Preindustrial urban diversity looks like disorder only because its ordering principle differs

Evidence

The above portrait particularly emphasized one characteristic of the preindustrial city: the multiplicity of uses to which public space was put. It is this characteristic which imparts to the modern eye, confronting the city through the works of historians and archeologists, an overwhelming impression of disorder. Some critics, disenchanted with what they consider the sterility of the modern city, have even suggested that our contemporary metropolises could well benefit from the importation of a little of this historical “disorder” (see, for example, Sennett, 1970). I do not share in this judgment of the preindustrial city as disordered. It may appear so to us, but only because the principle of its ordering, only because the dominant type of order, differs from that to which we are accustomed. Nevertheless, there is no question but that in contrast to the modern city, the public spaces of historic urban settlements were sites of an incredible mixture of activities and persons. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 174

Categorization

• XREF: Introduces Lofland’s organizing contrast between historical and modern ordering principles — frameworks the reader can weigh against Simmel’s and Cole’s versions.