PreserveCast: Come along with us as we explore the broad world of preservation and the work being done to preserve, interpret, and save our past in a 21st century world. From aquaculture to historic foodways to forensic modeling, we're talking weekly with experts from across the globe. This is your host, Nick Redding. Welcome to PreserveCast. Did you know that the Campaign for Historic Trades, which is powered by Preservation Maryland, is the sponsor of three registered apprenticeship programs? The campaign also hosts workshops across the nation, maybe even one in your backyard. Visit historictrades.org to learn more and find a way to learn a trade. This is Nick Ridding and you are once again listening to Preserve Cast. Today we're sitting down with somebody that I have wanted to talk about since I was able to dig into this book. ⁓ I was telling him before we got started that you know, the there we get a lot of interesting review copies and some books have really challenging topics and and and deservedly so. ⁓ and they can be, you know, challenging to get through and and but are important for for various reasons. And then some books come along and you're like, this is fun. And ⁓ and it's also it listeners know that I really dig on these sort of things that like just live everywhere and you just don't notice them until you notice them, and then you can't stop noticing them. And that is what we're gonna be talking about today. So we're we're talking with Michael Pollack, and Michael is A ⁓ professor of law and associate dean for faculty development at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. ⁓ And the Harvard University Press published his book, Sidewalk Nation: The Life and Law of America's Most Overlooked Resource. And you definitely will come away with a sense that this is the most overlooked resource if you read this book. It's a fun book. ⁓ I really commend ⁓ preservationists and people in the preservation community that we talk to to ⁓ pick this book up and read it. We'll put a link in the show notes because it really talks about something that ties everything together, but we so often overlook it. ⁓ but before we get into all of that and we dig into sidewalks, ⁓ we like to get to know the people that we're talking to. So, Michael, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? ⁓ Why why the law and then how on earth did the law lead you to sidewalks? Thanks, Nick. It's great to be here. ⁓ and I appreciate ⁓ all of the kind words in that very generous introduction. ⁓ so yeah, so I'm a law professor. I teach and write ⁓ primarily about property law, local governments, ⁓ constitutional law, and really what I'm trying to accomplish in my research is to better understand. ⁓ and and rethink sometimes how local institutions work among themselves and with other governments ⁓ to make decisions about how to regulate and structure our neighborhoods. So what I want to do is is get a better sense and help others to understand better how those processes and the laws that they generate, how they shape our ability to flourish as communities, to participate in our civil society. ⁓ to grow our local economies, whatever ⁓ your particular sets of goals might be. ⁓ it turns out that local government and local institutions, and particularly institutions of land use and property, ⁓ have a lot to to say about, have a lot to do with our abilities, our outcomes in all of these other areas of life and law and policy. And so you asked why, why and how sidewalks. So I I came to that as a sort of manifestation of this larger work, ⁓ really during the height of the pandemic. You know, I think like a lot of people, ⁓ I spent a lot of time walking around my my neighborhood in Brooklyn because that was what we did for for exercise, for mental health, for ⁓ you know, gathering with with friends, for engaging in in commerce at restaurants and bars and shops and things like that. and I really Noticed for the first time, ⁓ you know, just how activated and how essential this space was for so many different uses, ⁓ but also how much conflict there was between them. And, you know, in retrospect, that was a maybe specially salient moment for sidewalk life. But it turns out it's always been there. And like you were saying before, I just like most people was taking it for granted and and didn't really notice it. ⁓ but now that I have, like you said, I can't stop seeing it. And ⁓ you know, there are so many connections between uses, between, as I was saying before, implications for other parts of our lives, other parts of law and policy. ⁓ so I wrote the book to bring attention to all of that and to try to, you know, convince folks, whether it's, you know, residents and voters or ⁓ local officials, elected, appointed, career otherwise, right? Just bring attention to this and convince folks that this should be a priority. Number one. And number two, there are some things that we often do wrong in our law and policy about sidewalk management and sidewalk responsibility. And, you know, here are some ways we can we can change that and do better. Yeah, I mean, that all comes across. I mean, if if that was the goal, that's that's what you get in the book. ⁓ and it's and And I'm glad to hear that you the it was the law first and then then sidewalks. It wasn't you were a sidewalk guy and then you had to figure out how to how to jam that into the law. That would have been a little bit more challenging, I think. ⁓ so for people who were like, okay, well ⁓ I'm this sounds kinda cool. Like I mean I've I've had the chance to read it, but and we're not gonna ask you to summarize the whole thing, but like what's the what what's your How how did you structure the book and and how did you kind of decide how you're gonna do this? Cause sidewalks like it's at once, it's it's it's like one of these things that is just kind of everywhere. Like it's at once ever present, but then it also if you were to sit down and say, I'm gonna write a book about sidewalks, some people would be like, That sounds like a book about paint. But I mean, there could be an amazing book about paint as well. So how do you how do you tell something that is ever present but also super complicated? You know, and most people in my life, when I told them about this plan, that is almost exactly what they said. and but here's the thing. ⁓ I vividly remember at that Thanksgiving a few years ago when I was just starting the book, I brought this up and I got that reaction. But after just about ⁓ maybe a minute, 90 seconds of you know, me sort of making my pitch about how important it is and how how interconnected all these uses are. Everyone at the table started to have their own thing, their own gripe about sidewalks, their own experience with ⁓ you know, something in their community or on their block, or there was this time that I tripped and fell, or there was this time that I wanted to do XYZ. And I realized all I needed