How rich do you need to be to be against sidewalks? The lack of sidewalks in lower-income areas is a recognized problem. You’re forced to spend extra money on gas/transit to run short-distance errands. Local shops can’t operate. Groceries are an ordeal; missing sidewalks and “food deserts” are correlates. You can’t take walks. The air quality ends up worse when more driving is required. If you’re living in reality, sidewalks are good and necessary.
Yep. It’s an overlapping class and racial issue. The most lethal roads for pedestrians are all in the South, and in the big cities here, it’s the African-American and Latinx neighborhoods where the most people die…Â
Smart Growth America noted 46,149 pedestrians were struck and killed by cars in the U.S. in the 10-year period, at a rate of about 13 people per day. The study found that minorities and older Americans are overrepresented among pedestrian deaths.
“Everyone involved in the street design process—from federal policymakers to local elected leaders to transportation engineers—must take action to end pedestrian deaths,” notes the study’s authors. “So long as streets are built to prioritize high speeds at the cost of pedestrian safety, this will remain a problem.”
Florida was the top state on the pedestrian danger index, and had eight of the top 10 metro areas. Jackson, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee also came in the top 10. The report’s data is pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
Lack of sidewalks in more affluent neighborhoods have the same origins. It discourages lower income people from entering the neighborhood because they don’t have cars and there are no sidewalks. This is why those neighborhoods are set up the way that they are. There are no bodegas on the corner. You can’t walk to the store. You must drive at least two miles to reach a store.
^^ and those kind of sidewalkless neighborhoods often go through unintended demographic change. For example, when Buford Highway in Atlanta became a heavily immigrant neighborhood, many people now live there in high-density apartment buildings, many are carless, there are bodegas and small businesses owned by immigrants up and down the highway. But because the immigrants lack the political power to improve the neighborhood like they desperately want to, it’s become ridiculously lethal. The latest statistic I found says that every year, 30 pedestrians are killed on Buford Highway and 250 are injured. Just look at these pictures of people trying to do normal activities back and forth across a seven lane highway. The trails where the grass is worn down have the depressing name of “desire paths,” according to this article.
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