Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
culdesac.com
culdesac.com
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.
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.
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.
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
That's definitely my experience in York Region (north of Toronto for those unfamiliar) and Ottawa. Far too many bus stops, but wait times > 15 minutes _per route_ outside all but the most peak parts of rush-hour. Including on their "bus rapid transit" trunk lines. You almost end up feeling like a patsy every time you decide to take public transit.
The worst about busses is when they come every 30 min, but already arrive full. Or when they have more than one bus for a given timeslot and don't dock the less-full bus first.
(In other words: instead of a half-empty bus every 20 minutes you end up with packed buses every 5 min)
Including commuter rail.
And it all runs pretty regularly (bus, tram, train)
Most people still take bus/subway to work, although the car traffic increased.
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.
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.
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".
Recently I've been throwing around the word democracy as a way of calling out decidedly undemocratic political activity, because of the positive connotations the word has, given the narrative we're taught in this country that democracy is good, we are a shining beacon of democracy, spreading democracy to those who don't have it, etc. Perhaps trying to use the veneer were taught against those in power playing lip service to the will of the people? It's not as easy for people to shout down the idea of democracy as it is to argue with typical partisan positions.
I've been interested in Switzerland lately, where the people seem to have retained power over their representatives, being able to petition for referendums to add or remove any law they don't like, and with much smaller political structures, having cantons the size of U.S. counties that enjoy more independence than U.S. states.
I’m sure many non-Americans would fail to see what makes that unique, but for American neighborhoods it definitely is.
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 - 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.
And cerise-sur-le-gateaux these are some of the ugliest buildings that I have seen. Unbalanced colors, indecisiveness between American/European styles, etc... It's really just your average American neighborhood or worse.
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.
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.
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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.
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
No, the real problem is not idiots hurting themselves, but rather them hurting tools. Many tools are easy to damage or destroy through misuse, which can be very costly. If people don’t own the tools themselves, they have much less incentive to take good care of them. All your cutting implements will be perpetually dull, for example, unless you hire someone to keep everything in a good order.
Thats cold, and peak Havkernews. People here are by definition not proffeshional. I made quite a few mistakes and was lucky to get away unscathed.
People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas.
They go to Walmart because it’s significantly cheaper to do weekly shopping there than even other big retail grocery outlets, let lone little ones. My parents absolutely fucking hate going to Walmart but they go there weekly because it’s $50/week difference just for the two of them vs Kroger.
I also got the same in reverse for being less thrifty and more considerate.
Big shrug emoji. I know poverty so much it scares and traumatized me. I appreciate that not everyone does, but I also don’t think it should be represented as something uniquely rational.
Poverty is duress. People make all kinds of good decisions because they have survival instincts, and all kinds of bad decisions because they have a bunch of incentives. They often do both and everything in between in a single outing because, yep, gas is expensive. And they’re tired. And the world is hard and expensive.
You’re suggesting that poor people lose more money by going to Walmart than they would shopping locally, which is just ridiculous. It implies poor people have no basic math skills on a average, which isn’t the case.
Walmart doesn’t crush local competitors with shitty warehouse lighting and angsty employee vibes. They do it by being far cheaper with their massive logistics.
Poor people shop where the money will go the furthest, full stop.
People on a budget do for certain levels of "on a budget". If you only have $5 to buy food (and no credit) and a full tank of gas, it doesn't matter if it costs more in the long term. You burn extra gas now or your kids don't eat.
I have two local grocery stores. One is in town and the other the next over. Both are less than 3 miles. The prices are between 2-4x compared to me driving 30 miles in either direction to visit Cost Co/Walmart.
I don’t mind paying more for local or the convenience but I quite literally can’t afford to more than double my grocery budget for the month. So I only buy perishables locally for the most part.
The economics of this are problematic in both directions, but I still need to put food on the table.
(I'm not sure whether zoning is a "good" thing or not in general, but there are certainly lots of successful towns and cities with zoning rules.)
* People don't want the things that are specified in the master plan, so there's no tenant that would be both legal and viable.
* Businesses are protected from competition (for their space, and for their niche in the area) so they charge too much and deliver too little.
* People want things that aren't in the master plan, and they aren't allowed to exist. (The politically engaged majority can get the plan amended with enough work, but these top-down designs can miss the long tail of niche interests, none individually powerful enough to get itself on the agenda).
It's certainly a hard thing to get right, though.
This means for example that people obsessed with house prices can't stop a grocer from existing within walking distance.
In many cities, there are plenty of first floor shops with the proprietors living upstairs. It seems that collectively, they'd keep the planning and policies in favor of active and vibrant lifestyle, focus on keeping crime in check, promote community cohesion.
