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I live in a master planned community (Daybreak, Utah), and while you can definitely scoff at the building quality (state of things everywhere right now, it's al

by jrsdav 5y ago

I live in a master planned community (Daybreak, Utah), and while you can definitely scoff at the building quality (state of things everywhere right now, it's all done fast and with low quality materials), it's been fantastic, especially during the pandemic. The whole neighborhood is designed to be walkable, with parks, pools, trails, train stations, grocery stores and restaurants (added in the later phases, which are being developed right now) within 5 minutes of your doorstep. It gets a bad rap from locals on the outside, but talk to the people living here (mostly expats from out of state) and nearly all of them say the same thing: > "We love it here!" and > "Why aren't more communities built this way?" I will say though, the US is poorly equipped for bicycle commuting. Even our neighborhood doesn't have many dedicated bike paths, opting instead to share the road with cars. Most diehard cyclists I know will tell you it's a matter of "when" not "if" you have a scary encounter with a driver. And with the amount of gigantic trucks on the roads out here that people use as their commuter cars, you can imagine these encounters don't typically end well.

milkytron 5y ago
Very similar situation here. Master planned community with meh build quality, but our neighborhood is designed to be transit oriented. We don't have a lot of amenities within the community, mostly just a bike trail, and a light rail stop. Hopefully some retail and a grocery store open up nearby soon, because about 500+ units are all being built within a quarter mile. And well over 1000+ within a half mile. The bike trail is my favorite part. It connects to the major bike trails in my city, which allow me access to all the major sporting venues, downtown, major shopping centers, and job centers. I used to ride ~7 miles per day traveling from the office, and about 20 miles each weekend just going to do things I would have otherwise done via car. It allowed me to sell my car. The light rail also makes things convenient if the weather isn't so great. The odd thing is that nearly everyone in the community still drives everywhere, and some own multiple cars. Parking is a disaster and everyone complains about it, but these were all new builds and the buyers all should have known that parking would be limited.
- fy20 5y ago
  > The odd thing is that nearly everyone in the community still drives everywhere, and some own multiple cars. Parking is a disaster and everyone complains about it, but these were all new builds and the buyers all should have known that parking would be limited. This sounds a lot like communities built during Soviet times. At the time the idea was everything you needed was in your community, and if you ever needed to travel outside you could use public transport. This worked fine during Soviet times, as they could house people near where they worked, but nowadays that doesn't work. We still have pretty good public transport, but who wants to take two buses for 45 minutes when you can drive for 20 minutes? The green spaces between buildings have been converted to car parking, but it's still not really enough. As such all new developments within the city have to have underground parking.
  - verall 5y ago
    In most American cities the bus schedules are like every 15-20 minutes and buses arrive at a near random distribution over that time. So even if traffic is so bad that driving is consistently 40 minutes, the bus-to-stop-to-bus trip is really anywhere from 40-80 minutes depending on your luck. I think people really value being able to estimate their commute and buses add a lot of variance.
    - oscardssmith 5y ago
      That's an entirely self inflicted problem. Just run the busses every 5 or 10 minutes, and have twice as many busses.
      - mixmastamyk 5y ago
        Yes but it’s expensive and they already lose money. I think it’s worth it, but I guess most don’t. Maybe self-driving can handle bus routes at least.
      - mikepurvis 5y ago
        The issue is that a lot of transit planning is politically motivated and done to maximize "coverage" rather than more meaningful metrics like ridership, usefulness, and profitability. Planning for coverage allows you to tell individual taxpayers that they're "served" by the transit they help fund, but most will never use it because it's infrequent and the routes take forever to get anywhere. Optimizing for ridership means you focus on a smaller number of straight-line routes that are highly useful and run them at high frequency so that a smaller pool of people come to rely on them and use them regularly, instead of as a last resort. A primer from transit consultant Jarrett Walker: https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe
samstave 5y ago
I have a bit of subjective personal and professional experience with all of this (design, policy, politics, zoning, economics, etc etc etc... It ALL comes to one thing: ECONOMICS. And I don't mean a balanced budget - I am referring to greed and corruption. One may thing that greed and corruption is rampant on a federal level; no just look locally: HOS and Municipal governments (city councils etc) Did you know that many municipal government agents have been paid off by telco industry to literally write laws against a municipality installing their own data infra? Alameda California is just one. Did you know that a single family home must sit on no-less than a 2,000 S.F. lot regardless of size, and all homes (defined by the actual front-door-entrance), must have zero shared infra? (Sewer, water, power, etc) The zoning laws are working actively against the building of smaller home-facilities -- and all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics to fuck everyone over and in ten years we will see the actual impact - but it will be too late.
- mikem170 5y ago
