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The Great Cul-De-Sac Problem And How To Alleviate It.
- tejaswiy 15y agoI see what he's saying, but don't necessarily agree. I grew up in India and I'm not sure how the culture here is in the US, but most of my friends came from houses that were a maximum of 2 blocks away. Not how much of a difference you'd make by connecting houses that are as far apart as 2.5 miles. The link is great though, It seems obvious on hindsight, but I didn't realize cities were explicitly planned this way.
- aphyr 15y agoThe point is not to connect you with houses 2.5 miles away--it's to connect you with houses 50 meters away that are completely inaccessible thanks to the street layout.
- ditojim 15y agopeople can't walk on grass these days?
- gfodor 15y agoIs less about that and more about trespassing on a random person's property in order to get around.
- ditojim 15y agoi lived on a variety of cu-de-sacs until i was 30. cutting thru neighbors' yards was never considered "trespassing" in those neighborhoods, especially for kids/teens.
- potatolicious 15y agoMost suburbs have fences, no? The one where I grew up it'd be impossible for me to get to a house 100 feet away without hopping fences, and that's generally seen as poor form.
- ditojim 15y agoSo (1) almost all fences have gates. (2) most houses do not have fences unless they have an animal or need extra privacy for some reason. (3) jumping fences is fun when you are a kid/teen. Otherwise, yes, the fence will get in the way.
- tejaswiy 15y agoHmm, not sure what I was thinking. I guess I agree. It'd almost double the number of homes that are in walking distance to your home if done.
- foresterh 15y agoI've lived on a dead-end street (but not a cul-de-sac), and I've lived on a regular traffic street. I definitely preferred the dead-end with the lack of traffic and noise, and ability for kids to play in the street without fear of a car going 50 down it. And people did socialize with neighbors on the dead-end street (although maybe not as much as the regular street).
- stygianguest 15y agoI've never lived in a cul-de-sac (which btw is french for a dead-end street), but spent my childhood playing outside all the same. Narrow, one-way streets, with plenty of speed bumps. I walked to school. Currently I reside downtown, overlooking rails (the trains go quite slowly and make a noise far more agreeable than that of cars). There's a market under the rails, fruit vegtables and other foodstuffs at daytime, small quantities of drugs at night. I can buy on credit at both markets if I forget my wallet. I will never understand the attraction of suburbs. The distances. The architecture. The boredom.
- bdunbar 15y agoI will never understand the attraction of suburbs Low taxes. Lower cost of living. Privacy of a detached house. The lack of 'city' noise. Letting my kids play in the yard, on sidewalks. Letting my kids tear around the cul-de-sac. I've lived in the country, I've lived in the city, I've lived in the 'burbs. I prefer the latter, now. Maybe it's just me. I live in a smaller town, my commute is a five minute drive. YMMV.
- stygianguest 15y agoTo be fair. I have never lived outside of a city/town (>=200k). But living in suburbs "for the kids" (a big point of yours too) does not convince me. As a kid, I had a great time. With plenty of time outdoors too.
- rubashov 15y ago
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- michaelchisari 15y agoI've lived in both cul-de-sac hell (even pizza delivery drove there for years, it was a nightmare), and I've lived in straight grid systems, and I know where my loyalties lie. If electric cars and alternate fuels can't deliver, then public transportation is our only way out of fossil fuel dependence. And I don't envy the city planners who will have to figure out how to make a bus and train system work with a layout that looks like a small child closed his eyes and took a crayon to a piece of paper.
- buss 15y agoI like the sentiment of this article, but I don't like the wording of his survey. > Maps show that your neighborhood only has 1 entrance (through Radio Dr) creating a bottleneck and completely seperating [sic] you from your neighbors to the West, East, and South and adding extra miles to your commute. This is a really biased question, and will throw his survey results into question.
- alanh 15y agoYou are of course correct to point this out but maybe, just maybe, it is still a good proxy for gauging reaction to a positively-portrayed campaign along similar lines.
- shabble 15y agoMight be interesting to run another quick campaign without that, and see what kind of A/B results you get. Requires quite a lot more effort than the web to actually do, though.
