Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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.

4 responses to “The even narrower streets of Noto, Sicily”

  1. […] 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. […]

  2. […] has some of the most compact streets I have ever walked in. I didn’t have my laser distance measurer on me, but in many cases, you can barely fit two people side-by-side. I certainly couldn’t extend my […]

  3. […] If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I have a thing for narrow streets. Which is why when I travel I sometimes (okay, oftentimes) bring a laser distance measuring device with me. I like measuring things so that I have dimensions that I can feed back into our own development projects. But perhaps most importantly, it allows me to appear as nerdy as humanly possible while traveling. Walking around with just a camera in hand isn’t enough. You need to try harder than that. And so far the narrowest street that I have come across was in Noto, Sicily at just over 1.3m wide. […]

  4. […] Note: Sometimes a narrow sidewalk does not necessarily equal an inhospitable street. I mean, look at this example. […]

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