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‘We were still almost a couple of hours’ steaming distance before land could possibly come into sight when suddenly my companion shouted and pointed at the horizon. We saw, inverted in the sky, a full-scale mirage of the city, luminous and trembling, as if painted on dusty silk: yet in the nicest detail. The whole representation was as breathtaking as a masterpiece painted in fresh dew. It hung there in the sky for a considerable time, perhaps twenty-five minutes, before melting slowly into the horizon mist. An hour later, the real city appeared, swelling from a smudge to the size of its mirage.’

― Balthazer, The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

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"City form, in other words, is not some autonomous organic growth, nor is it dictated by ineluctable economic laws. It is in fact and artefact- an artefact of a curious kind, compounded of willed and random events, imperfectly controlled. If it is related to physiology at all, it is more like a dream than anything else."

   ~   

Joseph Rykwert

The Seduction of Place, 2000

#Cities   #Rykwert   
 
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