I've noticed sidewalks a lot more in the last couple of years since i've been using the train as my primary transport (over biking, on many days). One of the most galling things is something you touched on; when there's any kind of construction work, there's always re-routing and accommodation for cars, but almost never for pedestrians. Cyclists can usually mingle with motor traffic when a bike lane is closed, but a sidewalk is never re-routed, just closed, and often without enough warning to avoid the problem.
When he said "pedestrians do things like cutting through the Burger King drive-through," I thought to myself, "last time I did that was the one at Robert and Cesar Chavez." Turns out that is exactly the intersection he was leading up to discussing! 😆
It's very interesting. I am currently doing an ethnographic project about panhandlers on the sidewalks. ITS NOT JUST MADE OF CONCRETE! We should had to the video that we need to take to account the homeless and panhandlers people that we encounter in everyday life on the sidewalk. The sidewalks are a kind of mirror of the relation of power between citizen and non-citizen. We can create beautiful sidewalks that are inviting, but inviting for who? For those 'citizens' who got resources to invest private spaces and use the sidewalks as a space of circulation? What about those who invest in this space for survival activity such as panhandlers? Does the revitalization of sidewalks contribute to the spatial exclusion of homeless and panhandlers, or inclusion? In Montreal, where I am conducting the study, it's fascinating how there is a blend between the blasé attitude of passer-by in their own individualistic bubble air, with the indifference towards marginal people on the fringes of society AND breach of kindness and consideration that occur between panhandlers and passer-by. There is a mixture of retreatism, contempt and kindness, where the former is clearly more present. The way someone occupies the sidewalk, like sitting on the sidewalk for panhandling informs us of different use of sidewalks that is not linked to the injunction of circulation and mobility in late modernity, but survival economic activity in a disparate and unequal society. The vision that sidewalk's primary function is circulation leads to potential spatial exclusion because the panhandler behaves in a way that, under the law in Montreal, he is 'obstructing' the circulation like a telephone pole that we need to get around. The panhandler is like an object because it is more easier, under the law, to move between things and bodies vs social trajectories and status. So, I come back with my first thinking. We want to create inviting sidewalks for who?
before mankind arrived, animals ruled and they constructed their own pathways for navigation. However, as a citizen walking on sidewalks, i can say that the very composition of a sidewalk can also effect our feet and their impacts to the rest of the body. My neighborhood has an amazing amount of sidewalks. They are like tree rings, some sidewalks go back to the early 1900's. Then there is the freshly lain sidewalks of just a few years back. You can actually feel the difference in the formulation used in the sidewalks as you walk across them. both in feel and sound. In my neighborhood, likely in others as well, it seems that individual slabs inclined towards different directions. So in doing my daily constitutional, i feel their tilts within my ankles. And so, i think reexamining how animals create or chose their paths, should be considered as well. Sidewalks have multitudinous reasons for existing, besides just going from point A to point B.
Those bump-out markers though. I live half a block from them on 31st and Colfax. Sure, it prevents turning cars from noticing pedestrians but the stop signs are SO far back from the intersection that they completely ignore the crosswalk and stop right to the end of the markers. Still feels dangerous, if not more dangerous to cross streets with these as a pedestrian.
