Small furry mammals versus the dinosaur

Over the last six decades, the propensity toward ‘big’ has infiltrated every aspect of human life. People are bigger (or fatter), cars, homes, food production, retail, hospitals, business, industry, government, and cities all have burgeoned in size. This has resulted in vast layers of bureaucracy, the extinction of mom-and-pop retail, and disconnection between producers of goods and consumer. We now have come to recognize that ‘big’ does not always have positive social outcomes. In many cases the promotion of increasing scale for efficiency has been proven to be a myth.   More so, large-scale industrial processes have stifled small-scale individual exploration, creativity, and the incubation of alternative solutions. In response, CNU co-founder Andres Duany and a cadre of dedicated new urbanists, have launched the Lean Urbanism initiative, to promote making ‘small’ possible— and the resurgence of many chipmunks instead of a single behemoth dinosaur.