Preindustrial Rome mixed all classes and uses in shared public space

Evidence

But the mix of the preindustrial city was more extensive still. For its characteristic jumbling of stores and residences, of slums and palaces, of monasteries and warehouses, constantly brought together in all its streets and other public areas peoples of all classes, occupations, and age grades. … The fourteen districts of the urbs did not offer that sharp contrast between working-class and wealthy districts which may be seen in modern capitals, and there was the same kind of accidental egalitarianism in the Rome of the Caesars as there was later in the Rome of the Popes, with wretched apartOJent houses and magnificent palaces built next door to each other, and millionaires and men of modest means living on different floors under the same roof. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 222

Categorization

• XREF: Supplies the historical baseline against which Simmel’s blase attitude and the modern segregated city respond; useful contrast to Lofland’s later chapters on contemporary stranger management.
• DEFINE: ‘Accidental egalitarianism’ — the physical jumbling that predates modern class-segregated zoning — gets a concrete referent.