Lessons from 'The Human Scale'

How can we redirect our city building into a form that can handle the expected doubling of urban residents over the next 40 years? Great ideas can be found in this collection of soundbites from the film, "The Human Scale."

1 minute read

February 17, 2015, 12:00 PM PST

By Scott Doyon

Elliott Brown / Flickr

"We have known this about the motorcar: if you make more roads, you will have more traffic. Now we know about cities: if you make more places for people, you will have more public life. In cities that have done away with their pubic spaces, life has become totally privatized." ~Jan Gehl @citiesforpeople

"If you are a Robert Moses-type planner, you want to separate things, and extinguish the possibility for life to pop up. A concrete system in equilibrium (the Moses legacy of things moving quickly) is not what makes the city fantastic. Before the recent prioritization of pedestrians and cyclists, the image of New York City was of a throng of taxis in Times Square. The brand wasn’t the pedestrian experience." ~Jeff Risom @risomj

In a post for PlaceShakers, Hazel Borys goes on to excerpt salient points from various city planning leaders quoted in the film, The Human Scale, and link to their various Twitter feeds.

New York Times Square. Image credit: Wally Argus; flickr profile: argusfoto.

FULL STORY: The Human Scale

Monday, February 16, 2015 in PlaceShakers

Community / Economic Development Land Use Social / Demographics Urban Development World CNU 23 Congress for the New Urbanism Coralie Winn Hazel Borys Iqbal Habib Jan Gehl janette sadik-khan Jeff Risom Mark Gorton Paul Steely White Robert Doyle Ruhan Shama The Human Scale View More

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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