Preindustrial city streets mixed commerce, news, and waste in ways modern zoning separates

Evidence

Activities which, in the modern city, tend to be relegated to specialized public locations, were, in the preindustrial city, piled upon one another, as it were. Buying and selling, for example, often took place in the street itself, for the wandering vendors were everywhere. 7 Even where the businessmen had stalls or cubbyholes, both their goods and I or their activities tended to overflow, thus throwing up one obstacle after another to the innocent pedestrian. In Rome, edict after edict attempted to control this spill-over, but to little or no avail (Carcopino, 1940:47). — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 201

Categorization

• XREF: For the reading purpose: this functional mixing is the baseline condition whose later specialization (Lofland’s own argument) produces the stranger-filled anonymity of modern public space that Simmel and Cole respond to. — connects to: Existing zoning regulated streets and lot shape, not environmental harms — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1053