Where the Sidewalk Doesn’t Even
Begin
Cristina Ashba
Although a child of the suburbs, I do not necessarily hate all that this ephemeral concept encompasses. Indeed, nostalgia brings me fondly to the suburban homes of my parents, and where grandparents spoiled me with ice cream and other indulgences. Being young, energetic, and sun-starved, my cousin, brother, and I spent most of our visits at our grandparents’ house outdoors. With a short driveway and a scrappy front yard, our ventures outdoors often relied on the uneven sidewalk that spanned the streets. Both of my grandparents’ neighborhoods sported these choppy, broken slabs of cement, but none of the houses of my baby boom generation relatives had any semblance of these pathways. The tiny yards of the 1950s found some way to incorporate sidewalks, but the mammoth lots of the upwardly mobile from the 1980s and 1990s could not seem to be bothered with the inclusion of a little strip of cement.
Suburban historians often cite the
rise of the automobile as the reason for the decline in sidewalks. The common articulation is that with the
post-WWII incredible rise in automobile use, sidewalks, as well as front yards
in general, lost their vibrancy and central place in community to the more
privatized home.[1] By the 1980s, sidewalks’
prevalence in American society certainly had greatly diminished. One writer of the time even postulated
that the “past importance of sidewalks may have been
overemphasized.”[2] But is the automobile the prime reason
or is this merely a correlation instead of a causal effect? Sidewalks are more than just a
pedestrian thoroughfare; they are intrinsically involved in property rights,
design, and burdens of maintenance.
Even the automobile’s effect is more complex than the simple
existence of cars. To understand
sidewalks’ disappearing act, all facets of its role in American society
need to come into play. To begin a
thorough articulation of the reasons, not the reason, for sidewalks’
decline, we will first examine its link with the rise of the automobile.
With all the burdens of sidewalk
construction, planning, and cost, their prevalence in earlier eras has a strong
basis: safe, pedestrian thoroughfare.
Older tomes on street construction and planning dedicate much space to proper
sidewalk planning. One such manual
dedicates an entire chapter to sidewalk widths and several subsections to
pedestrian paths.[3] One cautionary image is of a
horse-drawn wagon rising onto a sidewalk with several pedestrians in order to
avoid a collision with a streetcar.[4] Considering the rather slow to moderate
speeds of horse-drawn vehicles and streetcars and the corresponding amount of
concern over pedestrian safety, one would think that rising vehicle speeds
would correlate to rising concern for pedestrians, especially if one also
recalls that the rise of vehicle speeds occurred simultaneously with a rise in
the number of vehicles and a decline in the level of experience of drivers due
to a switch from professional drivers to necessity drivers. One would be wrong though.
Instead,
of increased concern of pedestrian safety, the rise of the automobile met with
a decline of concern for pedestrians.
One of the reasons for this is certainly due to an overall decline in
pedestrians as the private sphere of the home expanded and walkers turned to
drivers and commuters. Another
reason simply put is arrogance of achievement. In the 1980s, after several decades of experiences with cars
and suburbia, evolving neighborhood planning believed it had arrived at the
solution for protecting pedestrians: cul-de-sacs. One landscape architect of the time articulated the
achievement of proper city planning as follows: “Properly designed
cul-de-sacs, and often the entire vehicular system when designed to slow and discourage
traffic can be very acceptable for pedestrian traffic.”[5] This faith in the achievement of his
field is admirable, but pedestrians of the time should not have trusted
it.
With comparison of a grid-plan
neighborhood to a curvilinear neighborhood, it is evident that with their
reduced entry points, curvilinear neighborhood islands would support increased
traffic since there are only one or two points to enter and exit the
development. The same architect
also believed that with improved design, “pedestrian traffic can use
pavement edges or the grass.”[6] Decades earlier, the Federal Housing
Administration also believed in this lack of necessity of sidewalks,
considering that small residential streets with limited traffic could exist
without sidewalks and curbs.[7] Thus, no real separation of pedestrian
and vehicle thoroughfares would exist, which is the rather scary truth of
current subdivision plans. In
general, sidewalk decline did match with a rise in automobiles, but this
simplistic correlation does not adequately describe the nature of the
relationship between automobiles and sidewalks. Furthermore, other trends rooted in the burdens in sidewalks
also played significant roles in decreasing the construction of sidewalks.
First on the list of burdens of sidewalks
are their perpetual maintenance costs.
