According to Jan Gehl development above the 5th floor leads to a disconnection with the street as the human scale is lost. Cities can be built without this in mind and the view of the city at eye-level is the best. Although nice views are available from a high-rise it’s not as easy to walk out your front door. This separates people from the outdoors. High-rise scale is not the human scale and they make no visual sense to a pedestrian at eye-level this can be isolating and dehumanizing. High-rises tend to separate people from the street and each other and as a result they greatly reduce the number of chance encounters that happen, which are crucial to the liveliness of a city. The physical or psychological proximity between people is significantly reduced which is bad for health (Gehl, 2010).

 

In human-scale neighborhoods, a wide mixed use of housing is clustered around one or more well-defined neighborhood centers, which support jobs, commercial activity, and a range of amenities. Neighbourhoods dominated by the car, without a mix of uses and housing types, tend to lack both diversity and a sense of community. The neighbourhood is scaled to the pedestrian, offering sufficient variety within a five to fifteen minute walk, a quarter to half mile to sustain lively streets and gathering places. It offers a gradient of density, from open spaces to high-density commercial cores. The layout of pathways, streets, and transportation corridors minimizes conflict between walking, biking, and driving, and provides effective and affordable transit access to other neighborhoods and regional centers.

 

Neighborhoods are the most significant building blocks compact towns and cities. Their physical design can greatly enhance community, and their spectrum of jobs and housing types can support social equity. Without vibrant neighbourhoods, towns and cities are split into single-use zones, retail and office there, manufacturing at the margin, which each lose their character.

 

On the right is a link to a video with an introduction to the Jan Gehl theories of human scale (Metropole Films, 2013).