  > all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics I'm concerned about this also. I wonder if this is something that can be mitigated somehow via referendum? It seems wrong if the will of the people in a democracy has to take a back seat to hedge fund profits, especially when it comes to a place to live. it's tough though, current homeowners don't want there to be more houses... Or maybe we'll luck out demographically, when the baby boomer generation dies they'll be less demand for housing.
  - cmurf 5y ago
    It's more of a polyarchy. The U.S. system is unique (originally but unremarkable today) in two respects: written constitution, and not a monarchy. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. Madison The argument against the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, is that the federal government had essentially no power. The argument against the second, it it's effectively created a presidential democracy, or unitary executive. It's a model our diplomats expressly avoided when helping other countries write a constitution. It's fragile, and while it's so far been stable in the U.S. it's possible we've just been lucky so far. But a polyarchy doesn't guarantee democracy, even representative democracy. It certainly wasn't pluralistic at its founding: white, male, land owners. It took a long time to unwind that and here we are with most states in one form or another trying to make it harder for people to vote. Can a democracy democratically undemocratize itself? Sure. If it wants to weaken or even obsolete democracy, by any combination of action or inaction, that's what will happen. One of the classic examples is the principate period of the Roman Empire. It had the veneer of a democracy, including having a senate, but there was an emperor who had all the real authority. That period lasted over 200 years, so it's not like we'd necessarily see the end to elections, laws, casting aside the constitution, or any of the other institutions we think display proof of "democracy".
pomian 5y ago
Your description in the beginning, sounds a lot like Europe. Hopefully planners start to reduce the footprint of future construction, so they are walkable.
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jerry1979 5y ago
I decided to take a look at Daybreak on google maps, but I'm having a hard time understanding how the layout is different than other developments. I do notice that the lane system looks nice as opposed to just having alleys. Is there other stuff you like?
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  I’m not the OP, but I’ve seen Daybreak I think emphasis there is smaller single-family home lots, and lots of multi family buildings, all built within walking distances to amenities like restaurants, entertainment, grocery stores, clinics, the light railway station, etc. It kind of feels like a hybrid between large urban downtowns you might find in the US and elsewhere, and traditional American suburbs. Not remotely as dense or large scale as say NYC, but far more walkable and mixed use than standard suburban life. I’m sure many non-Americans would fail to see what makes that unique, but for American neighborhoods it definitely is.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    What you're describing is pretty much exactly what every rust belt city that had no development from 1960 to present day is like. Of course everyone who works in an office turns their nose up at those kinds of places because "muh good schools" or something along those lines.
  - prawn 5y ago
    I couldn't see any real density from the satellite and streetview pictures. Looks like every typical housing development in Australia but with the laneway access for cars and more uniformity in terms of building design and fencing rules. No contemporary housing design that I could find. Walking anywhere (outside of strolling the neighbourhood) would be a longer undertaking, I'm guessing? Hard to see businesses or restaurants amongst the housing? As a suburb, should look good once the street trees grow up though. This is a masterplan of a typical Australian development: https://brookmont.com.au/masterplan https://brookmont.com.au/masterplan - in this case, has gardens and community spaces, but not walking distance to anything useful. There's a big hardware store nearby, but no one would walk to it.
slg 5y ago
For sake of comparison, Wikipedia says Daybreak is over 4000 acres while Culdesac is 16. These projects aren't close in scale and I think the "neighborhood" in the marketing for Culdesac is misleading regarding what life would actually be like living there. There are several individual buildings in my neighborhood that house more people and I still need a car on a regular basis.
- batoure 5y ago
  Agreed on some digging Culdesac is very clearly just a “rebranded apartment complex” their units are only for rent nothing like a stand alone house is available and as far as the retailers/restaurants the ones listed will occupy the only spaces built for that purpose… its an apartment complex
  - brewdad 5y ago
    Agreed. If their residents don't all end up as students at ASU, then they are going to NEED cars as well. The light rail covers maybe 5% of the metro area and the bus service is terrible if you need to travel more than a few miles. I'm not aware of any significant employers nearby, aside from the university and a lot of minimum wage retail jobs. I suppose airport workers could make this location work, if they can afford it.
dragontamer 5y ago
The shared makerspace seems like a neighborhood level thing. There's all sorts of services / hobbies that make more sense to be neighborhood based instead of nationally based. Tools and workshops are like that. The biggest issue with tools/workshops is liability. Someone's going to lose a finger, or a rotary tool will pull out their hair / a piece of their scalp... (even with all the safety precautions, its going to happen. There are some real idiots out there), and then everything goes to crap. In a neighborhood solution, there's more local trust in each other, and a social contract where people care for each other. In a city-solution, you need to bootstrap the community out of nothingness. When newbies come in, you've got forms and disclosure agreements and training videos to minimize the issue. It works but... I'm inclined to see how their neighborhood scale makerspace scales. -------- Everyone wants that "doohicky": a holder for your lawn-mower's starting line that broke off last week. A new holder for your favorite coffee mug that got smashed. Etc. etc. 3d Printers + some woodworking equipment + a few skilled individuals who hang out for fun / leisure can solve these minor problems.
