9 ms·

Debunking the Cul-de-Sac

92 points by misnamed 10y ago

jnordwick 10y ago
Did I miss something? I don't see anywhere where it "debunks" anything. It has some talk about traffic accidents when you travel outside of a cul-de-sac, but doesn't talk about the increased safety inside (especially for say children who play in the area), doesn't talk about crime rates, or any of the reasons people move into suburban areas. It throws in some off the cuff comment about being more connected, but doesn't say why that would be true in a more densely populated grid layout (as opposed to knowing your neighbor more in the the suburbs). The article seems really poor actually, rushed to meet a deadline.
- matthewowen 10y ago
  Those are fair comments about this article. If you're generally interested in answers to the questions you raise, you might enjoy reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/067974195X https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0...)
- twelvechairs 10y ago
  Also 'paid by the word journalism' - so many words such little content. Not sure why citylab is so heavily linked on hn. There are better urban development sites to read. Just today marketurbanism.com had a great article on Houstons alternatives to simple zoning. A really important contemporary example on a really important current issue
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Suburbs full of cul-de-sacs are terrible places to grow up for children after the age of about 6. They’re invariably designed to be incredibly pedestrian-hostile, and usually also bicycle-hostile, so if you don’t drive a car, you either need to have your parents drive you everywhere, or you need to have every possible destination within a couple blocks. Such an environment is stifling of children’s independence and community interaction.
  - joelmichael 10y ago
    When I was a kid I rode a bicycle.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      I think the difference is, in a suburb a kid can safely ride a bicycle. That's great, if your goal is to ride. If your goal is to go to somewhere specific (movie theater? soccer game? swimming pool?), kid probably needs a ride in a car, because those places aren't within biking distance for a kid.
- danans 10y ago
  > doesn't talk about crime rates While the article may have issues, I've not seen a compelling argument explaining lower suburban crime rates by their lower density instead of the huge unaddressed socioeconomic problems that in part drove suburbanization.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    Yeah, suburbanization is a symptom of a failure of the social contract - people fleeing from terrible schools, crime, racial division, etc. "A nice place to raise children" is a fairly transparent way of saying "a neighborhood with no black people," and they're not wrong: due to structural racism and America's unwillingness to deal with it's core issues, the white middle class really doesn't have another choice. Are you going to pay 1 million+ to live on the Upper East Side, which has good schools? You can't afford that on 75k a year. You're going to move to PA and talk about how it's "for the yard."
    - ravenstine 10y ago
      Here we go again. When you say things like that, a casual reader might think you're implying that there are next to no middle class black people or, worse, that people are intentionally avoiding black people and not typical inner city crime. A neighborhood with no black people? Bollocks. Unless you can demonstrate struck Ural racism, as opposed to just stating it, your entire second paragraph seems specious.
      - ravenstine 10y ago
        *structural
lgunsch 10y ago
I live in Edmonton, AB, and it somewhat follows a grid system. Although, a bunch of newer nieghborhoods have not continued to follow it. The roads all have numbers in a predictable pattern. This is very helpful for navigation, as just giving someone an address means they will probably be able to find it without consulting a map. Named streets automatically imply that I cannot find an address at all without a map. You can't even find out which general direction would be correct.
- schwap 10y ago
  I was going to say: "But what about the quadrant system?" until I took a look and saw that apparently all of Edmonton is in the NW quadrant. That's some great city planning.
  - lgunsch 10y ago
    When you get/send mail the NW is implied if you leave it off, although there are small brand new nieghborhoods in the SW quadrant now that the city is running out of room.
- JoelBennett 10y ago
  Worse yet - go to Calgary where they've named all the roads in a given neighborhood with the same name. E.g.: Eversyde Blvd, Eversyde Cir, Eversyde Manor, Eversyde St. It's insanity. (Lived in Edmonton, Calgary, and now Lethbridge. Always fun to see another Albertan on here. :P )
  - lgunsch 10y ago
    Been to a few nieghborhoods in Calgary like that, I can definitely confirm.
  - rezashirazian 10y ago
    As a former Calgarian I feel obligated to provide an example of this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Calgary,+AB,+Canada/@51.1429154,-114.241329,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x537170039f843fd5:0x266d3bb1b652b63a!8m2!3d51.0486151!4d-114.0708459 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Calgary,+AB,+Canada/@51.14...
cortesoft 10y ago
