In Part 1, we shall explore just what is going on in this public space. We shall discover that "what is going on" has undergone a historical change, and that this change is intimately linked to the matter of what clues are most reliable in the crucial task of identifying strangers. Chapter Two focuses on the preindustrial city. It argues that in this city, public spaces contained such a conglomeration of persons and activities that locational clues were of little value. Appearances, however, were fairly reliably hooked to identity. Chapter Four focuses on the modern city. It argues that in the modern city, the opposite is true. Here, public spaces "specialize" in certain persons and activities, while appearances can be highly deceiving. Each type of city, that is, has its characteristic type of order, which allows its citizens to make relatively accurate identifications of one another. The preindustrial city is characterized by the dominance of appearential ordering; the modern city, by the dominance of spatial ordering.

DEFINE: Introduces the key distinction between appearential and spatial ordering across historical city types. XREF: Connects to Goffman-era social ordering and urban sociology debates about how strangers are read in public.

SEED: A historical shift in how urban strangers are identified—appearance to spatial location—could anchor an essay on how identity signaling has changed with cities.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 11