Sidewalks: Conflict and Navigation Over Public Space
By Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht
MIT Press, 2009, 341 pp., hardcover $28
Review by Philip Langdon
Sidewalks in Anaheim, California, legally need be only four feet wide — which is too narrow for couples to pass each other while strolling. Los Angeles requires sidewalks at least five feet wide, which is more comfortable. Oakland mandates a six-foot minimum.
Some cities have extensive guidelines aimed at making the sidewalks a pedestrian-friendly public environment. Others cities do relatively little in that regard. In just about every respect, sidewalks are treated in very different ways from one municipality to another.
Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space, by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning and Renia Ehrenfeucht of Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans, is described by its publisher as the first book-length analysis of the sidewalk as a distinct social space. It traces the historical evolution of sidewalks in the US, examines conflicts that have arisen over their competing uses, and discusses some of the municipal standards now applied to these public rights-of-way.
Long ago, Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte showed how city sidewalks could be useful, enjoyable, sociable parts of neighborhoods and downtowns. The authors of this new book are not oblivious to enjoyment and sociability, but they seem more concerned about how to create “a just city.” This leads them in directions that will disconcert quite a few readers. Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht want people to think about whether panhandling should be allowed, whether the homeless have a right to sleep in public spaces, and whether protesters have an overriding right to demonstrate, among other issues.
They contend that activities currently prohibited by some cities or business improvement districts — such as asking for money or sleeping on the sidewalk — cause discomfort for middle-class people but do not inflict harm on anyone. Indeed, the authors at times suggest that seeing distressed homeless individuals may be useful because it can motivate people to solve a social problem. Perhaps so, but the argument seems one-sided. We know for sure that when sidewalks accommodate too much troubling activity, those who have choices stay away. The city becomes a dismaying place. Its economy is hobbled. It’s hard to see how this ends up being anything other than bad for most of a city’s inhabitants, the homeless included.
Loukaitou-Sideris and Ehrenfeucht oppose design interventions that might cause “the nonconsuming public” to feel it is being excluded from public spaces. They point out that some cities, in encouraging sidewalk dining, have either allowed café owners to place fences around outdoor areas or have mandated them. “Whereas in Paris the private space of the café blends seamlessly into the public space of the sidewalk, in US cities, fences create an abrupt border,” they observe. Some cafes and restaurants in this country “extend their control over public space” by posting signs that order people not to skateboard, loiter, tie their dogs to the fence, or engage in other forms of “inappropriate behavior” on the sidewalk, the authors say.
The book contains a moderately interesting chapter on “sidewalk as urban forest,” which looks at how cities deal with street trees. On the whole, though, Sidewalks seems geared more to social justice advocates than to people who are trying to bring vitality and prosperity to urban locales.