This article seems to totally gloss over the advantages of cul-de-sac and suburban living. Having just moved from the a more dense area of the city (after 10+ years) to a much more suburban area, I am keenly aware of the new perks I now have. The first one is obviously space. Suburbs can have bigger houses and bigger yards. That is a very nice perk. I am not saying that bigger is always better, but you can't just dismiss this as not being important at all. Having a backyard where I can BBQ and a garage I can park in are pretty nice. Second, the article talks about the increased overall danger from traffic accidents in the city, but they don't talk about actual accidents in the cul-de-sac itself. If you live in a cul-de-sac, your kids can play in the street much more safely than if you are in a city grid. Being able to play in the street is a nice thing. Again, I don't think that there isn't a cost to suburban cul-de-sac living, I just feel this article completely ignores the actual benefits, instead focusing on a few parts that I don't think people are actually claiming about the suburbs.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  I think the problem is that the people who enjoy the benefits are not the people bearing the cost. It's great for you if you want to live on a cul-de-sac in San Ramon, but it's not great that you now need to drive your car to work on an elevated freeway through Oakland. Without having ruined that neighborhood, the property in San Ramon would be all but worthless. If people in exurbs all rode the train to work then probably fewer people would be tut-tutting about their odd streetscape.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    That seems backwards to me. The natural state of things is no roads. In the human world, we typically start with property rights, and only take them away when it's deemed necessary. Looking at it that way, it's the road users who are enjoying benefits while foisting costs off on the residents whose property they drive past (or whose former property they drive over).
    - rev_bird 10y ago
      Parent commenter wrote: "[t]he problem is that the people who enjoy the benefits are not the people bearing the cost... if you want to live on a cul-de-sac in San Ramon... you now need to drive your car to work on an elevated freeway through Oakland." You wrote: "[i]t's the road users who are enjoying benefits while foisting costs off on the residents whose property they drive past (or whose former property they drive over)." I'm pretty sure you two agree.
wongarsu 10y ago
The article somehow seems to conflate road layout with population density, peppered with some vague arguments in favour of high density building. I agree that a lot of America's traffic problems are related to their low-density suburbs, and there are many arguments why these suburbs are not all that great. But that is completely seperate from road layouts: you can build a cul-de-sac with high-density buildings, add a few footpaths and get basically all the advantages listed.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  I got exactly the same impression. The cul-de-sac per se isn't even addressed. Taking it as symbolic, the article's main argument for grid layouts seems to be little more than "everyone was doing it 100 years ago, and we found a handful of favorable correlations, so they must have been on to something".
- dx034 10y ago
  Exactly, add a few footpaths to cul-de-sacs and you encourage walking/cycling while having low traffic noise. Works well in many European countries.
ars 10y ago
Having lived in all different types of road patterns, the number once thing that increases safety is population density. The lower the density, the safer, and the better for children. Everything is more pleasant, less noise, less wasted time, room for kids to play, less conflict with neighbors. There's more driving, but I don't care, everything else is so much better it's worth it. And don't forget that even with the driving, everything takes less time. So do it - design "for cars" if you want to call it that - you are really designing for the people inside the cars, and they will be much happier. If that means a cul-de-sac ("dead end" as I've always called it) do it.
- g52oevr0in 10y ago
  What do you mean by "less wasted time"? I found I wasted a lot less time when everywhere I wanted to go was a five minute walk away, and work was a 25 minute train ride away.
- mjevans 10y ago
  We've seen experiments globally where highly planned developments, and even 'projects' fail. However I am unaware of any experiments, natural or otherwise, with systemic encouragement of desired development goals. I see no environment in cities, suburbs, or rural areas where there is a strong vision and drive towards building community.
  - alexbeloi 10y ago
    Seems like what you're describing is a planned community or also intentional community. The latter being more of focused on the community part and the former on the planning part. Washington DC is a planned community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national_capitals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intentional_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intentional_communitie...
- stouset 10y ago
sliken 10y ago
I live in Davis CA (briefly) mentioned in the article and grew up in Pittsburgh PA. Pittsburgh PA placed in the top 10 worst cities to bike in, several times. The main problem is that the neighborhood streets don't go anywhere, they just feed you onto busy streets with speed limits of 35 mph and up, with minimal shoulders. So even for a 7.5 mile commute you end on up fairly dangerous roads for bikes. On the bridges you have to choose between really dangerous and legal (no shoulder at all, with a big railing between you and sidewalk), and illegally using the sidewalk. Things like a local school, grocery store, drug store, and even a pizza joint are often pretty far away. You have to skip several useless neighborhoods on a major thoroughfare to be able to shop. In davis there's a large downtown section that's largely a grid, low speed limits, bike lanes, and reasonable shoulders. The surrounding neighborhoods often have a green belt, and when they don't there's pretty much always a reasonable parallel road to any major through fair. There's much more retail space mixed into the neighborhoods. There are schools, parks, drug stores, and restaurants spread around the city, not just downtown. Pittsburgh does have a grid like downtown, but it's pretty much exclusively a business district, very few people actually live there. It seems fairly post apocalyptic after hours with no cars and no foot traffic, just the rats scurrying around. Seems like all the best cities have mixed use zoning, large grids, and highly connected streets. This allows for biking, walking, and of course better public transportation while minimizing high speed vehicles mixing it up with bikes and pedestrians.