() or even just hard work and reliability
This is a main corner and main street in neighborhood near my home place. It has car traffic, but it is perfectly walkable.
The main street has ground floor dedicated to commerce.
https://goo.gl/maps/W46KUsJtAtto2yUE7
You have a bus stop with buses getting to city center every 3-5 min, and the supermarket store around a corner has literally all grocery things I needed when I lived around (it’s the size of 3-4 medium Wallgreenses)
(Even if there's one in walking distance, hopefully it has an excess of carts and doesn't mind them going home with people...)
And unless you want to go out for groceries far too often, you're going to end up with a quantity of groceries that's incompatible with taking a bus. You'd need a car, or a bike trailer for a very dedicated cyclist, or a delivery service and the ability for them to deliver.
I know carless Londoners whose commute takes them past a grocery store on foot every day. So they will literally go into the store for a single item.
However, you're right that this isn't a good solution for everyone - for example, people who are starting a family. Even if you can fit a week's groceries for one person into a backpack, that's no help for four-person households. Grocery delivery services are widely used in London for this reason. As is moving out of the city in order to start a family.
Or look at one supermarket and see how many shops they have [2].
Depending on the size of the household and personal preference, people might use these shops every 2-4 days, perhaps using a bicycle or trolley to take things home.
[0] I'm sure there are exceptions, like Arctic areas, mountains, tourist towns, etc.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+store/@51.8962239...
[2] https://netto.dk/find-butik/?mapData={%22coordinates%22:{%22...}
Before delivery services, I'd walk to the grocery store every few days. It was perfectly fine. When I commuted I'd just pop by on the way home from work. There are at least 4 small-ish shops within 10 minutes walk, and half a dozen bigger ones within 20 minutes walk or a short bus ride (that would also coincide with the commute for a large portion of the people living around me).
And I live in perhaps the worst location locally in this respect - I'm pretty much equidistant from three 3-4 different shopping areas, dead centre of a very low density residential area with few shops.
Overall, the key thing to maintain a walkable neighbourhood is simply that enough people who live there actually want to walk. In that case there will be enough shops nearby. The problem occurs when too many of the people in these neighbourhoods like to live in an area that is walkable, but still prefer to use the care.
I think the key to make such neighbourhoods work is fewer parking spaces to explicitly ensure a sufficient portion of the people living in them actually bring foot traffic to the nearby retail spaces. Do that and you get grocery stores without any need for detail regulation.
Where I live the council won't approve planning applications with more than 1.5 parking spaces per living unit on average. It could probably be significantly lower.
I do suspect that a lot of people would prefer to live in that part of town over the more modern areas… as evidenced by the especially insane rent.
I’ve lived in Manhattan for close to thirty years got married here and raised a family here.
What you call a dramatically more livable feeling means different things to different people. Honestly it meant different things to me at 25, 35 and 45. It also meant different things when I was stretched financially and when I was flush.
There are also lots of other reasons the tip of manhattan may have been more expensive—for example, it's just the oldest part of the city, so everything started there and expanded outwards.
I don't know what the right metric would be—maybe median rent or even family income? I guess I also don't really think you can tell much from all this.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
I didn’t know about this but it makes a lot of sense. Those enormous boulevards are clearly not original nor unplanned.
[1] https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/reconn...
- 5-10 min walk to kindergarden/school and local stores - 3-5 min walk to a bus stop - tons of green space - taller buildings but varied in size and angles so that there is both ample space and variety
This is my place I lived in when studying: https://goo.gl/maps/VQqNEY8rcjScsGFg6 (not even the greenest one)
And this is my place where I grew up (street view not available because cars not allowed)
https://goo.gl/maps/Q3MwszTjQDqqNFS28
I literally had no streets to cross when I had to go to an elementary school, and literally 1000 other kids had 1-2 small streets to cross at most, walking 10-15 min or less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowa_Huta
Here's how it looks:
https://goo.gl/maps/5v8zZHpPtZ7Cik7b7
I'm linking to a traffic map, because it's best at highlighting the structure of the place. See the big roads forming straight lines, crossing to form distinct cells? This was intentional, top-down design. Zoom on a cell, see how it's made from apartment blocks surrounding shared, green communal areas.
It's currently the greenest place in Kraków, and despite having a reputation of a dangerous place in late 90s[0], it's one of the nicest and most family-friendly areas in the city.
The urban legend I grew up with goes, this cell-based design is partially for defensive purposes: during a ground conflict, spaces between outermost apartment blocks form choke points and could be barricaded to close off the sub-district.
There's another, less happy story that I've heard - that the steelworks and the city of Nowa Huta were purposefully placed by the Soviets on the most fertile soil in the area, destroying it in the process, in order to get the Poles to urbanize more and generally to spite them. I haven't found a confirmation of this - it might be an urban legend, but it's one that's widely believed over here.