- conductr 5y ago
  > liability IDK. Tool rental companies existed for decades. I'm sure the fine print is so good that you're assuming all liability by merely thinking about using their tools
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I do a lot of 3D printing. Almost none of it is for replacement parts. Replacement parts sourcing has gotten extremely good online in the last 10-15 years. Need a recoil start handle for a Honda HRX 217? Dozens of vendors of the original part and more selling knock offs. Even as a Mech E and experienced 3D printer with multiple printers, it’s almost never worth my time to make a part that I can buy.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    I had a 3D printer for a while but I just got so little use out of it. Designing anything was like an all day process and any time I found something I needed I would think "Do I want to spend the entire day to get this thing" and the answer was almost always no.
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stemlord 5y ago
Ive seen several attempts at master planned neighborhoods with little town center type things with the idea that youd rarely have to leave, around South Florida growing up, and even lived in one for a few years. They all failed miserably. I feel like ones that succeed are just lucky. These communities can have basic predetermined guidelines to how growth can happen but the actual growth needs to happen organically. You cant just plot and build every house in town at the start, and you cant expect that things wont change as things pan out. Otherwise youre forcing residents to live in this deterministic Truman Show world lacking real freedom, echoing the major failures of a lot of mid 20th century heavy-handed big-ego design that we still suffer the effects of today
- notJim 5y ago
  I’m skeptical that all planning is necessarily doomed to fail. Towns already do a considerable amount of planning via their zoning rules, and subdivisions are planned as well. The example here just seems like a subdivision, but planned for walkability rather requiring you to drive. Where did the place you lived in go wrong?
  - ethanbond 5y ago
    Well… most towns/subdivisions with zealous planning suck. The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion?
    - notJim 5y ago
      How would you measure this? How do you differentiate "zealous planning" from "normal [?] planning?" This just feels like confirmation bias to me.
      - ethanbond 5y ago
        Totally ripe for confirmation bias, which is why my comment seemed very uncertain. I’m kind of going from a heuristic of older cities versus newer ones under the (potentially wrong!) assumption that zoning has tended toward more stringency over time.
JPKab 5y ago
Boulder Colorado here: Bike commuting is amazing here, as it is in many parts of the US that have the population density and public funding to execute it. Anyway, Daybreak sounds amazing, and yeah, communities like that will always get "bad raps" from locals outside of it. It's human nature: These places are usually priced very high per square foot, due to the huge demand vs. supply of walkable neighborhoods. Locals outside of it see it as a luxury purchase, and then associate the residents with the most snobby behavior of the few snobs who inevitably inhabit it. I'm going to take a wild guess that the locals outside of the community have stereotypical nicknames for it like "People's Republic of Daybreak" or "Bankbreak" or something like that, lol.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> "Why aren't more communities built this way?" I chose to buy a house in Ballard Seattle just so I could be near things and not have to drive (along with a bunch of streets shutdown for bike/pedistrian traffic + the Burke Gilman bike trail). It costs a lot more, and we don't have a huge yard, but you can get those things without going for a planned community if you don't mind some urban living. When I lived in SLC I got most of the same thing (living near U of U in an old Victorian). Well, the biking was a bit harder, no trails, but it was easy enough (maybe I was just younger then, however).
bart_spoon 5y ago
I was in Utah for a while and thought Daybreak looked great. Glad to hear that residents like it there. If I ever move back it’s towards the top of my list of areas I’d be interested in. Outside of a few neighborhoods in Salt Lake City, Provo, and rural areas, I feel like the vast majority of Utah is the epitome of American suburbs, and all the issues that come with that, so I can see why many Utahns might scoff at something different like Daybreak.
maxerickson 5y ago
Biking around the streets in my small town isn't very stressful. Crossing the highways is usually fine (but takes a minute to do safely). There aren't enough people to support '5 minute' walkability though. Lots of things are a mile or 2 away.
prawn 5y ago
I know Daybreak is more advanced as a project and significantly larger, but Culdesac looks a lot more appealing to me if I were the target market. Lots of medium sized, social/public space spaces. Much more reminiscent of the old towns of European cities - Dubrovnik, etc - which are wonderful to wander around, find a small bar/restaurant/etc. I streetviewed one part of Daybreak and it looked very broad and less walkable. That said, Culdesac might make for a pretty small neighbourhood? Is it replacing a trailer park, going by the angled concrete bits on satellite photos? We have something similar here in South Australia, replacing a large industrial property: https://lifemoreinteresting.com.au/ https://lifemoreinteresting.com.au/ It's not car free, but the parking affordances are very much minimised and designed to be trivial to walk/bike everywhere. It's centred around open spaces that are great to visit as an outsider and would be fantastic to live around: https://www.plant4bowden.com.au/ https://www.plant4bowden.com.au/ There are a range of architects and building styles so it suits more people - singles, couples and families. Get a townhouse without a car park. Get an apartment with three bedrooms and two basement car parks. One thing it didn't seem to do when I visited was provide more in terms of ground-level commercial/retail tenancies. That would be the ideal scenario for a community, I think - small stores and businesses at ground level and living spaces around or above.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
