[1] Human Scale Development is basically community development and is "focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy and of civil society with the state.
"[2] For improving the living conditions of people in Latin America, the following 3 statements are taken as a starting point: A common shortcoming in existing literature and discussions about human needs is that the fundamental difference between needs and their satisfiers either is not made explicit or is completely overlooked.
Satisfiers may include forms of organization, political structures, social practices, values and norms, spaces, types of behavior and attitudes.
The satisfiers in the INTERACTING column (ESTAR in Spanish, BEFINDEN in German)[Note 1] are locations and environments.
They arise at the top (in the sense of a political group or traditional power-holders) and are imposed on everyone, and prevent Human Scale Development.
The first publication of the work was in 1986 in a (Spanish-language) article in the journal of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Development Dialogue.
[1] This document stems from the work carried out in different countries in Latin America by a team of researchers, which is essentially transdisciplinary in nature.
It was carried out in 1985 and 1986 with the assistance of professionals from Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada and Sweden.
Their expertise consisted of academic disciplines such as economics, sociology, psychiatry, philosophy, political science, geography, anthropology, journalism, technology and law.
The participants formed a stable core group that guaranteed continuity in the processes of collective research and reflection during the project.
The English translation of the article, expanded with "A Note on Methodology", was published in Development Dialogue in 1989.
This proposal for an improved development system can certainly be useful on a small scale and also provides insight into the satisfaction of fundamental human needs by social institutions.
One of the applications of the work is in the field of Strategic Sustainable Development, where the fundamental human needs (not the marketed or created desires and wants) are used in the Brundtland definition.