Reinventing the urban narrative for the 21st century

All men are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. Any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the fact that design is the primary underlying matrix of life.

Cities have the capability of providing for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.

A highly developed art of urban design is linked to the creation of a critical and attentive audience. If art and audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions of their inhabitants.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

What is needed is a concentrated focus on the social and personal implications of the future, not merely on its technological characteristics.

It is therefore up to us designers to make known our working methods in clear and simple terms, the methods we think are the truest, the most up-to-date, the most likely to resolve our common aesthetic problems.

So our ideal ought not to be a world without frontiers, but one where all frontiers are recognized, respected and permeable; a world, in fact, where respect for differences would start with the equality of all individuals, independent of their origin or gender.