The best sentences I read this week: Vol. 10

“The important thing is that you can’t let that stop you from trying. Be brave, little toaster.”

–Rejection 101: A Lesbian’s Guide To Getting Turned Down, Keeping Your Head Upby Intern Grace

“Modern urban planning was a mass exercise in ‘organising universal isolation’ that shackled and oppressed the human spirit. The primary solution to combat this attack was to walk.”

–Why is the act of urban walking so revolutionary? by JOHN ROGERS

“They eschewed dreams – journalism, art, entertainment – for safer bets, only to discover that the safest bet is that your job will be contingent and disposable.”

–Surviving the post-employment economy by Sarah Kendzior

“A total hoser, Ford talks hoser and acts the hoser lifestyle.”

–Rob Ford and the triumph of the new hosers by John Doyle

“Design is an intensely political act. Through the stroke of a pen, or these days a mouse, one can delineate exactly what people will see, hear and feel, how and where they will move. Within the context of the inefficiency and inequity of today’s Joburg, it is incumbent upon all of us who are engaged in shaping our built environment, including policy makers, planners, engineers, and designers, to challenge existing paradigms. We cannot think merely in terms of the way things have always been done and what has gone before, because these ways of thinking are behind much of what is wrong today.”

–Urban Inequality: Joburg United

“In March Johnson and his cycling adviser, the former journalist Andrew Gilligan, announced a hugely ambitious plan to increase cycling in London, promising to spend around £1bn on schemes such as a completely segregated east-west bike route which would, in one section, take a lane from the Westway elevated urban motorway, as well as bike-friendly “mini-Hollands” in some outer suburbs.”

–London expands protected cycle lane scheme by Peter Walker