[Urban planning] must be interpreted on the basis of the social effect produced by the political instance in the urban system and/or in the social st… - Manuel Castells

In the end if the system still ‘works’ it is because women guarantee unpaid transportation... because they repair their homes, because they make meals when there are no canteens, because they spend more time shopping around, because they look after others’ children when there are no nurseries, and because they offer ‘free entertainment’ to the producers when there is a social vacuum and the absence of cultural creativity. If these women who ‘do nothing’ ever stopped to do ‘only that’, the whole urban structure as we know it would become completely incapable of maintaining its function

At its core, the new economy is based on culture: on the culture of innovation, on the culture of risk, and the culture of expectations, and, ultimately on the culture of hope in the future.

[Castells major hypotheses in this book are:]