A Modern-Day War for the Right to the Sidewalk and the Street

Cities grow because agglomerative forces pull people together through a combination of industry and firm presence.[1] Cities also attract people because of vibrant social, economic, and creative elements.[2] As a result, cities become labor markets[3] attracting all types of people to the city. Considering this, it is estimated that by the year 2050 68 percent of the global population will live in urban areas.[4] This growth and densification, while beneficial to labor markets, economic growth, and innovation, has and will produce negative externalities.

In response to densifying urban areas that produce congestion, many local governments are developing strategies to decrease car dependence and provide safer streets to citizens. As a result, public policies are being implemented to promote complete streets, “vision zero” policies, and improved walkability. At the same time, the market is stimulating the development of innovative transportation technologies such as docked bikeshare and dockless bicycles, e-bicycles and e-scooters, collectively referred to as shared micro-mobility.

Recognizing agglomeration is beneficial to city life, it also amplifies existing social problems such as congestion.[5] One policy proposal to address such urban problems is the application of a smart city concept. Yet, the smart city as a policy concept is not yet truly defined, it holds various meanings at different scales. The rhetoric around the concept of the “smart city,” however, is further prompting city governments to adopt these innovative new mobility technologies.

With the deployment of these devices an old policy struggle has reemerged: the “right” to perceived public spaces such as the sidewalk and street. The modern story of fighting for the street is little different then that articulated by Peter Norton in Dawn of the Motor Age.[6] Norton writes about when localities established policies to govern the street in an era of automobile introduction. Now, local governments are attempting to incorporate new policies to govern the sidewalk, curb space, and the street into the existing set of policies that developed out of the automobile introduction. Further complicating the process are private sector companies entering local markets, often prompting reactive policy-making and angering citizens.

So, before the possibility of a smart city becomes a reality, city governments are dealing with a more immediate issue and the reemergence of an old issue – the question of street and sidewalk use, safety, and attractiveness and the right to public space.

Who owns the street? A brief history of the “Car-ification” of the city

As financial, environmental, and social stressors plague both growing and shrinking cities, policy-makers and residents are both welcoming and wary of market driven solutions such as micro-mobility services. They are welcoming the promise of congestion relief, mobility improvement, and equity of access but are wary of safety issues, the possibility of more congestion, and potential of an actual decrease in the equity of access. These counterpoints are fueling narratives, forming distinct coalitions of pro and anti-micro mobility social groups. Underscoring the perceived threats of micro-mobilty devices is that as they promise an increasingly multi-modal future, in doing so they threaten established social norms of the street and sidewalk.

The established modern norms suggest the street belongs to the car. Children gathered on a side street of an inner-city neighborhood for a game of street hockey or basketball stop to let a car go by, the “car” doesn’t wait for the game to end or turn around and find another unobstructed street - the driver feels they have right to first use of the road. Walkers are often forced to wait for a car to stop and “approve” their street crossing at intersections. An empty parking space cannot be used for random events like a al fresca dining or a market stall unless expressly permitted.

The street, because of the car, is not a flexible open public space, nor is it a public good, as many often believe. A public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. This means an individual cannot be excluded from use of the good or can get benefit from the good without paying for it and use by one individual does not reduce its availability to others. Beyond the simple use cases illustrated above, the more individuals who use a road, the fewer new individuals can enter, resulting in diminished availability and excluding potential users. This also results in congestion. Also, individuals who are frequently excluded from the use of a road are also often those who are not in automobile or similar vehicle.

In addition to exclusion mechanisms, pricing mechanisms are also applied to street users. Use of the street is priced through gas taxes, parking meters charge for curb space in high demand areas, and proposals of vehicle mile traveled (VMT) charges, shaped by the advent of electric and automated vehicles. Cordon pricing is also being promoted and implemented in large global cities to charge for entering a city street system. Thus, the modern social construction of the street creates not a public good, but a commodity.

