ease of passage

‘Stairs, to borrow an immortal phrase from Rodney Dangerfield, “get no respect.” ’   That’s how Bruce Zaretsky opened his August 2008 column in WaterShapes, then continued:  ‘[I]f my observations through the years tell me anything, the stairs set in far too many landscapes are strictly utilitarian objects – no more than a means of getting from one level of a space to another.  The only thought that seems to go into some of them has to do with avoiding trip hazards, which is important but hardly the most