was that 90 seconds. After that, people the the gears started to turn and people again had their their own ways of of entering this conversation. ⁓ Now, one of the things that came up a lot in these early conversations was isn't this just a thing in big cities like New York or Chicago, ⁓ you know, Boston or, you know, San Francisco, and and not not not really any place else. And that I didn't have a great answer to. And so ⁓ a big part of the book was trying to to sort of get a sense of what is the sidewalk like in Cities and towns all across the country. So the first half of the book is my ⁓ travelogue, my my attempt to do exactly that. I went to about a dozen or more, ⁓ little little over a dozen cities and towns in four different states: New York, ⁓ Texas, Louisiana, and Colorado, ⁓ to try to paint a portrait of the American sidewalk in all of its ⁓ diversity, but also, you know, to try to identify what might be in common or or or consistent across all of those all those cities and towns. And, you know, I went into this pretty blind, pretty open to finding whatever I would find. and through in you know a lot of interviews with officials and folks on the ground, my own observations and and travels, you know, what I discovered is, yeah, there there there certainly are differences, but there's a lot more that unites these cities and towns than than not. And sidewalks are A major part, or at the very least, could and should be a major part of daily life in pretty much everywhere, right? Even for example, Houston, which I picked as what is, you know, ostensibly like a mecca of car culture and car travel. ⁓ even Houston has a ton of well-developed sidewalk network. You know, there's not nearly as much use of those sidewalks as there is in a lot of other places. And I get into the book about why that might be. Yeah. You you kind of touch on there it it almost i in a in a weird way, and I don't I don't know if you'll agree with this, but it almost reminded me of Ezra Klein's abundance in some parts where I'm flattered by that. Thank you. Well, you're talking about like you're talking about ⁓ how Houston requires you to build sidewalks and Put all this money into sidewalks and there are like sidewalks that aren't even connected to anything that are just sort of like islands of sidewalks, which I guess is nice, but no one ever walks on them. And maybe the money should go into something else. I mean, Houston is this like I I wasn't surprised that you went there. you know, it seems like the obvious place to go to have this conversation about all the inconsistencies of sidewalks and walking in a place that is. Car culture driven. and they they get some right, and like all things in Houston, and they they they get some interesting things right, and then there's just some like obvious things that go terribly wrong with with sidewalks. Is is that one of the takeaways there where it's like don't require people to build sidewalks where people will never walk just because you should have a sidewalk? So, you know, look, I I I went into the project thinking. Okay, I'm gonna be, you know, sidewalk evangelist. That's gonna be my my new ⁓ alternative career. And that used to mean something else, but now evangelist for the sidewalk. Although there's a chapter on on free speech in the sidewalk and you know all all of the the evangelizing that can happen on it. ⁓ but yeah, I I I don't think that we should be just installing sidewalk without thought behind it. And really If there's one there okay, I was gonna say that if I was gonna say if there's one big takeaway, there's a few. There's there's quite a few takeaways, but yes. But but but one big takeaway in the book is that sidewalks are only as valuable as the network that connects them. Right. That a you know, random piece of sidewalk or even a random block of sidewalk is not that useful. And it it's only gonna serve very limited purposes and sometimes actually impose more cost than benefit, right? They're expensive to install and to maintain. They're also more impermeable surface. And so if you're especially in a city like Houston with ⁓ a lot of extreme weather, rain, and flooding concerns, you know, there's a real question whether it would be would be better if that space was just more grass, right? But if you are going to, and I think cities should, really step back and say, okay, what Kind of sidewalk network would best integrate this city, would best integrate these neighborhoods at least, would give people an opportunity to get from home to work to school to culture to commerce, ⁓ would enable commerce to play out and take place in the sidewalk, community gathering and life to take place. If there's demand for that, and turns out there often is, even in a place like Houston, That's a good thing. And cities should respond to that demand by planning and and taking responsibility for a complete network. The problem that I see all too often is, and this goes back to what you were saying before, a sort of no one's really paying attention. So we have this kind of ad hoc approach to installing them, maintaining them and whatnot. And you end up with an assortment of quality, of connectivity, and none of it's really. All that thought out. And I think that's the fundamental problem. If if it was thought out better, we would know better where it's worth spending the money to install it and where it maybe isn't, rather than sort of being on autopilot. And that was my my abundance piece, which is like it was it's well-meaning. Yeah. But and there's lots of well-meaning things that we do, but then they drive up the price of construction for you know, no gain or or little gain or and and we could be doing it smarter. I mean, we could be saying, and you you touch on this, I think, where it's like, okay, but maybe instead of building the sidewalk in front of your place, you just commit to a fund that helps take care of sidewalks where they're really needed, not in the middle of, you know, a sort of a a a sprawl, you know, landscape or something like that. So I mean obviously it's the travelogue and you talk about the issue of sidewalks and and you frame it in different ways in different communities. And we've kind touched on this where how how different communities deal with it. And then you talk about and touch on different issues. You talk about preservation, you talk about free speech, you talk about businesses and ⁓ you know, people not wanting sidewalks because it'll connect them to the ills of an urban area or something like that. ⁓ mean and and it's I was I was saying to Michael before we hit record, like it's a very readable book. It's there's there's some humor in it, there's some funny parts. ⁓ it's it's not written like a like a general book that you would pick up from an academic. ⁓ so I I I enjoyed it and I think that it's it's very approachable because of that. I wanna just get into a couple of questions. I mean, to sort