IN PRAISE OF THE HUMBLE SIDEWALK

A TOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

                                                            (Clematis Street West Palm Beach, FLA -- by Dover Kohl Partners)

The founder and president of nonprofit Strong Towns, which focuses on pedestrian-friendly development, believes sidewalks and streets play an important role in environmental justice.

"Sidewalks are often treated as afterthoughts in urban transportation projects," says Charles Marohn, P.E. 

"This is backwards. The function of an urban street is to serve as a platform for building wealth. 

On a street, we're attempting to grow the complex ecosystem that produces community wealth."

One big way that can be accomplished is through proper maintenance. 

Marohn advocates for city plowing of sidewalks, instead of making snow and ice clearance the responsibility of thousands of individual property owners. 

He says it's equally or even more important than street plowing — which often creates impediments to pedestrians.

"In most of our poorest neighborhoods, the public sector is neglecting their maintenance responsibilities, and this contributes to a vicious cycle of decline," says Marohn, author of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.

"When the streets have more potholes, the parks have more weeds, and the sidewalks have more cracks and gaps than the ones in our affluent neighborhoods, the signal being sent is that decline is going to continue, regardless of what the property owners do."