[lifeisstillgood]

So 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?

[almcd]

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.

[InitialLastName]

To expand, the various governments running Paris had a big issue in the early and mid- 19th century with urban insurrections being able to hamper military movement by setting up barricades across streets. There are multiple revolutions and major insurrections that were able to establish strongholds and fortified, highly defensible areas out neighborhoods by building walls out of furniture and debris.

It's much harder to block a military column from advancing down a 200' wide boulevard than down a 20'-alley.

[euroderf]

Nowadays potential insurrections are starved by population dispersion into low-density areas, like suburbs. It's getting hard to form an angry mob.