There is a scale that has been forgotten; for almost all cities and towns across America it never existed. It is this forgotten scale, the human scale, that is so captivating to Americans walking historic European cities.

 

The cities of the New World were laid out with wide straight streets. The narrow, curving and short medieval streets that colonists had left in Europe, were understood to be unhealthy, prone to fire, inefficient, dirty, stinky and if possible avoided. The medieval streets were certainly all of those things - but they also reflected the human person in a way that the master planned city streets of America did not.