Edward Relph

“Trying to design or reclaim places is, therefore, rather like trying to make or modify life itself. In this effort, it is wisest to adopt the gentle patient manner of an environmental midwife, while rejecting utterly the machine-driven arrogance of some environmental equivalent to a genetic engineer. By such gentle means places might flourish again, but also the world might become less threatened.”

“Genius loci cannot be designed to order. It has to evolve, to be allowed to hapen, to grow and change from the direct efforts of those who live and work in places and care about them...No matter how sophisticated technical knowledge may be, the understanding of others' lives and problems will always be partial. Just as outsiders cannot feel their pain, so they cannot experience their sense of place. I believe, therefore, that it is impossible to make complete places in which other poeple can live. And, in a world dominated by international economic processes and global telecommunications, there can be no return to an environment of integrated and distinctive places.”