of like not so much rapid fire, but just some of these topics that pop up that I think are I wanted to pick at a little bit and and talk to the author when I was reading it. Like, and you're particularly ⁓ well prepared for the for this one question, which is like the legal question, which is you you touch on this and and this comes up very I think almost like in the first chapter or something about how, and it makes sense given your background that ⁓ a a lot, most, maybe most sidewalks in America are technically like private property. But they're private property that is required to be maintained, but for a public right away. I mean, it is this weird tangled web. Where does that come from? Like, where in American jurisprudence do we get the you own it, but you have to take care of it for the public? We don't have that in a lot of other parts of American law. Like, where where does that come from? Why is it developed the way that it is? We actually don't really have this in any other part of American law. So All right, there you go. I'm not an attorney and I even caught that. So okay. So so right. So in some places, whether it's some municipalities or just, you know, particular property spaces, ⁓ the property line actually ends before you even get to the sidewalk. It ends at the front of a building or at the edge of a lawn. And so in those places, the sidewalk is public. property, genuinely public property, no different than the road. In other places, as you were saying, yes, the sidewalk might be inside of the private property line, but the public has what is called an easement, a right of access to that space. And so from the public's perspective, it doesn't really matter. No one really notices if they're if the sidewalk they happen to be walking on is one of the public property ones or one of the private property Plus public easement ones. It's the same experience. Now you might think, ⁓ but there's going to be a difference from the owner's perspective, right? When it is public property, the government, the public, takes care of that sidewalk. When it's private property, the property owner takes care of that sidewalk. Well, first of all, that wouldn't actually be the property law answer if this were anything other than a sidewalk. So the property law answer is that when you have Private property, and somebody else, whether it's another individual or the general public, has an easement to access that property. The obligation to maintain that access, to, you know, take care of the land where that access is, that's on the person holding the easement, not the property owner. So in this case, that would also be the public. So as a matter of sort of basic first-year law school property law, ⁓ The sidewalk ought to be cared for. The responsibility to care for it ought to be the public's, whether it's on public land or private land. And yet we do the exact opposite on both scores. It's a private responsibility, as you were saying, not universally, but in many cities and towns across the country. It is a private responsibility to maintain the sidewalk, fix it when it cracks or buckles. ⁓ Clear snow and ice and litter off of it, even install it. And that's what we were talking about before about these sort of owner obligations in Houston, for example, to ⁓ install patches of sidewalk ⁓ when they redevelop their property. So we have this arrangement that dominates across the country that requires ⁓ private individuals to pay to care for property they don't even own or aren't even or shouldn't even be responsible for. As a matter of basic property law. And yet we don't do this with other public space. Parks, roads, those are t you know, cared for by the government with our general tax revenue. ⁓ but sidewalks, we we often do this other thing. And your question of where does this come from? My answer is nowhere good, nowhere, nowhere that's going to be con convincing to you. ⁓ it's ⁓ historical anachronism. It's it's an artifact of Centuries ago, and we've had sidewalks for a very, very long time, where A, governments were pretty limited in their capacity. And so it was, you know, easy and and common to try to offload ⁓ responsibilities onto private hands. And this one at the time made some sense because sidewalks were really then not a huge network, a mode of transportation. It was more an amenity for. This particular home or business, right? It was sort of like a a place for where folks would hitch up their horse, then they could get off the horse and not stand in the muck in the gutter, but stand on the slightly elevated sidewalk out of the, you know, horse waste and cholera that might be, you know, surging past in the in the gutter. And so when it was viewed as this sort of feature of the that piece of private property, okay, it makes some sense that the property owner. takes care of it, installs it, maintains it, and what have you. It's just that that's not our world anymore. The the the actual uses of sidewalks, the expectations of the public and of property owners bear almost no relationship to that world. And the law, you know, generally doesn't doesn't treat ⁓ public property in this way. So the conflict between How the law operates today and what our expectations are today, on the one hand, and what our expectations used to be, and you know, the sort of holdover from that time on the other, that's I think where a lot of misunderstanding arises. And frankly, I think a lot of well-placed frustration arises. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely the frustration. I mean, and then we didn't even really touch on like the tort side of it, where then if you get hurt on it. It's still the in many cases, still the private property owner's problem, even though they're on a public easement, ⁓ which seems like almost doubly unfair. And and then I'm familiar in in Maryland when some communities where the property line actually goes to the center of the street. That's right. And which I think is hilarious in that no one would ever expect the property owner to maintain the street. ⁓ but then like does that suggest you could you if and then your neighbor across the street get together, can you put a toll up? Like, you know, I mean. ⁓ the the the public easement guarantees the right of free access in the same way that I can't put a toll on the sidewalk. Right. However, right, because people have this obligation to maintain the sidewalk, it's not uncommon for people to feel some sense of territoriality, some sense of a claim over that space. And they sometimes try to control what happens there or who goes there. And, you know, they're not allowed to do that. But it's a little understandable, right? The the mismatch between, you know, we have all the all the all the obligations of ownership, but none of the benefits of ownership. Right. Right. And that's I mean, that's that's never more present in than in Baltimore after a snowstorm where the the chair