The Sidewalk Project
Pedestrian safety and accessibility in the Inland Empire: a project conducted in conjunction with California Humanities. The Sidewalk Project is an investigative documentary that focuses on sidewalk upkeep and accessibility concerns of three cities in the Inland Empire of Southern California: Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, and Fontana.
We ask our audience to consider how the cities selected are supplying safe and ADA-compliant sidewalks. We provide data assembled from a sampling of areas to create an assessment of what sidewalk safety and accessibility looks like in specific locations in each city to support the question asked, and leave the audience to answer for themselves.
The Sidewalk Project came to be when we asked ourselves a more broad question: What does accessibility look like in the IE? When we went out to find the answers, we developed the hypothesis that there may be a pattern with the conditions of sidewalks being neglected in lower-income neighborhoods and prioritized in higher-income neighborhoods, city administrative buildings, warehouses, and other places depending on the city. We decided to test the theory for ourselves by examining these cities firsthand to collect our data.
The data we collected, and the videos we recorded led us to create our Qualitative Sidewalk Assessment Score. This assessment compiles our individual ratings on the condition of the sidewalks we walked based on their overall aesthetics, safety and if they comply with ADA guidelines.
We believe that our findings will bring our audience to question the ways their cities may be lacking in accessibility to all, and what that may mean for them as residents of that city. We encourage our viewers to consider:
Whose responsibility is it, to make safe and accessible sidewalks available to all, regardless of income level or social circumstance?
