Preindustrial cities’ density limited class-residential segregation

Evidence

There is some scholarly disagreement regarding the residential mixing of classes in the preindustrial city. Comhaire and Cahnman, for example, suggest that in Ancient Rome, the poor tended to concentrate in the central city, the rich moving outward to private homes built on the slopes of the surrounding hills (1962:52). That is, they suggest, at least for Rome, a pattern similar to that found in the modern city. On the other hand, Sjoberg argues that in the preindustrial city, generally, the reverse was true: the rich concentrated in the center of the city, while the poor were forced to the outskirts (I 960:98-99). It is probably the case that some tendency toward segregation was always to be found. Yet the necessary compactness and density of the pretrolley, preautomobile city must surely have kept this tendency in check. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1096

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s urban theory cross-reading: the density that precluded segregation also shaped the face-block familiarity and stranger-dense public spaces central to Lofland and Cole.