just a counter-point, if it is at all; I grew up in SoCal with poured sidewalks around the entire area. Nearly every single one of them was destroyed by nearby

just a counter-point, if it is at all; I grew up in SoCal with poured sidewalks around the entire area. Nearly every single one of them was destroyed by nearby trees or shrubbery extending their roots under the thing and cracked it up into a million pedestrian-tripping pieces. These sidewalks were from the 60s and 70s too -- thing is that they cracked 20-30 years ago and no one ever bothered to replace. The home owners i've spoken to that wish they could were confronted with the aspect of being forced to pay for their entire street lest they wish to pull permits to repair their small section. So you have this new problem with a liability tug-of-war between well-wishing civillians against the cost-saving municipalities, and to be clear this was more than one single municipality, i've seen it across SoCal. So, what i'm trying to get across is that there is a middle ground between 'needless replacement for the sake of generating work' and 'neglect', and neither China or the US has seemed to pin that middle down yet : but that needless replacement regime sure sounds nice as a pedestrian that just wants to use the goddamn sidewalk. I've seen busy-work before, that just doesn't strike me as that.