- pasbesoin 15y agoMy prior community did this... 50 to 60 years ago. I happened to meet one of the long-retired city council members who was part of that planning, and they chose the street layout -- a modified grid -- deliberately to prevent traffic / cars racing down the sidestreets. A few strategically placed walkways let people move between sections in pretty much a a straight line. It keeps kids off of the main thoroughfares, and it makes walking downtown (these days, more often a commuter heading to the train station, but also trips to the library, theatre, and restaurants) a very pleasant experience. It's also a community where kids can still walk to school (though it's wealthy enough that many nonetheless get rides -- lazy little buggers ;-). (It's also nice to not be incessantly driving over the uncomfortable alternative that is speed bumps. An annoyance in the nearby city, these days.)
- fleitz 15y agoThat sounds a lot like how Vancouver's West End is laid out. Unfortunately I couldn't read the article but having experienced the situation both in a typical cul-de-sac neighbourhood and a traffic calmed neighbourhood I definitely prefer the latter.
- gavanwoolery 15y agoIt does seem a bit insane, but the solution is not always so simple. Many of these neighborhoods are built on hilly terrain, and there are many laws and regulations about building roads, particularly building at a particular incline and building on stable and erosion-resistant areas. Most of these cul-de-sac layouts are aimed to maximize views and minimize construction costs, hence you have a sort of minimum-spanning tree configuration. Also, many of the streets are forced to follow isolines in the terrain.
- justinph 15y agoThe density in cul-de-sac neighborhoods is still too low to make it possible for residents to get to any of the basic services they need (school, grocery, etc) without driving. Adding a few roads to shave a mile or two off a commute or trip the store isn't going to make much of a difference. Our (american) cities desperately need urban growth boundaries to force density.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y agoWhy are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite? [edit] I had in a house in a great neighborhood in the city within walking distance of grocery, restaurants, buses, etc., and I still moved to the suburbs. Obviously density's not the only thing people want.
- kaiuhl 15y agoIs it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community. I live in downtown Portland, OR and have done so for the last eight years without ever owning a car. I can walk or bike to literally everything in the city, or alternatively take a streetcar, light rail train, or technologically advanced bus system. There's a reason people move here – there's value in Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) that make more livable, walkable, awesome places to live your life. And because of the UGB, it's even faster to escape the city's limits and find yourself in real green space. On Tuesday after work, I drove 45 minutes (using a car-sharing program) out of the city to a national wilderness where I slept under the stars, caught a few trout, and still made it back into the city for work the next morning. Something like that might be difficult in LA or in a large suburb. As you can see, I really really disagree with you. :)
- michaelchisari 15y agoAnd the thing is, Portland isn't even that dense of a city. As far as urban environments go, it's hardly Blade Runner. Plenty of detached homes with yards, parks, etc. The idea that people have that we have to live like sardines in some anime-inspired megalopolis is simply inaccurate. If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. Obviously, in terms of resources, it's more complicated than that, but it's clear that sprawling out is terrible for the environment, and that for true nature-lovers, it's much more advantageous to live in a city that has no suburbs, where the world of people truly ends at the city limits.
- bgentry 15y agoHe fails to understand the main reason that home developers want to build neighborhoods with lots of cul-de-sacs: Homes on cul-de-sacs sell for more money. The more of these you can squeeze into a given neighborhood, the more money you'll make off the development.
- huhtenberg 15y agoI very much doubt it is the main reason.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoI'll bet most developers do it for the money, no?
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago>Homes on cul-de-sacs sell for more money. // Presumably if the market is working properly this means that more people want to buy these homes and/or value these homes more highly than others. That is, people want to live on cul-de-sacs.
- SamReidHughes 15y agoAlso it uses less road, which means more space for homes.
- bgentry 15y agoAbsolutely, forgot to consider that. That might be a bigger reason.
- andrewtbham 15y agopeople will pay more for cul-de-sacs. they don't want to live on busy streets where their pets and kids are likely to wander into the street and get killed.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y agolol, you failed to read my first paragraph that specifically said "I get why people (myself even) like the suburbs and cul-de-sacs but they have been taken to an extreme" btw, sorry my whole shared hosting server crashed, and is still down since yesterday. I can now say, "hacker news crashed my server", so I consider it an achievement unlocked and am very happy about it.
