![]() First, we quantify the share of public space allotted to pedestrians versus cars, taking the measure of “arrogance of space” as defined by Colville-Andersen 22 to a city-wide level, and showing for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, on such a large scale how planning choices can leave pedestrians with less room to walk. We bridge the mentioned data gap by collecting comprehensive datasets of sidewalk and road infrastructure from ten world cities across three continents. In this work, we address the problems of space equity and traffic-restricted streets from the perspective of complex networks. So far, these interventions have been mostly local and manual, and have not directly benefited from a complex systems approach of treating urban sidewalks as a network, in part due to a generalized lack of publicly available data on sidewalk infrastructure worldwide. It is precisely on sidewalks that most cities have implemented ad hoc interventions (from temporary sidewalk widenings to complete pedestrianisation) to give pedestrians more space and to avoid large gatherings, measures which serve to provide people with a sense of relief –with evolutionary grounds 19– in terms of perceived risk 3, 20, 21. While the term “public space” may conjure up images of parks and greenways 18, we focus here on perhaps the most important –and surely the most overlooked– public space of all: the sidewalk. ![]() Should cities strive for distance goals (1, or 10, or 100 walkable kilometers)? Should they rather pay attention to routing and connectivity? Such a challenging shift in urban design calls for interdisciplinary efforts to understand how cities might be reformed efficiently and safely 17, towards a more sustainable future. Among those pushing for permanence, e.g., the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, there are common goals (sustainability, equitable space share, active mobility) but no clear city-level methodological guidelines. In this context, some cities are making Open Street programs permanent, but many others are not. ![]() Furthermore, the potential emergence of new strains and future epidemics (for which outdoor transmissibility is unpredictable) 15, 16 calls for better preparedness and planning. Many public transit systems have not recovered from the precipitous drop in ridership seen over the past year 12, 13, 14, while car use has remained steady, or is even expanding 13. Now, as vaccine-driven herd immunity presses ahead 11 in some countries, the long-term effects of the COVID-19 crisis on people’s daily habits remains unclear. It was at this point that cities world-wide took the opportunity presented by the pandemic to improve and expand pedestrian infrastructure 8, not only to help people comply with recommendations, but also to promote social benefits in terms of health, environmental sustainability, and economics that are associated with active forms of transportation 9, 10. City-dwellers had then to learn on-the-fly how to move around in the public space of the city, while at the same time keeping a distance of at least 1.5 m from their fellow citizens 5, 6, 7. By 2021, it has become clear that outdoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is rare 1, and yet a preceding lack of evidence, along with an exacerbated public risk perception based on uncertainty 2, 3, 4, resulted in outdoor physical distancing recommendations, which in turn placed more pressure on streets in general, and sidewalks in particular. The heuristic prevents the sidewalk connectivity breakdown, while preserving the road network’s functionality.Ĭalled variously “Open”, “Slow”, “Safe”, or “Shared” streets, the vision of limiting traffic on urban roadways to free up public space for pedestrians and cyclists clearly predates 2019-but the pandemic crisis has emboldened it decisively. Finally, we compare a no-intervention scenario with a shared-effort heuristic, in relation to the performance of sidewalk infrastructures to guarantee physical distancing. Next, we connect these geometries to build a sidewalk network –adjacent, but irreducible to the road network. Here, we leverage sidewalk data from ten cities in three continents, to first analyse the distribution of sidewalk and roadbed geometries, and find that cities present an unbalanced distribution of public space, favouring automobiles at the expense of pedestrians. So far, due to a scarcity of data and methodological shortcomings, these efforts have lacked the system-level view of treating sidewalks as a network. Cities world-wide have taken the opportunity presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to improve and expand pedestrian infrastructure, providing residents with a sense of relief and pursuing long-standing goals to decrease automobile dependence and increase walkability.
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