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Building Heights and Human Scale – Argument Unresolved, Or Is It?

A Beautiful City has a new category: Skinny Buildings

We all instinctively know that our cities appear better when huge, ugly buildings do not occupy our city block.

Perhaps your community burns a lot of energy arguing about building heights, sizes, ‘monstronsities’, ‘monoliths’ or ‘human scale,’ and all that malarky.  I know mine certainly does.

I think that’s fair but, certainly, we must now measure the shades of grey between ‘human scale’ and ‘monolith’.

Why?

Because our communities cannot keep wasting energy and time on arguing.

There’s so much to do out there, yet I’ve heard the same argument, unresolved, for generations.

Let grab a socket-set with all the pieces in it this time so we can make an intelligent conversation about this – or else the so-called ‘arguments for good’ will lose as well the ‘bad’ because people will give up on your city and walk out.

 Above: This building – nine levels, plus a basement, and only 4.04m wide (13’3″). The Saigon Pink Hotel, 100 Ho Yung Mao Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

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