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Human Scale Revisited: A New Look at the Classic Case for a Decentralist Future
Big government, big business, big Kirkpatrick Sale took giantism to task in his 1980 classic, Human Scale, and today takes a new look at how the crises that imperil modern America are the inevitable result of bigness grown out of control—and what can be done about it.
The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage—whether in our built environments, our politics, our business endeavors, our energy plans, or our mobility.
Sale walks readers back through history to a time when buildings were scaled to the human figure (as was the Parthenon), democracies were scaled to the societies they served, and enterprise was scaled to communities. Against that backdrop, he dissects the bigger-is-better paradigm that has defined modern times and brought civilization to a crisis point. Says Sale, retreating from our calamity will take rebalancing our relationship to the environment; adopting more human-scale technologies; right-sizing our buildings, communities, and cities; and bringing our critical services—from energy, food, and garbage collection to transportation, health, and education—back to human scale as well.
Like Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, Human Scale has long been a classic of modern decentralist thought and communitarian values—a key tool in the kit of those trying to localize, create meaningful governance in bioregions, or rethink our reverence of and dependence on growth, financially and otherwise.
Rewritten to interpret the past few decades, Human Scale offers compelling new insights on how to turn away from the giantism that has caused escalating ecological distress and inequality, dysfunctional governments, and unending warfare and shines a light on many possible pathways that could allow us to scale down, survive, and thrive.
The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage—whether in our built environments, our politics, our business endeavors, our energy plans, or our mobility.
Sale walks readers back through history to a time when buildings were scaled to the human figure (as was the Parthenon), democracies were scaled to the societies they served, and enterprise was scaled to communities. Against that backdrop, he dissects the bigger-is-better paradigm that has defined modern times and brought civilization to a crisis point. Says Sale, retreating from our calamity will take rebalancing our relationship to the environment; adopting more human-scale technologies; right-sizing our buildings, communities, and cities; and bringing our critical services—from energy, food, and garbage collection to transportation, health, and education—back to human scale as well.
Like Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, Human Scale has long been a classic of modern decentralist thought and communitarian values—a key tool in the kit of those trying to localize, create meaningful governance in bioregions, or rethink our reverence of and dependence on growth, financially and otherwise.
Rewritten to interpret the past few decades, Human Scale offers compelling new insights on how to turn away from the giantism that has caused escalating ecological distress and inequality, dysfunctional governments, and unending warfare and shines a light on many possible pathways that could allow us to scale down, survive, and thrive.
411 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 15, 2017
12 people are currently reading
367 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 27, 2024
Human Scale Revisited is, as its title implies, an update to Sale’s original Human Scale, which argued that everything has a limit beyond which further growth will tend toward its destruction. He begins the book first by re-introducing that concept (“The Beanstalk Principle”), and then exploring specific applications in society and technology, from probing the optimum size for human cities to the enormous promise that decentralized/distributed power via solar panels offers, wrapping up with a critical look at the ‘need’ for states. Some of this is updated from the original book, like the study of how organizations gain in function, peak, and then become encumbered by that size, and some strikes me as new: I don’t remember the essentially anarchist arguments of the latter third of the book, nor Sale’s delightful support of movements to re-localize their own politics. Sale is one of those authors who, like Bill Kauffman or Ed Abbey, cannot be boxed up, politically: he refers to himself as an eco-leftist, but his critique of government and analysis of big-biz monopolies could come straight from the Austrian school, and he regards populism as a natural expression of peoples’ discontent with being dominated by big business and big government.I enjoyed this thoroughly, but I’ve been highly sympathetic to localism and Sale’s critiques of the Cult of Big for over ten years.
September 21, 2021
3.5 stars from me. Good read but unrealistic when it promises to be applicable.
In "Human Scale Revisited", Kirkpatrick Sale updates his classic thesis and theorizes that bigness is behind many of our problems. He employs what he calls the "beanstalk principle", which is that "for every animal, object, institution, or system, there is an optimal limit beyond which is ought not to grow" (27). The rest of the book applies this core insight to technology, city size, architecture, business, government, etc. Sale's vision would decentralize just about each field towards something "human scale", which he tries to define for each area. For instance, to combat the ecological destruction wrought by current systems, Sale proposes bioregionalism. This would also mean shrinking government. Sale argues that the state grows and then itself causes more problems, which he calls the law of government size. He maps our over history how consolidation tracks with inflation and warfare, and while too simplistically argued, it's an interesting reflection on statecraft and war. Not to say I agree with him on the state as a whole; do remember Sale is some kind of lefty-anarchist.
