Stiff Reminders, and Regenerating for the Future: A Commentary on “Man as the Measure of All Things”

Margrit Hugentobler's article, “Man as the Measure of All Things: A Limiting Approach to Urban Regeneration?,” took to task the challenges of sustainable development that neither governments nor industry have yet met on the scale that is needed. From a planner's perspective, she gives a philosophical context. In essence, her message is that through thoughtful regeneration, urban environments can become more sustainable and that urban regeneration can meet a variety of human and environmental needs. She proposes a new model, using a multidisciplinary approach to urban regeneration and development. A slow advance in the beginning, followed by rapid and uniformly accelerated progress, followed again by progress that continues to slacken until it finally stops: These are the three ages of … invention … if taken as a guide by the statistician and by the sociologists, (they) would save many illusions [1].