"The American people haven't made up their minds what they want cities to be. They don't know how much agony they want cities to go through. They have to ask themselves: do cities represent an important national resource? And if so, they have to support them."

Robert P. Rosell, Director of Community Development Commission, Detroit. Qtd in "Detroit Struggles to Save Itself, " by Susanna McBee, Washington Post, February 20, 1973, A12.

From CINCINATTI Magazine, an article detailing how downtown renewal projects make Cincinatti's downtown ideal for... people. The implication being that the downtown core was perceived to, or actually was, absent of people. This seems to be a fairly prevalent presumption in the 1970s (see Arendt's review of Illumintations etc.)

[Magazine accessed via cover browser archive)

"People who flock to cities looking for jobs and more interesting lives will flock back again if jobs and more interesting lives are to be found where they came from. It has been suggested that, with modern systems of communication, the America of the future may be simply a network of small towns. But should we not say Walden Twos? A few skeletons of cities may survive, like the bones of dinosaurs in museums, as the remains of a passing phase in the evolution of a way of life."
- B.F. Skinner, Walden Two (introduction)