J.B. Jackson The Timing of Towns, Architecture California, 14. no. 2, November 1992, p. 4
"Most foreign visitors to the United States eventually come to like us. It is our landscape that bewilders them and that they find hard to understand. They are repelled by its monotony, by the long, straight roads and highways, the immense, rectangular fields, and the lonely white farmhouses, all very much alike. They remind us that in Europe, every city has its own individuality, whereas in this country, it is often hard to distinguish one city from another. With the possible exceptions of Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco, cities not only lack architectural variety, but they are also lacking in landmarks and in neighborhoods of unique character. We are often asked, how we who live in the midst of such urban monotony can have any sense of place whatsoever.
[p. 8] . . . Let me quote from Paul Tillich:
"The power of space is great, and it is always active for creation and destruction. It is the basis of the desire of any group of human beings to have a place of their own, a place which gives them a reality, presence, power of living, which feeds them, body and soul. This is the reason for the adoration of earth and soil, not of soil generally but of this special soil, and not of earth generally but of the divine powers connected with this special section of earth . . . But every space is limited, and so the conflict arises between the limited space of any human group, even of mankind itself, and the unlimited claim which follows from the definition of this space . . . Tragedy and injustice belong to the gods of space, historical fulfillment and justice belong to the God who acts in time and through time, uniting the separated spaces of his universe in love."