comes out to save the To save the parking place that you've shoveled out. And shoveling is a part that you bring up as well. did you find anything in the research that suggests when we decided to start shoveling and plowing, I guess I should really say, streets, we were like, very important for cars. If you have to walk, I'm I'm sorry, that's just not our issue. That is basically the attitude, right? Very important for cars. We gotta get the plows out to clear that. And look, I agree with that. I'm I'm I'm not suggesting otherwise. ⁓ but the pedestrians, afterthought, right? And, you know, look, I'll I'll I'll I'll try to give the best justification I can ⁓ for it, which is Clearing the snow, if the government were to do it all on the sidewalk, costs money. And there are all of these homeowners and business owners who are right there. They, for the cost of a shovel ⁓ and some time, they can clear out that space pretty quickly, whereas it might take some time for the government sidewalk plow to get there. ⁓ that's the argument. It's it's From the government's perspective, certainly it's easier to impose this burden on others. It's cheaper. And, you know, maybe for a long period of time at least, it was faster or more efficient that way. I'm not sure that that's true anymore. You know, first of all, you've got folks with disabilities, older folks, ⁓ folks with health problems who just might not be able to do the sidewalk shoveling job themselves. Folks with fewer resources who can't afford to pay somebody else to do it for them. People who are on vacation or out of town and they're not around to to clear the snow. They don't know the blizzard has happened. ⁓ so there are, and as you were saying, if you walk around Baltimore after a snowstorm, New York City after a snowstorm, the consistency in sort of snow snow removal is lacking. ⁓ there are there are places where, you know, pr ⁓ a particular property owner has done a good job. And then the next property owner has done Either no job or a much worse job. And for folks who are relatively able-bodied and mobile, it's an annoyance, but it's not so terrible, right? You know, you put on some boots and you you figure it out. The problem is that for people with mobility limitations, with disabilities, older folks, really young folks, you know, toddlers, that is not really so doable. ⁓ A a whole block of sidewalk, ⁓ this goes to my point earlier about the network, the whole block becomes useless, inaccessible, if even just one piece of the sidewalk is not safe, full of snow, full of ice, and what have you. And so we've really, I think the the policy choice we've made so consistently ⁓ assumes a certain level of this is what's gonna happen. On the sidewalk, people are going to just manage to deal with it. And if they can't, and this goes to what you were saying earlier, that's okay, right? It's it's not essential in the way that roads are. ⁓ but that's really just not true, especially in big cities. But as I talk about in the book, it's especially untrue in poorer neighborhoods where folks are more reliant on walking and on public transportation to get to where they're going. You know, rates of car ownership are substantially lower in poorer neighborhoods. They're three times lower nationwide in communities of color than in white communities. ⁓ in these communities, sidewalk access is essential. It is not the afterthought after we've dealt with the roads. It is as important or more important than the roads, but we treat it quite differently. So given all that. And I mean, you know, you you travel around and you see different examples and maybe we'll talk about a few of those. ⁓ and things that are working well, things that aren't working well, sort of the the innovation of the sidewalk world. ⁓ but ⁓ w why is there such a missing const constituency? So like, you know, what what occurred to me is I'm like, there's like a national organization for everything. And maybe I'm missing something, but I I'm, you know, I'm not like familiar with like sidewalk America, you know, like what it w why something that is in front of almost mo not everyone, but but many, many, many the the plurality probably of American homes has a sidewalk in front of it. why don't we have a a a national constituency for this or even just local constituencies for this? It just seems like it just kind of languishes until it becomes a problem. It's a great question. And I think that's that that is what tends to happen. It people only notice it when it's a problem. There are local constituencies for this. ⁓ you know, I I interview some of them in the book. You know, it's groups of parents, groups of homeowners. ⁓ and there are a lot of local officials who are attuned to these problems. You know, they we can talk more about this later too. They're they're there are obstacles to their being able to sort of make effective change that's Part of what I write about in the book, what those obstacles are and how we might we might get past them. ⁓ and there's some ⁓ state and national, you know, advocacy. I I did a webinar a few weeks ago for an organization called America Walks. I've heard of them. I have heard of them. So this is there, but you're absolutely right. Compared to the the constituencies behind car-oriented development or even bike-oriented development, ⁓ sidewalks are a distant Third, fourth, fifth. And, you know, I would love to see that change. Why I why is it that way? I think for a lot of people, the sidewalk is viewed as something that they can sort of take or leave. That ⁓ their primary mode of transportation is something they're going to do in the road, whether that's a bike or a car. And, you know, we've all we've all taken walks in communities or on blocks that don't have sidewalks, and you just sort of Figure it out. You walk in the in the shoulder, maybe on the grass, maybe you're actually on someone's front lawn for a part of your walk, right? I think for a lot of people it's just, yeah, I'll I'll figure it out. I'll I'll deal. ⁓ and if you live in a quiet block, you can probably just walk in the street and it's unlikely that, you know, a lot of car traffic is gonna come come past you. ⁓ the problem is that that's not true about everybody, and it's not actually that safe, even for the folks who can make it work. and I guess even if put aside the quiet residential neighborhood, whereas I was saying before, I'm not saying there needs to be a sidewalk everywhere. ⁓ all of the the downtowns, right? In a big city, that's a big part of ⁓ of a city. Even small suburbs have a downtown. There's a a block or two, maybe more, where there's shops, where the school is, where the parks are. Right. You want to be able to have people get safely around those places. ⁓ one of the one of the bigger national sort of moves toward sidewalk infrastructure does have to do with schools, right? So there's been this right. The safe routes to school. Exactly. Right. So