Reply #2: Another related issue is design [View All]

[MountainLaurel]

Most suburbs were deliberately designed without sidewalks. Part of it was the time: Everyone wanted to support the burgeoning car culture. Part of it was the usual bigotry: trying to keep out "undesirables" who were perceived as being more likely to be on foot.

I grew up walking almost everywhere, even in college. (On-campus parking was at a premium, and my car was usually in the shop.) After I moved to the DC suburbs in VA, I found it nearly impossible to run even minor errands on foot. Many roads (and even some streets in this area can be four lanes and see traffic moving at 55 mph) did not have crosswalks, stoplights with walk signals, and sidewalks. Even to get to a local walking trail, my roommate and I would end up walking along the berm of a six-lane highway.

Our neighborhood had a huge problem with pedestrian fatalities: I'd say someone got hit once a week, with a few fatalities each year. There was a large population of immigrants from small villages in countries where few cars traveled that fast, and all traffic would stop if a pedestrian entered the road. They didn't understand the concept of a crosswalk, and even if they did, many of the areas where the immigrants live have none, or they are 1/2 mile apart. The county's solution in most areas was to install 6-foot-high fences alongside the road to funnel pedestrians to the existing crosswalks.

Another issue, particularly for children, is the dreaded homeowner's association. In many neighborhoods, you can be fined for having a basketball hoop in your driveway. For me growing up, there was always a pickup basketball game going on, which later in the evening would turn into a neighborhood-wide game of hide and seek. Here, that'll get the police called in a heartbeat. As the book Southpaw mentioned will tell you (recently finished it based on a recommendation I saw on DU), some neighborhoods that advertise themselves as having lots of woods have actually made those natural areas off limits to kids because they were *gasp* playing in them, and the liability to the HOA was considered too great.