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Comment by adolph | Hacker News Reader

"Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a small force."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

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This is pretty widely thrown around, but it should be noted that the central purpose of Haussmannization was public health and beautification: tearing down the slums, building proper infrastructure like sewers and aqueducts, and pretty parks and streets. The article you link to emphasizes this.

The wide boulevards did very little to prevent the Paris Commune, for instance. Napoleon III just wanted to build a second Rome, not some martial panopticon.

The wide boulevards certainly helped the French Army in drowning the Commune in blood soon afterwards, though.

The Commune was also fairly unique among French revolts as it did not begin in Paris, rather it was Paris reacting to their emperor getting captured in battle.

There was a bit more than just Napoleon III getting captured. Paris was subsequently sieged and captured by the Prussians. Afterwards, the Prussian troops were kept nearby and occasionally paraded through the streets. The Commune arose also due to power disagreements with the new Third Republic and an attempted seizure of cannons in Paris.

The Paris commune was tripped off by a political failure, a war lost in a single battle, and the siege of Paris by the Germans followed by mass starvation. I doubt that any city design could possibly have stopped the commune from happening.

Not directly related, but the US Interstate Highway system was at least partially designed with military concerns in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Hist... . I'm reminded of it every time I see military vehicles on the highway.

Obviously not the same thing that you're talking about here - but just interesting to me, and vaguely related!

There's a reason why the Eisenhower Interstate System signs have the 5 stars of a general.

If I'm not mistaken, the 5-star logo only applies to sections of interstate highway that have at least one mile of level and straight road in any given 5-mile stretch. The idea was that an "Eisenhower Freeway" could be used as an impromptu landing spot for Air Force planes. While I'm sure this ability was tested at the beginning I don't know if there are regular drills and exercises making use of this feature.

I would love to see a plane try to decelerate from 200+ mph with the surface quality changing every 200 yards and with 18-inch-deep potholes every so often. I wonder what sort of maintenance budget the original interstate plan envisioned

Several planes land on highways per year, I don’t find the source but it was from AVWeb and the order of magnitude is ~10 per year. It’s actually much safer han fields. But those are Cessnas at 80mph, not Boeings.

This is an urban legend debunked in the linked Wikipedia article: "According to urban legend, early regulations required that one out of every five miles of the Interstate Highway System must be built straight and flat, so as to be usable by aircraft during times of war. There is no evidence of this rule being included in any Interstate legislation."

The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System is designed for military purposes only in the sense that it's very important to be able to quickly move your troops and materiel around to where they're needed (i.e. logistical reasons). In other words, it's important to the military for the exact same reasons that it's important to anyone else.

It has some merit. Sweden built an entire system based on road bases to deter any invasion attempts from the Soviets, including aircraft able to operate out of them. Still happen upon them to this day, just notice the road get straighter and a tiny bit wider.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90

I'm not saying it doesn't have merit or isn't true of other countries, just pointing out that it's not true of the United States. The US is a lot different from Sweden in two salient points here -- we're much bigger, and we're protected by entire oceans from potential enemies on all sides.

Completely agree with you. Just pointing out that the idea that I guess many technically minded people come across actually exists, although in a completely different environment.

In contrast to oceans there's 600 km by air from St. Petersburg to Stockholm which leaves minutes to respond.

Thanks for the link, very interesting! I love the US

is there any further explanation of this? it strikes me that narrow chokepoints would be more advantageous to the numerically inferior but better-equipped/trained force.

more advantageous to the numerically inferior who know the lay of the land, because it's much easier to conduct urban guerilla warfare in such instances.

Armies during this period were all still about marching in formation, which doesn't work well in confined spaces where you can't really keep a formation.

It was also in the context of a long history of barricades being put up by popular uprisings and stymying and trapping troop formations.

I guess I'm thinking too much in terms of modern times, where police are mostly aiming to contain a larger crowd. didn't consider that demonstrators might actually intend to trap security forces.

You're thinking about modern protests that are relatively peaceful and in which deaths are rare. The Paris riots looked a lot more like outright urban guerrilla warfare with lots of deaths, in a manner that is more similar to actual declared wars here in the US (e.g. the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War), not mere urban unrest.

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