The Human Scale is a 2012 documentary on DVD by Danish director Andreas M. Dalsgaard.
Life in the mega city.
50% of the world's population lives in urban areas. By 2050 this will increase to 80%. Life in a mega city is both enchanting and problematic. Today we face peak oil, climate change, loneliness and severe health issues due to our way of life. But why? The Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl has studied human behavior in cities through 40 years. He has documented how modern cities repel human interaction, and argues that we can build cities in a way, which takes human needs for inclusion and intimacy into account. THE HUMAN SCALE meets thinkers, architects and urban planners across the globe. It questions our assumptions about modernity, exploring what happens when we put people into the center of our planning.
The Human Scale Movie Review
"In this film, Los Angeles — with its worship of the automobile — is the bad. Copenhagen, with public spaces that allow citizens to mix, is the good. That’s the gospel of Gehl Architects, the Danish firm that guides this film’s vision of cities that encourage human interaction.
The documentary celebrates that quality in Siena, Italy; Melbourne, Australia; and New York. It points out the challenges faced by Dhaka, Bangladesh, and especially Chongqing, China, which is in a nation fast changing from agrarian to urban. History is touched upon — Robert Moses, Le Corbusier — and there’s an insightful diversity of neighborhoods pictured within each of the cities mentioned. The information is a bit narrow, but the point of view sincere. (Among the things that make these planners sigh with pleasure: bike lanes and low-rise buildings.)
The talk is not of futuristic utopias, however, but of brick-and-mortar ways to create environments according to the creed of the film’s title. If the result sometimes feels like a sedate lecture, the global journey strongly enlivens the lesson; it’s fascinating how alike and how different cities can be, and more fascinating to imagine what they may become.." New York Post – The New York Times – David DeWitt