It Is a Matter of Scale or What is the Connection between Brain Size and Sprawl by Galina Tachieva

Scale is fundamental to urban design. If you get it right, and achieve a well-proportioned space 

between buildings, you have a sound basis to build upon. Even if the architecture is far from perfect, 

the public realm you create can be decent and comfortable. If you get the scale wrong and your master 

plan is built, even the most lustrous architecture won’t remediate the failure of space-making; people 

might still use it for utilitarian reasons (think the parking lot of a Wal-Mart), but will not enjoy it. 

    

Getting the urban scale right has been the mantra of planners and architects for ages. But have 

we been practicing what we have been preaching? In reality, we have been putting up for too long 

with the worst offender to human scale, sprawl. This pathological growth pattern has created 

environments of magnified dimensions that overwhelm the physical size of the human body. 

Massive thoroughfares, perfect for fast-moving cars but not for pedestrians, have destroyed our 

neighborhoods; mind-boggling multi-level interchanges have eroded our urban cores; single-use 

mega structures of enormous size and their even more enormous parking lots, have obliterated 

the walkable scale of traditional towns. This type of planning has resulted not only in the largest 

waste of real estate, infrastructure and natural resources in human history, but has seriously 

impeded some elemental human necessities – the need to walk based on the physiology of 

our two-legged bodies, and the need for spatial enclosure based on the physiology of our human 

eyes as well as our psychology. It is simple: we enjoy walking and we enjoy well-defined spaces, 

while sprawl has deprived us of both. 

It is ironic that the demise of human scale in urban planning started with Le Corbusier, who 

taught us in his Modulor that human dimensions should become the universal criteria for any 

type of design – from the height of the kitchen counter to the size and shape of an airplane. 

However, he accomplished something very different in his city-building practice – he introduced 

gigantism in urban planning based on the necessity to accommodate the movement and 

speed of cars. Chandigarh, his only built plan, is the implementation of the modernist urban utopia,

 “a painting on a clean canvas,” per Edmund A. Bacon, where both separation of functions and 

division of vehicular and pedestrian traffic were instituted. The mega-grid created a strong, memorable 

diagram; the sculptural quality of Le Corbusier’s civic architecture delivered the grandeur of the image. 

However, Chandigarh’s scale is car-oriented; its street network is a highway system, with buildings 

pulled away from the streets, not shaping the streets into spatial enclosures. 

The Athens Charter of CIAM (mostly written by Le Corbusier) explicitly calls for the use of human 

scale in all urban planning matters (Conclusion 76 “ The dimensions of all elements within the urban 

system can only be governed by human proportions”), but in Chandigarh Le Corbusier did not 

apply this requirement literally. He carried through the monumental scale of the overall urban diagram,

but failed to achieve the smaller, human scale. 

Today most of our cities and suburbs repeat the mistake of Chandigarh, ignoring the ways people 

have been living and socializing for thousands of years in pedestrian-scaled, compact, and 

diverse environments. These places are sick with a virus that could be called “mega-scale” or 

as Jan Gehl defines it, “The Brasilia syndrome”. 

In Brazil’s capital there is a centerpiece called “The Square of the Three Powers,” designed by a 

follower of Le Corbusier, Lucio Costa, with buildings by Oscar Niemeyer. The ensemble is an 

astounding accomplishment of civic pride and symbolism, similar to the grand metrics of Chandigarh. 

As a main square of the capital of Brazil, its oversized dimensions are suitable. But seeing the pair 

of gigantic “Candangos,” or “The Warriors,” a metal sculpture at the square, symbolizing the people 

who built the place, I couldn’t help thinking about scale. I could barely touch the knee of one of 

the giants. It seemed that the square, as many other places in recent urban history, were created for 

these metal “avatars.” Towering four-fold over a normal person, they were the only ones who looked 

comfortable in this vast space. The square and the sculptures are appropriate for their location and 

function, but they remind us that in urban design large scale should be reserved for the civic 

and the monumental, while human scale should prevail over most of the urban fabric. We need 

to reclaim smallness, by “shrinking” the scale to fit our species’ size. 

Over the ages our minds have evolved more than our bodies. Actually, according to Wikipedia, 

“the appearance of modern man about 100,000 years ago was marked by a decrease in body size 

at the same time as an increase in brain size.” Yes, since then we have grown in height compared 

to the medieval knights; however, the difference is measured in only a few inches that are far less 

significant than the oversized, car-oriented dimensions we have chosen for ourselves while building 

sprawl. Today we acknowledge the mistake and the challenge to correct it. Let’s hope our larger 

brains will help us return to the smaller scale.