links for 2009-03-11

"The work-seekers’ office is full of immigrants. I don’t blame the factories for taking on immigrants. If they employ English people they will work for three months then sack it off. You employ an immigrant, they will work their fucking arse off for you. They have a better work ethic. They graft hard. They haven’t got a community here, so work becomes their community."

“The street is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center.”

“If there's a lesson in streetwatching it is that people do like basics – and as environments go, a street that is open to the sky and filled with people and life is a splendid place to be.”

“The human backside is a dimension architects seem to have forgotten.”

"Up to seven people per foot of walkway a minute is a nice bustle"

"I end then in praise of small spaces. The multiplier effect is tremendous. It is not just the number of people using them, but the larger number who pass by and enjoy them vicariously, or even the larger number who feel better about the city center for knowledge of them. For a city, such places are priceless, whatever the cost. They are built of a set of basics and they are right in front of our noses. If we will look."

"While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte began to use direct observation to describe behavior in urban settings. With research assistants wielding still cameras, movie cameras, and notebooks, Whyte described the substance of urban public life in an objective and measurable way.
These observations developed into the "Street Life Project", an ongoing study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics, and eventually to Whyte's book called City: Rediscovering the Center (1988). "City" presents Whyte's conclusions about jaywalking, 'schmoozing patterns,' the actual use of urban plazas, appropriate sidewalk width, and other issues. This work remains valuable because it's based on careful observation, and because it contradicts other conventional wisdom, for instance, the idea that pedestrian traffic and auto traffic should be separated."