Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance.
Interpretation
Human existence is inherently challenging and urban environments amplify these challenges due to their density and complexity.
Jane Jacobs highlights the inherent difficulties of being human, asserting that the challenges we face in life are magnified in densely populated urban areas. With more people living closely together, the issues of social interaction, resource allocation, and community relationships become more complex, leading to a multitude of societal problems that are often overlooked in idealized visions of city life.
In practice
During an urban development conference, one might cite this quote to emphasize the need for thoughtful city planning.
It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.
Streets and their sidewalks-the main public places of a city-are its most vital organs.
(The psuedoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.)
Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon. Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.
This is what a city is, bits and pieces that supplement each other and support each other.
This is something everyone knows: A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe.
Speak about Christ only when you are asked. But live so that people ask about Christ!
Consumerism has accustomed us to waste. But throwing food away is like stealing it from the poor and hungry.
He that Opposes his own Judgment against the Current of the Times, ought to be back'd with unanswerable Truths; and he that has that Truth on his Side, is a Fool, as well as a Coward, if he is afraid to own it, because of the Currency or Multitude of other Mens Opinions.
I have discovered that for me - now, maybe it doesn't work for everybody - for me, it is much more effective to arrive at any situation as a man from Mars than to try to fit in.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
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