there that is a place where more attention and more funding has historically been been available. ⁓ so you know, I don't want to suggest that there's no attention going to this, but to the extent there it d there there isn't. It's because I think it's often viewed as an option rather than a requirement. And the ways that it can the ways that it does support our lives ⁓ get overlooked. And the ways that it could do it even better really get overlooked. And we often sort of fail to imagine them until they're there. You know, there's a a frequent joke among like walkability advocates like myself that Americans like to go on vacation. To very walkable communities, whether they're in, you know, historic parts of Europe, whether they're in Disney World, and they say, Well, gosh, this is great, but heaven forbid we have this back home, right? ⁓ when we could actually have this back home. And it turns out it would be nice. And as I was saying before, people, there is a lot of demand for it. Sometimes people don't know, can't imagine how it would work out in their particular community. ⁓ but I think that if we put our minds to it and most importantly our resources to it, we really can implement a lot of change in ways that are sort of context specific and and useful for the needs and preferences of that particular community. Yeah, I mean and and there's so many things that connect to this. I mean, it's it's obviously really important for for civic life. you know, the sort of the bowling alone argument that, you know, we're do we're doing ⁓ a lot more alone or, you know, singularly. and ⁓ if you don't have sidewalks to connect you, you don't I mean that's how I meet a lot of our neighbors is we go out for walks and we wave and then you start talking. And ⁓ you know, when you're out on the sidewalk, you see things and you you know what's going on in the community. And and it's ⁓ easier to be engaged in a community if you're out on the sidewalk. So ⁓ They're super important, I th I think, and and you make a compelling case for that. You you talked about, you know, obviously we encourage people to pick up the book. Again, we're talking about Sidewalk Nation, the life and law of America's most overlooked resource with author and Professor Michael Pollack. ⁓ I think that ⁓ you know, people can pick up the book and and read about the specific case studies. I'm curious about the commonalities of obstacles to that that you've identified, sort of the Small community Brooklyn, you know, you name it. Here's here's something that's an obstacle. And then maybe we can talk about some innovation and and fixes and and good things that you've seen. ⁓ but but what are what are what are those obstacles ⁓ that you're seeing across the board that just are pretty obvious? So one of them is this system of private responsibility. ⁓ you know, I think that that is Aside the snow removal part, you know, I'm I obviously think that we should ⁓ at least be moving toward more government responsibility for clearing snow off sidewalks, especially in you know, the most ⁓ com heavily trafficked corridors. But I'm I'm I'll I'll admit I'm a little bit ⁓ out on the on the fringes of sidewalk advocacy on that front. You radical, yeah. Yeah, exactly. ⁓ But when it comes to the maintenance, right, the the repairing of the sidewalk, the building of the sidewalk in the first place, that is where the private responsibility really is the most pernicious. As I was saying before, right, it is in poorer communities where folks are most reliant on sidewalks. And yet, under this system of private responsibility, they're least able to keep those sidewalks in great condition. And so There's this sort of adding insult to injury problem where you have those least able, those with the fewest resources available to maintain the space most reliant on them. And even in, you know, wealthier communities, you know, it's not to say that everyone's got a spare couple thousand dollars in the bank to spend on sidewalk repairs. And the thing is, it's not just when you, as the homeowner, feel like repairing the sidewalk. The city is going to tell you. It's your turn. The sidewalk we've now assessed is in a sufficiently bad condition that you need to now pay to r pay to repair it. And so it's the You talk about, I think in the book you call it like s the sidewalk with the the lottery. Sidewalk roulette, exactly. Sidewalk roulette. Yeah, yeah. Where it's like, well, maybe I won't get caught today. So and and you basically don't fix it until all right, all right, they're coming down hard on me. They're gonna find me if I don't do it. Now I'll do it. But you kind of let it go as far. And I mean, we all kind of do, right? Like, I mean, that's you know, that's just kind of how it works. You know, and so there you you end up with a lot of inconsistency in quality, in safety, and accessibility. and or just in the the existence of the network itself, right? If it's if it's not, this is back to our earlier discussion about Houston, if it's not a coordinated plan about where we're going to install sidewalks and how we're gonna roll them out, it's a sort of Haphazard patchwork that doesn't really get the job done. So I think that's one of the biggest obstacles is not having this be sufficiently centralized in the government's hands and purview. Now, that goes to the related problem, which is okay, if we did that, if we put this in government control, someone's got to pay for it still, right? Where's the money going to come from? and for a lot of property owners and taxpayers who don't. face the sidewalk roulette ball dropping on them anytime soon. ⁓ from their perspective, they might not even realize that this is currently a private responsibility. I think for a lot of folks it ends up being a surprise. Yeah. I I didn't know about it until I became a h a homeowner. And then I was like, I'm sorry, what? But what is what is that? But in that, in that sort of li not not knowing about it, it can feel like sidewalks are free right now. And if it became a government responsibility, well, they're gonna have to either raise my taxes or impose a fee or some other way of collecting the money. And that's that that now feels like a greater cost than Right. You tell I can't toll. So you know that's out. But but the reality is it's not free right now. It just means that maybe you haven't had to pay it yet. But someday you will, and it's gonna be a very big bill. Compared ⁓ with with that on the one hand, compared to Okay, instead, we all pay just a little bit every quarter in our taxes, in a sidewalk as ⁓ sidewalk improvement fee that some cities have been rolling out. ⁓ that is a easier sort of budgetary burden for the property owner, but it also enables us to more equitably do this work by pooling the money and then allowing the city to identify where things are in the worst condition. where the most work needs to be done and making