Within cities, he suggests neighborhoods that are tight-knit and whole city structures that don't exceed maybe 50,000 and remain walkable. Economically, Sale follows in the lineage of EF Schumacher, calling for a steady-state economy. This economy, he convincingly argues, would lend itself to more localized production and consumption patterns geared towards self-sufficiency. I have my doubts about degrowth, but Sale makes a compelling argument that with a less growth-obsessed economy, it would be easier to implement community ownership and workplace democracy. Self-sufficiency, for Sale, is infused with a greater sense of care. (259) This would also help us seek appropriate technology, because tech “comes with an inevitable logic, bearing the purposes and priorities of the economic and political systems that spawn it.” (95)
I especially enjoyed reading his thoughts on the human-scale city. Many of these insights have been picked up on by New Urbanists. His embrace of solar energy (sadly accompanied with anti-nuclear paranoia) makes sense, as rooftop solar really could re-localize energy production and create a more resilient grid. Moreover, local production of food would help combat some of the shortages we see today, as well as tackling food deserts. I found the Human Scale Services chapter probably the most practical of all.
My main qualm is that he makes outlandish claims sometimes (homeopathy working as one clear example) without footnotes or sources. I also think he ignores some evidence on issues like education, where it's pretty clear that schooling is a good thing. He underplays the importance of a centralized coordinating body. No, a million micro states will not be able to better tackle global issues like COVID-19 or climate change. Moreover, many of his ideas are fundamentally unrealistic. How do we get to a small enough scale such that direct democracy and community ownership, two admittedly interesting ideas, can actually be implemented? How do we make cities shrink? It's more aspirational than anything. Unlike Wendell Berry's books, Sale's tome promises a wide-ranging policy case for a decentralist future. This is why I noticed its unrealisticness more.
Nonetheless, Sale presents a strong counterpoint to consolidating trends and provides readers with much to think about. How do we recover a sense of limits? For “what separates the human animal from the lower order is … a fully developed conceit, the conceit that declares us to be the rulers and shapers of this world and all its workings”, and this conceit has led us to giantism and exploitation. (91)
In "Human Scale Revisited", Kirkpatrick Sale updates his classic thesis and theorizes that bigness is behind many of our problems. He employs what he calls the "beanstalk principle", which is that "for every animal, object, institution, or system, there is an optimal limit beyond which is ought not to grow" (27). The rest of the book applies this core insight to technology, city size, architecture, business, government, etc. Sale's vision would decentralize just about each field towards something "human scale", which he tries to define for each area. For instance, to combat the ecological destruction wrought by current systems, Sale proposes bioregionalism. This would also mean shrinking government. Sale argues that the state grows and then itself causes more problems, which he calls the law of government size. He maps our over history how consolidation tracks with inflation and warfare, and while too simplistically argued, it's an interesting reflection on statecraft and war. Not to say I agree with him on the state as a whole; do remember Sale is some kind of lefty-anarchist.
Within cities, he suggests neighborhoods that are tight-knit and whole city structures that don't exceed maybe 50,000 and remain walkable. Economically, Sale follows in the lineage of EF Schumacher, calling for a steady-state economy. This economy, he convincingly argues, would lend itself to more localized production and consumption patterns geared towards self-sufficiency. I have my doubts about degrowth, but Sale makes a compelling argument that with a less growth-obsessed economy, it would be easier to implement community ownership and workplace democracy. Self-sufficiency, for Sale, is infused with a greater sense of care. (259) This would also help us seek appropriate technology, because tech “comes with an inevitable logic, bearing the purposes and priorities of the economic and political systems that spawn it.” (95)
I especially enjoyed reading his thoughts on the human-scale city. Many of these insights have been picked up on by New Urbanists. His embrace of solar energy (sadly accompanied with anti-nuclear paranoia) makes sense, as rooftop solar really could re-localize energy production and create a more resilient grid. Moreover, local production of food would help combat some of the shortages we see today, as well as tackling food deserts. I found the Human Scale Services chapter probably the most practical of all.
My main qualm is that he makes outlandish claims sometimes (homeopathy working as one clear example) without footnotes or sources. I also think he ignores some evidence on issues like education, where it's pretty clear that schooling is a good thing. He underplays the importance of a centralized coordinating body. No, a million micro states will not be able to better tackle global issues like COVID-19 or climate change. Moreover, many of his ideas are fundamentally unrealistic. How do we get to a small enough scale such that direct democracy and community ownership, two admittedly interesting ideas, can actually be implemented? How do we make cities shrink? It's more aspirational than anything. Unlike Wendell Berry's books, Sale's tome promises a wide-ranging policy case for a decentralist future. This is why I noticed its unrealisticness more.
Nonetheless, Sale presents a strong counterpoint to consolidating trends and provides readers with much to think about. How do we recover a sense of limits? For “what separates the human animal from the lower order is … a fully developed conceit, the conceit that declares us to be the rulers and shapers of this world and all its workings”, and this conceit has led us to giantism and exploitation. (91)
Want to read
August 18, 2020The original had a huge influence on me and I've got to read the update, but it's ironic an advocate of decentralism is charging such a price-gouging amount -- more than the actual hard copy should cost -- for a Kindle version with zero marginal cost. I think I'll wait till it shows up on LibGen or b-ok.cc.
