My previous comment had grammar issues and could have been hard to read so I’m reposting it with better grammar as to have a better explanation of my thoughts.
Sorry it took me a day to get back to you,
I think highway=pedestrian is better tagging since these features represent the areas of sidewalks so they are pedestrian areas and if one were to add a new pedestrian area in iD (or any other editor using the iD tagging schema) the tagging added would be area=yes and highway=pedestrian so that tag should stay. That’s why I didn’t change/remove the area:highway=pedestrian since the area*=* is technically correct so that’s why I feel it would be optimal to keep the tagging before this change. Though if you absolutely must, remove the highway:area=pedestrian and change it to area=yes.
Happy mapping 