- jimktrains2 10y ago
  Pittsburgh's neighborhoods are also heavily segregated by geography. You really can't go more than maybe a mile being generous, ½mi more likely, without hitting a major elevation change. Additionally, we're starting to add better support for bikes; it's not super great, but it's getting a lot better than even 5 years ago.
mberning 10y ago
My work life for the past few years has been a constant effort to not work downtown. I don't want to live or work there. It is a miserable concrete hellscape. Dirty, unkempt, infested with beggars and other indigents. The concept of a legitimate grocery store is something that has not existed there for decades. This is all fine if you can survive off of craft beer, gourmet cupcakes, and takeaway for the rest of your life. But the city keeps making sweetheart tax deals for desirable employers. And I keep getting the news "We are moving the office downtown! Isn't that great!" It's great for somebody, but not the average working stiff.
hkmurakami 10y ago
I've noticed over the years that Palo Alto's residential areas started with a grid system but moved towards a cul-de-sac by blocking off roads to cut off parts of the grid. The College Terrace area is particularly notable (likely because of its proximity to employment centers like Page Mill's corporate campuses and Stanford University), and I seem to recall the Old Palo Alto area having some road blocks as well (particularly the area directly south of Palo Alto High School). It definitely makes the quality of life better for the residents while making commuters "pay more" so to speak. I wonder when these road blocks (which are visually pleasing with trees and pedestrian and cyclist permeable) came to be.
okintheory 10y ago
I'm going to repost a comment from citylab page: This piece is lying or deceptive, depending on your perspective. The Roman Empire may have built cities on grids, but most major European cities are generally not on grids, at least not in the sense of American cities. Just have a look at London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Rome and many more. They are full little side streets that head off in unpredictable directions. They're not full of Cul-de-sacs, though, as most streets are not dead ends. But, don't pretend that the main alternative to cul-de-sacs is the American grid. Both are awful, compared to Paris! Without being an expert, I would guess that what makes European cities more enjoyable that American ones (they usually are!), is that they have many streets that are for pedestrians only - this makes for a much more enjoyable experience walking the city, and creates lots of wonderful spaces for restaurants and other venues to have outdoor seating. - by wowsuchgoodpoint
- jakewins 10y ago
  The point isn't that streets are for pedestrians - the point is that the streets are not single-purpose. The street I lived on in Stockholm had a life cycle like: - 6am - early people head to work - 8am - kids head to school - 10am - parents with baby strollers pass by on their way to cafes - 11am - first people show up for lunch at the square - 12pm-2pm - bulk lunch traffic - 4pm - people start coming back home - 5pm - people going shopping down the street - 6pm - shops start closing, shop keepers fiddling with their things - 7pm - dinner guests start passing by on their way to the restaurants - 11pm - last restaurant guests start heading home Compare that to the cul-de-sac I now live on in the US: - 6am - people start leaving, everyone drives - 10am - all cars are gone at this point - 5pm - people come home, all in cars The difference here has nothing to do with grid or windy streets, it has to do with mixed use buildings and streets built to be used for multiple purposes. The effect is quite substantial: In the Stockholm neighborhood, I always felt safe, always had neighbors going places on the street. In my US neighborhood, the streets are almost always empty. No one has a reason to come here for most of the day. This is why the local PD posts a patrol car at our dead-end cul-de-sac every Saturday night, because otherwise people come out here to smoke pot, since there's never anyone around
- bane 10y ago
munificent 10y ago
The article claims cities should not be trees, but I don't think grids are better. I'm a big fan of Christopher Alexander's claim that successful cities are actually semilattices: http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexander-A-city-is-not-a-tree.pdf http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexa...
bill_from_tampa 10y ago
The article did not discuss the advantages that my cat(s) obtain from not being crushed beneath the wheels of passing traffic on a more regular basis. [note to purists: "our cats" are kept strictly inside, but there are stray cats that we feed, and have survived for many years without auto crushing on a cul-de-sac].
rezashirazian 10y ago
When self driving cars take over, Get ready for the revival of suburbia. Whatever progress migration toward densely populated urban areas has made in recent year (due to traffic and high gas prices) is going to rescind.
- criddell 10y ago
  I think you are right about that. Self-driving cars are going to lower the cost of trips and car ownership and I think that can only lead to more trips being made and cars being owned. I can't wait to buy one.
  - bbcbasic 10y ago
    Why buy one? Just use Uber or similar.
    - criddell 10y ago
      Because they are going to be very affordable (eventually) and it's nice to be able to leave stuff in your car. People already spend far more on cars than they need to and that's not likely to change.
      - 1812Overture 10y ago
