism leads to paralysis.
In part, public planning agencies have no vision because they are drowning in minutiae. We need to design our cities so that one feels embarrassed, inconvenienced, and like one who is missing out on all the fun when driving a car. The desire for community is a constant of human nature. Stephen Price Well planned cities can compensate for declining incomes by decreasing the cost of living. Although the American scarcely thought of his car as an instrument for reshaping the city, it was to prove the most potent means of crippling Central Business Districts and upbuilding outlying shopping areas that had ever been invented.