The battle over a new order of the street

The closed, commodified system of the street was not the norm until about one hundred years ago. Cities had long been planned around public space and pedestrian networks to facilitate social and commercial interaction. Before cars, roads functioned as communal multi-use spaces. Roman cities used a grid pattern with foci around public spaces such as public markets, libraries, bath houses and latrines, theatres and forums. The Roman urban legacy continued to influence Renaissance thought and became established in Western European urban theory. In early Spanish settlements the “Law of the Indies” specifically required the gridiron. Also, the Land Ordinance of 1785 required boundaries to be rectilinear. As a result, prior to the automobile, early urban planners and architects like Pierre L’Enfant in Washington DC, and Charles Bulfinch and Harrison Gray Otis in Boston, laid out many colonial and early American cities with grid or gridiron systems, centered around grand avenues, public squares, markets and other open gathering spaces.

The Western European influence on American urban planning resulted in many dense urban cores with small blocks producing walkable neighborhoods that facilitated movement and access to public transportation. Streets functioned as agglomerate spaces where public transit, such as street cars and trams, and carts, buggies, horses, people, taxis intermingled and facilitated social gatherings, marketplaces and other commerce. The order of the street was implicitly understood as a space for all. But then, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries as populations had already become less agrarian, even greater numbers of people began to move to cities in search of work in the industrial age. This, coupled with the massive influx of immigrants who settled in cities, made urban life increasing complicated and dense. Soon after, the automobile began to erode the conceptual public right to the street. Not surprisingly, the established norms of the street stood in conflict with cars. And with a growing population centering itself in cities, many who did not have cars themselves, the war over the street ensued.

Historian Peter Norton described the mass adoption of the automobile as a “search for order” on the street.[7] This search for order originated from traffic pressures and conflicts over appropriate uses of the street and prompted the formulation of rival groups. These groups became coalitions who became distinct “through their competing ways of fighting traffic accidents and congestion”.[8]

The fight centered around a central premise: what and who are streets for? After intense debate, the prevailing argument established streets belonged to cars.[9] As a result, the car became the incumbent user of the street and cities (especially in suburbs) were rebuilt and built to accommodate the mass adoption of the vehicles. Even wider boulevards were built and paved, open space was also paved over to accommodate parking, and highways were built - dividing once vibrant, connected neighborhoods. To that end, the result was the relegation of most non-car activities off of the street. All other modes of street travel were relegated to a thin strip of pavement, grass, or dirt on the side of the road, or sidewalks, when available.

Now, nearly a century later the same question is being asked: what and who are streets for? Automobile enthusiasts of the early 20th century faced off against those opposed to cars encroaching on the perceived public space of the street. And streets have since evolved to accommodate their primary users: cars and their drivers. Therefore, a fierce policy battle over street space centers on the appropriate use of alternative transport modes, and taking lanes or parking space away from cars has developed. Right now, infrastructure is limited to support the safe travel for the portfolio of micro-mobility devices. Existing infrastructure like unprotected and protected bicycle lanes and sharrows (street markings painted on pavement to indicate the preferred lane for travel) offer mechanisms to accommodate alternative devices at vary degrees of safety but they are far from ubiquitous. Cars still rule the road. And because of this, safety issues abound with riding micro-mobility devices on streets. In response, less experienced or timid micro-mobility riders move to the sidewalk. This is problematic, riding on the sidewalk encroaches against the space pedestrians claimed after being pushed off of the street because of cars. And the devices are already being parked on the sidewalk. Pedestrians pushed from the street claimed the sidewalk and now that claim is being assaulted.

The war spills on to the sidewalk

The legacy of the road as a public space and a public good perpetuates a sense that people have the right to the street. This time, in addition to the street as a battle ground, proponents now face a two flanked assault. The anti-micro-mobility camp features two distinct groups – those who do not see micro-mobility devices and their users having the right to the street and those who do not see their right to the sidewalk. Micro-mobility devices are being pushed from the street, and as a result, they end up on sidewalks. This then leads to impeding pedestrians from their access (and perceived right) to the sidewalk.

