Challenge the evidence
Bring a stronger primary source, failed replication, methodological issue, confounder, or evidence that a claim has been graded too strongly.
Open evidence challenge →Choose a contribution
Critique the doctrine
Show a contradiction, hidden assumption, missing tradeoff, ideological blind spot, or place where Human Scale would create the opposite of what it intends.
Open doctrine critique →Report a local experiment
Share a project with receipts: problem, context, cost, permissions, labor, participation, outcome, failure, maintenance, and what others should learn.
Report experiment →Build something
Improve the website, Audit, accessibility, visual design, data tools, civic prototypes, open-source code, documentation, or a Human Scale implementation.
Open repository →Accessibility critique
Find where “walkable,” “independent,” “simple,” “healthy,” “local,” “quiet,” or “community” assumes an able-bodied, neurotypical, wealthy, housed, culturally dominant, or otherwise narrow user.
Raise accessibility issue →Run a Lab experiment
Try the Human Time, Quiet Technology, Third Place, Living-World, Bureaucracy Receipt, or local-project experiments and report what happened.
Open the Lab →What makes a strong contribution?
Be specific. Name the exact claim, page, policy, experiment, or design.
Bring evidence when the claim is empirical. Primary sources, data, official documents, strong reviews, or direct implementation receipts beat argument by vibe.
Separate evidence from values. “This does not cause X” and “I do not value X” are different objections.
Show tradeoffs. A proposal that improves one Human Scale value may worsen another.
Include context. Climate, disability, income, housing, culture, age, governance, geography, and institutional capacity can change what works.
Report failure. Failed pilots are first-class contributions if they prevent repetition.
Say what would change your mind too. Critique should be vulnerable to evidence just like the doctrine.
Contribution boundaries
No harassment, doxxing, manufactured engagement, unsafe experimentation, or political manipulation. Do not publish private health, family, workplace, or identifying information without permission. Do not use the project to target people based on sensitive traits. Critique ideas and systems without turning disagreement into a campaign against individuals.
Human Scale should be pluralistic enough to include people who disagree strongly about markets, government, religion, cities, technology, family structure, energy, and culture—provided the disagreement can remain evidence-aware, rights-respecting, and open to revision.
If you want to help but do not know where to start
Take the Audit
Report a question that does not fit your life, culture, disability, family, or environment.
Take Audit →Document one friction
Record the real time, forms, cost, travel or bureaucracy involved in one system you use.
Find one counterexample
Show where a large system works better than a small one, where a modern technology beats the older alternative, or where a Human Scale intervention backfires.
The goal
A mature Human Scale project should contain arguments from people who made it stronger by disagreeing with it.
The doctrine belongs less to its author each time reality improves it.