As threatened long ago and alluded to again recently, I am starting a new recurring feature, the Hall of Shame. My original conception of it was to point out newly-laid sidewalk that was out of compliance with marking requirements, but I am going to broaden it to include anything sidewalk-related I feel like disapproving of.
Lansing is much better with sidewalks than Lansing Township. In fact, one way to tell that you have wandered out of Lansing proper is that the sidewalks have vanished from under your feet. Nevertheless, Lansing still leaves something to be desired, in that the city seems to think that only blocks (or sides of blocks) that have houses on them strictly need sidewalks. Side streets that only have driveways on them usually have no sidewalks. I assume they were just never built there. That doesn’t surprise me, even if I don’t like it. What did surprise me was discovering, now that the snow is off the neighborhood and I can see it properly, that the city has actually been removing sidewalks from depopulated blocks.
The first example I ran across was the southern end of South Hayford Avenue. I’m not sure when the sidewalk was removed but the earth underneath still looks pretty fresh, and a photo in the city’s property records seems to show the sidewalk still present in June 2020. I’m sorry I didn’t know this was going to happen so I could have catalogued all the doomed sidewalk stamps. Speaking of stamps, here is the last one on the west side of the block, a very worn Cantu & Sons.
There are two more sidewalk blocks past this one, and then it ends abruptly, presumably at the edge of the property. Beyond it is the muddy ghost of the old sidewalk.
The obvious rationale for the sidewalk’s removal is that all the houses that were south of here have been demolished. There is now an urban farm there on the right. Hayford has a heavy concentration of them, making the street look almost rural. So why do I disapprove of removing the no-longer-needed sidewalk?
Because I reject the idea that only houses need sidewalks. This is still a public street, and anyone ought to have the right to walk down it for exercise, to amuse their dog, to admire the urban farms that the city wants us to take pride in, or for any other harmless reason. Tear down the houses if you must, but there should still be a public right-of-way.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but removing the sidewalk strikes me as a gesture of subtle hostility toward the neighborhood. It is well known that the city would rather the Urbandale neighborhood not exist because of its susceptibility to floods and concentration of people of less means. Ever since the great Lansing flood of 1975, the city’s long-term plan for Urbandale has been to phase it out of existence, but efforts have been stepped up over the last decade or so. The city states that one of the goals of the Flood Mitigation Plan is to “keep neighborhoods strong and intact,” and yet it also states that “all property that is acquired is permanently deed restricted so that it cannot be developed again in the future.”
The city, the county, or the Garden Project own about half of the properties on the 700 block of Hayford. Most have been turned into farms or gardens, which is their favorite way of dealing with blight (although to my eyes it’s no more aesthetic to have a neighborhood full of sheds, barrels, and plastic-sheeted greenhouses than tired homes). A few are still standing, though that might mean they just haven’t gotten the funds for demolition yet, or maybe they’re waiting for the renters to move on voluntarily. Many properties eventually fall into the county’s Land Bank due to foreclosure. The city also has a program to buy properties directly, funded partly by a FEMA grant.
The east side of Hayford also has lost some of the end of its sidewalk. It’s a smaller amount, but more awkward, since it just cuts off after the last house’s front walk instead of continuing to the property line.
After taking these photos I walked to the end of Foster and found that it has even fewer remaining houses on its last block, and so an even larger amount of sidewalk has been recently removed.
