By definition cities are huge, but the best cities offer a mix of big and small streets. But too many cities prioritize vehicles over humans, de Botton says. A city should be easy to navigate for both humans and vehicles, with big boulevards for orientation and warrens of alleyways and small streets to allow us to wander and create a sense of mystery and exploration. Modern cities are all about the big, de Botton says, but the ideal human scale is five stories high; anything more starts to make humans feel insignificant, small, and trivial. But our cities have been largely hijacked by commercial interests, he says, advocating that we stop making the collective mistake of allowing large corporations to hog the airspace in our cities, building shrines to industry rather than things we care about.