Thus, the social construction of sidewalk is also being challenged by micro-mobility devices. Sidewalks are the new frontier in the battle for the street. This is due to two main reasons. First, the devices are not explicitly allowed to be parked on the street, in deference to cars, and end up being parked on sidewalks. Furthermore, by discouraging micro-mobility device use on the street by limiting speeds, failing to provide adequate road infrastructure, and car users failing to accommodate them, they are pushed on to sidewalks. This then leads to excluding pedestrians from their access (and perceived right) to the sidewalk. All of this further stimulates the battle for the sidewalk. This impedes pedestrian access that previously was unfettered. The odd person riding a bicycle on the sidewalk could elicit eye rolls or a harsh comment as the rider passed by, but parked micro-mobility devices are stationary. And they take up space perceived as reserved for pedestrians. There is no person to attack, so the resulting anger becomes directed at the devices. And the backlash is severe.

And so the war rages on…

It's fair to conclude that the introduction of micro-mobility devices is disrupting the modern social norm of the street and has unearthed an old battle over who has the “right” to use this commodity. The car-ification of the city resulted in a relatively stable social construction of the street and sidewalk. Thus, streets transformed into car dominated domains to be punctuated briefly by buses, motorcycles, trucks, bicycles and the occasional pedestrian trying to cross the street. Motorists fought for their right to street. Whether this is good or bad, these “intruders” transformed our perception of the street and the city. Now, micro-mobility devices have been similarly described[10] and their users are fighting for their right to the street and the sidewalk. As a result, rival groups are forming. Safety concerns are fueling negative backlash, and in some locations, fatalities are leading to outright bans. Pro micro-mobility users are citing the many benefits such as evidence of gender parity and racial diversity in users[11] and preliminary results in decreased car use and ownership.[12] But the policies remain in flux and unclear as city governments struggle to reconcile these devices with established norms.

Compounding any shift in the social order of the street and sidewalk is the pending deployment of automated cars, aerial drones, and a host of new mobility devices proposed as components of a smart city vision. These devices present numerous new issues with just one being that of the perceived rights to public space. These new technologies are not only disrupting the market, they are disrupting the social order of public space. All this considered, the war will continue until the norms of the street and the sidewalk are reestablished, only to be challenged again.

Notes:

[1] See Alfred Marshall, “Principles of Economics” (1890); Jane Jacobs. "Economy of cities." (1969). Michael Porter. “The Competitive Advantage of Nations.” Harvard Business Review. (March-April 1990): 73-93; Edward L. Glaeser et al., “Growth in Cities,” Journal of Political Economy 100, no. 6 (December 1992): 1126–52, https://doi.org/10.1086/261856.

[2] Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class--Revisited: Revised and Expanded (Basic Books, 2014).

[3] Alain Bertaud, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities (MIT Press, 2018).

[4] “68% of the World Population Projected to Live in Urban Areas by 2050, Says UN,” UN DESA | United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, May 16, 2018, https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html.

[5] Vito Albino, Umberto Berardi, and Rosa Maria Dangelico, “Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives,” Journal of Urban Technology 22, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 3–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2014.942092.

[6] Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (MIT Press, 2011).

[7] Norton, Fighting Traffic.

[8] Ibid., p.3

[9] Ibid., p.7

[10] James Tapper, “Invasion of the Electric Scooter: Can Our Cities Cope?,” The Guardian, July 15, 2019, sec. Cities, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/15/invasion-electric-scooter-backlash.

[11] Regina Clewlow, “DC Is Growing Its Dockless Bike and Scooter Program: We Partnered with Them to Evaluate How It’s Expanding Access in Underserved Communities,” Medium, December 6, 2018, https://medium.com/populus-ai/measuring-equity-dockless-27c40af259f8.

[12] “People Love Scooters and They’re Replacing Car Trips Says City of Portland Survey,” BikePortland.Org (blog), October 22, 2018, https://bikeportland.org/2018/10/22/city-of-portland-releases-e-scooter-survey-results-291323.