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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to totally gloss over the advantages of cul-de-sac and suburban living. Having just moved from the a more dense area of the city (after 10+ years) to a much more suburban area, I am keenly aware of the new perks I now have.

The first one is obviously space. Suburbs can have bigger houses and bigger yards. That is a very nice perk. I am not saying that bigger is always better, but you can't just dismiss this as not being important at all. Having a backyard where I can BBQ and a garage I can park in are pretty nice.

Second, the article talks about the increased overall danger from traffic accidents in the city, but they don't talk about actual accidents in the cul-de-sac itself. If you live in a cul-de-sac, your kids can play in the street much more safely than if you are in a city grid. Being able to play in the street is a nice thing.

Again, I don't think that there isn't a cost to suburban cul-de-sac living, I just feel this article completely ignores the actual benefits, instead focusing on a few parts that I don't think people are actually claiming about the suburbs.

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I didn't understand the article to be against suburbs but against the cul-de-sac supporting layout that makes it hard for people to get around without a car. If suburbs were designed differently we could have both space and easier walkability and bikeability.

How would you feel about a grid with parks sprinkled in instead of cul-de-sac? I have a small public park across the street and it gets heavy usage from the kids that live around it. Traffic is still pretty low despite the street connecting the neighborhood to the main thoroughfare that leads to the freeway.

My wife used to own a home in a development in California that was actually designed around cul-de-sacs. However, there were walk ways between houses that allowed you to get around on foot quickly and be in less than 5 minutes at a small mall that had a grocery store, cafes etc. That also might solve some issues discussed in the article.

I do think that the boneheaded zoning in the US that practically aims to ruin walkability is as always a huge factor as well.

There are quite a few interestingly designed cities in the UK. I used to work in Bracknell which is similar to what you suggest with walking paths and basically parks around many of the houses, especially in an estate called Great Hollands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hollands). They also have small roads that are dedicated to buses, with underpasses so that they avoid intersections. I didn't live there so I don't know a lot about it, but it did look really good and I used to go for runs along the paths there.

Another interesting one to visit is Milton Keynes. This city has a large grid layout with roundabouts at the intersections, and smaller communities inside each grid block. The grid layout is intended to allow for large flows of traffic.

>How would you feel about a grid with parks sprinkled in instead of cul-de-sac?

Check out Savannah, Georgia. One of the first planned cities in the USA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squares_of_Savannah,_Georgia

Aren't these orthogonal concerns, mostly?

There is no reason you need cul-de-sacs in order to have large lots. In fact, it's often easier to have more usable space in a grid system because you aren't dealing with as many curves.

The suburbs have more space because they are the suburbs, not because they have cul-de-sacs.

To your second point, suburbs don't suddenly become 'city grids' with all the traffic that implies just because they use a grid layout. Yes, traffic will almost certainly be higher in front of your house if you are not in a cul-de-sac, but that doesn't mean it's unsafe for kids to play there. There are a lot of quiet suburban streets, built on a grid, and kids definitely play in them.

The article makes the point that grids actually decrease the amount of traffic, and its speed. It seems likely that the variation of traffic conditions is much lower; every street has some traffic, but no streets have lots of traffic. Grids promote walking and cycling, and are potentially serviced by public transport better (likely because they weren't designed car-first).

So yes, there are benefits to living in a cul-de-sac, but I would think most of those benefits come from living in a suburb in the first place. The cul-de-sacs, as opposed to a grid system, just make suburbs a worse place to live overall.

As others have pointed out, you can still obtain the benefits of the suburbs while not having to live in a suburban desert. If you wanted to fix the suburbs, you'd have to change zoning laws and make those areas much more walkable. That would mean allowing businesses to be sprinkled in with the homes.

The most successful communities (which are now being or have been gentrified) are walkable, mixed-use development neighborhoods. They have parks sprinkled throughout in addition to businesses, shops, restaurants, schools, and streets that are not through streets, have two lanes, cars parked on either side, and a bike lane between the parking spaces and the sidewalk.

I don't see how you can have those benefits in the suburbs. Restaurants fail at a very high rate. How can you afford to run a restaurant in the middle of the suburbs where the population density is so low? Other business face a similar dilemma. Can you afford to build a shop in the middle of a sparse neighborhood? Will the residents shop there or just drive to the big box just past the edge of the development?

And on the off chance you manage to build a successful urban-esque neighborhood in the middle of the suburbs, how do you prevent the massive influx of traffic that would undoubtedly come from the nearby suburbs? And how will you justify preventing that traffic when it impacts the livelihoods of the shop owners who took the risk to open there?

