“There is nothing to fear from growth; you only fear unplanned growth.”

Writer / director Andreas Dalsgaard meticulously shows how self-described architectural ethnographer Jan Gehl has used his native Copenhagen as a model of urban planning and a working template for cities with ailing, depopulated, car-centric downtown cores, and throughout the doc’s first two-thirds we’re shown how affected cities like New York, Chongqing, and Melbourne reinvigorated dead zones into functioning social and economic centres.

Le Corbusier’s brand of urban planning - where leisure and work activities are restricted to physically disparate locales - is a key villain in The Human Scale, and the doc’s final third offers up two affecting case studies: the messed up, over-populated, World Bank funded schemes pushing Dhaka past the point of no return; and Christchurch, with its earthquake ravaged downtown core that must be redesigned and rebuilt from scratch.

Dalsgaard could’ve made a shrill, anti-car rallying cry for change, but instead we’re shown sane arguments with solutions whose tangibility is restricted only by bad governance, bad habits, and narrow minds.

© 2013 Mark R. Hasan