“Planning and Zoning the Mature City: A Working Paper,” (Michael Kwartler and Associates), Planning and Zoning New York City: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Editor: Todd Bressi, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1992

The use of the term “mature” to characterize the way New Yorkers think of their city is intended to be both evocative and provocative. “Mature is meant to subsume the biological, mechanistic, and economic metaphors that are used to describe large cities into a broader concept that is suggestive of the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions characteristic of a state of maturity.