You can just cross the street
Yeeeeeaaaah, that is exactly the issue here, no one ever does that just so they can walk on the sidewalk.
Quick test:
if someone want to go from house (a) to house (b), which path do you think they will use?
Answer:
Because they’re normal people and they’re already walking, crossing the road just to cross it again at destination is sort of redundant and take way more effort and risk than it should be(because car, fast or slow, still a threat to people crossing road), and people following the designated path by the developer is pretty sociopathically law abiding.
non-permeable
Permeable sidewalk exists. Even then, a 4 or 5 feet wide sidewalk have less impact than the asphalt. If that’s a big issue for you, then the street should be narrowed. And even if you want to retain the size of the street, i still see a tons of permeable surface, a sidewalk will have minimal impact.
decrease density
Density of what?
increase the city’s maintenance burden for no increase in utility or throughput?
It doesn’t increase the throughput and utility because based on this picture, the whole environment outside of the house is build for car, not human. And based on this picture, i can be certain that car is hoarding most of the city’s maintenance fund anyway, because maintaining road cost significantly more than maintaining pedestrian infrastructure. The burden are mostly caused by car infrastructure, while the earning from designing the area this way isn’t even enough to cover the maintenance. If maintenance cost is of concern, maybe build something human-scale?
aideservedthis