        Why would they possibly be cheaper than current human operated cars?
        criddell 10y ago
        The cars will be mechanically simpler (electric motor connected to wheels without a traditional gearbox), require less maintenance (no oil changes), be cheaper to insure, and inexpensive to operate. The electronics and software will do what they always do - get better and less expensive. Lighter cars that don't crash (often) can be made from different (cheaper) materials than current cars. They will be similar to today's golf carts. I think a basic car will cost less than $10,000. A lot of the same innovations that go into producing a self-driving car apply to the construction and repair of the car itself. One of the most expensive parts of a new car is paying for wages, benefits, and pensions for the people that made the car. I'm thinking self-driving cars will be built and serviced by other machines. I would bet that before long, you buy a car the same way you buy a cell phone. You subscribe to a plan and upgrade every 2-3 years. Maybe you would subscribe to a shared fleet for $50 / month or maybe you "buy" your own car for $250 / month. This is all assuming a few years have passed and human driven cars are rare.
agentgt 10y ago
In Massachusetts both in suburb and city we have almost complete chaos. I'm almost sure we do no have the "grid" nor "curvilinear" nor "cul-de-sac" (my house is older than all of those designs by ~130 years). What we have is streets that follow natural features (e.g. the Charles River). The irony is Massachusetts despite its urban legend of having horrible drivers is one of the safest states to drive in [1] (there are many more references). [1]: http://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/23/traffic-accident-death-odds-by-state/ http://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/23/traffic-accident-death-od...
- xkcd-sucks 10y ago
  It seems like many states are known for having the worst drivers, while none are known for having the best
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    The states that have a distinctive "style" of driving, which isn't close to the "average" national style, are known for having bad drivers, by visitors who aren't yet comfortable with the local style.
jakewins 10y ago
Highly recommend http://www.strongtowns.org/ http://www.strongtowns.org/ if you are interested in articles like this; still trying to explain to city councils over a hundred years after Ebenezer wrote "To-Morrow" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement) why he was horrifically wrong. If you want to dive deeper into this, Jane Jacobs's "Death and Life of the Great American Cities" is an incredible and very approachable book on urban planning: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/067974195X https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0...
enoch_r 10y ago
These things always devolve into a shouting match between the planners and people who value solitude or a big yard. I agree with the anti-density folks on one thing: big yards are awesome, larger houses are very useful, and I want my kids to feel safe on my street, and I find it hilarious that planners have so little humility--they curse the foolishness of the previous generation of planners, who overlooked some very important details, and then proceed to lay out their broad-brushed scheme for utopia. What could possibly go wrong? But I'm convinced of the following: driving has huge costs that are not internalized as part of the decision-making process about whether to drive somewhere or not. E.g.: - driving presents a large risk to pedestrians or bicyclists nearby - driving requires a large amount of incredibly expensive infrastructure to be custom-built to support it - driving down a street makes that street a less pleasant place to be, in general, due to noise, perceived risk, etc. - driving causes congestion, which delays other drivers - pollution and environmental costs So if people actually paid the full cost of their trips, they'd probably drive less, and would be much less likely to plan their lives in ways that require large amounts of driving. For some people, the benefits would be worth the costs, and more power to them--but I shouldn't have to subsidize that choice. I wish the debate could be less about what type of lifestyle we prefer, and more about how to fairly distribute the costs of our choices.
- massysett 10y ago
  No one pays the full cost of their trips. Transit users are subsidized. Pedestrians and cyclists are subsidized as they pay nothing at all for their infrastructure. Plus, every "drivers are subsidized" argument ignores the fact that drivers shoulder the entire capital and operating expense of their vehicles--a cost borne entirely by governments for transit. Even transit systems with high fare box recovery rates do not come close to paying even one penny of _any_ of their capital expense, whether for guideways or for vehicles.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Pedestrians and cyclists are subsidized as they pay nothing at all for their infrastructure. Comparisons across many orders of magnitude are not insightful. Pedestrians and cyclists can travel over unimproved ground, or gravel if they're being picky. Any road that currently serves automobiles could serve the same number of drivers as pedestrians and cyclists for centuries with no maintenance.
albertop 10y ago
Cul-de-Sac hase one enormous advantage - Google and Waze will not be able to send tons of traffic through your little street.
AstralStorm 10y ago
Simple, if you put in a huge section of housing without services in walking or good mass transit distance, people will be forced to drive there. Thus negating advantages of the cul de sac while making the congestion much worse. Fixing means a return to mixed developments, but you can still keep the cul de sac structure. Another broken thing recently appearing is gated "communities" adding impassable terrain to the landscape.

