Sidewalk Terminates in Stone & Brick Wall
When I was back in Oklahoma City last summer I visited a new subdivision. I was happy to see that they had sidewalks although they didn’t lead out to the main street. Of course, the main street doesn’t have sidewalks either.
Inside the subdivision some of the homes were in a regular section while others were in a special gated area. But, walking from one section to the other presents issues:
Yes, the sidewalk was poured right up the wall dividing the sections. From the other side:
Crazy huh? Those on the other side of the street do get a pedestrian gate.
The sidewalk does lead out of the subdivision toward the main road. Of course, it stops well short of the main street. And, despite the road network being all new construction, they couldn’t manage to place the utilities in the path of the sidewalk. Amazingly bad planning.
So, at the very point that the roadway is most constricted (due to the hinges and center pylon for the gate), pedestrians and kids on bicycles (who usually ride on the sidewalks) will join the cars on the roadway. Nice planning …. if you like seeing people get run over.
Of course, this all assumes that those who live in this cul-de-sac subdivision of suburban specials will actually USE this sidewalk… “what… me? walk? Screw that”. Of course, if they attempted to actually walk on this sidewalk to go somewhere meaningful, and if the sidewalk didn’t end so abrubtly, what they would soon discover is that thay may have well just have taken the car. That sidewalk doesn’t go anywhere, regardless of whether it falls short of the intersection or leads pedestrians right into the monument gate wall, and THAT’S bad planning.
the people most likely to use the sidewalk are the ones most likely to get run over anyway: kids.
WOW….I know town planners and architects and they would laugh at that bad planning. I’m sure it saved someone fifty cents. Great website!
Bill…We want to know your advice, please.
Last picture – at least there’s a reason (but not a good one) for the jog in the sidewalk – too many times designers get “creative” and lay out meandering paths (when they have the room) when direct ones would be much more useful, if not as “aesthetically pleasing” . . . As for the main issue, it probably looked pretty good on the site plans in the office, but the guy (or gal) doing the plans wasn’t talking to the guy (or gal) designing the gate edifice . . . How much you wanna bet the gates were added later, to increase the “desirability” of the gated section?!
It isn’t planning but lunacy.
Jim, I’m right with you on your thinking about when designers get “creative”. They get all artsy fartsy and forget the whole purpose of what it is they are designing.
All those hipped roofs in the background of the last picture look like a western mountain range in the distance…
I was going to say a F5 would fix the problem but the sidewalks would still be there.
As long as we’re all ripping on the suburban subdivisions I’d like to add, who in the heck could stand to live someplace like that. No matter what you want to do you have to get the darn car out! Which I don’t have right now because some knumskull stole mine! Thank God I live in the city so I can get to the goods & services I need on Metro, my bike or by simply walking. And by they way, John W. says it reminds him of a mountain range. My first impression was that of a World War II army barracks. The tent kind.
I thought we all had the ability to walk through walls?
This planning certainly takes the cake for stupidity. One would think that someone would have noticed it and called the bricklayers or the sidewalk layers or the builders or hell, someone, anyone.
Oh, and where the hell are the trees??????????????????
Trees? We don’t need no steeenking trees! They’ll just get hugged by granola munchers, so why plant ’em?
It appears the ability to think is at a premium. It’s interesting the proportions of the wall and gate columns are not pleasing either. Certainly it is not based on the golden mean. In the old days the transitions of materials would have been more meaningful also.
This is a testament to how far artistic sensibilities have fallen. It is clearly not just in the City of St. Louis, but an American failing. Where we live and the quality of life is not important except in the most superficial sense.
This is pretty funny…
Forget the fact that the sidewalk is not accessible, leading straight into a wall. Let’s face it, it’s not like that many people will be using the sidewalk and the quiet suburban drive isn’t going to be that dangerous to walk or ride a bike on. If I lived there I would be really irritated, not b/c I can’t walk continuously on my sidewalk, or even if I didn’t have any sidewalk at all, but the fact that this looks SO DUMB! Seriously! Like the comment above said, at somepoint, somewhat had to have realized what was happening before it was all finished. This is ridiculous..
This isn’t bad planning, it’s intentional. Sidewalks in these neighborhoods are intended for 3 possible uses:
1) As a pretty representation of real neighborhoods where sidewalks actually serve a pedestrian and urban connection purpose. In this case it is only an image anyway, so how does it matter as long as the canvas stops outside the frame. It gives the right “look”. And heck, fake sidewalks are better done than the fake deer that reside on the manicured pieces of front yard anyway. After all, the front yard too is just a grassy representation of the wilderness and nature that the utopic ideal was trying to capture. So what’s a little fake sidewalk to add to the fake everything else.
2) Those who actually think that the sidewalk is “real” and use it to walk anywhere may be taking their dogs for a walk or just going for a stroll. Dead-ends are therefore just turn-around points in their destination-less walks. It also serves effectively as skateboarding or roller-blading strips that are vehicle free.
3) It’s a hard surface to receive the newspaper that lands there.
So it’s 3 uses as representative image, destination-less usage and receiving surface are all adequately satisfied. Considering that there’s no real place to go to on these sidewalks, I’m surprised that they even carried it as far as they did!
Anjana.
The mindlessness of single-use zoning will always provide easy targets for riducule and countless examples of the detachment of meaning from certain neighborhood components (i.e. connective sidewalks, front doors that are useful, etc) that got built anyway. If we don’t make significant strides in the cessation of this zoning formed land development pattern, we will be in more trouble than we know.