Typically, sidewalks are the domain of the public, but the individual
land owner must maintain them. One
writer warns of this maintenance burden and encourages avoidance of turning
open spaces into a “maintenance burden on the homeowners.”[8] This burden includes shoveling,
de-icing, and leaf removal in those climates that require it. Some cities help ease the burden of
maintenance from the homeowners through financial deals on repairs or supplies. Rockford, IL, along with various other
cities, offers a 50/50 Sidewalk Repair Program, in which the city will provide
a contractor and split the cost of repairing a public sidewalk with the land owner.[9] Another example is Ann Arbor, MI, which
offers a five-gallon bucket’s worth of a deicing mixture of sand and salt
to its residents.[10] These small aids for property owners
exist partly because governments must work within a community’s
pre-existing conditions and partly to maintain the perception of the usefulness
of sidewalks amongst the community’s constituents. Up-keep of sidewalks’ image is as
important as up-keep of the physical slabs of concrete because taxpayer support
can dry up quickly.
Besides maintenance, another reason taxpayer support wanes
for sidewalks is a result of jurisdiction complications. As stated before, sidewalk repair
usually falls to the homeowner, but this is not set in stone. According to James Kunstler, jurisdictional
disputes may arise over sidewalk construction and maintenance.[11] If the burden is on the homeowner,
homeowners will be unhappy. On the
other hand, if the burden falls to the city, the entire tax base is upset. Costs of maintenance represent just one
of the jurisdiction issues that arise out of private-public space marriages, while
another is liability in the courts.
Kunstler sees jurisdictional conflict as one of the key players in the
lack of sidewalks in modern subdivisions, but he overlooks the aesthetic
aspect, which can often overpower complications when little else can.
Developers,
architects and homeowners have difficulty incorporating sidewalks seamlessly
into landscape while at the same time retaining sidewalk functionality and the
neighborhood’s or individual house’s style. Since sidewalks need to continue from
lot to lot in order to serve any purpose at all, community planners need to
follow some uniform standards. Since
sidewalks have the added burden of protecting pedestrians, especially little
children, safety issues also arise.
These constraints often make sidewalks an unwelcome part of suburban
landscape.
The
quantity of land sidewalks monopolize is no small trifle. The National Committee for Traffic
Safety recommends a minimum of four feet in width and either three or seven
feet away from the road, depending on the existence of trees.[12] These standards incorporate
sidewalk’s role as a protector of pedestrians and center of community
life. To foster community and
maximize functionality, the minimum four feet width is to permit two people
walking abreast. Another reason
for this minimum is two-way traffic.
Four feet widths allow for two-way traffic without collision or pushing
one party to the grass or the street, which is what developers originally created
the sidewalk to avoid. The setback
distance, the distance from the street, is to protect pedestrians from street
traffic, both in perception and in actuality. These standards are the first hurdle that neighborhood
designers must jump in laying out sidewalks.
Practicality
is another constraint on sidewalk design.
Sidewalks “must follow a logical route of travel if they are to be
useful,” else there is no point to their existence.[13] This logical route of travel in
practice means no meandering, curvilinear lines, but rather a direct route that
basically connects two points in the shortest possible distance. In addition, these primary paths must
be durable. Frequent use “in
all types of weather, by people wearing all sorts of footgear” requires a
“solid, secure surface that is easily cleaned.”[14] This limits the materials available for
use to either concrete or asphalt, which are not the most stylish building
materials. These particular
materials carry their own constraints, such as hot surfaces for asphalt and
high-reflective power for concrete.
One landscape architect noticed another problem with common concrete
sidewalks because of its “high cost, high energy user” character.[15] In the 1980s, when this architect
published that statement, energy use was rapidly increasing in importance. He cited problems with concrete as one
reason, among others, why developers should minimize the installation of
sidewalks. Constraints on material
and form and imperfect solutions in material both hinder creativity and create
a less-than-desirable final product.
Not all thoroughfares for pedestrian
traffic suffer the constraints and design difficulties to which sidewalks must
bow. When writing of garden paths,
one landscape architect compares these ornamental paths with the primary and
secondary paths of frequent use—sidewalks, in common parlance. The primary and secondary paths, in
addition to filling the above requirements of size, material, and form, must
also be an obvious element in the overall design since people other than the
property owner use them.[16] A hidden sidewalk severely limits the
practicality of the path whether the decision was stylistically conscious or
not. This additional criterion
poses a substantial problem to landscape architects because they must
incorporate a rather unwanted structure into their design that offers little
freedom of modification. This
particular designer does not despair and believes in the importance the lines
of a walk has on the overall landscape, but the examples he relies on to show
the beauty of functional paths are a brick straight path and a curvilinear continuous
concrete walk.[17] Neither of these design options is feasible
for public use sidewalks as stated previously. Sidewalks seem doomed remain as concrete slabs or as strips
of hot, sticky asphalt slashing through lush green lawns.
One large difference, in both
historical importance and literal size, between the relatively compact suburbs
of the 1950s and 60s and the McMansion-littered subdivisions of the late
twentieth century is the yard. With
some notable exceptions, the ideal house became firmly planted in the
imaginations in Americans as placed “in the middle of a manicured lawn or
a picturesque garden” with the first suburbs.[18] Lush green lawns had prevailed in the
American Dream for years, but the post-WWII era saw a serious increase in their
desirability. A key example that
demonstrates this move towards manicured lawns is the Gateway Arch of St.
