Is there an ideal height — or should buildings be as tall as they need to be to fulfill housing needs?
A new video from Oh the Urbanity! YouTube channel tries to debunk the “common urbanist myth” that urban buildings should be no more than five stories tall, writes Aysha Khan in Next City. As the video explains, the belief is “Inspired largely by Danish designer and architect Jan Gehl’s landmark text Cities for People, in which he argues that taller buildings are out of scale with the human experience.”
The channel’s creators argue that this is a subjective and arbitrary height. Instead, “Our starting point for density is that buildings should be as tall as they need to be in order to provide abundant housing in places that people want to live.”
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