I know I’m an outlier but, in a city I feel generally safer riding on the road in traffic than on dedicated lanes and paths. In traffic with cars, everyone knows the rules, has the opportunity to see and use signals, and has regulated safety standards. I’ve ridden on separated bike lanes that were so dangerous I opted to use the main road and still felt safer with people trying to run me off the road honking and screaming at me. I’ve ridden on highly regarded bike paths that are so poorly maintained trees are growing out of them, so poorly lighted that collisions are unavoidable, and mixed traffic with pedestrians in a way that makes tangling with cars feel a lot safer. I know, I’m in the minority on this. But even after serious injuries in a bike accident sharing the road with cars… that still feels safer to me.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  That said, I welcome communities without cars! And I definitely feel like those communities especially need dedicated bike routes to separate cyclists from pedestrians.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > I know, I’m in the minority on this. That’s because it doesn’t make sense? Even if you consider you might hit a tree, another bicyclist, or a unlighted lamp post on the regular, it’s still much safer than being hit by a two ton car just a single time. Everyone knows the rules and uses signals on bike lanes as well. I genuinely do not understand how you arrive at feeling a road full of cars is safer.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Partly because in my experience this: > Everyone knows the rules and uses signals on bike lanes as well. … is not true. Mostly because I’ve been on too many separated bike lanes that really aren’t separated—in really dangerous ways—and can’t be without eliminating the car traffic entirely. As an example: there is a separated lane in downtown Seattle. It runs along a one way road, on the left hand side. The road has frequent signals for left hand turns, with separate stop signals for cyclists and cars. The stop signals for cyclists are smaller and uncommon, so they’re easy to miss. And they’re timed in an unusual order that frequently confuses cyclists and drivers alike. All of those things led to several cases where I was nearly hit by a car anyway, under conditions that just don’t exist in shared traffic. And this lane like many others has a beginning and an end, where cars can and frequently do mistakenly enter. If all of that is not enough, some parts of the lane also has parking to its right, with ramps on either side for pedestrians to access/exit their vehicle, which are often used for deliveries to local businesses, often large deliveries where the delivery person has limited vision. All of those things are more dangerous, and more likely to result in collisions and accidents (at least in my mostly bike-friendly city) than just normal traffic flow. Sure this example is particularly badly designed. But it’s not dissimilar to many others I’ve ridden. This is all not to mention dedicated but non-separated lanes where getting doored by people parking is common and drivers frequently use as a passing lane. In those cases, the otherwise well accepted (here) “if it’s unsafe beside car traffic, take the lane” is considered an affront by a lot of drivers who expect you to stay in the bike lane. So now you have the added risk of road rage for no good reason. I can absolutely understand why anyone would prefer these trade offs. But to me they make everything about riding in mixed traffic more perilous, and I’d prefer the risk where I know everyone is following the same set of rules.
Asooka 5y ago
The thing that gets me is it seems to all be for rent. How can you have a real community when people don't own the land they live on?
yodelshady 5y ago
> will say though, the US is poorly equipped for bicycle commuting. Even our neighborhood doesn't have many dedicated bike paths, opting instead to share the road with cars. Most diehard cyclists I know will tell you it's a matter of "when" not "if" you have a scary encounter with a driver. My country is far from perfect, but the US simply culturally hates cyclists. I see outright dehumanisation - comparison to insects and the like - from US media on the regular. It's extremely unattractive, and given the role of transport patterns in climate change - well.
- czottmann 5y ago
  > The sort of sentiment you get from Europe when you mention Roma. To me, a European, that generalization is quite insulting.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    Are you Icelandic?
  - yodelshady 5y ago
    It did seem strong, I edited it out. Generalising isn't my intention, but honestly, I don't know how to avoid it entirely without losing points worth making, and I'm not sure anybody does. The point I was trying to make, in this case, is that in every culture you'll find some unpleasant sentiment condoned not just in the spaces you expect, but in the sort of cosy middle class spaces that are perceived (if they don't actively market themselves) as being inclusive and enlightened.
op00to 5y ago
Look up Radburn, NJ.
vmception 5y ago
Sad the name is Culdesac though Immediately triggers the idea of empty soulless suburban community dead ends that are the opposite of walkable
raptor99 5y ago
So locals don't like it, and all the outsiders that moved in are questioning why aren't more communities built this way...