92 points by misnamed 10y ago

Did I miss something? I don't see anywhere where it "debunks" anything. It has some talk about traffic accidents when you travel outside of a cul-de-sac, but doesn't talk about the increased safety inside (especially for say children who play in the area), doesn't talk about crime rates, or any of the reasons people move into suburban areas. It throws in some off the cuff comment about being more connected, but doesn't say why that would be true in a more densely populated grid layout (as opposed to knowing your neighbor more in the the suburbs). The article seems really poor actually, rushed to meet a deadline.

matthewowen 10y ago
Those are fair comments about this article. If you're generally interested in answers to the questions you raise, you might enjoy reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/067974195X https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0...)
twelvechairs 10y ago
Also 'paid by the word journalism' - so many words such little content. Not sure why citylab is so heavily linked on hn. There are better urban development sites to read. Just today marketurbanism.com had a great article on Houstons alternatives to simple zoning. A really important contemporary example on a really important current issue
jacobolus 10y ago
Suburbs full of cul-de-sacs are terrible places to grow up for children after the age of about 6. They’re invariably designed to be incredibly pedestrian-hostile, and usually also bicycle-hostile, so if you don’t drive a car, you either need to have your parents drive you everywhere, or you need to have every possible destination within a couple blocks. Such an environment is stifling of children’s independence and community interaction.
- joelmichael 10y ago
  When I was a kid I rode a bicycle.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    I think the difference is, in a suburb a kid can safely ride a bicycle. That's great, if your goal is to ride. If your goal is to go to somewhere specific (movie theater? soccer game? swimming pool?), kid probably needs a ride in a car, because those places aren't within biking distance for a kid.
danans 10y ago
> doesn't talk about crime rates While the article may have issues, I've not seen a compelling argument explaining lower suburban crime rates by their lower density instead of the huge unaddressed socioeconomic problems that in part drove suburbanization.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  Yeah, suburbanization is a symptom of a failure of the social contract - people fleeing from terrible schools, crime, racial division, etc. "A nice place to raise children" is a fairly transparent way of saying "a neighborhood with no black people," and they're not wrong: due to structural racism and America's unwillingness to deal with it's core issues, the white middle class really doesn't have another choice. Are you going to pay 1 million+ to live on the Upper East Side, which has good schools? You can't afford that on 75k a year. You're going to move to PA and talk about how it's "for the yard."
  - ravenstine 10y ago
    Here we go again. When you say things like that, a casual reader might think you're implying that there are next to no middle class black people or, worse, that people are intentionally avoiding black people and not typical inner city crime. A neighborhood with no black people? Bollocks. Unless you can demonstrate struck Ural racism, as opposed to just stating it, your entire second paragraph seems specious.
    - ravenstine 10y ago
      *structural

lgunsch 10y ago

I live in Edmonton, AB, and it somewhat follows a grid system. Although, a bunch of newer nieghborhoods have not continued to follow it. The roads all have numbers in a predictable pattern. This is very helpful for navigation, as just giving someone an address means they will probably be able to find it without consulting a map. Named streets automatically imply that I cannot find an address at all without a map. You can't even find out which general direction would be correct.

schwap 10y ago
I was going to say: "But what about the quadrant system?" until I took a look and saw that apparently all of Edmonton is in the NW quadrant. That's some great city planning.
- lgunsch 10y ago
  When you get/send mail the NW is implied if you leave it off, although there are small brand new nieghborhoods in the SW quadrant now that the city is running out of room.
JoelBennett 10y ago
Worse yet - go to Calgary where they've named all the roads in a given neighborhood with the same name. E.g.: Eversyde Blvd, Eversyde Cir, Eversyde Manor, Eversyde St. It's insanity. (Lived in Edmonton, Calgary, and now Lethbridge. Always fun to see another Albertan on here. :P )
- lgunsch 10y ago
  Been to a few nieghborhoods in Calgary like that, I can definitely confirm.
- rezashirazian 10y ago
  As a former Calgarian I feel obligated to provide an example of this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Calgary,+AB,+Canada/@51.1429154,-114.241329,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x537170039f843fd5:0x266d3bb1b652b63a!8m2!3d51.0486151!4d-114.0708459 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Calgary,+AB,+Canada/@51.14...

