Sidewalks in Germany are mostly paved tiles

Sidewalks here in Germany seem to be mostly tiled concrete blocks.

In the states, they are mostly poured concrete.

Is this just a southern German thing?

Is there some reasoning for it? It seems like it would be a lot more work to put down.

I do like the blocks that let weeds grow so it looks grassy but you can still drive on it without trouble.

Makes them easier to take them up to add/fix/remove cables and pipes.
In the US Most major cities use huge underground conduits. It seems
like a much easier solution then breaking up and repouring concrete
every time, don't you think..

those are usually used where for access routes for the fire department so they can drive their fire trucks closer to apartment buildings.

Possibly one reason why they are called PAVEments here rather than sidewalks. Having said that, in the street I grew up in the Pavements were tarmac like the road, but with wee white stones in them.

It may be easier to pull paving up (rather than jackhammer the concrete) but I doubt it is easier to put them down (compared to repouring). And generally, I think they try to run cables next to sidewalks (in the grass) or across them, not under them. Laying all those blocks so precisely just seems quite difficult and time consuming. But I am obviously not well-versed in construction.

Ill think u`ll find most of Europe paves...

Laying the pavers back down can be done by 1-2 people in a few hours, no waiting for concrete to dry.


Nope.. Next time you see a sidewalk tore open, have a look.. They run everything, Gas,Water,Telephone, Glass Fiber, etc. etc.
under the sidewalks. The cables are usually in plastic conduit. Under the streets of cities like Munich are the Sewer lines. I
saw a TV show once where they were in Munich looking at the sewer lines, and there are some really big lines (4-5m wide/2-3m High)
If you want to see just how big they can get, SWM does a sewer tour during the Long Night Of the Museums event.. Sign-up fast as places are limited and go very quickly.

They've been digging up our street and it's a very fast process to get those tiles up and relay them, with surprisingly little extra material needed. Dig up tarmac or concrete and you can chuck away the old stuff and buy all new - more expensive probably.

Every town is different. Some of the sidewalks in my town are poured, some are cobblestones, some are blocks, and some are a combination. Maybe the blocks (and certainly the cobblestones) require a bit of artistry to lay, but it's not a bad thing to live in a place that actually places value on asthetics, instead of going for the cheapest option every time. And there's much less waste.

you cant put handprints in a paving slab

Communist!

Anyway, just wanted to nominate this thread as the strangest of the week. Of all the many differences between Europe and North America, the material used in pavement construction seems to me to be one of the less important ones.

Duh! So the protestors have something to pull up and throw at police! :-)

But you replied, so it must be somewhat important to you...

I prefer the look of all the pavers, stones, etc, but I was just thinking as I was watching the guy "build" our new street (with the open concrete blocks... don't know what they are called, specifically), that it's going to be a pain for my son to learn how to ride a bike on that. In that case, asphalt is preferable.

I was waiting for that.

Germans try to avoid sealing too much surface area as this creates all kind of ecological problems.

http://www.siegen.de/doc.cfm?seite=282&..._Versiegeln.pdf

Negative effects of sealing:

- Sealed surfaces cause urban areas to heat up during day time
- The air is more dry and dusty
- Rain cannot trickle away into the ground causing sinking ground water levels
- You need higher capacity drainage network and sewage plants since the natural filtering ability of the ground is not used anymore
- Most life forms die on sealed surfaces
- Sealed surfaces form a barrier which is hard to pass for many organisms

... and employs a lot more people to quarry and shape all those paving stones and mallet them into place one by one, as opposed to one guy standing there dumping cement into sidewalk forms.

Also, as an unintended consequence, in the US you get this, whilst in germany, you get this.

Wundervoll!

So what's wrong with employing people? As usual an American who thinks money is the only thing that matters. But of course I forgot, you and your country are so much better than anything over here, as you love telling us. Perhaps that's why you have no friends. (I can't be arsed to search for the thread where you said that, but you know which one it was).

As an unintended consequence do you think there's a guy going to the same trouble in My Lai?

I am so angry about all of this!

One of the benfits of the dreadful "socialist" communication between the utility people is that we get less streets ripped up becuase it is co-ordinated.
That's the price we have to pay that Munich City Council is "Anti-American".

You're the one reading nothing but negativity into my comment. I meant that a bit more TLC on placing the sidewalks in with paving stones may a bit more labor intensive, but yields better results than the quick-and-dirty method that ends up heaving out of place over time anyway.

The links were an attempt to be funny ... contrasting a frivolous use of US poured concrete sidewalks vs. that guy in Germany's amazing volunteer project.

I'm starting to think that perhaps I have no friends here because there are none to be had.

Concrete sidewalks also tend to crack and fall apart faster. With paving stones if something under them moves, so do they. There much more flexible that a huge sheet of concrete..

Yeah, there are some sidewalks that are poured concrete in Germany too, for example in my suburb of Munich (and in the suburb of Heidelberg I lived in as well) they are almost exclusively poured concrete, and often there are tears in the concrete, like from when the root's of trees break through.

Don't be so hard on yourself, expaticus. Allershausen's reply to your post was one of the dipshittier things I've read. Like many others, the target has been identified (anti-US), but the argumentative route to get there is convoluted. Such is life. If everyone were cool I'd just be managing friends on facebook all day. What a chore that would be.

I take some personal responsibility for that as a) I overestimate people being able to infer sarcasm/irony/deadpan from a mess of Arial 8 type and b) the fact that I can actually admit to being a complete dipshit from time to time myself.

Some people can like one's online persona all of the time, and all people can like one's online persona some of the time, but not all people can like one's online persona all of the time.

Yeah, well, we're all blockheads some of the time. And poured-concrete heads the rest.

How else could you play if-you-step-on-the-crack-you-will-be-eaten-by-a-monster on your way home?

Absolutely. The paving stones look nicer, too, IMHO, whether you're comparing them with a fresh new sheet of concrete or (certainly) one that's gotten cracked and pocked.

On a related note, boy do I hate looking at above-ground electricity and phone lines. Not something I really thought about before living in Munich, they just blended into the scenery, even in Colorado. But now I keep noticing them, and they're so ugly.

My missus is forever whingeing about the damage the pavers do to her heels; no such problems with poured concrete / tarmac pavements, apparently.

Just sayin'



K

Take her for a walk on some real cobblestone streets, she won't complain about paving stones then

Heidelberg has slowly begun replacing it with tiled/plated sidewalks. Wait 30,40 years and they'll be done with the whole city.
The concrete was the cheap method in the 60s-70s, for the most part, and nowadays only used anymore in places where it's difficult to lay tiles - in particular where there's a ton of roots, and you can't lay it any higher.

Funny thread. Especially as yesterday i was reading a thread somewhere else about comparing the sidewalk colouring between the Netherlands and Germany.

Just goes to show that August really is a slow news month.

Tell her to get tha clogs on and thee will be reet sparking on those cobs!
Sorry, slight northerner moment there.

That's quite alright. 'Appen.

K

Strangely enough I just noticed this morning that on Leo there is a German translation of Yorkshire 'appen as 'vielleicht' http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=wlq...arch=vielleicht
I like to imagine that there was a German dubbed version of classic Emerdale with Amos Brearley replying to Herr Wilks' "Es regnet heute" with "Na ja, vielleicht".
(I'm easily amused).