by jrsdav 5y ago

milkytron 5y ago

Very similar situation here. Master planned community with meh build quality, but our neighborhood is designed to be transit oriented. We don't have a lot of amenities within the community, mostly just a bike trail, and a light rail stop. Hopefully some retail and a grocery store open up nearby soon, because about 500+ units are all being built within a quarter mile. And well over 1000+ within a half mile. The bike trail is my favorite part. It connects to the major bike trails in my city, which allow me access to all the major sporting venues, downtown, major shopping centers, and job centers. I used to ride ~7 miles per day traveling from the office, and about 20 miles each weekend just going to do things I would have otherwise done via car. It allowed me to sell my car. The light rail also makes things convenient if the weather isn't so great. The odd thing is that nearly everyone in the community still drives everywhere, and some own multiple cars. Parking is a disaster and everyone complains about it, but these were all new builds and the buyers all should have known that parking would be limited.

fy20 5y ago
> The odd thing is that nearly everyone in the community still drives everywhere, and some own multiple cars. Parking is a disaster and everyone complains about it, but these were all new builds and the buyers all should have known that parking would be limited. This sounds a lot like communities built during Soviet times. At the time the idea was everything you needed was in your community, and if you ever needed to travel outside you could use public transport. This worked fine during Soviet times, as they could house people near where they worked, but nowadays that doesn't work. We still have pretty good public transport, but who wants to take two buses for 45 minutes when you can drive for 20 minutes? The green spaces between buildings have been converted to car parking, but it's still not really enough. As such all new developments within the city have to have underground parking.
- verall 5y ago
  In most American cities the bus schedules are like every 15-20 minutes and buses arrive at a near random distribution over that time. So even if traffic is so bad that driving is consistently 40 minutes, the bus-to-stop-to-bus trip is really anywhere from 40-80 minutes depending on your luck. I think people really value being able to estimate their commute and buses add a lot of variance.
  - oscardssmith 5y ago
    That's an entirely self inflicted problem. Just run the busses every 5 or 10 minutes, and have twice as many busses.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      Yes but it’s expensive and they already lose money. I think it’s worth it, but I guess most don’t. Maybe self-driving can handle bus routes at least.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      The issue is that a lot of transit planning is politically motivated and done to maximize "coverage" rather than more meaningful metrics like ridership, usefulness, and profitability. Planning for coverage allows you to tell individual taxpayers that they're "served" by the transit they help fund, but most will never use it because it's infrequent and the routes take forever to get anywhere. Optimizing for ridership means you focus on a smaller number of straight-line routes that are highly useful and run them at high frequency so that a smaller pool of people come to rely on them and use them regularly, instead of as a last resort. A primer from transit consultant Jarrett Walker: https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe

samstave 5y ago

I have a bit of subjective personal and professional experience with all of this (design, policy, politics, zoning, economics, etc etc etc... It ALL comes to one thing: ECONOMICS. And I don't mean a balanced budget - I am referring to greed and corruption. One may thing that greed and corruption is rampant on a federal level; no just look locally: HOS and Municipal governments (city councils etc) Did you know that many municipal government agents have been paid off by telco industry to literally write laws against a municipality installing their own data infra? Alameda California is just one. Did you know that a single family home must sit on no-less than a 2,000 S.F. lot regardless of size, and all homes (defined by the actual front-door-entrance), must have zero shared infra? (Sewer, water, power, etc) The zoning laws are working actively against the building of smaller home-facilities -- and all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics to fuck everyone over and in ten years we will see the actual impact - but it will be too late.

