Added note below on LA sidewalks.
I’m traveling, first in Las Vegas area, and now in Los Angeles area. Traveling to other places is a good reminder that Sacramento is not all that bad. There are worse places!
In Las Vegas, everyone drives everywhere. I observed a person jump in his Jeep, drive a half block to his mailbox, and drive back home. Walking to and from his front door, and to and from his mailbox (clustered mailbox), I saw no sign of disability. In fact, the prevalence of Jeeps is amazing. Every third suburban house has one. Cause you know, its wild out there. The number of them with dirt on the undercarriage, however, is infinitesimal. I see people leaving their house to drive and get coffee, and drive back home. Not as part of a chain of errands, but a drive just to get coffee, for no other purpose. Of course much of Las Vegas is so spread out, that it may to a long ways to a coffee shop (see coffee shops (tea) on the grid for a contrast). Every new development I saw is a gated community. I’m not aware of any being built or recently built that are anything but gated. Even the apartments are gated. People live in, and want to live in, a world where they don’t have to interact with other people, any more than absolutely necessary. They drive large vehicles with darkly tinted windows. They don’t know their neighbors, nor do they want to. The ‘living in a quiet neighborhood where you know your neighbors’ is a mythology perpetrated by people who want to defend their lifestyle, while preserving their isolation.
The worse thing about the neighborhood where my sister lives is the lack of any real shade. Though I celebrate the end of front yard lawns, trees seem to have been thrown out with the bathwater (‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’). Most front yards do not have trees at all, and the ones that do, they are mesquites and related trees, which are beautiful but provide almost no real shade. Except in the very oldest parts of the Las Vegas area, all sidewalks are attached, meaning no space for street trees. If they aren’t on private property, they pretty much don’t exist. Of course that doesn’t matter, because no one walks, so there is no need for shade. Not quite true. Everyone has a dog, or multiple dogs, and takes their dog for a 10-minute walk every day so they can leave their dog waste in someone else’s front yard. If you haven’t spent time in the Las Vegas area, it is always at least 5 degrees hotter than Sacramento, and up to 20 degrees hotter. It is a place that could really benefit from sidewalk shade, but doesn’t have it. Wait, I haven’t been fair. There are palm trees, everywhere. Shade? Nope. Wildlife value? Nope. Aesthetics? Nope.
There are a lot of bicycle riders in southern Nevada. They drive to the paved trails and to unpaved trails at the edge of the city. They don’t ride in the city.
Now I’m in Los Angeles. I have to say that people are much more friendly here. Complete strangers will start up conversations. And you do see a lot more people walking. There are sidewalks on every street. However, except along the main arterial roads, every block has a major issue the sidewalk, often root heaves that make the sidewalk impassible to people with mobility devices, and sometime even to abled walkers. If not root heaves, then there is just deterioration, big cracks and gaps. Bike lanes are scarce in the City of Los Angeles and unincorporated areas of the county. A few of the cities have really put in bike facilities, but in general, they just don’t exist. Because most of Los Angeles is on a grid, there are often lower speed, lower volume parallel streets to ride, but don’t bother with the major streets, or trying to get somewhere quickly.
I have been walking around Koreatown this afternoon, refreshing my memory and experience of the sidewalks. It is nearly impossible to walk a block, on any street except the arterial roadways, without running into a sidewalk issue that would make it difficult or impossible for someone in a wheelchair to navigate. The reason root heaves are so prevalent here is that the sidewalk buffers are only three feet, except in richer neighborhoods. Even Sacramento has six feet or more for sidewalk buffers (where they exist). So every tree that is older has root heaved the sidewalk (photo below). If it isn’t a root heave or deterioration, then a motor vehicle is parked across the sidewalk, blocking it. In several miles of walking, I have yet to see anyone using a mobility device, except in the grocery store. Are they staying home? Are they driving? Are they using transit? They aren’t rolling on the sidewalks!
I know I complain often about the built environment in Sacramento, and the very slow progress in correcting the mistakes and disinvestment of the past. All of that is true. But…
Sacramento has a great tree canopy in much of the city, and where it does not, everyone recognizes that there is a problem and I believe the city is making an honest effort to correct that (though handicapped by the same issue that lower income neighborhoods were built with attached sidewalks (no sidewalk buffer for trees). Though there are some areas of gated communities, they are mostly in the county, not the city. Other than our governor, most people don’t live behind gates. It seems to me that there is nowhere near as much dislike of other people as is present in southern Nevada.
The central city has good bike facilities, and relatively polite drivers, at least for bicyclists (not walkers), and is flat. Flat. And the central city is getting better, and work is or will be done on some of the arterial roads in the suburbs, though it is many years late and many dollars short. But it is happening.
I really like living in Sacramento. Of course I go to the bay area frequently, and it in most ways does not compare well with that. But it certainly compares well with Los Angeles, and Las Vegas area. Las Vegas is really just a suburb of LA anyway. 75% of the people came from LA, and the rest from Utah. But every place has its challenges, and I know my perception is just one of many.
How about you?