Great Cities Begin With Sidewalks | Bill Lindeke | TEDxMinneapolis

Re-thinking everyday sidewalks as the foundation of urbanism: how cities depend on sidewalks for public health, mobility, and urban design.
It's easy to overlook the sidewalk. But so much depends on how we design our sidewalks, streets, and intersections. From the freedom to get around, to safety and public health, to the rich potential of people-centered urban design, understanding how sidewalks shape our lives is the key to designing great cities.
Bill Lindeke, Ph.D., is an urban geographer and writer who focuses on how our environments shape our lives. He has been blogging about sidewalks and cities since 2005. Bill has taught at the University of Minnesota and Metro State University, blogs at Twin City Sidewalks and streets.mn, and is a member of the Saint Paul Planning Commission.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx

[@ottovonbisquick]

I've noticed sidewalks a lot more in the last couple of years since i've been using the train as my primary transport (over biking, on many days). One of the most galling things is something you touched on; when there's any kind of construction work, there's always re-routing and accommodation for cars, but almost never for pedestrians.
Cyclists can usually mingle with motor traffic when a bike lane is closed, but a sidewalk is never re-routed, just closed, and often without enough warning to avoid the problem.

[@tyegolden2472]

LOVE THIS!!! Thank you!!

[@ianrbuck]

When he said "pedestrians do things like cutting through the Burger King drive-through," I thought to myself, "last time I did that was the one at Robert and Cesar Chavez."
Turns out that is exactly the intersection he was leading up to discussing! 😆

[@etienneperreaultmandeville7246]

It's very interesting. I am currently doing an ethnographic project about panhandlers on the sidewalks. ITS NOT JUST MADE OF CONCRETE! We should had to the video that we need to take to account the homeless and panhandlers people that we encounter in everyday life on the sidewalk. The sidewalks are a kind of mirror of the relation of power between citizen and non-citizen. We can create beautiful sidewalks that are inviting, but inviting for who? For those 'citizens' who got resources to invest private spaces and use the sidewalks as a space of circulation? What about those who invest in this space for survival activity such as panhandlers? Does the revitalization of sidewalks contribute to the spatial exclusion of homeless and panhandlers, or inclusion?
In Montreal, where I am conducting the study, it's fascinating how there is a blend between the blasé attitude of passer-by in their own individualistic bubble air, with the indifference towards marginal people on the fringes of society AND breach of kindness and consideration that occur between panhandlers and passer-by. There is a mixture of retreatism, contempt and kindness, where the former is clearly more present.
The way someone occupies the sidewalk, like sitting on the sidewalk for panhandling informs us of different use of sidewalks that is not linked to the injunction of circulation and mobility in late modernity, but survival economic activity in a disparate and unequal society.
The vision that sidewalk's primary function is circulation leads to potential spatial exclusion because the panhandler behaves in a way that, under the law in Montreal, he is 'obstructing' the circulation like a telephone pole that we need to get around. The panhandler is like an object because it is more easier, under the law, to move between things and bodies vs social trajectories and status. So, I come back with my first thinking. We want to create inviting sidewalks for who?

[@jukio02]

I think we should kick all homeless people out of the country onto an isolated island. They are bad for society.

[@hopjeremy]

Love this!

[@loolee49]

The MOST important video in youtube!!!

[@jukio02]

Sidewalks may not sound fun or anything, but it's really important, because it gives people the ability to get around places.

[@MrPanetela]

before mankind arrived, animals ruled and
they constructed their own pathways for navigation.
However, as a citizen walking on sidewalks,
i can say that the very composition of a sidewalk
can also effect our feet and their impacts to the
rest of the body.
My neighborhood has an amazing amount
of sidewalks. They are like tree rings, some
sidewalks go back to the early 1900's. Then
there is the freshly lain sidewalks of just a few
years back. You can actually feel the
difference in the formulation used in
the sidewalks as you walk across them.
both in feel and sound.
In my neighborhood, likely in others as well,
it seems that individual slabs inclined towards different
directions. So in doing my daily constitutional,
i feel their tilts within my ankles.
And so, i think reexamining how animals create or
chose their paths, should be considered as well.
Sidewalks have multitudinous reasons for existing, besides just going from point A to point B.

[@birusan2262]

yay! Thanks for watching everyone! Please leave me some feedback if you think of any.

[@jesseflu]

Those bump-out markers though. I live half a block from them on 31st and Colfax. Sure, it prevents turning cars from noticing pedestrians but the stop signs are SO far back from the intersection that they completely ignore the crosswalk and stop right to the end of the markers. Still feels dangerous, if not more dangerous to cross streets with these as a pedestrian.

[@hadiwibisana5540]

Try sidewalks in jakarta indonesia pls

[@aidanyates8328]

First Llama

[@cosmothelion]

FIRRST