priorities, not based on who's got the most resources, but where's the problem actually the worst? So I talk in the book about Ithaca in and Hudson in upstate New York, Denver and Colorado. ⁓ just a few years ago, voter referendum ⁓ changed to this system of government responsibility with a fee imposed on property owners. Lexington, Kentucky did it a few years ago as well. So this is the kind of move that I want to see more, more cities and towns make. ⁓ you know, and the politics of it are not always straightforward. But ⁓ as officials in those cities who I who have made the change and I that I interview in the book, you know, once you sort of explain to people what the status quo really is and how both financially and in terms of just their actual sidewalk experience, how bad it is for them right now, and how much better this way could be. ⁓ it turns out that people are supportive of it. And, you know, that's why these changes have gotten made. Yeah. And I mean, I think getting to the place where there's like a sort of a draft ordinance or something like that would probably be really helpful for communities. ⁓ because even when I was reading the one, I was like, I'm not sure I could explain this to like where I live. Like, you know, because like I mean, it made a lot of sense where it's like, okay, you get charge a certain amount if you're a commercial owner versus and if you have more sidewalk than somebody else, you pay a percentage of the and I'm like, ⁓ boy. You know, like I think it just depends on the community. But I think having something that because oftentimes surprisingly, and you maybe you've seen this, so many of our municipalities kind of operate in isolation from each other. I mean maybe there's some type of municipal league in the in the state or or otherwise, but So many of them feel like they have to reinvent the wheel every time they come up with a new piece of policy. ⁓ and that's why I mean I think things like this are really good, not just for preservationists like the folks that we talk to, but ⁓ for planners and municipal leaders to be reading books like this just to see like, okay, we're not alone. This is a problem. Everybody has this problem. Now, in some communities, you touch on this obstacle of like who has who has the rights to the space itself? Like When it comes to COVID, obviously we were living a lot of our life on the sidewalks and ⁓ some somewhat famously or infamously, New York City had, you know, we went from eating in a restaurant to eating on the sidewalk open air to, well, now we're gonna build a hut. Now we're gonna build sort of and then that becomes sort of like they they're get they got dangerous. I mean, they were like little, little, I don't wanna say death traps, but they, you know, they were sort of these unregulated two by four huts. ⁓ and and you talk about that, but that sort of sets up this question of like who has the ability to use these spaces? And you want an activated downtown. Where do you see the future of that playing out? So that's the other, I think, big structural obstacle to effective sidewalk management is the functions that cities have right now, which again are not often the maintenance functions, but the enforcement functions ⁓ and the permitting functions, whether it's ⁓ DOT, department of whatever your the name might be in a given city, you know, consumer affairs or whatnot that might license these restaurants or shops, ⁓ departments of buildings, sanitations, environmental protection, police, fire, mental health and hygiene, homeless services, you know, there there's this array, this alphabet soup of agencies, especially in big cities that have a sort of complex bureaucracy. And all of those agencies have some regulatory authority over the sidewalk. And that fragmentation of responsibility across all those different agencies leads to two problems. One of them is sort of duplicative or or overlapping responsibility, where they might not be coordinating so well, they might be making inconsistent decisions, allowing the restaurant to operate, but also Authorizing some scaffolding to be put over that exact restaurant space. So you have the sort of inconsistency risk on the one hand. The other is just gaps, right? It's with when you have so many people, no one's really paying attention to the whole thing. And that you know need to step back and take a wide-angle view of the whole space, all of the uses that are happening on it, all of the needs that might be. Sort of implicated in a given block or a given community, and saying, okay, how do we structure this from a regulatory perspective, not just a physical perspective? How do we structure this in a way that is coherent, legible for folks? ⁓ you know, straightforward set of permitting requirements for businesses and property owners and all the other uses, but also that can coordinate and make sure that everything that's happening there works together to activate the space. Rather than risk sort of cannibalizing each other and degrade the quality of the space. And I think the latter is too often where we end up, espe again, especially in in big cities. And so I argue in the book for more consolidated and coordinated authority in what I call a department of sidewalks. And, you know, that's the other ⁓ radical thing that I that I have to to offer in the book. You know, I get a lot of pushback on this idea. ⁓ and so I think it's worth Noting, first of all, I'm not suggesting adding to our bureaucracy. Rather, I'm suggesting streamlining it, pulling out a bunch of different functions that are currently spread across all these agencies and giving them one consolidated regulatory home. ⁓ the other bit of pushback I often get is, okay, why the sidewalk as opposed to a sort of department of the public realm or department of streets, which would include sidewalks as well. Those are good too. Right. I they're all in the right direction of giving us more coordination, thinking bigger about each of these resources. The thing is, I think sidewalks are a unique space. ⁓ part of the reason why is this history of this private responsibility that we don't have in the others. The other is I think you can't, at least as far as I'm as I can tell, you can't tally up uses and find more in any other space than a sidewalk. Right. Ro streets, parks, there's a lot of uses of all those spaces. I think they all pale in comparison to just how many uses sidewalks can serve and and do, at least in some communities. And so in some places, yeah, department of sidewalks might not be the right approach. It might actually be something more like a department of streets or the public realm. A lot of smaller cities, you know, because their government and their jurisdiction is smaller to begin with. And I write about some of these in the book, they're kind of already there, right? They have a city manager and a department of ⁓ you know, public works official, and the two of