https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1388888938270580736?s=20
This morning I came across this beautiful photo by @callicles of the 11th in Paris. After admiring it for a few moments, I then immediately tweeted it out with the above caption: "It's okay to put buildings close together." Because here's the thing about this photo: It represents one of the great paradoxes of city building. When most people look at this photo, I suspect that they will find it beautiful. They will like the mid-rise architecture and they will like the quaint European-scaled streets. But despite its fairly universal appeal, very few cities are able to build this way today. It's often not allowed. So instead what people do is travel to Europe in the summer, sit in cafes, admire the architecture and urban design, and then lament the fact that we don't build cities like we used to.
What is it that makes this intersection so inviting? Well, the buildings are tight up against each other. I'm guessing that the right-of-ways (ROWs) in this picture are maybe 6-9 m wide. There are no building setbacks or stepbacks to speak of, save and except for the penthouse floors which taper back slightly. And so all of the spaces in these buildings would likely have some sort of direct facing condition with their opposing neighbors (but partially mitigated by the fact that these aren't all glass buildings). The ratio of ROW to building height is, I'm guessing, something like 1:4, which, at the end of the day, is a large part of the reason why these streets feel so intimate and inviting. The buildings frame the streets and public realm.