Introduction

In most aesthetic endeavors, physical size is only a minor consideration. Works that are considered aesthetically pleasing can exist at both ends of the scale of size: both large, grand, and powerful, and small and exquisite, with subtle nuances. If anything, there is some suggestion that size opposes aesthetic ends, that creating something large implies a lack of adequate control and design. Large things are gross and crude, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Shakespeare, Macbeth). In many artistic domains, the small form is considered the most demanding and the closest to perfection: in poetry, the haiku or sonnet; in music, the string quartet, for example.

The relationship between aesthetics and the applied area of environmental planning has always been somewhat problematic (Porteous, 1982). Physical planners may wish to meet aesthetic ends, to create spaces that are artistically pleasing, yet in physical planning, the emphasis is on function, on what is necessary in order that an environment meet a specific set of human needs. Aesthetic considerations, although often a concern of environmental planners, have been assumed to have a lower priority.

This paper considers size and its meaning to environmental planners both aesthetically and functionally. As far as size is concerned, the assumption may have been that size simply has to be a priority for physical planners, despite its relative unimportance in other forms of aesthetic endeavor. Unlike artists, who can begin projects with size as just one of many “free,” or flexible, components of the final design, physical planners often work in situations where size is “fixed,” or predetermined, from the outset.