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Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health
- clarebear 13y agoWalkable neighborhoods are like environmentally friendly homes... people won't usually pay as much more than what they cost as they will for McMansions, so builder's don't want to build them. I live on a cul de sac and my kids play games on the street with the neighbor kids, but we are the only family on the block that walks to the local park just outside of our neighborhood. We do walk to that park, but drive to the indoor play/swimming complex 2 miles away. So the rules of thumb in this article apply to my family, but not the others on my block.
- lanaius 13y agoNot that it directly relates to your comment, but Midtown Atlanta is filled with brand-new high-rise condominium buildings at an incredibly high price. They continue to build more of them even right now, so there is still healthy demand there.
- runako 13y agoWorth noting since this is on HN: pretty much nothing in Atlanta is an "incredibly high price" by the standards of America's coastal cities. Things may be relatively higher in Midwtown than places much further away, but none of it will be "expensive" for folks reading this.
- wmeredith 13y agoYou presume too much. I live in a suburb just east of Kansas City and my money goes a long way here.
- jordo37 13y agoThis is interesting and I always love urban planning discussions, but I feel there is something a little off about this. It seems to be suggesting that that reason people in non-urban areas are overweight / drive is because of dendritic street patterns, but those exist and are emblematic of a lower population density. If you took my grandfather's fully rural town in the middle of Nebraska, there isn't much in the way of cul-de-sacs but people still drive everywhere because of - what seems to me - the more dominant issue of population density.
- couchand 13y agoIf your grandfather's rural town was anything like my family's, it used to have a lively main street. Unfortunately the viability of that walkable neighborhood has been decimated by decades of greenfield construction out by the interstate.
- philwelch 13y agoDensity is an effect and not a cause of design. My dad grew up in Bend, Oregon during the Depression. People had cars but walked to work, typically at the sawmill. Bend was a small town and not the tourist destination it is today, but it was apparently designed to be walkable. Go to Bend today though, and it's been rebuilt for cars rather than humans.
- VladRussian2 13y ago>it was apparently designed to be walkable. was it really "designed"? To me one of the issues with modern development is that it is explicitly "designed/planned" and thus diversity and vibrancy is naturally limited by the views/imagination of the designers/developers and politicians. (an illustration from another area - it is like "planned" economy vs. naturally evolving/developing capitalist economy)
- philwelch 13y agoThat's a good point. Someone unavoidably had to lay out the streets but walkable cities and towns are quite a bit more organic than designed.
- timjahn 13y agoI'll never understand why we continue to design our suburbs for cars and driving with no attempt to encourage walking. Instead, we seem to discourage walking through a lack of sidewalks, concentration of destinations surrounded by parking lots a mile wide themselves, and burying houses in subdivisions that require almost a mile walk just to get out of.
- potatolicious 13y agoA large part of it is crime and/or race. The modern subdivision - full of meandering streets and poor connectivity to nearby arterials - is deliberate. It creates the gated neighborhood effect without the need to put up any unsightly walls or gates, and in effect keeps its residents separated from the world outside. The world outside presumably filled with undesirables. The lack of connectivity discourages through traffic (i.e., undesirables), and meandering streets that run every which way helps artificially draw out the walking distance between any two points, further hobbling any desire or ability for people who walk/take transit to visit (i.e., undesirables). Suburbs weren't always like this, we had walkable suburbs a long time ago, and in some places we have them again. But the most typical archetype of a suburban neighborhood is an exercise in extremely class-conscious design. Despite the revitalization of urban cores across the US, the mentality that drove the construction of these suburbs still remains. The thing that jumps into my mind is the furor over Seattle's extension of light rail into Bellevue - a high-income suburb. All of the opposition boiled down to "but the undesirables!". Until we shake the whole "urban = poor" thing, we'll continue to architect our suburbs in this way.
- rajpaul 13y agothese analysis fall apart once you realize that people with kids need more room. Mableton Homes With Kids: 32.8% 2 bedroom: $56,600 Midtown Homes With Kids: 5.2% 2 bedroom: $ 253,700 http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Mableton-people/r_32619/ http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Mableton-people/r_32619/ http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Atlanta/Midtown-people/r_269381/ http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Atlanta/Midtown-people/r... http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Mableton-home-value/r_32619/#metric=mt%3D34%26dt%3D32%26tp%3D5%26rt%3D8%26r%3D32619%26el%3D0 http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Mableton-home-value/r_32... http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Atlanta/Midtown-home-value/r_269381/ http://www.zillow.com/local-info/GA-Atlanta/Midtown-home-val...
