Sidewalks and their Many Purposes

Growing up I always remember my mom telling me to stay on the sidewalk, stepping off the sidewalk was considered a huge offense. When I was just starting to learn how to ride a bike it was on the sidewalk, walking to and from school was done on the sidewalk, even walking two houses down to my best friend’s house was on the sidewalk. I was always told that this was because I had to be careful and avoid the fast dangerous cars on the big bad street. According to Jane Jacobs that is one of the purposes of a sidewalk, to keep people at a safe distance from the cars, but there are two other underlying effects.

Contact and assimilating children to their environments are other reasons for the existence on the sidewalk. Sidewalks help to bring the people of the city together in intimate settings that force them to come into contact with one another. It is the sort of contact that city people could appreciate; one is able to come into contact with other people without allowing them into their private life. The people around them are comfortable because they are not too involved. This is good for city dwellers because their privacy is one of the most valuable aspects of city life.

Sidewalks also play an important role in the life of city children. Jane Jacobs argues that parks and underused sidewalks are areas that children are supposedly “safe” but in actuality are not. The parks are actually dangerous for children because there is less adult supervision, in some cases non at all. This gives children leeway to bully other children and to wreak havoc in general. Jacobs gives one example where she observes a park where two boys beat up on a little girl. A few blocks down there is a group of 28 children playing on a sidewalk without any squabbles. She accredits this to the fact that the sidewalk also contains a bustle of adults going about their daily lives, they help to keep order amongst the children. This sidewalk would be classified a lively sidewalk and this is a safe area for children to play because there are many people around, however underused sidewalks can be just as dangerous as the parks. The sidewalk was also able to support the large gaggle of children because it was sufficiently wide enough, narrow sidewalks and streets are what keep students in the parks and streets and keeps them in danger. This is due to poor city planning, Jacobs argues that the ways the cities are constructed lead to crime and deviant behavior but that’s for a whole other post.

Check out further discussions of Jane Jacobs arguments in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” at this fellow blog.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/260