See Independence Boulevard, the ugliest street in North Carolina, from the safety of your car. Drive I-77, more exciting than Thunder Road, more dangerous than a day in Belgrade. There is perhaps nothing more important to a town than sidewalks. And for one obvious reason. They encourage walking.
Sidewalks downsize towns to human scale.
Automobiles are out of scale, not so much in size as in speed. Humans are made to walk, slowly, smelling the roses, as it were. When we walk we see things from a different perspective. Yards, homes, trees become visible which before, behind the glass windows of a car, were unseen. Landscapes change at five miles per hour, from blurs and glimpses to full scenes observed at length from several angles.