- Mz 15y agoI live without a car. The "put in connector sidewalks" solution is one that has occurred to me. My thought is that it would let people keep the same situation they seem to prefer in terms of car traffic but would connect neighbors like he is talking about, where teenagers could go see each other without needing a driver's license and car to have a social life.
- whatusername 15y agoMy exurb has these. It's quite an elegant solution.
- joelmichael 15y agoI grew up on a cul-de-sac. I knew all of my neighbors and it was a great environment for a kid to grow up in. We had a nearby woods, too. We often walked and rode bikes.
- jseliger 15y agoProblem is, as the article points out, cul-de-sacs impose substantial externalities on everyone else. It would be "a great environment" for me if everyone else rode bicycles and I drove—after all, I'd be very safe!—but it wouldn't be so great for everyone else. That's an extreme example, but the principle remains.
- jarin 15y agoSame here. One thing I've noticed is living on a road or in an apartment you don't really talk to your neighbors all that much. On a cul-de-sac you do get to know them.
- yason 15y agoThe cul-de-sac suburbia is probably pretty good for kids until they're 8-10 years old and want to do something else than ride a bike along their neighbours' yards. Because of the cul-de-sac layout, it's nearly impossible to walk or take your bike and go somewhere, namely because: a) it's a long way because you practically have to detour towards your destination all the time; b) there's nowhere to go because it's just houses and other culs-de-sac; c) if you manage the gymnastics to find yourself out of the neighbourhood you're likely to bump into a large junction leading to an arterial road where there's no place to ride a bike; d) and if there was, you'd have to pedal for miles until you ever reached some place to go, like a mall, another suburban feature.
- dadads 15y agoSome problems with this argument: For overhead maps 1-4, couldn't you just simply walk over on foot?
- throwaway32 15y agono, because people usually fence in their yards, from one, or both sides.
- Mz 15y agoIt depends. There may be fences and other obstacles in the way and it may involve trespassing. I sometimes find pedestrian-friendly paths cut through and sometimes not.
- jimmyhwang 15y agoCan anyone else see the article? I'm getting redirected to http://127.0.0.1/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it/ http://127.0.0.1/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-ho...
- fabianhoward 15y agoHe's probably redirected it so he doesn't crash under the load.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y agoYou guys crashed my 1and1 hosting. lol.
- sbierwagen 15y agoGet a less terrible provider. Serving a static HTML page to only ten thousand people is not hard.
- jimmyhwang 15y agoI guess it's time to upgrade... Congrats on getting all the traffic though!
- johnbatch 15y agoGoogle Cache at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&rls=10_7_1&q=cache:http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it/&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#...
- bdunbar 15y agowww.chrisnorstrom.com is redirecting to 127.0.0. ... why?
- rprime 15y agoAs stated somewhere else in this thread, I assume he is trying to scale his app due to higher loads and probably forgot to change some config items.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y agoMy 1and1 shared hosting crashed. I have no control over this from here on out. lol, I was wondered what it would do...
- mkopinsky 15y agoFor some reason this link is forwarding to http://127.0.0.1/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it/ http://127.0.0.1/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-ho.... Any clue why, or how to fix it?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- KenCochrane 15y agoProbably misconfigured web server. Looks like they are using a reverse proxy that isn't setup right. Nothing we can do, the person who runs the server needs to fix it.
- jimmyhwang 15y agoThe server crashed... (per the site owner's words: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3061633 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3061633)
- shorttime 15y agoHmm, thanks for posting that. I had the same problem. Good to know that I don't have anything malicious on my computer.
- jeromeparadis 15y agoJust stepped into this thread and I thought that was the cul-de-sac: pointing back to 127.0.0.1. Would have made somewhat sense. :-D
- Barnabas 15y agoCached by ViewText: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it/ http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.chrisnorstrom.com...
