The Streets of Europe

Street Life tells the history of the city street as a vanished world that many people yearn for but that few understand in its complexity. Ladd's journey centers on four major cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. He focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth and his story of the rich culture of the street ends with the arrival of the automobile - the street increasingly became equated not with commerce or entertainment or assembly but with rapid transportation. As Ladd ably weaves architectural and social history he includes sights, smells, and sounds-chapters on transportation and sanitation provide the less dazzling side of these sensations. Street performers, urban activity, street commerce, and public order are all part of the vivid history. In a conclusion, Ladd ponders the move off the streets, before and after 1900 and how our thinking about streets and cities has changed and how it might change more--