Where the Sidewalk Funding Ends
Homeowners Should Have Skin in the Game For Sidewalk Costs
In Eugene, the fact that property owners are directly responsible for the cost of building and maintaining sidewalks on their property can lead to difficulty figuring out ways to fairlymaintain this common good. Point and counterpoint from City Lab and the Urbanophile talk about the pros and cons of having the governments directly maintain sidewalks.
“One reason we get so much of it is that these suburban homeowners are able to push the cost of their infrastructure onto the “government”, which is to say somebody else. They can get other people and businesses in the community (or outside of it, in the form of state or federal aid) to subsidize things that benefit almost entirely just them or the residents of their particular subdivision. The best way to curb sprawl is to make these developments start internalizing their infrastructure cost. A lot of this has happened with requirements to developers to pay for a lot of infrastructure up front, impact fees, etc. But there’s more than can be done.”