A Defense of 'Out of Scale' Buildings

[M II A II R II K]

Is This Development "Out of Scale"?


July 22, 2020

By Daniel Herriges

Read More: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...t-out-of-scale

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I wrote in March 2020 about the use of "garbage language" in talking about cities and their development—phrases that serve to obscure meaning rather than illuminate it. In it, I called out such empty urban buzzwords as "livable" or "vibrant." Here's another one that drives me nuts: "out of scale." I hear this phrase or a closely related one, "incompatible" used all the time by those with strong negative opinions about existing buildings or proposed ones. "Out of scale" sounds a bit like architectural or design jargon. It's a way of applying a veneer of objectivity or authority to what is really just subjective disapproval (almost always of something the speaker deems too big or too tall). But it doesn't actually identify a concrete problem.

- Unfortunately, the vague notion of "incompatibility" has even made it into many city codes and planning documents, where it functions as a catch-all justification for any advocate or elected official to object to a proposal they personally dislike. This trend is harmful to our ability to talk about urban form, urban design, and development regulation in constructive ways. When we frame the debate around "compatibility" or "scale," it quickly drags the whole thing into culture-war territory. — You can't win a culture war through reasoned argument. Those who understand debates over zoning and development intensity as a contest between two competing visions of the good life in caricature, an urban vision of lively, eclectic, "live-work-play" neighborhoods and a suburban vision of greenery and family-friendly tranquility are likely to retreat to their corners. They're likely to view these conflicts as existential and zero-sum, to be paranoid and angry, and to believe that a proper role of government is to safeguard their preferred way of life and all of its signifiers from those who wish to "impose" something different.

- A counterargument might be that buildings are in fact out of scale when they are not built to a human scale, and that that determines how people interact with them and how compatible they are functionally (not aesthetically) with their surroundings. Human scale is a real, objective thing in a way that "big ugly eyesore" isn't. We are bipedal mammals who average a little under 6 feet tall, and this determines some crucial aspects of how we relate to the world. For example, the Gehl Door Average is one of my favorite attempts to codify the human scale in a rule of thumb. It's rooted in something real: how long does it take to walk past the front of a building, and how long can it hold your interest? There are all sorts of rules of good design that come down to human psychological comfort. These are things we can actually study on an empirical level. Yet, as long as humans are bound to the earth's surface by the law of gravity, I would argue that the effects of scale are important primarily in the horizontal, not vertical, dimension. A 10-story building and a 50-story building look pretty equivalent from the sidewalk.

- What matters most is not height, the strange obsession of many an armchair urban-design expert, but whether the sidewalk-level design is good and sufficiently granular. And granularity matters, as I argue in "A City Shaped By Many Hands," not just for the tactile experience of exploring a place, but for its long-term resilience. A place owned or controlled by many hands, and made up of an eclectic mix of structures, will fare better over time, because it can evolve by small degrees one business closure here, one building renovation there—rather than its fate being determined as a unit. When a small number of people or decisions are instrumental in shaping a place's present and future, the likely effect of any mistakes in judgment or foresight will be magnified. This is a case against mega-developments, and for the distributed ownership of smaller parcels of land among many owners. But the case is a functional one: it’s about the actual consequences of building in one way versus another, not preference or ideology.

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[Imaus]

Honestly I like seeing big, tall buildings arise out of their local environs. They stick out, and I see that as a 'good' thing. If everything was 'to scale' we'll just end up with monotonous and mind numbing psuedo Townhouse blocks, row-houses, the suburbia effect.

[JManc]

I like the Russian Hill high rises (2nd and 3rd pics) in SF. They work with the streetscape.

Houston, lacking zoning, is full of this sort of thing and on an extreme scale.