- ynniv 13y agoThe article mentions that Atlantic Station sits on a large parking deck, but doesn't explore how its 7,200 parking spaces can make an otherwise small outdoor mall very busy at popular times. Cars remove you from your immediate surroundings, but they also enable you to temporarily be part of a community physically distant from where you live. The answer to why Atlantans drive so much is not that they are lazy, but that they have somewhere else to be. You can lament that walking is good exercise, or you can appreciate the ability to raise a family in a house with a backyard while having a reasonable commute to a Fortune 500 company's world headquarters, a startup community, or a global research university. Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent.
- bcoates 13y agoThe article wasn't complaining about density but about structure; a fences-and-backyards suburb arranged on a grid or some other well-connected layout is much more walkable than the same density suburb where all traffic must pass through a distant trunk to a major street. This makes it possible to actually connect useful mass transit to the suburb, which as the article explained, people will use if it's there.
- ynniv 13y agoThat's the catchy title, but the article is really about density and transportation by car. There's a nice diagram describing how living in the suburbs reduces the number of places in walking distance, but in that diagram the house isn't even on a cul-de-sac. The thesis is actually that cul-de-sacs increase driving distance, because the places where they are used tend not to have any walkable destinations. This makes it possible to actually connect useful mass transit to the suburb, which as the article explained, people will use if it's there. The article says that people in midtown take MARTA to the grocery store... I can confidently tell you that this is incorrect at best. People in midtown drive their car to Whole Foods on the way back from their 15 minute reverse commute to work in another part of town. They will later walk to a local restaurant, bar, the park, or a local grocery or retail store, but it is rare that they will use MARTA except to get to the airport.
- redthrowaway 13y ago>Why do most people fail to walk even the 10,000 daily steps needed to stay healthy? Where does that figure come from? A lazy guestimate of 1m/stride puts that at 10km/day. That's 2 hours of walking a day. Who the hell spends 2 hours a day walking?
- flexd 13y agoI don't know where the 10,000 daily steps figure comes from, but moving around more than two hours daily seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do in order to remain healthy. Or maybe run for 45 minutes, or walk to work, or go swimming or do a ton of other physical activities I am not going to bother listing. Personally I ride mountain bikes in every way possible, and time permitting also as often as possible.
- AznHisoka 13y ago2 hours straight, no. but it adds up: 10 minutes to the train station 5 minutes transferring trains 10 minutes to work. 10 minutes to your desk 20 minutes to lunch and back. 10 minutes to train station 10 minutes home 10 minutes walking around home etc..
- lucaspiller 13y agoI used to live in a city centre without a car. My office was only a 20 minute walk (or about the same by bus due to traffic), so I did that usually. If I wanted to go shopping it was about 10 minutes to the nearest mall. I used Moves [0] to track how much I walked, and it was around 60km/week. [0] - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/moves/id509204969 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/moves/id509204969
- showerst 13y agoHere's an about.com article that says it's medically unsupported. [1] (about.com isn't a great source but hey it's someone who's looked into it) http://walking.about.com/od/measure/f/10000steps.htm http://walking.about.com/od/measure/f/10000steps.htm FWIW I live in central DC and walk for about 90% of my total trips (although I have a sedentary job and a short commute), and the moves app says I go roughly 3mi/day, which squares with my intuition looking at a map.
- genwin 13y agoMy more ideal city would have higher density housing but with small private yards, if only decks that seem like yards, something like this: http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/mountain-dwellings-urban-development-copenhagen http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/mountain-dwellings-... In the US we have high density housing (condo skyscrapers) and low density housing (suburbs) but not much in-between that's nice.
- enjo 13y agoThat's not true for any city I've been to in the U.S. I'm seriously trying to think of a single one that doesn't have sprawling bungalow neighborhoods near the center of the city. These are historically known as "streetcar suburbs", as most cities had actual fixed transit networks throughout the city itself. Today these are close-in neighborhoods full of generally smaller homes with yards. They tend to have small yards, as they are generally built pretty close together. I live in Denver which has an enormous number of those homes ringing Downtown. New Orleans has the garden district and surround. San Francisco fits that bill with the huge number of row-homes in the city(although the costs are nuts). Portland most certainly has a lot of that stock. Capitol Hill all the way to the Queen Anne in Seattle fits that bill. Dallas has the park cities. New York City has queens. Little Rock even has an excellent selection of inner-city bungalows (the neighborhoods are in poor repair, but they exist). The issue we have in the U.S. is cultural. I think it's a widespread mental disease. We're willing to drive enormous distances, spending huge chunks of our lives in cars, so that we can own giant houses full of rooms we don't even use. It's nuts.
