I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

If you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons. They've come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That's why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.

Everything around us is scale dependent. It's woven into the fabric of the universe.

My provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious, scientific theory of cities and scientific theory means quantifiable, relying on underlying generic principles that can be made in a - put into a predictive framework. That's the quest.

I think that our fundamental belief is that for us growth is a way of life and we have to grow at all times.

A book I often refer to by Naomi Klein is called 'No Is Not Enough'. It's not enough to be against something. You have to actually be for something. A better alternative. For me, that's about transformation.

The key things are about power and about growing up and realizing as you grow up that there are consequences for the choices you make, especially when you get seduced by power.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.