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If you're beginning to wonder about this sort of thing, I'd strongly recommend reading up on Really Narrow Streets, on the New World Economics website. The auth
by clock_tower 10y ago
If you're beginning to wonder about this sort of thing, I'd strongly recommend reading up on Really Narrow Streets, on the New World Economics website. The author has more or less managed to quantify what makes Old World cities so liveable, and he's beginning to get some traction among urban planners.
You might also find his discussion of the Industrial Revolution spirit -- what he calls Heroic Materialism -- interesting; I think he makes a strong case that the pre-industrial shouldn't automatically carry negative connotations.
- mc32 10y agoI think I agree with that. By pre-industrial I meant that for many people where they lived and where they worked were geographically either identical or close enough (baker baked in their house, butcher slaughtered in the back yard, spinner spun in the house, serf worked at a nearby lord's land, etc.) I think there are some negative connotations simply because serious disease was untreatable and incomes were meager among other things (like power inequality and very low education).