June 21, 2021
The basic premise of this book is important- we will do better as a society, ecologically, politically, etc if we move to smaller communities and politics. Smaller groups are more socially, politically, ecologically responsive. But, if we don't also recognize that in the past even small communities could easily be racist, sexist, mysoginist, we will not improve our society.
August 16, 2019
Enjoyed this bit of science fiction. Except it leaves out the narrative, a real story confirming the ideal.
Sale has many resources here for a sci-fi author who is able to supply things like characters, moral goodness, adversary interactions, world apocalypse, and Utopian future. This book would probably provide more insight with a good story structure. (For an example of similar thinking in applying social, economics, ecology and human "instincts" within a serious sci-fi context, compare with Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.)
But alas, it's filled only with ideals and much self-serving back-up references from history and idealistic natural man. To his credit, he admits some of this throughout the book. And he admits not having a good solution himself—the last page points to apocalyptic breakdown as the possible outcome. A perfect setup for a science fiction story on struggle and recovery to a bright future based on the natural instincts of mankind.
I give it 3.5 stars as it is worth reading by anyone who thinks about progressive growth vs. conservation of traditions. So glad the author was able to update his 1980 edition with this "Revisited" one with the changes in technology and politics up to 2016.
You'll find ideas here that you can to agree or disagree with whether a progressive liberal or conservative. Decentralism, a conservative ideal, is balanced by the too familiar liberal-minded ideals on climate, economics, role of government, social responsibilities, etc.
Yet conservative small government is supported with a turn toward pre-industrial reflections on society. And to this point, I'm glad I was also reading The Making of the English Working Class as the movement toward a pre-industrial world in the early 19th century offers a real-life, historical perspective on the foundations of the mess we find ourselves in.
Sale has many resources here for a sci-fi author who is able to supply things like characters, moral goodness, adversary interactions, world apocalypse, and Utopian future. This book would probably provide more insight with a good story structure. (For an example of similar thinking in applying social, economics, ecology and human "instincts" within a serious sci-fi context, compare with Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.)
But alas, it's filled only with ideals and much self-serving back-up references from history and idealistic natural man. To his credit, he admits some of this throughout the book. And he admits not having a good solution himself—the last page points to apocalyptic breakdown as the possible outcome. A perfect setup for a science fiction story on struggle and recovery to a bright future based on the natural instincts of mankind.
I give it 3.5 stars as it is worth reading by anyone who thinks about progressive growth vs. conservation of traditions. So glad the author was able to update his 1980 edition with this "Revisited" one with the changes in technology and politics up to 2016.
You'll find ideas here that you can to agree or disagree with whether a progressive liberal or conservative. Decentralism, a conservative ideal, is balanced by the too familiar liberal-minded ideals on climate, economics, role of government, social responsibilities, etc.
Yet conservative small government is supported with a turn toward pre-industrial reflections on society. And to this point, I'm glad I was also reading The Making of the English Working Class as the movement toward a pre-industrial world in the early 19th century offers a real-life, historical perspective on the foundations of the mess we find ourselves in.
August 28, 2018
Kirkpatrick has hit on something worth our consideration: that we do not perform well living at scale. There’s a lot to like and disagree with here, but much to consider too.
If we begin with the family, we immediately begin at a local, small scale if life. If church, community and larger groups, including local government, business are all “scaled up” from family as the basic unit, then we “begin” local and small. The question is where we go from there. Kirkpatrick shares stats and data on all sorts of “scales” that are human and workable.
Whilst the church is universal and global, the “practice” of church is local and smaller scale. There is a lesson here.
If we begin with the family, we immediately begin at a local, small scale if life. If church, community and larger groups, including local government, business are all “scaled up” from family as the basic unit, then we “begin” local and small. The question is where we go from there. Kirkpatrick shares stats and data on all sorts of “scales” that are human and workable.
Whilst the church is universal and global, the “practice” of church is local and smaller scale. There is a lesson here.
April 6, 2025
Started out with some interesting insights, which I generally agree with, but his explanations of issues with scale as the cause are oversimplifications.
There is very little mention of race, and how colonialism is built into the systems he describes.
It started to unravel when he referred to how North America was “bestowed to us”…ignoring the genocide of indigenous peoples. Then describes how the South Bronx became a slum without mentioning white flight.
This is not a serious exploration of scale. It’s a series of thought experiments by a libertarian.
There is very little mention of race, and how colonialism is built into the systems he describes.
It started to unravel when he referred to how North America was “bestowed to us”…ignoring the genocide of indigenous peoples. Then describes how the South Bronx became a slum without mentioning white flight.
This is not a serious exploration of scale. It’s a series of thought experiments by a libertarian.
June 7, 2025
Perfect by-the-numbers book to understand best solutions to economic and social problems of today. Explains bioregionalism both with nods to the human happiness it stewards and with statistics backing up localism's mathematical necessity.
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