Perspective – making sense of modern landscapes
Charlotte Street, South Bronx, 1979
The city magnifies, spreads out, and advertises human nature in all its various manifestations. It is this that makes the city interesting, even fascinating. It is this, however, that makes it of all places the one in which to discover the secrets of human hearts, and to study human nature and society.
Robert Park
The City as a Social Laboratory
One day I walked with one of these middle-class gentlemen into Manchester. I spoke to him about the disgraceful unhealthy slums and drew his attention to the disgusting condition of that part of the town in which the factory workers lived. I declared that I had never seen so badly built a town in my life. He listened patiently and at the corner of the street at which we parted company, he remarked: "And yet there is a great deal of money made here. Good Morning, Sir."
Friedrich Engels
The Condition of the Working Class in England
…like the moon now, nothing but minerals…the buildings that used to form cliffs …had collapsed. Their wood had been consumed, and their stones had crashed down, had tumbled against one another until they locked at last in low and graceful curves. …walls still stood, but … windows and roof were gone, and there was nothing inside but ashes and dollops of melted glass. “It was like the moon,” said Billy Pilgrim.
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five