I don't believe that you can build a mixed-use, walkable neighborhood in the suburbs where lots are a third of an acre each. Density is what makes mixed-use possible.

In regard to traffic, I think you just let it happen, and provide metered parking on the streets. If the traffic gets bad enough then people will use the bike lanes between the cars and sidewalk, or the sidewalks. One mistake I think we make is this idea that we have to prevent vehicle traffic at all costs. Not only does it absolutely never work, it costs money and generally causes the areas where you're attempting to improve traffic to transform into drive through areas. Then we wind up with fast food chains everywhere... .

I also should have been more clear in my original post. I was trying to be subtle and make enough suggestions about improving a suburb that we actually turn it into a neighborhood :)

The lack of traffic is the entire reason people want to live on cul de sacs. If you fill a suburban street with traffic, the very people who want to live in the suburbs will not want to live on that street. Which is why people who live in the suburbs vote against multi-use zoning.

Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to live in a desirable area you have to deal with people going to that area for various reasons. And mostly you wouldn't have traffic problems anyway because people who did happen to be driving to the downtown area for shopping/food would primarily use the main avenue and wouldn't have a reason for going down side streets, so long as you design it such that those streets don't take you to outside highway arteries.

> Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You were the one proposing that you could: "you can still obtain the benefits of the suburbs while not having to live in a suburban desert"

If you "fix" the suburbs, they won't be the suburbs that people want to lie in anymore.

> And mostly you wouldn't have traffic problems anyway because people who did happen to be driving to the downtown area for shopping/food would primarily use the main avenue and wouldn't have a reason for going down side streets, so long as you design it such that those streets don't take you to outside highway arteries.

Your vision of the "fixed" suburbs must involve either tons of parking garages or mass parking lots. Otherwise everyone driving in will absolutely be driving down side streets because they need to park.

I think what you're envisioning is not the suburbs at all but neighborhoods that you'll find in any city. Seattle is full of neighborhoods where there's mixed-use buildings and other shops and restaurants along "main" streets and single-family homes surrounding this. These aren't the suburbs, though. These are urban neighborhoods.

Well the benefits of the suburbs are that they usually don't have a lot of through traffic, and you can have a large house or lot.

And no my vision for these fixed suburbs would involve the removal of most parking garages and lots, so there won't be anywhere to drive to. There wouldn't be a reason to drive down any street really. Ideally what you'd want to do is make it very expensive to park at meters and the maybe one garage you have, and then have parking on side streets for residents only.

Then we would only have autonomous vehicles which don't need to park, uber/taxi, and walking/biking.

> Well the benefits of the suburbs are that they usually don't have a lot of through traffic, and you can have a large house or lot.

And you're going to create traffic, destroying the first benefit on your list. This implies traffic: "If you want to live in a desirable area you have to deal with people going to that area"

> And no my vision for these fixed suburbs would involve the removal of most parking garages and lots, so there won't be anywhere to drive to.

So no one will visit? I don't think your vision is honestly very well thought out.

> Then we would only have autonomous vehicles which don't need to park, uber/taxi, and walking/biking.

So your plan hinges on 1) autonomous vehicles 2) everyone taking a taxi, or 3) everyone walking/biking.

1. Autonomous vehicles effectively don't yet exist, and when they do it will likely be years before they replace people's cars. They will generally have the same shortcomings as taxis when they do arrive.

2. Taxis exist and have not replaced peoples' cars. People who own a car generally prefer to drive rather than wait 15+ minutes for a taxi/Uber and then pay $35 for a short ride. For families with small children, taxis are effectively useless because of the need to provide a carseat. Also, taxis don't sit around in suburbs because there's not enough business. So 15 minutes is probably an optimistic wait.

3. Suburbs are neither walkable nor bikeable, especially for children (or families with children). That's almost the definition of a suburb: you can't walk anywhere.

So again, I find your vision unrealistic. You're going to create a mixed-use zone in the middle of a suburb and somehow that area won't be filled with traffic, but it will attract people. It will also somehow be within walking distance of a large population of patrons in spite of the sprawl that a suburb implies.

Your vision is basically to have all the benefits and none of the drawbacks without an explanation. It's sprawled but walkable. Population is low but it still supports businesses. People want to come but there's no traffic.

A couple of quick points:

1. Autonomous vehicles are going to drive down the cost of essentially hailing a taxi to the point that it will become an affordable alternative. What we need to do is make it so painful to drive yourself to desirable areas that you basically don't do it.

2. You keep going back to the suburbs, but we've mostly moved past that. The benefits of the suburbs -> having a large lot and not much traffic, are both easily accomplished in a neighborhood. Not every house would be a giant McMansion, but some would. I'm not advocating to seriously create a mixed use development neighborhood in the suburbs. You'd have to demolish the whole thing probably.