cortesoft 10y ago

This article seems to totally gloss over the advantages of cul-de-sac and suburban living. Having just moved from the a more dense area of the city (after 10+ years) to a much more suburban area, I am keenly aware of the new perks I now have. The first one is obviously space. Suburbs can have bigger houses and bigger yards. That is a very nice perk. I am not saying that bigger is always better, but you can't just dismiss this as not being important at all. Having a backyard where I can BBQ and a garage I can park in are pretty nice. Second, the article talks about the increased overall danger from traffic accidents in the city, but they don't talk about actual accidents in the cul-de-sac itself. If you live in a cul-de-sac, your kids can play in the street much more safely than if you are in a city grid. Being able to play in the street is a nice thing. Again, I don't think that there isn't a cost to suburban cul-de-sac living, I just feel this article completely ignores the actual benefits, instead focusing on a few parts that I don't think people are actually claiming about the suburbs.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
I think the problem is that the people who enjoy the benefits are not the people bearing the cost. It's great for you if you want to live on a cul-de-sac in San Ramon, but it's not great that you now need to drive your car to work on an elevated freeway through Oakland. Without having ruined that neighborhood, the property in San Ramon would be all but worthless. If people in exurbs all rode the train to work then probably fewer people would be tut-tutting about their odd streetscape.
- mikeash 10y ago
  That seems backwards to me. The natural state of things is no roads. In the human world, we typically start with property rights, and only take them away when it's deemed necessary. Looking at it that way, it's the road users who are enjoying benefits while foisting costs off on the residents whose property they drive past (or whose former property they drive over).
  - rev_bird 10y ago
    Parent commenter wrote: "[t]he problem is that the people who enjoy the benefits are not the people bearing the cost... if you want to live on a cul-de-sac in San Ramon... you now need to drive your car to work on an elevated freeway through Oakland." You wrote: "[i]t's the road users who are enjoying benefits while foisting costs off on the residents whose property they drive past (or whose former property they drive over)." I'm pretty sure you two agree.

wongarsu 10y ago

The article somehow seems to conflate road layout with population density, peppered with some vague arguments in favour of high density building. I agree that a lot of America's traffic problems are related to their low-density suburbs, and there are many arguments why these suburbs are not all that great. But that is completely seperate from road layouts: you can build a cul-de-sac with high-density buildings, add a few footpaths and get basically all the advantages listed.

0xcde4c3db 10y ago
I got exactly the same impression. The cul-de-sac per se isn't even addressed. Taking it as symbolic, the article's main argument for grid layouts seems to be little more than "everyone was doing it 100 years ago, and we found a handful of favorable correlations, so they must have been on to something".
dx034 10y ago
Exactly, add a few footpaths to cul-de-sacs and you encourage walking/cycling while having low traffic noise. Works well in many European countries.

ars 10y ago

Having lived in all different types of road patterns, the number once thing that increases safety is population density. The lower the density, the safer, and the better for children. Everything is more pleasant, less noise, less wasted time, room for kids to play, less conflict with neighbors. There's more driving, but I don't care, everything else is so much better it's worth it. And don't forget that even with the driving, everything takes less time. So do it - design "for cars" if you want to call it that - you are really designing for the people inside the cars, and they will be much happier. If that means a cul-de-sac ("dead end" as I've always called it) do it.

g52oevr0in 10y ago
What do you mean by "less wasted time"? I found I wasted a lot less time when everywhere I wanted to go was a five minute walk away, and work was a 25 minute train ride away.
mjevans 10y ago
We've seen experiments globally where highly planned developments, and even 'projects' fail. However I am unaware of any experiments, natural or otherwise, with systemic encouragement of desired development goals. I see no environment in cities, suburbs, or rural areas where there is a strong vision and drive towards building community.
- alexbeloi 10y ago
  Seems like what you're describing is a planned community or also intentional community. The latter being more of focused on the community part and the former on the planning part. Washington DC is a planned community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national_capitals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intentional_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intentional_communitie...
stouset 10y ago

sliken 10y ago

I live in Davis CA (briefly) mentioned in the article and grew up in Pittsburgh PA. Pittsburgh PA placed in the top 10 worst cities to bike in, several times. The main problem is that the neighborhood streets don't go anywhere, they just feed you onto busy streets with speed limits of 35 mph and up, with minimal shoulders. So even for a 7.5 mile commute you end on up fairly dangerous roads for bikes. On the bridges you have to choose between really dangerous and legal (no shoulder at all, with a big railing between you and sidewalk), and illegally using the sidewalk. Things like a local school, grocery store, drug store, and even a pizza joint are often pretty far away. You have to skip several useless neighborhoods on a major thoroughfare to be able to shop. In davis there's a large downtown section that's largely a grid, low speed limits, bike lanes, and reasonable shoulders. The surrounding neighborhoods often have a green belt, and when they don't there's pretty much always a reasonable parallel road to any major through fair. There's much more retail space mixed into the neighborhoods. There are schools, parks, drug stores, and restaurants spread around the city, not just downtown. Pittsburgh does have a grid like downtown, but it's pretty much exclusively a business district, very few people actually live there. It seems fairly post apocalyptic after hours with no cars and no foot traffic, just the rats scurrying around. Seems like all the best cities have mixed use zoning, large grids, and highly connected streets. This allows for biking, walking, and of course better public transportation while minimizing high speed vehicles mixing it up with bikes and pedestrians.

