I’ll wager that most of you over 50 years of age grew up on a street with sidewalks on both sides of the street and all the way around the block. You probably made use of them often. Sidewalks used to be essential in residential neighborhoods. Today, not so much. More often then not, newer residential subdivisions do not have sidewalks, nor do they have off-road walking trails meandering through them. If you walk at all, you have to walk in the street. Having motorized vehicles and pedestrians sharing the same space is inherently risky, especially at night.
It is interesting to note that the Ancient Romans built sidewalks everywhere, but by the Middle Ages, people were again walking in the streets. Progress is not inevitable.
Today, developers generally consider sidewalks to be an unnecessary expense, and homeowners are not clamoring for them because they are usually saddled with the expense of keeping them up.
Therein lies the problem. It is my view that sidewalks should be treated as public infrastructure no different than city streets. Just as the developer pays most or all of the cost of building the streets in a new residential subdivision, they, too, should be required to build sidewalks or, in a more rural subdivision, walking trails. Sidewalks should be maintained (and that includes snow removal) by local government supported by tax revenues, not directly by the homeowner.
Perhaps the typical homeowner might be more supportive of sidewalks if they didn’t have to shovel the sidewalk in front of their house each time it snows, or replace sidewalk slabs when they’re broken or cracked. Sure, they’d still be paying taxes to support those activities, but it would be a win-win situation for the entire community. And shouldn’t that be our goal—the common good?