them basically do it all, right? And those individuals are already kind of the department of sidewalks, as well as the other hats that they wear, and they they have that 360 view. I think it's really in the the bigger the city, the bigger the bureaucracy is, the more that what I'm talking about becomes an issue. ⁓ and that's where I think having a a centralized home for sidewalks where people can sort of point to that and say, Okay, if I need help, if I need if I have questions, I need a permit, that's where I go. If I have complaints, that's where I go, right? That that's who's accountable for this space. I think that would be really valuable. But, you know, there are lots of steps short of the Department of Sidewalks. All of them I think would be an improvement over where we are right now. Yeah, just being aware. of the issue is is one step. and you know, I even think sometimes like a simple thing is how often do local elected officials walk their sidewalks over the course of a year, could they walk all of those in their in their jurisdiction, in their district, whatever it might be, particularly at the local level. The great point. ⁓ because I I I don't see a lot of mine out on them. And I I know them all and I know the ones I like. I know the sidewalks I don't like, you know, like the ones I try and steer clear of. Yeah. So ⁓ yeah, the Sidewalk Improvement District was definitely ⁓ something that I think holds a lot of of interest and and and I don't know if that also pretends or or presents an opportunity for the son of kind of sprawl repair that we're gonna need to do as a country as well. You talk about people going to to Disney or they go to Europe and they're like, ⁓ I wish I could have this. And I mean you you could have this. but ⁓ that that's gonna take another level, but just having something that focuses on it. And I also think that what you're you're sort of advocating for, which other people have circled around and we've talked about this, is that as life has become more complex and there's more things all coming together in the public realm and the public space and we're expecting to be safe, but also don't want to be slowed down, we have to figure out how to balance those things. And I think taking that step back and thinking about what happens in a community and how the experience of someone trying to open a restaurant or trying to open a business or trying to build housing, what's the experience like for that person is I think really important. And I think that that's sort of a a broader, more universal takeaway from a book like this for me is like, okay, what is the experience like? If the homeowner has a problem with their sidewalk, who are they calling? Do they know how to do that? ⁓ and and how do how do we address that? How do we pay for it? All that kind of stuff. ⁓ I probably wouldn't be doing my job if we had you on PreserveCast and I didn't ask you about the preservation piece. You you've given the the preservationist a little bit of a ding. ⁓ in New Orleans, you suggest that we make it harder to to fix things. ⁓ you know, speak up for yourself here, Michael. Tell tell tell us what you really think. ⁓ are we, you know, and I and I I'm sort of joking, but like, ⁓ What can the preservation community do to be better partners of sidewalks? Cause I think about this a lot. I'm like, you know, in some ways, in some respects, sidewalks are the thing that knit together all the different historic places. So if we want people to go from one to the next and enjoy these places and use historic places to make life better, then maybe we should be right there championing sidewalks and involved in sidewalk restoration and repair. ⁓ you know, But what's What's the obstacle? What are you seeing? And what can we do better? So one of the obstacles that I identify is less about the the individual landmark, but more the sort of landmark community or the historic preservation, you know, where where it's a a set of blocks. ⁓ right, because there you have I guess I'll break this into a couple of of components, right? One of them is where the Sidewalk is itself part of the landmark or part of the historic district. ⁓ that historic sidewalk is probably not ADA compliant, for example. ⁓ it's probably not as wide as it forget, you know, even putting the accessibility aside, not as wide as it probably needs to be for the demand on the space right now. So as you said, I write about this in the context of New Orleans and the French Quarter in particular, right, which has very old, very narrow sidewalks that are part of the landmark district. ⁓ but there's just way too many people to fit on those sidewalks and they're not ADA compliant generally. ⁓ and so that's a that's a problem, right? Where the the the the landmarking itself preserves a particular kind of sidewalk that is not necessarily what we need right now or what we might ⁓ what most people might benefit from right now. You know, I guess it it's that that p potential conflict between Preserving the historic sidewalk and preserving the history that you want the people to be able to get to and see, right? And those might be at cross purposes. The other is, and this is where it collides with the private responsibility problem that we already have, where a particular building is landmarked and the private property owner, you know, owns that landmark. In some communities, the law requires sidewalk restoration. when the parcel is redeveloped. But the landmarked parcel may never be redeveloped because it's landmarked. And so the sidewalk, that that trigger for sidewalk restoration never ends up happening. Right. Now that's that's a soluble problem. One way would just be to pull that responsibility out of the property owner and put it in the government where they'll restore and repair that sidewalk depending on its condition, regardless of whether the adjacent parcel is landmarked or not. ⁓ another could just be to alter that re that restoration trigger to be temporal rather than based on redevelopment of the parcel, right? Right. ⁓ so those are are easier to solve. I think the bigger issue is when you have a historic district and the sidewalk is part of that landmark, what do we do about that? Well, that's a great question. I don't have the answer to that. But ⁓ yeah, I mean it and it is something to think about. I mean, we we need to make sure that these places aren't captured in amber and that they're usable and they're walkable and they're livable. ⁓ at the same time, having been to a place like New Orleans, the sidewalks are kind of part of the experience. They're they are they are cool. And I if I remember correctly, some of them are flagstone and things like that and brick and all that kind of stuff. And that adds that that that Texture of course the experience adds something to it. So, but you're you're I I totally get that. I also, you know, made made me think when you said, you know, the trigger