jimktrains2 10y ago
Pittsburgh's neighborhoods are also heavily segregated by geography. You really can't go more than maybe a mile being generous, ½mi more likely, without hitting a major elevation change. Additionally, we're starting to add better support for bikes; it's not super great, but it's getting a lot better than even 5 years ago.

mberning 10y ago

My work life for the past few years has been a constant effort to not work downtown. I don't want to live or work there. It is a miserable concrete hellscape. Dirty, unkempt, infested with beggars and other indigents. The concept of a legitimate grocery store is something that has not existed there for decades. This is all fine if you can survive off of craft beer, gourmet cupcakes, and takeaway for the rest of your life. But the city keeps making sweetheart tax deals for desirable employers. And I keep getting the news "We are moving the office downtown! Isn't that great!" It's great for somebody, but not the average working stiff.

hkmurakami 10y ago

I've noticed over the years that Palo Alto's residential areas started with a grid system but moved towards a cul-de-sac by blocking off roads to cut off parts of the grid. The College Terrace area is particularly notable (likely because of its proximity to employment centers like Page Mill's corporate campuses and Stanford University), and I seem to recall the Old Palo Alto area having some road blocks as well (particularly the area directly south of Palo Alto High School). It definitely makes the quality of life better for the residents while making commuters "pay more" so to speak. I wonder when these road blocks (which are visually pleasing with trees and pedestrian and cyclist permeable) came to be.

okintheory 10y ago

I'm going to repost a comment from citylab page: This piece is lying or deceptive, depending on your perspective. The Roman Empire may have built cities on grids, but most major European cities are generally not on grids, at least not in the sense of American cities. Just have a look at London, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Rome and many more. They are full little side streets that head off in unpredictable directions. They're not full of Cul-de-sacs, though, as most streets are not dead ends. But, don't pretend that the main alternative to cul-de-sacs is the American grid. Both are awful, compared to Paris! Without being an expert, I would guess that what makes European cities more enjoyable that American ones (they usually are!), is that they have many streets that are for pedestrians only - this makes for a much more enjoyable experience walking the city, and creates lots of wonderful spaces for restaurants and other venues to have outdoor seating. - by wowsuchgoodpoint

jakewins 10y ago
The point isn't that streets are for pedestrians - the point is that the streets are not single-purpose. The street I lived on in Stockholm had a life cycle like: - 6am - early people head to work - 8am - kids head to school - 10am - parents with baby strollers pass by on their way to cafes - 11am - first people show up for lunch at the square - 12pm-2pm - bulk lunch traffic - 4pm - people start coming back home - 5pm - people going shopping down the street - 6pm - shops start closing, shop keepers fiddling with their things - 7pm - dinner guests start passing by on their way to the restaurants - 11pm - last restaurant guests start heading home Compare that to the cul-de-sac I now live on in the US: - 6am - people start leaving, everyone drives - 10am - all cars are gone at this point - 5pm - people come home, all in cars The difference here has nothing to do with grid or windy streets, it has to do with mixed use buildings and streets built to be used for multiple purposes. The effect is quite substantial: In the Stockholm neighborhood, I always felt safe, always had neighbors going places on the street. In my US neighborhood, the streets are almost always empty. No one has a reason to come here for most of the day. This is why the local PD posts a patrol car at our dead-end cul-de-sac every Saturday night, because otherwise people come out here to smoke pot, since there's never anyone around
bane 10y ago

munificent 10y ago

The article claims cities should not be trees, but I don't think grids are better. I'm a big fan of Christopher Alexander's claim that successful cities are actually semilattices: http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexander-A-city-is-not-a-tree.pdf http://www.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexa...

bill_from_tampa 10y ago

The article did not discuss the advantages that my cat(s) obtain from not being crushed beneath the wheels of passing traffic on a more regular basis. [note to purists: "our cats" are kept strictly inside, but there are stray cats that we feed, and have survived for many years without auto crushing on a cul-de-sac].

rezashirazian 10y ago

When self driving cars take over, Get ready for the revival of suburbia. Whatever progress migration toward densely populated urban areas has made in recent year (due to traffic and high gas prices) is going to rescind.