- Prophasi 15y agoTo address a few of the myths: Myth 1: Who is he to say how people feel about their neighborhood is nonsense? There are plenty where the neighbors know each other, their kids play, they have block parties and BBQs, and there's a strong fabric of trust. To pitch them all as "nonsense" is to sweep away all pretense of objectivity. Myth 2: How much traffic someone gets varies widely with the street. In his red zone, I'd bet traffic is next-to-none on E. Radiom, Amona, E. Lemona, and Hallock; light on Nemo and Damson; medium on W. Radiom and W. Lemona; and "heavy" on the rest. But consider even Erie and Avila: no car would take both, and many will take neither; their realistic exposure is maybe 50-75 households? Compare that to a giant grid, where every street is a route to every other, and I don't think the outcome is clear at all. But it'd be dumb to get a house on N. Radio or N. Hale to avoid traffic, sure. An added question is whether people speed more in a closed community or in a grid. Daily I see lots of people on main roads tear off onto residential streets to circumvent red lights, and the last thing they want to see when they meet back up with the artery is the people who waited, passing them by. Myth 3: For the reasons above, less traffic traveling by my house -- which is clearly possible in these neighborhoods -- means less pollution in the form of noise, smoke, and gas fumes. ... Not to say the grid system doesn't have its merits, and I agree on some of them. But I don't think I'd want to see either system entirely eliminated... much less with the presumption that there are just millions of closed-minded people out there who are dead wrong about where they want to live, because they're simply not as enlightened as your humble author.
- ANH 15y ago> An added question is whether people speed more in a closed community or in a grid. I live on a cul de sac and not a day goes by that I don't see someone speeding through the stop sign a few houses down. The cul de sac is not what appealed to me about where I'm living, and I would gladly give it up so I could ride my bicycle unimpeded to the subway station that's nearby without being forced out to the major highway that runs through the area.
- Prophasi 15y agoSure, and I've seen it, too; but for both of us, it's just anecdotal. It'll obviously depend on a lot of geo- and demo- and chronographic factors which one is worse.
- lachlanj 15y agoTry the link for the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.chrisnorstrom.com%2F2011%2F10%2Fthe-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.chrisnorstrom.com%2F2011%2F10%2Fthe-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it%2F&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=4629l9955l0l11550l12l12l1l0l0l0l568l2593l4-1.4l5l0&mvs=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&clien...
- littlegiantcap 15y agoI'm failing to see where some of these conclusions are coming from. I grew up in a cul de sac and it honestly made me closer to my neighbors because we could play in the street more often, and adults have block parties and stuff in cul de sacs. I also disagree with the whole miles and miles to see neighbors a few blocks over point. In almost every neighborhood in my town there's tons of bike/jogging trails everywhere that makes this a nonissue. As an aside I was a little turned off by the overly hostile tone taken by the article.
- ADent 15y agoHis assumption is invalid. There are many cul-de-sacs around here. But some subdivisions still have good access to the surrounding streets, and some are hard to get in and out of, both seem to have about the same number of cul-de-sacs.
- yason 15y agoThe sad recipe of the 1900's: - have nice walkable cities for everyone - start building and selling cars - cars begin to take space in the city, cause local pollution, and also kill people walking or biking - don't blame the cars but blame the dangers of city, and thus proceed to build suburbs which are perceived safe, and move there - build miles and miles of wide and car-friendly culs-de-sac because everybody knows if cars stay on their runway and people stay inside their yards or homes, they can't hit each other - automobile accidents soar because everybody needs to drive around - thus, build and sell more cars because suburbanites require a couple in each house, continue blaming cities and leave it to poor people who can't buy a house and maintain a couple of vehicles - build malls and office parks to avoid going to the downtown at all, but only if you can afford to drive there because there's no other way there - suburbia is becomes dead during the daytime and conversely office parks die off after the workday, and malls get their share of visits before people go to sleep and this is all glued together by huge traffic congestion during commute hours - to battle congestion, build more roads and make them even wider: there's more congestion that spreads even wider - oil prices soar and living gets really expensive in the suburbs: continue to build new suburbs while leaving older suburbs to become McGhettos - 2011
- Loic 15y agoWhat you need is not less cul-de-sacs, it is more pedestrian ways meshing your neighbourhood and small parks to connect people together. Do not focus on the roads, focus on the people.