I don't dispute at all that you can build nice neighborhoods. I live in one and love it. If there were fewer cars, that would be even better.

Autonomous vehicles don't really reduce the number of cars on the road, though. They just reduce the number of parked cars. You need great public transit and great walkability to really reduce the number of cars.

What makes a gridded layout have smaller blocks? I live in a gridded layout and I have a large backyard, as do all those in my suburb. And when I compare with the suburbs with the cul-de-sac layout I see their backyards are smaller! This is in Australia, and maybe it's different where you are, but there is nothing in the grid layout stopping larger blocks.

On your second point I wouldn't dismiss the articles argument completely. Where I live there are often children playing in the street. Games of football and cricket. Kids skateboarding and roller skating. Cars drive quite slowly because it tends to be local traffic. With all the stop signs it's far more efficient for cars to traverse the suburb on one of the arterial roads, so most of the traffic drives out of the grid to get anywhere.

When I find myself driving in cul-de-sac suburbs I find I get frustrated and tend to drive faster, because getting where I am going is a huge convoluted drive. Where I want to go is literally 200 meters away and to get there I have to drive 3 km. It's very frustrating.

I live on a cul de sac in Alameda with a bike/walking path that connects it to other streets. If you want to get to a house one street over it will take you a few minutes to drive but it is a short walk to cut across. The speed limit is 25 in most of the city.

This has been a really common theme of city planning discussions on HN. A lot of urban dwellers don't understand the appeal of suburban living, and would rather brand it as "wrong" than accept that not every living situation is there for their preferences.

I'm pretty firmly in the "market urbanism" camp: I accept that people have different preferences, but please don't foist them on me. If you want to live in a suburb, fine: pay for it (all that infrastructure has a lot of costs associated with it), and stop trying to make things like corner stores or denser housing illegal.

http://marketurbanism.com/

I've lived in a suburban setting most of my life until a few years. Sure, there are advantages, but all in all not worth it.

I've spend way more time doing stuff out of the house than what I would spend in my garage or extra large home office. And most of this stuff would not be possible or would be really hard if I lived further away, in an area with less pop. density.

A lot of us grew up in a suburban setting, and did not like it. We moved to an urban setting for a reason.

I grew up in a small town and thought life there was pretty good until I moved to a city for university. Once I got a taste of living in a city, I didn't think I would ever return and couldn't understand why so many people live out there.

Then I had kids and we moved to the suburbs and I like living here better than any place I've lived before. Once self-driving cars are a thing, I'm buying one and moving even further out of the city.

Interestingly, there's been a lot of office space being built around me. I think companies that have a lot of suburban employees are moving to the suburbs (including my employer).

> I think companies that have a lot of suburban employees are moving to the suburbs (including my employer).

Probably so. It's cheaper than urban office space, and they probably figure everyone's driving anyway (which is pretty much guaranteed true after they move to the suburbs).

And continuing to miss the point, your comment stands as a shining example. You did not like it. Others do. You are not the defining opinion on how people should live.

I grew up in suburbia. It was nice. Moved to a city for college. It was nice. Moved to a different city after college. It was nice. Started a family, moved to a slightly more suburban area of the city. It was nice.

I think all the types of housing are good for different people at different stages of their life. There is no 'this is the best type of housing for everyone' housing type.

I grew up urban lived suburban and now I am somewhere in the middle. Suburban was the worst. Felt like I was far away from everything, and left the house far less.

I think I was four years old. My mother let my brother (5) and I walk our bikes down to the nearby cul-de-sac, and ride them there. (We lived on a narrow street, with little traffic, but still a through street.)

Some time later, she heard the sirens. She looked out the window as an ambulance went past our house, down toward the cul-de-sac. She came running down to find is sitting on our bikes watching the ambulance go past. A car had hit a boy crossing our street. It paralyzed him.

So, that's anecdote instead of data. But cul-de-sacs are a safer place for kids on bikes, scooters, skateboards, and just playing in the street. (Safer, not safe. I got mildly bloodied in a bike-on-bike collision in that exact same cul-de-sac...)

> So, that's anecdote instead of data. But cul-de-sacs are a safer place for kids

You agree that it's not days and yet you assert the truth of cul de sac safety based on your anecdote. :/

I wonder if data actually backs this up or not. Arterials are almost certainly less safe than cul de sacs just based on traffic volume and speed, but I wonder if that's the case for reasonably quiet residential streets. I've seen idiots driving through small residential streets at dangerous speeds occasionally, but I've also seen idiots screech in and out of driveways to turn around on cul de sacs.