mikem170 5y ago
> all the hedge funds are swooping in with dark money, dark legal and dark politics I'm concerned about this also. I wonder if this is something that can be mitigated somehow via referendum? It seems wrong if the will of the people in a democracy has to take a back seat to hedge fund profits, especially when it comes to a place to live. it's tough though, current homeowners don't want there to be more houses... Or maybe we'll luck out demographically, when the baby boomer generation dies they'll be less demand for housing.
- cmurf 5y ago
  It's more of a polyarchy. The U.S. system is unique (originally but unremarkable today) in two respects: written constitution, and not a monarchy. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. Madison The argument against the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, is that the federal government had essentially no power. The argument against the second, it it's effectively created a presidential democracy, or unitary executive. It's a model our diplomats expressly avoided when helping other countries write a constitution. It's fragile, and while it's so far been stable in the U.S. it's possible we've just been lucky so far. But a polyarchy doesn't guarantee democracy, even representative democracy. It certainly wasn't pluralistic at its founding: white, male, land owners. It took a long time to unwind that and here we are with most states in one form or another trying to make it harder for people to vote. Can a democracy democratically undemocratize itself? Sure. If it wants to weaken or even obsolete democracy, by any combination of action or inaction, that's what will happen. One of the classic examples is the principate period of the Roman Empire. It had the veneer of a democracy, including having a senate, but there was an emperor who had all the real authority. That period lasted over 200 years, so it's not like we'd necessarily see the end to elections, laws, casting aside the constitution, or any of the other institutions we think display proof of "democracy".

pomian 5y ago

Your description in the beginning, sounds a lot like Europe. Hopefully planners start to reduce the footprint of future construction, so they are walkable.

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jerry1979 5y ago

I decided to take a look at Daybreak on google maps, but I'm having a hard time understanding how the layout is different than other developments. I do notice that the lane system looks nice as opposed to just having alleys. Is there other stuff you like?

bart_spoon 5y ago
I’m not the OP, but I’ve seen Daybreak I think emphasis there is smaller single-family home lots, and lots of multi family buildings, all built within walking distances to amenities like restaurants, entertainment, grocery stores, clinics, the light railway station, etc. It kind of feels like a hybrid between large urban downtowns you might find in the US and elsewhere, and traditional American suburbs. Not remotely as dense or large scale as say NYC, but far more walkable and mixed use than standard suburban life. I’m sure many non-Americans would fail to see what makes that unique, but for American neighborhoods it definitely is.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  What you're describing is pretty much exactly what every rust belt city that had no development from 1960 to present day is like. Of course everyone who works in an office turns their nose up at those kinds of places because "muh good schools" or something along those lines.
- prawn 5y ago
  I couldn't see any real density from the satellite and streetview pictures. Looks like every typical housing development in Australia but with the laneway access for cars and more uniformity in terms of building design and fencing rules. No contemporary housing design that I could find. Walking anywhere (outside of strolling the neighbourhood) would be a longer undertaking, I'm guessing? Hard to see businesses or restaurants amongst the housing? As a suburb, should look good once the street trees grow up though. This is a masterplan of a typical Australian development: https://brookmont.com.au/masterplan https://brookmont.com.au/masterplan - in this case, has gardens and community spaces, but not walking distance to anything useful. There's a big hardware store nearby, but no one would walk to it.

slg 5y ago

For sake of comparison, Wikipedia says Daybreak is over 4000 acres while Culdesac is 16. These projects aren't close in scale and I think the "neighborhood" in the marketing for Culdesac is misleading regarding what life would actually be like living there. There are several individual buildings in my neighborhood that house more people and I still need a car on a regular basis.

batoure 5y ago
Agreed on some digging Culdesac is very clearly just a “rebranded apartment complex” their units are only for rent nothing like a stand alone house is available and as far as the retailers/restaurants the ones listed will occupy the only spaces built for that purpose… its an apartment complex
- brewdad 5y ago
  Agreed. If their residents don't all end up as students at ASU, then they are going to NEED cars as well. The light rail covers maybe 5% of the metro area and the bus service is terrible if you need to travel more than a few miles. I'm not aware of any significant employers nearby, aside from the university and a lot of minimum wage retail jobs. I suppose airport workers could make this location work, if they can afford it.

dragontamer 5y ago

The shared makerspace seems like a neighborhood level thing. There's all sorts of services / hobbies that make more sense to be neighborhood based instead of nationally based. Tools and workshops are like that. The biggest issue with tools/workshops is liability. Someone's going to lose a finger, or a rotary tool will pull out their hair / a piece of their scalp... (even with all the safety precautions, its going to happen. There are some real idiots out there), and then everything goes to crap. In a neighborhood solution, there's more local trust in each other, and a social contract where people care for each other. In a city-solution, you need to bootstrap the community out of nothingness. When newbies come in, you've got forms and disclosure agreements and training videos to minimize the issue. It works but... I'm inclined to see how their neighborhood scale makerspace scales. -------- Everyone wants that "doohicky": a holder for your lawn-mower's starting line that broke off last week. A new holder for your favorite coffee mug that got smashed. Etc. etc. 3d Printers + some woodworking equipment + a few skilled individuals who hang out for fun / leisure can solve these minor problems.

