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Comment by nhebb | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in a SW Portland neighborhood with no sidewalks. The road shoulders were narrow, unsafe, and often muddy. I never saw people out for leisure walks. It just wasn't enjoyable.

Now I live in the outskirts of Portland, in a place with modern suburbs grown up around a quaint old town. Sidewalks are everywhere. I take walks all the time, and I see other people out for walks daily.

It's seems like common sense that urban and neighborhood design can have a huge impact on the livability of an area, but a lot of the suburbs created in the US abandoned the sidewalk to save a few bucks and cram more houses per acre. I don't know if the tide has turned, but I'd never live in a neighborhood without sidewalks again.

Home buying tip: Look for a neighborhood with a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. It's a small detail that has a big impact on "neighborhood" feel.

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Woah, we've had some 'pack 'em in' zoning here in New Zealand but I've never seen anything where they left out footpaths entirely. Has anyone got a representative Google street view link for SW Portland or something similar? (And is this really quite common across the US?)

There are two separate issues at play - urban planning and neighborhood development. Portland prides itself on being at the forefront of urban planning, but when many of the roads were created in the perimeter of the city, there wasn't much thought put into it. The city has looked at retrofitting sidewalks into some of these areas, but it's prohibitively expensive.

Oddly enough, a lot of the neighborhoods weren't tightly packed. The lot sizes were decent and the house-to-house spacing was ample. I'm guessing it was more of an issue where, if the builders didn't have to spend money on sidewalks, they didn't.

This is the American suburbia I know best. Falls Church VA. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

Portland is not a good example of American urban planning gone awry. As it's probably one of the most sensible cities in the US.

And yes, unfortunately neighborhoods without sidewalks are all too common in American suburbs.

Wow. I've travelled to many countries and lived in a few, but I've never been somewhere without sidewalks. I looked at that street view and thought: "that's weird, grassy sidewalks". I had to pan 360 degrees a few times to realise it was people's front gardens, not public space. It feels very alien to me.

Around here, there are laws now that prevent someone from building without providing a sidewalk. Old lots are grandfathered in, I think, but any new development has to also provide a sidewalk.

I suspect it's that way most places, and that's why you find so few without sidewalks. They do exist, though.

I have you beat. The American neighborhood I know best has no sidewalk or even a curb. :)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

So you need to trespass through people's gardens to walk down the street? Or do people just walk in the street?

In the suburbs you can walk in the street or through people's yards ("gardens") along the edges and no one really minds. Everyone tends drive instead, though, since there aren't any well-connected walkways that lead to any place you'd really like to get to.

In general, people do not walk down the street at all. I used to live in a place that looked a bit like this (except spread out a bit more) in Alabama, and while you'd once in a while see someone walking down the street, it was pretty rare except for kids too young to have cars (under 16, basically).

Are you sure that's Falls Church? I don't see a single Super Mutant.

Please confine your references to classic games like Fallout or Fallout 2.

Bah, Falls Church isn't a suburb anymore; anything inside the beltway is basically just more of DC.

> Portland is not a good example of American urban planning gone awry. As it's probably one of the most sensible cities in the US.

Mostly, but there's really 2 Portlands. Downtown & the eastside are dense, mostly flat, walkable and with excellent public transit. The west side is hilly, mostly suburban, and generally neither walking nor transit friendly.

Fairly large stretches of the Washington, DC, suburbs have no or few sidewalks once you are off main streets. I have read the explanation that the developers wanted to give the original buyers, 55 or 60 years ago, the feeling that they were out in the country. (Given that some of these streets had little bungalows wedged tightly together, the buyers must have been oddly susceptible.) A number of neighborhoods within the city lack sidewalks, too, and in them one can start a listserve war and bring out yard signs by proposing to lay sidewalks. There can be good reasons--big old oaks in the way--and ridiculous ones--fear of attracting riff-raff.

It should be said that when some of these neighborhoods were laid out, most families had at most one car, and that car commonly smaller than some of the sports utes and minivans one sees today, leaving more space on the pavement for pedestrians.

What's listserv?

For an example of neighborhood fun, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/nyregion/10bigcity.html?_r...

It's rare to have connected walkways in the US. They often stop suddenly on their trail off to nowhere, have big gaps between disconnected sections, lead up to bridges that are meant for driving on, etc.

My mother-in-law lives in a neighborhood with no sidewalk. However, it's got very little traffic, and it's a 20mph zone. When we go for a walk, we just walk on the street. A good number of people in the neighborhood do the same.

A sidewalk is not always needed to have a good walk.

Yes, good point. And some of these street views (thanks everyone - most interesting!) actually look okay for walking as long as the traffic was light and slow.

It's not even all that rare to lack sidewalks within traditional city limits. The street where I grew up had sidewalks, but here is Street View of the street a block away, which does not: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

The area was built up in the 1920s, and apparently at the time it was left to the homeowners on each block whether they wanted to pay for sidewalk construction. Most blocks paid for it but the homeowners on this street did not.

In my neighborhood (Washington, DC area) some residents recently objected to plans to install a sidewalk along the main drag because "the drivers don't need any more distractions than they already have". We're moving in two weeks, hallelujah!

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