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[0] - Since taken by other districts; last I heard, Kurdwanów was the prime "hot zone". By "dangerous" I mean "you can get robbed at knife point" and "you can get beat up by hooligans". The joke goes, hooligans that lived in Nowa Huta have since grown up, started families, and don't have time for petty crime anymore.
A bit of a problem however is when original detailing gets removed on n the estates that did have it, often replaced with cheap pastel Styrofoam insulation.
It's a virulent meme. Planned towns are bad. Organic growth is good. Planning is tyranny, is oppression, is taxation. Please read "Seeing Like a State". Organic growth is freedom, is markets, is good.
It's not entirely wrong, just extremely misleading. Urban planning doesn't have to create complete, inflexible designs, managing every tiny bit of life. And outside some failed experiments[0], it almost never is.
Think of planning towns as growing gardens. You work with the forces of organic growth, not against them, but still nudge and direct them to create a result that's better[1] than what would be there on its own.
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[0] - Some planners got high on cybernetics/system thinking, in an era we could not computationally support designing complex systems - then others used this to push political ideologies; mix in power struggles and regular corruption, and of course it fails. What's annoying is that it gets painted as "planning bad", "cybernetics bad", "central bad", instead of recognizing the incentive failures in the mix.
[1] - Better according to the gardener. Nature optimizes for its own thing. It's important to remember that natural, organic growth rarely optimizes for the benefit of individual units, whether plants or people.
American urban philosophy is the car and the road and segregation. Everything else is secondary.
American suburbia is just Conway's law on a massive scale.
Which ones do you think were organically grown vs. which have zealous planning?
(It would be nice if you used large enough examples that we could discuss them, as opposed to small towns known only to you.)
If you do plans badly, you don’t do the thinking, but just declare any deviation from the plan a mistake.
Rather than trying to plan it all out from the beginning, it has a planning philosophy that seems to have sustained it through the decades and my understanding is that the philosophy is used to this day to try to ensure a vibrant town. Not all of the early ideas and development worked either, but change seems to have been built in and the town is looking to grow in the coming years pretty significantly.
I've been there a couple times and it reminds me of various mixed developments outside of city centers I've been at in Europe. The twist seems to be a gearing around walkability and abundant commercial/business zoning so people can live and work there.
The good cities you see aren't good because of early planning. They're good because of constant vigilance to improve and maintain. Subway systems for example aren't usually part of the master plan of the city at inception but are the result of constant vigilance to improve.
Meanwhile western US suburbia is the result of unplanned urbanization reacting to the whims of corporate car culture. Totally unplanned and terrible.
There's a software engineering analogy here.
You can see it in how cities are built this country. Cities established in the east before car culture took over are much more walkable and have a different set of "codes"
I don't know why you insist on putting scare quotes around the words "planning" and "codes." In municipal governments all across the country, people who went to school for "Urban Planning" and have the job title "Planner" work for the "Planning Department" and administer the "Planning Code." These the canonical, legal names.
[0] https://cityobservatory.org/the-illegal-city-of-somerville/
>Part of the problem is that presently walkable cities don't have walkable codes, so as they expand or even replace old buildings they become more car centric
Unlikely a city doesn't convert a high density building into a low density building because of a remodel. People really need to leave the city in droves for this to happen.
What you're referring to is NEW cities or new expansions.
Somerville is like a one off. It's also not really a walkable city like Tokyo or Hong Kong is. It's more like a walkable town or village.
There is a chasm between the Truman Show and a vertical hellhole. If I had to choose, I'd live in the Truman Show.
It's amazing how many problems in the UK and the US today can be traced back to Thatcher and Reagan respectively.
Seeing the greenspaces of my childhood filled-in with shoddy-looking, expensive housing was shocking. Fingal County Council planning department seem to be giving the go-ahead to build any and every piece of rubbish using the excuse of "housing crisis" that you mention.
I just returned from visiting Dublin (mainly the Northside) after several years away and was irritated by: ridiculous levels of private vehicle usage; broken in-carriage electronic stop announcements on the DART (light electric rail); difficulty in planning trips connecting dublin bus/iarnrod eireann/dart; bus stops without proper shelters; drivers parking on the pavement(sidewalk); lack of courtesy from drivers at non-signalized intersection. On a positive note I will say that all (especially Dublin Bus drivers) personnel interacted with on an individual level were wonderful.
I wonder if you have ever talked with actual urbanist, as I have, and this definitely not how they think.
Urbanism can actually be very ‘agile’, with a difference that you have a vision for the outcome you want to reach (which good agile in sw development is adding as well).
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.
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).
