What a street corner tells you

A surprising amount of what a street looks like was decided by tax law, fire code and land price. Frontage taxed by width produces houses one room wide and five deep. Arcades appear where a rule made every owner give up the ground floor to a covered walkway. External iron stairs are retrofits demanded after a fire. None of it is decoration, and all of it is dateable.

The rest is climate and commerce: shutters that let air through but not rain, awnings sized to a particular sun angle, goods displayed in a way that only works where it never freezes. A street is a place where the rules, the weather and the trade of a city are all visible at once.