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During the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815-1848) Paris’ streets underwent significant urban renovation. The eighteenth-century street was transformed from a filthy and dangerous open sewer dominated by carriages into an agreeable paved prom-enade equipped with sidewalks, trees, benches and boutiques. These pedestrian spaces generated new cultural practices in urban environments such as strolling (‘flânerie’), window-shopping, and outdoor night-life and gave rise to novel forms of casual, bour-geois sociability. Unlike city planning which took place during the second Empire un-der the Baron Haussmann, early nineteenth-century urban design was a decentralized process that allowed citizens to dictate the shape of the capital. As a result, many of its consequences were both unintended and unforeseen. Contemporary observers agreed that the result of such efforts was the gentrification (‘embourgeoisement’) of the inner city and the displacement of its working-class population to the exterior of Paris. / History