City Squares Quotes

“Feeling in the middle of things, at the place to and from which streets flow, where people come not to escape the city but to be inside it: This us usually what defines a successful square. It is a space around which the rest of a neighborhood or town or city tends to be organized [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“spaces that at first may appear to reflect a simple condition are much more complex when the actions of individuals and groups are factored in. These unique patterns of movement through space can and should guide the architecture we build to serve them. For space only becomes truly public when people recognize it and utilize it as such. Great public space cannot be built as much as curated; it is architecture's responsibility to craft space in response to specific needs and unique practices. . . . it is not the space itself that is meaningful; it is the way space facilitates diversity, interaction, and new negotiations that makes it meaningful [David Adjaye, "Djemaa El-Fnaa, Marrakech: Engaging with Complexity and Diversity"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“This deeply free and public space plays a vital role in our world, equally important in our digital age as in Greco-Roman times, when they were marketplaces for goods and ideas. As common ground, squares are equitable and democratic; they have played a fundamental role in the development of free speech.”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“What do we mean by a public square? For starters, it is rarely square. . . . It may be a quadrangle or rectangle or circle or pretty much any shape, and it can be open or closed. It might even be a park . . . through which people pass, going from one place to another, not simply a retreat. A square is porous, balancing its porousness with some focal point, like a fountain or a reliable patch of sun with some benches that marks a break from the cars and streets and invites people to stop, look, exhale, find one another [Michael Kimmelman, "Part One: Culture: Power of the Place, Introduction"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“a square is also an organism, not just a work of art and architecture [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“The square is a treasure precisely because it doesn't masquerade as an outdoor museum. It's a living place, jammed with people, changeable, democratic, urbane. [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. From the start, the public square has been synonymous with a society that acknowledges public life and a life in public, which is to say a society distinguishing the individual from the state [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“a square is not just about light, air, proportion, and people. It must also give form to some shared notion of civic identity. [Michael Kimmelman, "Culture: Power of the Place"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“The protestors feel that the elections have been hijacked and the choices are between two corrupt parties—that when the power structure no longer represents the people, the vote is no longer a tool for change [Jehane Noujaim, "Tahrir Square, Cairo: Lost and Found in the Square"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“The battle over society—its direction, its temper, its organization, its character—is often played out on the square. But the battle rarely ends; it does not easily resolve [David Remnick, "Geopolitics: Strength in Numbers"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“As the number and the size of cities keep growing across the world, changing conditions bring shifts in language and vocabulary. Despite the social and linguistic complexity, however, there are only two types of cities: those where a woman can walk after dark relatively freely and those where she possibly cannot. — Elif Shafak, Taksim Square, Istanbul: Byzantine, Then and Now,”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“As always, violence created more violence [Jehane Noujaim, "Tahrir Square, Cairo: Lost and Found in the Square"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“When the great sixteenth-century Ottoman architect Sinan would start building a new mosque, he would make sure both the design and the project were in harmony with the city's history and the city's spirit [Jehane Noujaim, "Tahrir Square, Cairo: Lost and Found in the Square"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“Come on guys, let's be serious. If you really want to do something, don't just 'like' this post. Write that you are ready, and we can try to start something" [Mustafa Nayyem quoted in Chrystia Freeland, "Euromaidan, Kiev: A Place Becomes A Movement"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“City squares are planned absences—they're defined, first of all, by what they're not [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“a city square that's designed on a scale to express national greatness is hostile to the human intimacy necessary for freedom's space [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“In newer countries, you often find two types of public square: one that is older, organic, chaotic, and populated; and one that is recent, planned, orderly, and deserted. The first type predates the nation-state and accretes over time to accommodate the habits and needs, mainly commercial ones, of ordinary city dwellers. Its names are maidan, souq, bazaar, market. The second is constructed according to a master plan to embody the idealized qualities of the nation, often with grandiose results. The first thrusts people together in a public space, a hive if activity. Its essence is accidental and spontaneous. The second leaves nothing to chance. It tells people that they are subservient to the state and, in a sense, irrelevant to it [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“(One difference between old-style autocrats, such as Caesar, Louis XIV, or Napoleon, and their totalitarian successors is the replacement of the marble statue in the middle of the square with an embalmed corpse.) [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

“Is there a civic purpose for city squares where people are already free? Hannah Arendt described freedom not as individual free will but in terms of acting and associating with others. This kind of freedom requires public space. In What Is Freedom?, Arendt likened politics to the performing arts, for "both need a publicly organized space for their 'work,' and both depend upon others for the performance itself" [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].”
― Catie Marron, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World