[D66] Human Scale Revisited

[R.O.]

The Human Scale Revisited cover 
<https://www.chelseagreen.com/wp-content/uploads/9781603587129-1.jpg>
*Pages:* 	408 pages
*Book Art:* 	Black-and-white illustrations throughout
*Size:* 	6 x 9 inch
*Publisher:* 	Chelsea Green Publishing
*Pub. Date:* 	May 3, 2017
*ISBN:* 	9781603587129

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Scale Revisited


  Human Scale Revisited

A New Look at the Classic Case for a Decentralist Future


      /Kirkpatrick Sale
      <https://www.chelseagreen.com/writer/kirkpatrick-sale/>/

Business & Economy 
<https://www.chelseagreen.com/product-category/business-economy/>Politics 
& Public Policy 
<https://www.chelseagreen.com/product-category/politics-public-policy/>
Availability: In stock

*Paperback*

$24.95


Big government, big business, big everything: 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.


      Reviews and Praise

  *

    */Kirkus Reviews/-*

    "The modern world is dysfunctional because, in part, it is scaled
    for the convenience of machines and despots and not us. Since
    publishing /SDS/ (1973), his classic study of the radical student
    organization of yore, philosopher Sale (/After Eden: The Evolution
    of Human Domination/, 2006, etc.) has been much concerned with
    matters of local governance and autonomy, advocating the atomization
    of government to smaller and smaller levels of decision-making. In
    this book, a revised version of a polemic first published in 1980,
    he looks at all the ways that we work at the wrong scale. Big
    universities, for instance, rank low on the roster of scholarly
    achievement. … [C]ities that grow beyond 100,000 tend to break down.
    As for bureaucracy? Sale coins a term, ‘prytaneogenesis,' to cover
    maladies wrought by government, which by rights should be solving
    problems rather than creating them. Because it is so broad, the
    author's argument is often diffuse; Sale is at his best when, in
    good syndicalist spirit, he pushes for responsibilities as well as
    rights, as when he reminds readers that no government ever willingly
    gave up rights, which instead were won in rebellion and struggle,
    whether of colonies, unions, or individual heroes. By the same
    token, Sale is too credulous of altruism as opposed to government
    interventions: it is arguable that private organizations do better
    at blood drives than social service agencies, though the debate
    becomes moot when we consider that the Red Cross, a hybrid of the
    public and private, does the brunt of that hard work. A provocative
    book with many points to ponder the next time you're caught in
    traffic or on hold with the insurance claims department."


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