criddell 10y ago
I think you are right about that. Self-driving cars are going to lower the cost of trips and car ownership and I think that can only lead to more trips being made and cars being owned. I can't wait to buy one.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Why buy one? Just use Uber or similar.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Because they are going to be very affordable (eventually) and it's nice to be able to leave stuff in your car. People already spend far more on cars than they need to and that's not likely to change.
    - 1812Overture 10y ago
      Why would they possibly be cheaper than current human operated cars?
      - criddell 10y ago
        The cars will be mechanically simpler (electric motor connected to wheels without a traditional gearbox), require less maintenance (no oil changes), be cheaper to insure, and inexpensive to operate. The electronics and software will do what they always do - get better and less expensive. Lighter cars that don't crash (often) can be made from different (cheaper) materials than current cars. They will be similar to today's golf carts. I think a basic car will cost less than $10,000. A lot of the same innovations that go into producing a self-driving car apply to the construction and repair of the car itself. One of the most expensive parts of a new car is paying for wages, benefits, and pensions for the people that made the car. I'm thinking self-driving cars will be built and serviced by other machines. I would bet that before long, you buy a car the same way you buy a cell phone. You subscribe to a plan and upgrade every 2-3 years. Maybe you would subscribe to a shared fleet for $50 / month or maybe you "buy" your own car for $250 / month. This is all assuming a few years have passed and human driven cars are rare.

agentgt 10y ago

In Massachusetts both in suburb and city we have almost complete chaos. I'm almost sure we do no have the "grid" nor "curvilinear" nor "cul-de-sac" (my house is older than all of those designs by ~130 years). What we have is streets that follow natural features (e.g. the Charles River). The irony is Massachusetts despite its urban legend of having horrible drivers is one of the safest states to drive in [1] (there are many more references). [1]: http://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/23/traffic-accident-death-odds-by-state/ http://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/23/traffic-accident-death-od...

xkcd-sucks 10y ago
It seems like many states are known for having the worst drivers, while none are known for having the best
- jessaustin 10y ago
  The states that have a distinctive "style" of driving, which isn't close to the "average" national style, are known for having bad drivers, by visitors who aren't yet comfortable with the local style.

jakewins 10y ago

Highly recommend http://www.strongtowns.org/ http://www.strongtowns.org/ if you are interested in articles like this; still trying to explain to city councils over a hundred years after Ebenezer wrote "To-Morrow" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement) why he was horrifically wrong. If you want to dive deeper into this, Jane Jacobs's "Death and Life of the Great American Cities" is an incredible and very approachable book on urban planning: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/067974195X https://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0...

enoch_r 10y ago

These things always devolve into a shouting match between the planners and people who value solitude or a big yard. I agree with the anti-density folks on one thing: big yards are awesome, larger houses are very useful, and I want my kids to feel safe on my street, and I find it hilarious that planners have so little humility--they curse the foolishness of the previous generation of planners, who overlooked some very important details, and then proceed to lay out their broad-brushed scheme for utopia. What could possibly go wrong? But I'm convinced of the following: driving has huge costs that are not internalized as part of the decision-making process about whether to drive somewhere or not. E.g.: - driving presents a large risk to pedestrians or bicyclists nearby - driving requires a large amount of incredibly expensive infrastructure to be custom-built to support it - driving down a street makes that street a less pleasant place to be, in general, due to noise, perceived risk, etc. - driving causes congestion, which delays other drivers - pollution and environmental costs So if people actually paid the full cost of their trips, they'd probably drive less, and would be much less likely to plan their lives in ways that require large amounts of driving. For some people, the benefits would be worth the costs, and more power to them--but I shouldn't have to subsidize that choice. I wish the debate could be less about what type of lifestyle we prefer, and more about how to fairly distribute the costs of our choices.

massysett 10y ago
No one pays the full cost of their trips. Transit users are subsidized. Pedestrians and cyclists are subsidized as they pay nothing at all for their infrastructure. Plus, every "drivers are subsidized" argument ignores the fact that drivers shoulder the entire capital and operating expense of their vehicles--a cost borne entirely by governments for transit. Even transit systems with high fare box recovery rates do not come close to paying even one penny of _any_ of their capital expense, whether for guideways or for vehicles.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Pedestrians and cyclists are subsidized as they pay nothing at all for their infrastructure. Comparisons across many orders of magnitude are not insightful. Pedestrians and cyclists can travel over unimproved ground, or gravel if they're being picky. Any road that currently serves automobiles could serve the same number of drivers as pedestrians and cyclists for centuries with no maintenance.

albertop 10y ago

Cul-de-Sac hase one enormous advantage - Google and Waze will not be able to send tons of traffic through your little street.

AstralStorm 10y ago

Simple, if you put in a huge section of housing without services in walking or good mass transit distance, people will be forced to drive there. Thus negating advantages of the cul de sac while making the congestion much worse. Fixing means a return to mixed developments, but you can still keep the cul de sac structure. Another broken thing recently appearing is gated "communities" adding impassable terrain to the landscape.