- genwin 13y agoIf it's too expensive or inner-city or a money pit or ugly or cheaply-built it's off my radar. That includes Capitol Hill and Queen Anne-type areas, or anything built prior to 1950 and most stuff built after 1990. Given my criteria, in Denver a 1960s+ small house would likely still have a big lot. If not a big lot it tends to have parking for only 1 car. Albuquerque has the best type of higher-density housing I've seen with quality townhouses, having small private yards and 2-car garages in the suburbs.
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- geetee 13y agoRecently I was trying to find a new place to live in the suburbs where I could walk to a train. Time and time again, a nice short walk by the way the bird flies. Triple that if you don't want to walk through people's yards. I didn't even get so far as seeing if there were sidewalks.
- lucaspiller 13y ago> Aesthetics matter. We walk farther when streets feel safe and interesting. People who live in central New York or London typically walk between a third to a half mile to go shopping. That’s a four- to 10-minute stroll. I don't think aesthetics is really the main point. Older cities like New York and London aren't designed for cars. High rise buildings don't have parking for every home / desk so it isn't an option to have that many cars in the city.
- MAGZine 13y agoUnderground parking provides plenty of avenues for people to own a car if they want. However, these cities are so well connected that it doesn't make sense to own a car because it's easier to walk, and given the option, people wouldn't want to navigate streets if they have the option of walking to work or shopping. Cul-de-sacs on the other hand are the signature of urban sprawl. If you live in a cul-de-sac, odds that walking to shopping isn't very convenient. You also probably have a car, so why bother?
- officemonkey 13y agoDriving around underground parking is also unpleasant, so instead of firing up the car to drive to the megaplex supermarket, you're more likely to the shop down the street.
- lucaspiller 13y agoIn London at least there is very little underground parking. Most buildings are 50+ years old, and even in new builds it isn't very common. When I was working there, in a building with ~2000 desks, the underground car park had a spacious 80 spaces. I lived a bit further out, so I actually had a driveway, but if you live in the centre you are lucky to even get on-street parking. Still, as you say, it makes no sense to have a car due to the easy availability of public transport. It's a catch 22 really :)
- nilsbunger 13y agoIf each cul-de-sac just had a walking path cut out of it, I think you'd have the ideal. That's what it's like in small-town Holland. Cul-de-sacs do have other benefits like a quiet street and keeping your little kids "corralled".
- alex-g 13y agoI agree. There are good reasons to want to live on a street that doesn't have a lot of traffic. (That doesn't equate to a cul-de-sac, although they trivially fit the pattern because there is only one end.) One of the problems with the street layouts described here is that pedestrians have to follow the same winding routes that the cars do. Another is that the larger, heavier-traffic roads aren't nice to walk along, even if they have sidewalks.
- stonemetal 13y ago>One of the problems with the street layouts described here is that pedestrians have to follow the same winding routes that the cars do. Why do they have to? I don't see why you couldn't build a more natural walking path away from the street traffic that would be less objectionable to homeowners since there wouldn't be the automotive noise and danger to children.
- alex-g 13y agoThat is what I and the parent comment were saying - that they ought to do this.
- jstalin 13y agoSome people like dead-end streets and large yards. Some people want to prevent people from having such an option.
- mason240 13y agoIt really is amazing how much urbanites hate the happiness of others.
- slurry 13y agoSome people like high-rise apartments right next to the train station. Some people want to prevent people from having such an option.
- jstalin 13y agoI'm fine with both, as long as both parties are bearing the costs of their chosen option.
- Stronico 13y agoTwo observations: 1. There are far, far more differences between Midtown and Mabelton than urban planning (Midtown is a young, liberal, much higher than average percentage of gay residents, close proximity to Georgia Tech) and Mabelton is pretty much in the opposite direction in every way possible. It is an apples to oranges comparison. 2. A huge advantage of cul-de sacs is that people don't speed down them like they do on residential connective streets, which is a huge plus when you have children of a certain age.
