Almost like it would make sense to have at least legally separate pathways for motorized, less motorized (scooters, e-bikes), bicycles and pedestrians, because they are very different forms of transport.
My suburb had 2 very popular parks at either end -- as kids, we always walked or rode our bikes there... on the road since there were no sidewalks. Likewise when we went to a friends house we generally walked on the road (or cut through people's yards).
There are plenty of reasons to have sidewalks even if there's no commercial destination to get to, not everyone can drive everywhere they need to go. Of course, this was a time when kids were allowed some autonomy, nowadays maybe parents would drive us 2 blocks to the park.
The neighborhood still has no sidewalks, but I see speed bumps and "Slow down - watch for children signs", so seems that kids do still walk on the roadway and parents are worried for their safety.
I rode the school bus to school because the school was way too far to walk -- it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the school was only about half a mile away, but with no sidewalks, it wasn't realistically walkable despite the short distance. We spent more time waiting for the bus every morning than it would have taken to walk there.
At the time it seemed completely normal - why would anyone walk when they could drive!? But now I pay attention to walkability and bikeability and avoid driving when I can. (not just because it's good for the environment, but it's good for me too)
However, one thing I do remember was that there were absolutely no sidewalks, so for a lot of people it probably didn't seem walkable.
The only places I've seen without sidewalks would be clearly classified as "rural".
A much bigger issue is that you can't generally get to a store, across town, or to work on sidewalks.
http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/...
Plenty of suburbs have sidewalks.
I've been guests at a few different suburban neighborhoods in the US. I realize that some of these are so big and remote that it really is too far to walk to anything significant, but those I visited did have grocery stores and such within a walkeable distance, but that's not always the case, and still there's not much if any sidewalks. One did have sidewalks, but using it to get to stores was a detour compared to other roads. The other did not have any sidewalks. I walked anyway (didn't have a car) and I felt like people looked oddly at me for doing it.
In Norway, almost all suburban areas have wide sidewalks now, even if grocery stores and such are far away. Kids generally use sidewalks for biking, and many kids bike or walk to school, even for a mile or more (3 for my high school, although there was school bus that I used in winter). People take walks from just outside their house to.. wherever. There's usually some park or just a patch of woods within walking distance. Maybe a shared playground or soccer field for kids.
There are generally walking paths between houses at regular intervals, so houses don't act as impassable walls. If there are steep slopes and hills, there's often stairs you can walk down.
I'm really astonished that Americans don't do it the same way. My mother in law house could've been a 5 minute walk from a lovely beach and supermarkets and cafes if there was just a path/stair that went down a slope from their house between other properties. Instead it's a 30 minute+ walk, along a long and winding road with an extremely narrow sidewalk, where a 100m stretch of the road for some inexplicable reason is missing sidewalk altogether (if you ask for directions on Google Maps it'll avoid this stretch, which gives you a 1 hour walk instead)
Americans tend to have strange ideas about walking. If they think about it at all, they tend to think of it as something that's only done in extremis.
I've discovered, for example, that, when I travel for work, it's generally useless to ask hotel staff if they can recommend any restaurants "within walking distance" when I'm staying in a suburban area. They will always say that there aren't any. Even when there are several within 500 meters of the hotel.
When I am visiting the main office (also in a suburban area) I stay about 1.5km away from the building. I choose to walk to get between there and the hotel. It's a lovely walk, all sidewalks, through a quiet neighborhood. My colleagues consider this to be very peculiar behavior. If someone recognizes me while I'm on the sidewalk, they'll stop, express concern, and ask me if I need a ride, and I generally have to assure them multiple times that I'm OK and I just prefer to walk.
In my mind that means looking up to 1.5 km walk or 10 km of cycling really says more about me and you than it says about the distance. The world walking record is 175 km in 24 hours. Think about it, that is much more than a hundred times 1.5km. Someone some day cycled.... over 900 km in a day! Climbing Mount Everest is only 20 km but it takes 55 days!
You have to be in terrible shape to look up to 1.5 km.
Is that right? That's 685 days of continuous walking at the world record speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Transcendence_3100_Mile_R...
You have 52 days to do it. Record: 40 days 09:06:21 by Ashprihanal Pekka Aalto
There is recreational walking, but it can be odd. I have family members who live in areas without sidewalks, and they do regularly go for pleasure walks, but such outings tend to start with a car ride. Because the nearest place where space has been made for walking is several miles away.
Walking on country roads generally isn't pleasant. The roads are narrow, the traffic is fast, the drivers are discourteous and/or texting while driving, and the only place to put your feet where you're not in danger of being hit by a car is often a drainage ditch.
In the suburbs I grew up in, walking, especially to accomplish practical tasks like grocery shopping, was seen a signal that you were "on welfare" - which was code for poverty.
Meanwhile, people drove to fitness clubs to walking miles on treadmills while slurping energy drinks.
Where, in the movies?
If you're talking about Manhattan, NYC, that place is absolutely nothing like the rest of America, except maybe for a few other large cities' downtown areas (DC, Boston, Portland, etc). These few places have entirely different lifestyles from the rest of rural and suburban America, where cars reign supreme.
Hit by a car at 3pm, i.e. broad daylight. "Deputies ticketed Weaver for not being as far off the road as possible. The driver who hit him was not charged."
with my road bike (i.e. no suspension) i usually prefer the road over adjacent bike paths (which is legal in my country), as the roads are usually in better shape.
If you think that a sidewalk in a purely residential area only goes to nowhere, you spend way too much time looking at screens. Get out, meet, and spend some time with your neighbors.
Seriously, get out and meet your neighbors.
And then you could have second story pedestrian entrances to buildings, which already have elevators in them, so it wouldn't even be an issue for people who have trouble with stairs.
Plus, said catwalks need to be accessible, so how many elevators are you planning on putting in and maintaining now?
Pedestrian bridges flat-out suck. Better to get rid of as many vehicles as possible and slow the remaining ones waaaay the hell down so that people can walk along streets and across intersections safely.
If this idea were viable, someone somewhere in the world would have already done it. But the closest I can think of is Las Vegas, and that's only along one road, and it's not even a full pedestrian pathway but instead just some bridges over intersections, and those are primarily there to prevent drunks from getting run over by cars.
Hong Kong does this in the downtown area. It’s viable because of the very high population density and prevalence of foot traffic.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hong+kong+pedestrian+bridge&iax=im...
It works out great. Though admittedly it’s more of a workout than walking in flat Manhattan.
That's a several orders of magnitude difference between the capacity of the two systems.
Consider further coverage and commentary such as
https://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/streets-in-the-sky-the-...
https://failedarchitecture.com/the-downfall-of-londons-stree...
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/campaigns/notopi...
The closest thing I can think of is a series of connected pedestrian tunnels that you see in some Canadian cities like Montreal and Toronto. Those primarily exist for a different reason; winter is months-long and so cold that you don't want to step foot outside at all. Pedestrian bridges don't accomplish this goal.
For Minneapolis, the first segment was built in 1962. Segments are often retrofits, as many of the buildings predate there system.
Quite a few cities do do this (Florida, I'm looking at you!). It's a terrible design, might as well have a machine that punches all pedestrians in the face as they go by.
I assume it would cost more in building and maintenance costs than sidewalks.