conductr 5y ago
> liability IDK. Tool rental companies existed for decades. I'm sure the fine print is so good that you're assuming all liability by merely thinking about using their tools
sokoloff 5y ago
I do a lot of 3D printing. Almost none of it is for replacement parts. Replacement parts sourcing has gotten extremely good online in the last 10-15 years. Need a recoil start handle for a Honda HRX 217? Dozens of vendors of the original part and more selling knock offs. Even as a Mech E and experienced 3D printer with multiple printers, it’s almost never worth my time to make a part that I can buy.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  I had a 3D printer for a while but I just got so little use out of it. Designing anything was like an all day process and any time I found something I needed I would think "Do I want to spend the entire day to get this thing" and the answer was almost always no.

deleted 5y ago

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stemlord 5y ago

Ive seen several attempts at master planned neighborhoods with little town center type things with the idea that youd rarely have to leave, around South Florida growing up, and even lived in one for a few years. They all failed miserably. I feel like ones that succeed are just lucky. These communities can have basic predetermined guidelines to how growth can happen but the actual growth needs to happen organically. You cant just plot and build every house in town at the start, and you cant expect that things wont change as things pan out. Otherwise youre forcing residents to live in this deterministic Truman Show world lacking real freedom, echoing the major failures of a lot of mid 20th century heavy-handed big-ego design that we still suffer the effects of today

notJim 5y ago
I’m skeptical that all planning is necessarily doomed to fail. Towns already do a considerable amount of planning via their zoning rules, and subdivisions are planned as well. The example here just seems like a subdivision, but planned for walkability rather requiring you to drive. Where did the place you lived in go wrong?
- ethanbond 5y ago
  Well… most towns/subdivisions with zealous planning suck. The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion?
  - notJim 5y ago
    How would you measure this? How do you differentiate "zealous planning" from "normal [?] planning?" This just feels like confirmation bias to me.
    - ethanbond 5y ago
      Totally ripe for confirmation bias, which is why my comment seemed very uncertain. I’m kind of going from a heuristic of older cities versus newer ones under the (potentially wrong!) assumption that zoning has tended toward more stringency over time.

JPKab 5y ago

Boulder Colorado here: Bike commuting is amazing here, as it is in many parts of the US that have the population density and public funding to execute it. Anyway, Daybreak sounds amazing, and yeah, communities like that will always get "bad raps" from locals outside of it. It's human nature: These places are usually priced very high per square foot, due to the huge demand vs. supply of walkable neighborhoods. Locals outside of it see it as a luxury purchase, and then associate the residents with the most snobby behavior of the few snobs who inevitably inhabit it. I'm going to take a wild guess that the locals outside of the community have stereotypical nicknames for it like "People's Republic of Daybreak" or "Bankbreak" or something like that, lol.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

> "Why aren't more communities built this way?" I chose to buy a house in Ballard Seattle just so I could be near things and not have to drive (along with a bunch of streets shutdown for bike/pedistrian traffic + the Burke Gilman bike trail). It costs a lot more, and we don't have a huge yard, but you can get those things without going for a planned community if you don't mind some urban living. When I lived in SLC I got most of the same thing (living near U of U in an old Victorian). Well, the biking was a bit harder, no trails, but it was easy enough (maybe I was just younger then, however).

bart_spoon 5y ago

I was in Utah for a while and thought Daybreak looked great. Glad to hear that residents like it there. If I ever move back it’s towards the top of my list of areas I’d be interested in. Outside of a few neighborhoods in Salt Lake City, Provo, and rural areas, I feel like the vast majority of Utah is the epitome of American suburbs, and all the issues that come with that, so I can see why many Utahns might scoff at something different like Daybreak.

maxerickson 5y ago

Biking around the streets in my small town isn't very stressful. Crossing the highways is usually fine (but takes a minute to do safely). There aren't enough people to support '5 minute' walkability though. Lots of things are a mile or 2 away.

prawn 5y ago

I know Daybreak is more advanced as a project and significantly larger, but Culdesac looks a lot more appealing to me if I were the target market. Lots of medium sized, social/public space spaces. Much more reminiscent of the old towns of European cities - Dubrovnik, etc - which are wonderful to wander around, find a small bar/restaurant/etc. I streetviewed one part of Daybreak and it looked very broad and less walkable. That said, Culdesac might make for a pretty small neighbourhood? Is it replacing a trailer park, going by the angled concrete bits on satellite photos? We have something similar here in South Australia, replacing a large industrial property: https://lifemoreinteresting.com.au/ https://lifemoreinteresting.com.au/ It's not car free, but the parking affordances are very much minimised and designed to be trivial to walk/bike everywhere. It's centred around open spaces that are great to visit as an outsider and would be fantastic to live around: https://www.plant4bowden.com.au/ https://www.plant4bowden.com.au/ There are a range of architects and building styles so it suits more people - singles, couples and families. Get a townhouse without a car park. Get an apartment with three bedrooms and two basement car parks. One thing it didn't seem to do when I visited was provide more in terms of ground-level commercial/retail tenancies. That would be the ideal scenario for a community, I think - small stores and businesses at ground level and living spaces around or above.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