- ch4s3 13y agoRe: 2. Narrower streets do the same thing for traffic speed. For an added bonus, tree lined streets slow traffic even more due to how nearby moving objects in your peripheral vision change your perception of how fast you're moving. So, you can get the desired effect of the cul-de-sac without the cul-de-sac.
- Stronico 13y agoI live on a narrow street, with lots of trees, and lots of street parking, which makes it one lane in many parts. And Speed humps. It seems to make the cautious drive slower, but the speeders don't seem to be affected that much.
- ch4s3 13y agomileage may vary. In all seriousness, you'll never stop some people, but good design of infrastructure does change behavior in many people.
- Stronico 13y agoA valid point, but since it is a through street there are more speeders due to the higher total of cars on the road in general - It does not take that speeding cars to elicit fear. That was actually one of the first things I noticed after we brought the baby home - the speeding cars.
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- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoI did some research on cul-de-sacs using my own neighborhood using Google satellite images: It's gotten so out of control that you have to drive upwards of 4 miles just to see your neighbors when they're only a few yards away on a neighboring street: http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it/ http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-pr... I can understand the allure of cul-de-sacs but perhaps a regular "street grid" system with "pipe sprouts" would be better for everyone. Overall, our American lifestyle is the culprit here. Just compare any small American town with a small Italian town: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fedesk8/7880293850/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fedesk8/7880293850/ and you'll notice what the cause of bad public transit and over-use of cars is. We seem to have a passion for living far apart and having our space.
- TillE 13y agoIn my experience, even the most rural farmland of Germany is more walkable than most American suburbs. Houses are quite far apart, but there's still decent bus service, and you can walk into town in maybe 20 minutes without crossing a highway. Most suburbs are just bad design through and through. They're not really optimal at achieving their goals, and they have countless terrible side effects.
- halcyondaze 13y agoI grew up on a double cul-de-sac street so I am clearly the most unhealthy.
- VLM 13y agoI can see why the story about Atlanta was contrived to run in the winter. I spent some time in the South in my youth and you'd have to be ... overly acclimatized to intentionally set foot outside air conditioning from June to September or so. Its not just sauna-like, it fits the temp and humidity of a sauna exactly. So you're going to need to own a car with AC, and you're going to pay the extensive monthly bills if you use it or not, so may as well use it. I never really did anything outside in the south intentionally all summer long. I went out a couple times at night when it got down to the upper 70s as a low, sometimes, but the mosquitos were the size of hummingbirds. Aside from the summer weather its beautiful land and nice people.
- jackalope 13y agoI don't buy it. Cul-de-sacs experience less crime, fewer traffic accidents and are very conducive to taking safe leisurely walks. The problem is that some neighborhoods don't provide efficient pathways for practical pedestrian traffic between major destinations, which isn't caused by cul-de-sacs, but poor planning. Communities that provide pathways between cul-de-sacs away from traffic that connect such points have the best of both worlds. I envy them, because I live in a cul-de-sac that is about a mile from our schools as the crow flies, but the only available route adds 2 miles, driving or walking.
- webXL 13y agotl;dr Connectivity counts: More intersections mean more walking, and more disconnected cul-de-sacs mean more driving. People who live in neighborhoods with latticeworklike streets actually drive 26 percent fewer miles than people in the cul-de-sac forest.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoThat's a darned shame. Because streets use a shameful fraction of our city surface area. Cul-de-sacs can be quite efficient. Kind of like a dendritic structure, every endpoint served with a relative minimum of cement. I imagine the stats are because folks like to walk a circuit, not walk out-and-back on the same route, because its boring.
- peatmoss 13y agoIt more relates to the relative size of the service area and the fact that pedestrians have a steeper distance decay function than other modes.
- rietta 13y agoThis strikes me as an interesting read. I live in an Atlanta suburb. The closest shopping center is more than half a mile away and the one I go to most, and where I go to check my company's mail, is 2.5 miles away. The distances themselves are not so bad, but the main road is a 4 lane highway with a posted speed limit of 55 - but people drive faster. Frankly, the thought of walking or biking along that road is scary from a safety point of view, so yes, in general I drive everywhere. Ironically, if I want to go run laps at the closest city park, I have to drive to that too. The area that the author is describing is 25 miles away and takes at least 45 minutes to an hour each way by car, so I go there as infrequently as possible. Frankly the situation is not too bad, because telecommuting is the best work situation ever. The internet beats commuting - be it by bus, train, or automobile - any day!