> You agree that it's not days and yet you assert the truth of cul de sac safety based on your anecdote. :/

No, I assert the truth of cul-de-sac safety, but not based on my anecdote. I assert it based on... let's call it intuition, or prejudice if you're going to be less charitable to me. I admit that I don't have the data.

> Arterials are almost certainly less safe than cul de sacs just based on traffic volume and speed...

Agreed, though again, neither of us have data here.

> I've seen idiots driving through small residential streets at dangerous speeds occasionally, but I've also seen idiots screech in and out of driveways to turn around on cul de sacs.

My suspicion is that the through residential streets see more of this, because the turn arounds in cul-de-sacs are by mistake, but going through the residential street is on purpose.

When I was young I visited our city's traffic department, they had a map on the wall of all the traffic accidents. In the city I lived in the older parts were a very regular grid, and the new parts were cul-de-sacs. Almost all the traffic accidents were at intersections in the grid parts of town.

I think the problem is that the people who enjoy the benefits are not the people bearing the cost. It's great for you if you want to live on a cul-de-sac in San Ramon, but it's not great that you now need to drive your car to work on an elevated freeway through Oakland. Without having ruined that neighborhood, the property in San Ramon would be all but worthless.

If people in exurbs all rode the train to work then probably fewer people would be tut-tutting about their odd streetscape.

That seems backwards to me. The natural state of things is no roads. In the human world, we typically start with property rights, and only take them away when it's deemed necessary.

Looking at it that way, it's the road users who are enjoying benefits while foisting costs off on the residents whose property they drive past (or whose former property they drive over).

Parent commenter wrote: "[t]he problem is that the people who enjoy the benefits are not the people bearing the cost... if you want to live on a cul-de-sac in San Ramon... you now need to drive your car to work on an elevated freeway through Oakland."

You wrote: "[i]t's the road users who are enjoying benefits while foisting costs off on the residents whose property they drive past (or whose former property they drive over)."

I'm pretty sure you two agree.

I do think you're right. I thought they were saying that culs-de-sac screwed up transportation networks, but now I don't know why.

Sorry! Consider that to be strenuous agreement instead, OP.

> I thought they were saying that culs-de-sac screwed up transportation networks, but now I don't know why.

I think there's some truth to that as well. Government roads in suburbs obviously drive down the population density and encourage the use of cars, which definitely makes mass transportation less viable.

Would you elaborate on how is it nice to play on the street? For some reason I can't think of it being nice - quite opposite - I think it is dangerous (not to mention I don't see any fun in it). No matter the traffic is smaller. One car is enough to kill your kid.

On a cul-de-sac, almost all the traffic is of people that live there. Hours can go by with absolutely no traffic.

At the same time, for kids to play together, you need to get lucky and have other kids live nearby. A grid system is much easier to navigate for kids, even if their friends live 4 blocks over East and then 2 blocks North. In a cul-de-sac neighborhood, that same distance if drawn with a straight line is impossible to walk that way. It can quickly become daunting for kids to follow neverending mazes, often without any sidewalks.

Sidewalks are another issue. In car-oriented neighborhoods they are often non-existent, or an afterthought on only one side of the street. Sometimes they just randomly end, only to start again half a mile down the road. In older grid neighborhoods, sidewalks are wide, often separated from the street with a tree line, and are on both sides of the street. They are almost inviting kids to come play on them.

My home is on a street that only feeds cul-de-sacs. Almost every house has kids in it. Plus, there are trails connecting all of the different neighborhoods. Within a short walk of my house (< 1/2 mile) are tennis courts, basketball courts, swimming pools, soccer/football fields, and multiple playgrounds. It's all maintained by the HOA.

Also, there are sidewalks everywhere. My one big complaint is that the street lighting is pretty bad.

And that's I think is even more dangerous. You may get surprised the most by something that you expect the least.

Well, I am glad you guys could stay safe, but I would rather send my daughter to play in some sort of kinder garden, park, or some facility made for that purpose rather then allowing her playing on the street.

Still, it is my personal feeling only, because I've had never lived in a suburbs like this.

I'm okay with it I think because I grew up playing street hockey every day after school.

There are parks and schools with playgrounds within a very short walk from my house. Like I mentioned in a different comment, my big complaint is the crappy street lighting. I don't mind my kids going out to play, but once the sun goes down it's pretty dark out and that makes me a little uncomfortable.

> but once the sun goes down it's pretty dark out and that makes me a little uncomfortable.

Just get your child a decent headlamp. Problem solved (this is how I solved the problem that it is quite funny to go inlineskating on summer nights, when it is already dark but still warm).

