This is something I've been similarly realizing about the sidewalks in my neighborhood now that I have a baby I need to push around in a stroller. My neighborhood is kind of hipsterish and a lot of people think urban residential districts are good places to grow agriculture. They build these gigantic, unkempt gardens in their front yards (I call these people "front-yard farm fanciers" for this reason, because alliterations are allegedly always accurate).[0] At first, it was just annoying to have to step out into the street to get around fallen sunflower plants, or the clouds of insects that fruit and vegetable plants attract, because of course these sorts of people also don't believe in insecticides.
With a stroller, I'm less mobile than walking on my own, but I suspect I'm more mobile than a person in a wheelchair. There have been places that have been challenging for me. Telephone poles in the middle of the sidewalk, flanked on one side by cars and the other side with stratchy or thorny (or smelly! Flowers are sexual organs!) plants. The sidewalk is cut into two, 6-inch wide strips.
It makes me extremely self-conscious and anxious about my work in Virtual Reality and how I have absolutely zero realistic plan for accessibility yet. In a way, our current state of VR being very early is a good opportunity to really rethink accessibility and start taking a more serious, more pervasive approach to it. VR is itself an accessibility feature, just much further on the "physically standard" end of the spectrum than standard desktop computers. I've been trying to make a framework that makes gracefully degrading from full room-scale VR down all the way to mouse-and-keyboard/FPS-style play, or even touch-panned mobile work. But it's a lot of work and the night is dark and full of terrors.
[0] You can tell the people who are just starting out for the first time, when they have more than one tomato plant. One place had 10 tomato plants in their front yard. The only way to use that many tomatoes is to start a side business in canning tomato sauce!
I'd like to live in a neighborhood where my biggest obstacle on the sidewalk is a fallen sunflower plant, and not the pile of human excrement in the middle of the sidewalk, not the homeowner that decided as long as his car is not sticking out into the street, it's ok to park half in his driveway and half in the sidewalk, and that there's actually a complete sidewalk, it doesn't suddenly end for a block because for whatever reason, that undeveloped property was never required to build a sidewalk.
My parents grew a lot of tomatoes... I want to say we had at least 12 plants in a row in the garden - summer was tomato season, tomato sandwiches, fried green tomatoes, we shared and traded with neighbors for whatever was growing in their garden, and mom canned what we couldn't eat immediately so we had them all winter.
As a new parent, I'm surprised you're not more tolerant of these "save the world" hipsters since they are reducing their impact today to save the world for your child(ren).
We don't get human excrement, but we do get the dog variety, even though the city puts out bag dispensers everywhere. And yeah, we get all of those other things, too. Actually, I'm about half convinced there is one guy in our neighborhood who tore up the sidewalk in front of his house, extended his lawn, and just plain got away with it for 20 years.
You want to play farmer, there's plenty of farm land just outside of the city. Agriculture does not belong in urban centers for a reason. It's a public nuisance. These people also don't pick their plants on time, so the rotting vegetables attract insects and vermin from everywhere. There's a reason cities and farms are separated and it's not "cuz cars".
Hmm - regarding your comments on VR and accessibility - if something like this hasn't already been done: How about a wheelchair simulator app (experience the world - to an extent - as how someone confined to a chair might).
Trying to navigate a world not built for wheels. Or reaching things high on a shelf. Or navigating narrow corridors. Or simply trying to get up on the sidewalk (some of the transition "lips" from street level to sidewalk level are more than you'd think).
Such a simulation could also serve the practical purpose of seeing how to change things to better accommodate those in chairs...
Seriously - while spending a day in a chair doesn't begin to approach what these people experience in their day-to-day lives, it does give you a fresh look and experience that will change your perspective. At least, that's what I experienced.
With a stroller, I'm less mobile than walking on my own, but I suspect I'm more mobile than a person in a wheelchair. There have been places that have been challenging for me. Telephone poles in the middle of the sidewalk, flanked on one side by cars and the other side with stratchy or thorny (or smelly! Flowers are sexual organs!) plants. The sidewalk is cut into two, 6-inch wide strips.
It makes me extremely self-conscious and anxious about my work in Virtual Reality and how I have absolutely zero realistic plan for accessibility yet. In a way, our current state of VR being very early is a good opportunity to really rethink accessibility and start taking a more serious, more pervasive approach to it. VR is itself an accessibility feature, just much further on the "physically standard" end of the spectrum than standard desktop computers. I've been trying to make a framework that makes gracefully degrading from full room-scale VR down all the way to mouse-and-keyboard/FPS-style play, or even touch-panned mobile work. But it's a lot of work and the night is dark and full of terrors.
[0] You can tell the people who are just starting out for the first time, when they have more than one tomato plant. One place had 10 tomato plants in their front yard. The only way to use that many tomatoes is to start a side business in canning tomato sauce!