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