The coyotes make me nervous.

I grew up in a neighborhood that was laid out in a more or less rectangular grid. We played in the street all the time. Actually, the street was just an extension of the front yards, meaning that we had overall more space.

Playing in yards meant having to watch out for flower beds, and for neighbors who were fussy about their lawns.

During the summer, we played endless street hockey. When a car came, someone yelled "CAR" and we cleared out of the street.

One thing to note is that there were fewer cars and less traffic back then. When I go back to visit my parents, the same streets are parked up and down both sides with cars, with an apparent preference for giant pickup trucks. Some of traffic is kids being driven to destinations that we used to walk or ride our bikes to. The kids are also driven to the same elementary school that we walked to.

Since pretty much all the neighbors on a cul-de-sac know each other, they'll often just block off that part of the road system with cones, or even their cars while their kids are out playing and turn it into an all purpose flat space for wheeled play devices or even community activities like block parties or summer slip and slides, street hockey etc.

Even if they don't block it off, it's highly unusual for a car that's not from their particular group of homes to be down there, and all the people that live down there know that their kids are going to be out and about on the street, so people just drive cautiously.

I don't have any stats, but I'd wager that kids were more likely to be run over in their own driveways than out on the street of a suburban cul-de-sac.

Maybe if it's essentially private property, the cul-de-sac owners should also pay for it, rather than dumping the costs on the public at large:

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/2/fitchburg-cul-de...

In a fair number of cases they are, or similar road structures will be considered "private roads" and the residents along that road will provide a mutual easement and pay for maintenance, plowing etc. I grew up in a rural area that connected through some trails and dumped out into a private cul-de-sac road that was exactly as described -- it was also very poorly maintained.

In my current very suburban neighborhood there's dozens of cut outs "eyebrows" and private enclave segments in the development that are privately owned and maintained by the residents.

I personally wouldn't buy into a situation like that though, neighbors tend to make for terrible mutual cooperatives.

You might think that, but no more people die in cul-de-sac than without. Most likely because grids are easer to deal with as a driver so they can more easily see people. But with curves all over the place people tend to be far more distracted.

I've lived in three cu-de-sacs as a child. It's nice to bike, skate, scooter, whatever. Or toss around a football or frisbee.

> One car is enough to kill your kid.

When there's 8 houses on the street, there aren't many cars. And the cars that are there aren't driving 40mph to turn into their driveway.

By your logic, you shouldn't drive a kid in your car either, because one car is enough to kill him.

> When there's 8 houses on the street, there aren't many cars.

You'd think, right? I've found this strongly depends on the neighborhood. In my experience, the richer the neighborhood, the fewer cars you see, either parked on the street or driving about. In richer neighborhoods (of co-workers I visit for example), there's nary a car present. Few people driving in, out, and through, and all the homeowners' cars are parked nicely in their garages. In the neighborhoods I've live in, it's like Joe's Used Car Lot. Probably 3 cars to every house, all packed in together parked on the street, in the driveways, on the grass, cars everywhere, some functional. People driving through the neighborhood at all hours, sometimes speeding, sometimes gridlocked. Garages are all full of old stuff/junk and/or in-laws, not cars. Cul-de-sac or not doesn't seem to affect the environment as much as socio-economic class.

I know where I'd rather my kid bike or skate.

> In my experience, the richer the neighborhood, the fewer cars you see, either parked on the street or driving about.

That's less an indicator of wealth than an indicator of development age. Newer neighborhood developments tend to be designed with two car garages at minimum, and for more affluent neighborhoods, three or even four car garages. Newer developments also tend to be built with more enclosed space in general, including more dedicated storage space, making it easier to keep the garage clear for cars. For new cul de sac developments in particular, the street curves and driveway placements also often make it difficult to park on the street (probably intentionally so).

If you look in older but still affluent developments, you'll find a lot of cars parked on the street because there are fewer garages and the ones that exist are often small. I have no garage but do happily have off street parking. My neighbor has no off street parking at all. I live in a rather pricy neighborhood.

Development age in many places is tightly correlated with occupant wealth, but that's not true everywhere. You always pay more for a new house, but you often pay even more for that house to be in an established, affluent neighborhood.

> If you look in older but still affluent developments, you'll find a lot of cars parked on the street because there are fewer garages and the ones that exist are often small. I have no garage but do happily have off street parking. My neighbor has no off street parking at all. I live in a rather pricy neighborhood.

Best example of this I have around here is Ansley Park in Atlanta. Lots of very old houses, not a lot of garages. Tons of cars on the street. It's also, along with adjacent Sherwood Forest, one of the most expensive places in the entire Atlanta area to own a home.

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