Honestly, the sidewalk war being waged in Manor Park seems a tad ridonculous. Read MoreSome Manor Park residents don’t want them, but maybe these dissidents should take a different approach: that of the Kanata rebels of 1992.
Some Manor Park residents don’t want them, but maybe these dissidents should take a different approach: that of the Kanata rebels of 1992.
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Honestly, the sidewalk war being waged in Manor Park seems a tad ridonculous.
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For those who missed it, many residents in that area have banded together to oppose the city’s plans — part of its council-approved Transportation Master Plan — to add sidewalks to a half dozen residential streets when it digs them up to replace aging sewers and water mains. One resident has made and distributed lawn signs that read “NO SIDEWALKS” — subtitled, presumably in a nod to Joni Mitchell, “DON’T PAVE PARADISE.”
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At first glance, and even if you stare a little longer, opposition to sidewalks might well be the height of NIMFYism. Most neighbourhoods that don’t have them, I’d hazard a guess, would welcome them with the sort of joy normally reserved for functioning storm drains. After all, sidewalks separate pedestrians from motorists, youngsters from cars. Ideally, they should make everyone safer. What next? Outlaw crosswalks, fluoride and vaccines? While we’re at it, can we get leaded paint back?
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The Evening Citizen
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Among the arguments being advanced by the grassroots camp is that it has always been thusly, and thus there’s no need to change. If God wanted sidewalks in Manor Park, she would have put them there 75 years ago. Installing them now, they say, would cause some trees to be removed while altering the neighbourhood’s character, presumably not for the better. Save your sidewalk-constructing budget, they’re telling the city, for other, needier streets.
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At second glance (or perhaps this is still part of the first, longish glance), it’s remarkable that this is even a hill on which anyone would choose to pitch their encampments. Cuts to school funding, I’d understand. Proposals for a sixth bridge over the Ottawa River? Sure. But mobilizing to protect your long-held tradition of walking down the middle of the road sounds like something from a terrible Wes Anderson film. Will adding sidewalks really be such a betrayal of Manor Park’s Rockwellian landscape?
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That said, I do have a soft spot for dissidents, though I confess I’d have more sympathy for the sidewalk blockers if their issue was with the functioning and maintenance of Ottawa’s sidewalks overall, and not the idea of sidewalks specifically in their neighbourhood.
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For it’s undeniable that sidewalks, at least those in Ottawa — as I’ve increasingly discovered in recent years — are a young person’s game, despite the contention by Elizabeth Murphy, the city’s program manager of Transportation Engineering Services, that sidewalks promote “equitable mobility.”
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