alt Hacker NewsSo the interesting thread through history for me was the comment on Damascus - the streets were built with houses close together and therefore carriages could not pass each other (and presumably barely in single file)
It was not possible to run a bus service until the roads were widened.
What caused that Inwonder?
In London the fire of 1666 presumably meant streets were made wider (to prevent spread of fire) - but why in Paris? New York was designed as a grid. Was this just a reaction to “urgh, we don’t want to be tired old cities like Damascus so they built wider streets?)
Was it the need to drive traffic through to supply urban areas and take out manufactured goods?
Was it better sanitation?
For Paris, the renovations overseen by Georges-Eugène Haussmann between 1853 and 1870 shaped much of the centre of Paris. Overcrowding and sanitation were publicly cited as the main motives for this renovation, although social control was also a factor with the new boulevards deliberately being designed to enable suppression of street-level insurrection.