I know I’m an outlier but, in a city I feel generally safer riding on the road in traffic than on dedicated lanes and paths. In traffic with cars, everyone knows the rules, has the opportunity to see and use signals, and has regulated safety standards. I’ve ridden on separated bike lanes that were so dangerous I opted to use the main road and still felt safer with people trying to run me off the road honking and screaming at me. I’ve ridden on highly regarded bike paths that are so poorly maintained trees are growing out of them, so poorly lighted that collisions are unavoidable, and mixed traffic with pedestrians in a way that makes tangling with cars feel a lot safer. I know, I’m in the minority on this. But even after serious injuries in a bike accident sharing the road with cars… that still feels safer to me.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
That said, I welcome communities without cars! And I definitely feel like those communities especially need dedicated bike routes to separate cyclists from pedestrians.
Aeolun 5y ago
> I know, I’m in the minority on this. That’s because it doesn’t make sense? Even if you consider you might hit a tree, another bicyclist, or a unlighted lamp post on the regular, it’s still much safer than being hit by a two ton car just a single time. Everyone knows the rules and uses signals on bike lanes as well. I genuinely do not understand how you arrive at feeling a road full of cars is safer.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Partly because in my experience this: > Everyone knows the rules and uses signals on bike lanes as well. … is not true. Mostly because I’ve been on too many separated bike lanes that really aren’t separated—in really dangerous ways—and can’t be without eliminating the car traffic entirely. As an example: there is a separated lane in downtown Seattle. It runs along a one way road, on the left hand side. The road has frequent signals for left hand turns, with separate stop signals for cyclists and cars. The stop signals for cyclists are smaller and uncommon, so they’re easy to miss. And they’re timed in an unusual order that frequently confuses cyclists and drivers alike. All of those things led to several cases where I was nearly hit by a car anyway, under conditions that just don’t exist in shared traffic. And this lane like many others has a beginning and an end, where cars can and frequently do mistakenly enter. If all of that is not enough, some parts of the lane also has parking to its right, with ramps on either side for pedestrians to access/exit their vehicle, which are often used for deliveries to local businesses, often large deliveries where the delivery person has limited vision. All of those things are more dangerous, and more likely to result in collisions and accidents (at least in my mostly bike-friendly city) than just normal traffic flow. Sure this example is particularly badly designed. But it’s not dissimilar to many others I’ve ridden. This is all not to mention dedicated but non-separated lanes where getting doored by people parking is common and drivers frequently use as a passing lane. In those cases, the otherwise well accepted (here) “if it’s unsafe beside car traffic, take the lane” is considered an affront by a lot of drivers who expect you to stay in the bike lane. So now you have the added risk of road rage for no good reason. I can absolutely understand why anyone would prefer these trade offs. But to me they make everything about riding in mixed traffic more perilous, and I’d prefer the risk where I know everyone is following the same set of rules.

Asooka 5y ago

The thing that gets me is it seems to all be for rent. How can you have a real community when people don't own the land they live on?

yodelshady 5y ago

> will say though, the US is poorly equipped for bicycle commuting. Even our neighborhood doesn't have many dedicated bike paths, opting instead to share the road with cars. Most diehard cyclists I know will tell you it's a matter of "when" not "if" you have a scary encounter with a driver. My country is far from perfect, but the US simply culturally hates cyclists. I see outright dehumanisation - comparison to insects and the like - from US media on the regular. It's extremely unattractive, and given the role of transport patterns in climate change - well.

czottmann 5y ago
> The sort of sentiment you get from Europe when you mention Roma. To me, a European, that generalization is quite insulting.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Are you Icelandic?
- yodelshady 5y ago
  It did seem strong, I edited it out. Generalising isn't my intention, but honestly, I don't know how to avoid it entirely without losing points worth making, and I'm not sure anybody does. The point I was trying to make, in this case, is that in every culture you'll find some unpleasant sentiment condoned not just in the spaces you expect, but in the sort of cosy middle class spaces that are perceived (if they don't actively market themselves) as being inclusive and enlightened.

op00to 5y ago

Look up Radburn, NJ.

vmception 5y ago

Sad the name is Culdesac though Immediately triggers the idea of empty soulless suburban community dead ends that are the opposite of walkable

raptor99 5y ago

So locals don't like it, and all the outsiders that moved in are questioning why aren't more communities built this way...