- dmerrick 13y agoAs a minor nitpick, the plural of cul-de-sac is 'culs-de-sac' (not 'cul-de-sacs' as appears in the title).
- adrusi 13y agoWhere I live, Columbia MD, roads meander, have a hierarchical structure and there are A LOT of cul de sacs. It's a very walkable town, however, because it has walking paths that penetrate at least every other residential street, and provide direct walking routes to important sites, such as shopping plazas, schools and the mall. It's not optimal, because commercial and residential area are zoned apart, so things aren't as close as they could be, but at least the routes between then are efficient. I'm a 15 minute's walk from a grocery store, a mall, the elementary, middle and high schools that my house is districted to.
- rkischuk 13y agoStartup Founder. Married. 2 kids. We live in Mableton, and our office is in midtown. I know both areas well. Cost of "home" in Midtown, $500k: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/847-Myrtle-St-NE-Atlanta-GA-30308/2117688025_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/847-Myrtle-St-NE-Atlanta-G... Cost of "home" in Mableton, $200k: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4582-Somerset-Rd-SW-Smyrna-GA-30082/14288922_zpid/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4582-Somerset-Rd-SW-Smyrna... Midtown, local elementary school is a 2/10 on GreatSchools. Mableton, 7/10. If you want to live anywhere near midtown and have a decent public school, tack on another $150k and you lose most of the touted walkability. It's strange to build Mableton up as the straw man for Atlanta suburbs since it's only 10 miles from midtown and a ~25 minute commute to several of Atlanta's job centers, and is probably more diverse both racially and economically than midtown. A place like Kennesaw, 20 miles out, 45+ minute commute, and less diverse would be a smarter target. So much of these discussions seem to be single people arguing against places they've never lived, trying to convince people whose lifestyles they don't understand.
- colinake 13y agoAtlantan here. I lived in West Midtown for five years post-college. It's the epitome of hip re-urbanization and all that comes with it. I walked from my house to a local restaurant or shop exactly 0 times during those five years. I moved to a cul-de-sac in a northern suburb six months ago. I'm 1 mile from 270,000 ft^2 of retail shopping and 1 mile from a walkable downtown with tons of shops and restaurants. Do I drive 60 miles to and from work every day? Yes. I've also walked to restaurants and shops on numerous occasions. And as pointed out by rkischuk, I live in a house I couldn't begin to afford in West Midtown and we live in good school districts. If you want to live in a small apartment in a high density area away from cul-de-sacs, good for you. Let me make my decisions based off what I've optimized my life for without demonizing me because we place different levels of importance on different items in life. I am happy spending $33/day to commute in exchange for a walkable area, larger house, better schools and more family-friendly environment.
- runako 13y agoAtlantan also. >> happy spending $33/day to commute Just curious, how do you factor in an hour+ of commuting per day? For me, that seems like it would far outweigh the costs of moving further away from the office. Time away from kids, time not working/sleeping, etc. Money can be earned or received in investments, but Founder time is a finite resource at the business. Obviously if you're married with kids there are a lot of factors that determine living situation, but in isolation it seems like a false economy. It seems like just multiplying by your effective comp rate would make this commute far more expensive than living closer. For instance, if you bill at $100/hr, you've just told me your commute costs a minimum of $133/day (~$2,660/mo) [at $150/hr, that's $3,660/mo, etc.]. This should easily cover the price delta between e.g. midtown and 30 miles out. And that's before factoring in the other benefits that come along with not spending that much time on the road every day. I can't make the math work, I'm wondering how others justify it.
- colinake 13y agoMy commute is about an hour a day. There are many ways to turn this into productive time. Think. Listen to audiobooks/podcasts. Run through a few key work phone calls. Catch up with friends. I really enjoy my commute. I'll also point out that while that's theoretically $3660/mo if you aren't productive throughout any of the drive, that's not actually something many people can convert into cash. Many people spend time during the day with various items to unwind or provide a mental break from work. Working more is not always a goal. I don't want all my time to be spent working or sleeping. You also have to account for where you spend your down time. I chose to live near friends and family in a place I can raise my kids. If I didn't live where I do, I'd be driving out here on the weekend and maybe once a week. In addition, if you're living in town with kids and you want a quality education, you might be able to bill more $ a month (presuming you're building a business where you're selling your time, which I'm not and I don't want to do), but you're going to spend more money on a quality education or a house. Everyone has different circumstances. My math works out for me. It might not for you.