United States Municipalities' Sidewalk Installation and Maintenance Policies and Practices

Database of text extracted from a publicly available documents related to sidewalk installation and maintenance policies and practices from 12 randomly selected U.S. municipalities. Documents with relevant information may have included the annual budget; design guidelines for streets and sidewalks; capital improvement plan or program; general ordinance code; local improvement district documentation; plan; program; public works standards or specifications; subdivision regulations; and zoning ordinance or code. The stratified random sample of 12 municipalities was drawn from the four Census regions (Northeast, Midwest, West, South) and three population sizes (5,000-49,999; 50,000-199,999; ≥200,000). Population size stratification was based on Census Bureau definitions for urban areas as well as further classification used by the Federal Highway Administration (5,000-49,999 (small urban area); 50,000-199,999 (urban area); ≥200,000 (large urban area)). Each source document was subjected to separate searches for the terms “sidewalk”, “walkway”, and “pedestrian infrastructure”, and all resulting text was reviewed. If a local ordinance stated that a state statute was “adopted by reference”, the local document was coded as the source and relevant text was extracted from the state statute. Relevant text was copied into a REDCap data collection form. The extracted data for each municipality was used to complete two data collection forms, New Construction and Repair/Replacement. Specific evidence was required for any response other than “Unspecified”. The response “Other” required a description in all cases. Table 1 presents a summary of the key constructs and response categories.