What I continually find neat and attractive in these old videos, specifically the one before the earthquake, is how multiuse the roads were.

People walking in the middle of the street, carts, horses, etc. The street hadn’t yet been given completely over to the car. We’ve swung so far away from this now to make it illegal to jaywalk for the efficiency of cars getting around without them needing to worry about other forms of traffic.

It’s definitly safer now, but at the cost of giving over significant portions of our cities to cars. We put the onus on the pedestrian, cyclist, scooter, et al, to fight for getting access back to the street, but it hasn’t always been this way.

Edit: spelling.