The Earliest Parking vs Building Restrictions
The Earliest Parking vs Building Restrictions
Janne M. Korhonen (@jmkorhonen.fi): "As they say, when you invent the wheel, you invent the parking violation. But Assyrians had a solution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_violation#Ancient_Assyria"
Unfortunately incorrect: this had nothing to do with parking and everything to do with a type of building creep.
When buildings were torn down and rebuilt, new builds often encroached and built over existing road infrastructure, narrowing the street's width. Sennacherib set up steles to stop that.
"At that time, I enlarged the site of Nineveh, my capital city. I broadened its streets for the course of a royal road... So that in the future there would be no diminution of the royal road, I had steles made and they stood on each side, opposite one another.... At any time, when (anyone of) the people living in this city tears down his old house and builds a new one — if the foundation of his house encroaches upon the royal road, they will hang him on a stake over his house."
Sennacherib 38, lines 13-27 (link here)
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