Tag: narrow streets

• Physical space is a funny thing

  It is often difficult to grasp. This is why when you look at an empty piece of land, it can sometimes be difficult to visualize actually fitting a building on it. And why when you look at an empty room, it’s common to think, “there’s no way that furniture will fit in here.” But in the end, it does fit.

  It also tends to be relative. Here in North America, it is common to argue over things like parking space dimensions and drive aisle widths. We’ll say things like, “well, people like their big cars.” But then you travel to Europe and you find streets like this:

  

  And this:

  

  The first is only marginally bigger than the width of a parking space in Toronto (2.6 meters). And the latter is only marginally bigger than the width of a typical two-way drive aisle (6 meters). So are these too small? Well, it depends on your perspective.

  If your basis of measurement is the size of cars, then these streets will seem too small. Cars also keep getting bigger, so you have this inflation factor to deal with. But if your basis of measurement is something else, such as walkability, then maybe they’re just right.

  2024.09.10

• Seoul crush

  We have spoken a lot over the years about the benefits of narrow and pedestrian-focused streets. Most recently, I even ran around Europe with a laser distance measuring device to collect a few field samples. Here’s an example from Marseille and here’s an example from Sicily.

  But given all this, I think it is important to recognize that what happened in Seoul over the weekend — a deadly crowd crush that killed over 150 people — is both a horrible tragedy and a result of too many people in a narrow and pedestrian-focused street. So clearly there can be a flip side to what we talk about here. At the time of writing this post, investigations were still ongoing.

  I am not a crowd-control expert, but I have spent time in dense Asian cities during major events and holidays, and never have I felt so claustrophobic. I have lined up for hours to get into subway stations and I have lined up to get into entire city districts — presumably because they were trying to avoid things like what happened this past weekend.

  My heart goes out to all of the people and families that were impacted by this horrific incident.

  🇰🇷 🇨🇦

  2022.10.30

• The even narrower streets of Noto, Sicily

  

  

  So it turns out that the narrow streets in Le Panier (in Marseille) are actually far too wide at nearly 13 feet. What were the planners even thinking back in 600? Here’s a street I found in Noto, Sicily at just over 4 feet. I’m not sure if this is considered some sort of tertiary lane or not, but it had a street sign, addresses, and businesses in a courtyard at the end of it. So I’m going to assume it’s a bona fide street. It’s hard to imagine getting much tighter than this. I wonder if Jeff Bezos delivers here.

  2022.10.06