This is deeply fascinating and I need to hear more about businesses and sidewalks!
Why are some houses in my neighborhood missing sidewalks? I thought all houses had to have them! This is an individual house level, there’s no hoa or the like.
Lots of times, it’s because the house is older than the rules. Other times it may be because of a variance granted to that property. Variances are really only supposed to be granted when meeting code is otherwise essentially impossible because of a unique physical characteristic of the site, but the Board of Adjustments (appointees who decide zoning variances for the city in many states) is made up of political appointees, and the reality is that if everyone likes Dave he gets what he wants even though he shouldn’t.
The area is old, and the houses weren’t here in the 70s (but were here by the 90s) so it feels like the rules should be 90s. But that’s my soup brain going everything should be around by the 90s, maybe.
I’ll blame it all on this mysterious Dave letting these people not have sidewalks when it would be really nice to have sidewalks all the way to the end of the fucking block so I can walk to my polling place without walking into the street.
This is deeply fascinating and I need to hear more about businesses and sidewalks!
Why are some houses in my neighborhood missing sidewalks? I thought all houses had to have them! This is an individual house level, there’s no hoa or the like.
Lots of times, it’s because the house is older than the rules. Other times it may be because of a variance granted to that property. Variances are really only supposed to be granted when meeting code is otherwise essentially impossible because of a unique physical characteristic of the site, but the Board of Adjustments (appointees who decide zoning variances for the city in many states) is made up of political appointees, and the reality is that if everyone likes Dave he gets what he wants even though he shouldn’t.
The area is old, and the houses weren’t here in the 70s (but were here by the 90s) so it feels like the rules should be 90s. But that’s my soup brain going everything should be around by the 90s, maybe.
I’ll blame it all on this mysterious Dave letting these people not have sidewalks when it would be really nice to have sidewalks all the way to the end of the fucking block so I can walk to my polling place without walking into the street.
Thank you!