Regarding the Human Scale
The key ingredient common to both good architectural design and thriving, economically strong, and free civilizations
1 - The Human Scale of Traditional Urbanism
Ever since I started my research for the Fresh Start Project, I have noticed the same themes that keep popping up in seemingly unrelated areas.
For example, the more I researched the two (seemingly different) things that interest me most right now— “fighting the good fight” in terms of public policy and how to create beautiful towns and cities—the more I came across the term human scale.
The first time I saw this term used was by WrathOfGnon. For those of you who don’t know who he is, WrathOfGnon is Twitter’s leading expert on traditional urbanism—the philosophy and design of good towns, cities, and living spaces.
According to WrathOfGnon, good towns and cities are walkable, sustainable, have clearly defined boundaries, and are in harmony with their natural environments. Many of the cities that tourists flock to from around the world—such as Porto, Siena, Assisi, Dubrovnik, Kyoto, and Kanazawa—follow these principles.
In America, if you have ever visited a living museum such as Colonial Williamsburg or Mystic Seaport (one of my favorite places on earth), you will notice many of the same principles.
A characteristic of good, traditional urbanism is human scale.
Human-scale buildings are in a comfortable proportion in relation to a person, because they were built by hand.
They are made with materials gathered from nearby—not too heavy and not from too far away, because they had to be carried or carted to the building site.
The buildings are built for the particulars of the local climate, weather, and geography—they are shaped by and made for the terroir. Architecture that is built in this way necessarily contribute to a sense of localism and regionalism.
The results are living environments that are aesthetically pleasing, have distinct character, and have that undefinable cozy factor.
Contrast that with what is commonplace in the modern world: cities built for cars, not people.
Massive, nondescript constructions that need heavy machinery to put up and require enormous resources to continually power, climate control, and maintain.
Ugly, synthetic materials.
Not to mention that mass production and cost-efficiency produce places that all looks the same: Local culture is levelled and erased in favor for monotony and standardization—everywhere you look are McDonalds, Starbucks, strip malls, concrete, steel, glass.
2 - The Gift of the Artist’s Eye
I’ve become quite knowledgeable about traditional urbanism and similar schools of thought. But there was a time when this was all completely new to me. What struck me most when I first read about these concepts was the idea that environments could be assessed in the first place.
I was vaguely aware that ugly and run-down areas made me feel depressed, but I had no way of articulating why they were depressing. The places where I lived and worked were unchangeable facts of life.
I couldn’t do anything about the chain link fences, the gas stations, the metal highway barriers, and so I accepted them as simply part of the scenery. What would be the point of complaining about it if it was beyond my ability to change?
That is why unique individuals with the “artist’s eye” are such treasures to any society. What WrathOfGnon gave me was a new way of seeing things—a framework for evaluating environments. If a scene outside produces a gut reaction, I now have a vocabularly and system of principles for explaining why I feel the way that I do.
I still can’t change the “bad” environments that I inhabit. But being aware of what is good and bad means that a good envionment could—conceivably—be designed and built. And if that is possible, then your surroundings can be a choice—you no longer have to put up with bad environments.
This was the beginning of an awakening for me.
3 - Envisioning a Better Way to Live
It was this realization, more so than any conservative commentary or political argument, that made me realize that things need not be the way that they are. It is possible to imagine something Different.
4 - On Distributism
I’ve previously written about “the powers that be”—the tiny fraction of the population at the pinnacle of wealth, power, and influence who are fighting to maintain and tighten their grip. Their goal is centralization: to bring all significant decision-making from around the world under their control.
As author and political thinker Maajid Nawaz said in a recent interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, “It’s no longer about left or right. It’s about up versus down, power versus those who don't have power.”
In other words, centralization versus decentralization.
Everyone on earth needs to be awake to this power struggle, and to decide where they stand. For anyone who prizes their autonomy or who believes in the sovereignty of the individual, the decision should be clear: decentralization.
What does a decentralized world look like? It’s one where power and wealth are spread out among the population, not concentrated in the hands of a few. This is the basis of the economic system of distributism, which was promoted by 20th century Catholic philosophers Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton.
(Note: The term “distributism” is meant to describe an economy in which wealth is distributed generally among the population; it is not an advocation for a policy of wealth redistribution conducted by the state.)
In distributism, big business and big government are seen as undesirable. More conducive to personal liberty and human flourishing is a small-scale economy: a system in which many people control their own capital and means of production.
A nation of entrepreneurs and small-to-medium-sized businesses would be very self-sufficient, and government dependency would be minimal.
Today, more than half of Americans don’t even have enough emergency savings to cover three months of expenses. A nation of people who are just one layoff or unexpected medical bill away from catastrophe is much more prone to turn to government for help.
Most of us in the modern world are living on shaky foundations, and are a hairs-breadth from desperation. This is no way to live. It encourages a society in which we give power to those who already have power.
A small-scale, distributist economy also nurtures strong social and cultural bonds. In “The Humane Economy,” economist Wilhelm Röpke writes,
Nothing is more detrimental to a sound general order appropriate to human nature than two things: mass and concentration. Individual responsibility and independence in proper balance with the community, neighborly spirit, and true civic sense—all of these presuppose that the communities in which we live do not exceed the human scale.
And there is that term again, human scale.
I really encourage you to listen to a short talk on distributism given by Andrew Abela, dean of the Busch School of Business and at The Catholic University of America. He briefly touches on why the concentration of wealth and power leads to a weak society more dependent on both big business and big government (which Belloc would describe as being in a state of “servility”), but also why the concentration of wealth and power is “antithetical to economic growth.”
It seems like the antidote to many of our modern problems is to detach from a system of centralized power and assume your own God-given agency. To become a master of your own domain—not servile, not dependent on big business or big government. To build and inhabit a human-scale world.
I hope to write more about this in the future. In the meantime, what would you like me to write about? Who would you like me to interview? Drop your suggestions in the comments! Thank you for reading.