Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption or conservation. They map our lives.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The design and rules of places shape our society and lifestyle, influencing inclusion and sustainability.
Rebecca Solnit's quote emphasizes the significant role that physical spaces play in our lives. It suggests that the characteristics of communities—such as their design, accessibility, and resources—directly affect social dynamics, environmental practices, and our overall quality of life. Through highlighting aspects such as pedestrianism and conservation, the quote calls for a deeper understanding of how our surroundings dictate societal values like equality and diversity.
Themes
PlacesDesignCommunitySocietySustainabilityInclusionDiversity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about urban development, this quote could highlight the impact of design on community well-being.
More from Rebecca Solnit
All quotes →I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.
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We have a real role in how our own collective lives, our nation, and our world and society turn out. Seizing those opportunities is important, and disasters are sometimes one of those opportunities.
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If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.
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The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
Rebecca SolnitRead
Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.
Rebecca SolnitRead
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