I would think that would have been better measured to establish safety parameters BEFORE the buildings were finalized.

Iirc, Liverpool had a health crisis due the expansion of the city during the industrial revolution. A lot of streets were very narrow, making it very difficult to clean up waste and provide access to firemans.

If a street was too narrow, they actually would demolish one of the buildings to make space

Edit: or buildings in plural now that I think about it. You couldn’t just demolish one of them if they are so close

Luckily we contracted the Germans to do a lot of the demolition work, for free, in the 1940s