Louis, Missouri. Built to
commemorate Lewis & Clark’s expedition into the vast open space of
the Louisiana Purchase, the original landscaping surrounding the Arch was
symbolic of wilderness and consisted of a mini-forest. [19] The triumph of architecture that is the
Arch would then dwarf this wilderness.
This original design gradually morphed into the current landscape of large
“open lawn areas,” scattering the original symbolism to the winds
and representing the new ideal of yards in the 1970s and beyond.
Lawns
and the lot sizes they reflect so well in dazzling bright green play an
important role in sidewalk construction.
With wider home lots, the expense of a sidewalk spanning the whole great
distance is great.[20] Furthermore, the scale of the community
expands to such an extent with wide lots that walking a few houses down becomes
quite a distance. In addition to
these problems, sidewalks again pose a design difficulty. These white slabs of concrete slice the
continuity of the green lushness of the lawn, which visually shrinks the
lot. Since setback requirements
ensure that sidewalks do not exist right at the edge of the street, they must
perform this incision into the vast lawn.
A love of property ownership goes hand-in-hand with a love of grandiose
lots, and anything a developer can do to maximize the lot size appearance, it
will do. This includes avoiding
the expense of sidewalks.
With
all the difficulties sidewalks face in their implementation, it is of little
wonder that their prevalence in society has significantly waned. The articulated reasons above that
include a loss of their original purpose, maintenance burdens, issues of
jurisdiction, and design considerations have created subdivisions that have
lost the sense of community both sidewalks and front porches helped
create. Addtionally, they have
replaced this sense of community with an environment unfriendly to those
without cars.
A common reason suburbanites cite for the move to the
McMansion suburbs is to protect their children. In the actual communities, some say that these sprawling
suburbs are ideal for Big Wheel youths and suffer a trade-off for the teenaged
years of those same children; however, Big Wheels do not count as
vehicles. Suburban plans are
suitable for adult-sized cars, not the tyke-sized ones, and mixing the space
for Big Wheels with the space for SUVs and minivans is not ideal. A member of a planning committee in a
local suburb stated it concisely: “children
should play on sidewalks rather than in the street.”[21]
Even with reduced traffic flow and
cul-de-sacs and reduced population densities, parents are still not so happy on
having their children running and playing where they could meet up with the
business end of a battering ram on an SUV. Indeed, while I universally played on the sidewalks in my
grandparents’ neighborhood, my parents still remember of how I
consistently played on the last three feet of our own driveway and keenly
recall their anxieties of the relatively limited suburban traffic.
[1] Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 279-80.
[2] Jensen, David R. Zero Lot Line Housing. (Washington D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 1981), 56-7.
[3] Folwell, Amory Prescott. Practical Street Construction: Planning Streets and Designing and Constructing the Details of Street Surface, Subsurface and Supersurface Structures. (New York: Municipal Journal and Engineer, 1916), III.
[4] Folwell, 107.
[5] Jensen, 57.
[6] Jensen, 56.
[7] Girling, Cynthia L., Kenneth I. Helphand. Yard Street Park: The Design of Suburban Open Space. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 86.
[8] Jensen, 57.
[9] City of Rockford, Illinois: 50/50 Sidewalk/Curb Repair Program. http://www.ci.rockford.il.us/government/works/index.cfm?section=services&id=406#5050. Accessed November 19, 2005.
[10] City of Ann Arbor: Snow Removal on Sidewalks. http://www.ci.ann-arbor.mi.us/safetyservices/police/sidewalk.html. Accessed November 20, 2005.
[11] Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 116.
[12] Interestingly, three feet is the minimum without trees and seven with trees. Considering the use of sidewalks as protection of pedestrians from automobile traffic, it is inconsistent that sidewalks with no barrier in the form of woody trunks would be closer to the road than those with a meager barrier. The Committee considered the existence of trees as the only deciding factor for stipulations in sidewalks. This consideration is due to the size of full-grown trees and their roots, which can damage sidewalks. De Chiara, Joseph, ed. Time-Saver Standards for Residential Development. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1984), 85.
[13] Hannebaum, 40.
[14] Hannebaum, 39.
[15] Jensen, 56.
[16] Hannebaum, 39.
[17] Continuous refers to one solid sheet of concrete to create the entire structure, instead of square slabs that break up the continuity of form. Hannebaum, 40-1.
[18] Jackson, 55.
[19] Birnbaum, Charles A. ed, Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture: Papers from the Wave Hill-National Park Service Conference. (Cambridge, MA: Spacemaker Press, 1999), 29.
[20] Kunstler, 116.
[21] Minutes/Regular Planning Commission Meeting for Rochester Hills, MI on 8.17.04. Accessed November 19, 2005.