Historia Universitatis Iassiensis 6, 189–216
Abstract. Medieval and premodern organization of Iasi was comprised of different structures, among which alongside the neighbourhood or parish was also found the street. From this point of view, the street, apart from the geographic role of access route, develop an important social component. To this social role which it held in the economy of urban communities, it was added the status of element of aggregation for the city agglomerations. Therefore the street represent in this case a complex urban tissue, an assembly in which the spatial elements (such as housing groups, urban landmarks, urban morphology or landscaping) are influenced and even frequently dictated by social relationships between community members; we refer here to neighbourly relations, ethnic, family or professional. The street was becoming thereby the indicator of urban life, the unification point for the economic, commercial and social functions. The street is therefore an individual urban structure developed at a smaller scale than that applied to large areas such as the neighbourhood; formed of at least two – three families, the communities of townspeople are linked by geographical proximity, the main communication relationship between the townspeople being the area which they have / take in dominion, symbolically. In most cases this form of neighbourhood exceeded the physical proximity imposed by the needs increasingly complex determined by geographical proximity residential.
