Street Narrowing, circa 1200 A.D.

Back in April, I ventured a few ideas on the topic of street narrowing, a remedy I'd suggested for certain overscaled urban streets.  Although modern examples of narrowing (here meaning physically building into the right-of-way) are quite rare, the process was commonplace several hundred years ago, according to this account of medieval Bologna, which apparently was more accommodating of student housing needs than many 21st century American cities:

"....every street is lined with arcades, or portici.  The original ones date from the 12th century, when the comune, faced with a housing shortage compounded by the presence of 2,000 university students, allowed rooms to be built on to existing buildings over the streets. Over time, the Bolognesi became attached to them and the shelter they provided from the weather."

Arcades on a Bologna arterial street.

This solution was elegant, essentially representing a sale of air rights over the existing street.  Residential space was in the aggregate expanded considerably, while pedestrians gained a network of covered passageways providing a shield from bad weather.  Remarkably, in the centuries since, it appears that few if any stores have expanded to fill the covered space beneath the arcades.

This concept was not limited to Bologna, as many other European cities underwent a similar transformation around the same time.  Even the remains of Roman cities show the same process at work.

Could this process be applicable to cities of the present day, as one of several potential approaches to right-of-way narrowing?  Although many of New York's office buildings constructed since the adoption of the 1961 zoning resolution  did adopt arcade-like features in satisfaction of density bonus incentives, these were never constucted over sidewalks, and sometimes were separated from the walk entirely, rendering them useless as a source of shelter for those on foot.  One can imagine a very different streetscape in the process of emerging had the code rewrite, instead of encouraging setbacks and plazas, offered for sale sidewalk air rights on the same terms as Bologna of the 1100s.

Related posts:
Are Narrow Streets a Realistic Objective?
Thinking Small: The Narrow Streets Movement
Josh Mahar's great article on street narrowing at CityTank: Reversing Haussman