Jaime Lerner Quotes

If you provide good alternatives for public transport, you won't have traffic problems.

If you want creativity, take a zero off your budget. If you want sustainability, take off two zeros.

The secret to the city is integration. Every area of the city should combine work, leisure and culture. Separate these functions and parts of the city die.

A lot of people assume that the expensive ideas are the most effective ones, but that is simply not true.

A city grows like an organism. It is a structure of living and working together a mix of functions.

Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything.

Cities are not problems. They are solutions.

The car is the cigarette of the future.

After working in cities for nearly 40 years, I am telling you that every city can improve its quality of life in less than three years, no matter the scale or the financial conditions.

We can’t have landfills forever and we can’t ask others to accept our trash.

Creativity starts when you cut a zero from your budget.

I always try to say, 'If you want to help the environment, try to do just two things. One, use less of your car. Second, separate your garbage.'

There is no endeavor more noble than the attempt to achieve a collective dream.

I always run into these Ph.D.s. They write and write and write about sustainable development. Then these guys ask me, 'But, how do you do it?' They are scared to death to do anything.

A car is like a mother-in-law - if you let it, it will rule your life.

There is little in the architecture of a city that is more beautifully designed than a tree.

Every city has to deal with the problem of cars and public transport.

Brazil will change when its cities change.

I have realized after all these years that a city that has a good quality of life attracts jobs. People don't want to invest in places if there is no quality of life.

The city is not the problem; the city is the solution.

A city is like a family portrait - you don't tear it up if you don't like your uncle's nose.

Every city in the world can be improved in less than three years.

We have to change from 'ego-architecture' to 'eco-architecture.'

The design of a city is like a strange archeology.