by hand

SCALE

Management of this crisis will make it irreversible (Illich, 1973:66) and erasure is not the answer, we need these admirable deserts that are the world’s cities (Blanchot, 1962). Madness and uncontrolled spontaneity are likewise no quick fix (Ellul, 1978:166-7). However, commoditized city space which is ‘assembled and ordered’ in form, appearance, and functional prescription (Heidegger, 1977[1]) need not be entirely fixed or predetermined by the complex process through which it enters the world (Jaspers in Verbeek, 2005; Sartre, 1948; Smart, 1994:68; Verbeek, 2005). Reality acquires its identity from what can be done with it and what is important is the relationship that human beings have to their everyday environment. Technology in this view can generate specific forms of access to the world for human beings (Heidegger discussed in Verbeek, 2005:54, 59, 76). It is the use-objects around us that are the nearest and authentic things (Heidegger, 1971:29[2]), they give us access to being and thus (help us) shape our world (Verbeek, 2005:85).

“here and now and in the little things…we may foster the saving power in its increase”
(Heidegger quoted in Verbeek, 2005:57)

Contrast the objective reality of the environment as measured in size with the subjective reality by which each person operates – scale (e.g. Gehl see Jacobs, 1993eg:306-7,10).  Note that universal vocabularies of spatial organization and value (upright-prone, high-low, front-back, right-left etc) derive from the structure and values of the human body; and spatial prepositions are necessarily anthropocentric, whether they are nouns derived from parts of the human body or not. Folk measures of length, as well, are derived from the body – the breadth or length of the finger or thumb, man-made tools, the cupped hand…..(Tuan 1977:37, 45-6).

The human(e) scale can, with imagination, harness the desire of ordinary people to improve their everyday lives and environments (Braiterman, 2010), and active engagement and relationships with space/objects can foster self-realisation (Smart, 1994:69). Then, we can hope that “life in a community of any size can be experienced on a human scale, and that people can be made to feel that they and their actions have meaning for, and impact on, the environment” (Krupat, 1985 chapter 8, p202). Civic life may become comprehensible and open to avenues for participation (Bookchin, 1974:87), feedback, continuity and relation. Such commitment is the sine qua non of city success (Wilsher and Righter, 1975:87[3]).

[1] in Smart (1994)

[2] See also Verbeek (2005:83).

[3] Discussing Robert Kolodny’s Self Help in the Inner City (1973).