[skh]

I lived in Berlin for a while and when I came back to the U.S. the two things that stood out were the massive parking lots and billboards. American cities are hostile to humans. Way too much space taken up by ugly parking lots. Go out West and so much land is fenced off. Access to lakes and rivers is hard since so much of the surrounding land is private and fenced off.

[justaguyhere]

Outside of cities like NY, it is actually dangerous to walk. There aren't sidewalks, drivers are actually hostile towards those on foot and on bikes. American cities are built for cars and cars only.

[AnimalMuppet]

The one city I know well definitely has sidewalks, both downtown and in the suburbs. (I can't comment on hostility to bikes, though.)

[njarboe]

Almost every city in America has sidewalks. I guess you might be technically correct that "Outside of cities like NY" if "like" means "has sidewalks", but that would exclude almost 100% of cities.

[ArtDev]

I have lived exclusively in the Western Coastal states and 100% of the cities I have lived in do not have consistent sidewalk coverage. For example: Seattle, Sacramento, Olympia, Portland and especially other rural cities I have lived in.

American cities are designed for cars. Not people or people on bikes.

You would think that new developments would not continue this insanity and yet they are still allowed by city planners to cut corners.

[yellowapple]

I grew up in/around Sacramento. The new residential construction is almost always accompanied by new sidewalks, from what I've seen. It's usually the older areas that have spotty sidewalk coverage, but those are getting patched up (especially now that Sac's more-or-less recovered from the housing bust).

[bobthepanda]

How far do you have to go out to reach an area without sidewalks, though? Even many suburban developments don't necessarily have those.

I went to a college in the suburbs of Long Island and the road outside campus was a two-lane road with a speed limit of 55 with no sidewalks. To walk outside of the cities is to invite death.

And this is before we get into things like the lack of adequate marked, signalized crosswalks that are common throughout America: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/17/between-your-bus-stop...

[yellowapple]

Nearly all suburban developments I've seen that were built within my lifetime have had plenty of sidewalks and signalled (sometimes even stoplighted!) crosswalks. The exceptions are old rural roads that became suddenly suburban when they got surrounded by housing developments, but the developments themselves always had plenty of sidewalks, and quite a few of the roads in my hometown of Elk Grove have sidewalks even when they didn't before (though sometimes with gaps, admittedly).

I've spent nearly all my life in (Northern) California and Nevada, though, so YMMV elsewhere.

[souprock]

Normally, you just step off the road when a car comes. I suppose this doesn't work for high heels, but those can't handle storm drains either. You can even walk off the road.

Sidewalks, signals, and crosswalks all give the illusion of safety. Either the cars are behaving well and you can just step aside, or they are misbehaving and you'll need a concrete barrier to stop them. The signals and crosswalks mean that cars are revving their engines near me, making the air I breathe worse, so I'd rather do without.

[bobthepanda]

> Normally, you just step off the road when a car comes. I suppose this doesn't work for high heels, but those can't handle storm drains either. You can even walk off the road.

This is assuming that the road something you can walk next to. And it's not amazing advice for roads with blind corners and such.

Sidewalks do actually help; drivers respond to their built environment, and most drivers do not want to scuff their cars by hitting the curb or other obstacles in the road.

The real crux of the problem is that the suburbs have become surrounded and cut across by massive high-speed traffic moats which are inherently unsafe for pedestrians because of the speed differential. Yet to walk in the suburbs you can't avoid these moats. And dissuading people from walking is near impossible, since the poor are now migrating to suburban areas and they are the ones least likely to have cars due to the cost.

[yellowapple]

Depends on how far West, and which parts. A lot of Nevada is publicly-accessible, for example.