being redevelopment, and that's something that I think is unique in some cases to to that particular district. ⁓ but you also see that over on the sprawl repair side. Yes. ⁓ where okay, we're gonna put in this great new zoning code, maybe ⁓ form-based design code or something like that, and and design ⁓ And it's going to be sprawl repair and it's triggered once the, you know, fill-in-the-blank big box store decides to leave. And that may never happen or it might not happen for 30 years. And in the meantime, ⁓ you you have to walk across a, you know, a w ⁓ you know, a water retaining pond to in order to get to it. ⁓ so you know, it's that I I that that can't just be carried on on preservation shoulders. That's kind of across the board, this sort of like. We'll do things better in the future, but we don't want to require the current property owner to do anything better. ⁓ that's that's that's absolutely right. And again, it goes to my bigger point about the current property owner shouldn't have to do any of this, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. I mean, and I think that that is really a part of the answer. And also just kind of, you know, new sidewalk material and design and being able to, you know, I think part of the reason sidewalks look the way that they do, which I'm not saying they look bad or good, but is that If private property owners are going to be responsible for doing it, and this is ⁓ me editorializing a little bit, but I'm I'm curious. Maybe I'll I'll I'll rephrase it as a question. ⁓ is you know, do they look that way? Because that's just sort of like the absolute base minimum. That's the base model. I mean, y y yes and no. The the what when the property owner is sort of required to do the installation or the repair, they can't do whatever they want, right? There's a ⁓ limited menu of of options. Sometimes it's not, it's a menu of one, right? It's here's our contractor, here's what what they're going do. But you're right that we generally do opt for the sort of base model because even that's pretty expensive. And developing and installing sidewalks that have better drainage capabilities, for example, that have, you know, prettier or fancier materials, whether it's brick or flagstone, right? Those are more expensive. ⁓ I just want to add one thing to your point too about the the materials, right? Flagstone is pretty and and and and all of that and historic and gives a certain feel, but it's actually not great sidewalk building material. It's soft. And so so I write in the slick in the in when it's wet. It gets very slick when it's wet. I write about this in the context of Denver. ⁓ if you try to shovel it too aggressively, it will break pretty easily. And so a lot of the historic flagstone, the best way to clear snow is with like a brush roller. ⁓ because you'll sort of more more more gently brush the snow away. And so this goes back to my point too about sort of New Orleans sidewalks, right? What is pretty and maybe even historically accurate isn't always functional anymore. And I'm not saying it's an easy choice between the two of them, but there are trade-offs there. ⁓ you know, you talked about about New Orleans and you know the the the you know sidewalks being part of the experience, the historic sidewalks being cool and part of the experience. I agree with you. But that experience also includes really ⁓ bumpy terrain because of tree roots that have thrown a lot of the concrete pavers, not just a few inches out of alignment, but six, you know, 45 degrees out of alignment. ⁓ Where you have cracks that and and potholes in the sidewalk. And if you approach it with the physical ability or the attitude of this is part of the charm, yeah, it is quite charming. But it's also quite unsafe and quite inaccessible. And so again, I don't have an answer as to which should necessarily be the decisive factor, but It's important to recognize that it's not just about preservation, though that's one of many examples I I I discuss. There are trade-offs here. And ⁓ the the problem from overlooking sidewalks for so long is that we haven't really approached these as trade-offs. We've just sort of done things and the sidewalk consequences have not really factored into our calculus nearly as much as it should. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's a perfect place to kind of bring this to a conclusion and that like that that's what this book does, right? It's food for thought. It it makes you think about this issue. And and I hope the preservation community is thinking about it. I'm thinking about it a lot more. We've been talking about is there a way for us, we have a trades program, is there a way for us to be doing more around sidewalk repair as a component of trades? And ⁓ you know, I think that as you as we all approach projects, thinking about sidewalks is a vital component. of them and not just the last thing that we do ⁓ at the end. ⁓ is it's that would be that would be a C sh C shift and and and so would ⁓ public repair and sort of a common approach to how we do this to bring down the individual property owners sticker shock when ⁓ the roulette game ⁓ lands in the way you don't want it to. So ⁓ We will put a link in the show notes so people can pick up a copy of this. It's a great read ⁓ and kind of digs into something as we said that is is ever present, but is something not many of us think about, but we need to do more thinking about it. ⁓ what's next for you? What are what what are you what are you covering next? What's gonna come up at Thanksgiving this year? It's a great question. And I don't have a good answer. I got a few months, I guess, to figure it out. ⁓ you know, the obvious questions that come to me are what about at the international scale, right? This is a book about sidewalk nation, this one. ⁓ what are other countries doing and and what are sidewalks like? What are their laws laws and policies and approaches and what might we be able to learn from them? Yeah, I want to go on that road trip. Yeah. When you I guess that's a flight trip. A flight trip. Yeah. Bring me along. I'll be your I'll be your sidewalk walker ⁓ next to you. Well, we've been talking with Michael Pollack about his book, Sidewalk Nation, the life and law of America's most overlooked resource. Absolute pleasure. Read the book. ⁓ and whenever you write that next one we'll have you back. Thanks so much, Nick. Thanks for listening to PreserveCast. To dig deeper into this episode's story, head over to Preservcast.org for show notes and our collection of previous episodes. Don't forget to engage with this podcast by subscribing, commenting, and leaving a review. Follow along on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at PreserveCast for even more. PreserveCast is currently recorded in Walkersville, Maryland, and sponsored by the 1772 Foundation and powered by Preservation Maryland. Thanks for listening and keep on preserving.