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.
There aren't enough people to support '5 minute' walkability though. Lots of things are a mile or 2 away.
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/ 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/ 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
To me, a European, that generalization is quite insulting.
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.
Immediately triggers the idea of empty soulless suburban community dead ends that are the opposite of walkable
1) Architecture that inspires, elevates the soul, and will last the test of time. All I see is soulless pre-fabs. It looks like you're living in a shopping mall.
2) The freedom to create buildings and institutions that are meaningful to the residents who reside there. Churches, schools, sporting clubs. Trusting the company behind this to provide for your every need is naive. Maybe it will work for some people. But will people want to move and raise children here?
Creating one-off experiences is not the way to create the sustainable towns and cities of the future. This is like Airbnb taken to an obscene level. We should be designing car-free towns where people can buy property, design beautiful homes, participate in a small local economy, work locally and start small businesses, create the local institutions that their children and their children's children will participate in. I don't want to rent my space in a town I'm only partially attached to. I want to put roots down, and build things that will last.
2 is doing to doom it long term though IMO
Spot on. Like a town from Greece or Portugal, Spain, Italy, Mexico... but with a dystopian feel.
Communities need to be built organically. Let's say a town has 5,000 buildings in it; is somebody going to pay an architecture firm to design 5,000 buildings for them? Or are they going to pay them to design 40 buildings and copy and paste 125 times?
Neighborhoods in the United States have a tendancy to look like shit, and that's because most of them are planned developments that were designed and constructed all at the same time. Each neighborhood is a snapshot in time of what "modern" "new" and "interesting" looked like some number of decades prior. IMHO the best thing about these houses is that they're not designed to last for 40 years. So 50 years from now after half of the houses are torn down and replaced with something different -- maybe worse, maybe better -- they have a chance of being nice.
If you compare Factorio to Cities:Skylines, the best and worst feature of Factorio is that it lets you copy-paste, and C:S doesn't.
And Poundbury in the UK looks like it might turn out well.
But the designer has to have taste, give a shit, and care about something besides money.
It's pretty telling that not one of their CGI promotional images includes a family, or even a child.
It’s an interesting concept, but it’s applicability outside of this location is not clear to me.
I'd want more of an "ground-up" place, not "top-down" neighborhood. Independent people, businesses and families getting together in an emergent fashion without a planner.
Our vision is to build the first car-free city in the US, starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US.
Join our waitlist at culdesac.com. We open next year! If you want to visit in the meantime, drop me a note.
Hiring-wise, we're hiring in Tempe or remote. Our top hiring prio is to lead product design. https://www.culdesac.com/jobs
Here's our insta, which has lots of construction updates https://www.instagram.com/liveculdesac
Here's our tik tok https://www.tiktok.com/@liveculdesac
Here's our twitter https://www.twitter.com/culdesac
Here's my twitter where I also talk a lot about ebikes https://www.twitter.com/ryanmjohnson
Here's our intro article https://medium.com/culdesac/introducing-culdesac-3fbfe7c4219...
Here's a longer piece on us https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/business/culdesac-tempe-p...
I’m not sure how much of an issue stormwater management is, in Arizona, but that was something my mother harped on, in Maryland.
Developers hate stormwater management, with a burning passion. My mother was not popular with them. Planned communities were notorious for not, er…planning for stormwater management. It usually required setting aside significant acreage, and doing a lot of fill work.
It was a really big deal, though. The communities that cut corners, suffered millions of dollars in damages, and often multiplied damages in other communities.
The dirty little secret about all these natural disasters; earthquakes, wildfires, volcanoes, tornadoes, etc., is that the single deadliest and most destructive force in nature, is good ol’ H2O.
In fact, part of why downtown Phoenix developed a few miles from the Salt River is because it had to avoid the seasonal flooding.
We have a plan for storm water management both during construction and long-term. We worked closely with the city on it.
Fortunately for Culdesac, the area they're in is mostly flat and won't accumulate runoff from mountains, and is near canals and Tempe Town Lake (the Salt River), so they're probably pretty safe. Also developers were allowed to build Anthem about 45 minutes north in a wash. A coworker who just moved there mentioned today that he saw his neighbors' cars float by last week when it rained. So sadly your latter sentiment does seem to be in full force out here. But probably not in that area of Tempe.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=greenway%20underpas...
Couple of thoughts; first, it’s kinda weird for you to introduce yourself as a ‘founder’ - I’ve been around developers and real estate all my life, and I’ve never heard anyone use that term to describe what they do. Makes me wonder if you see this as more of a housing subscription service than a community?
Which leads to my second thought - what’s the thought process behind this being a rental-only thing? Are there any accommodations for families? Your website doesn’t appear to address kids or families of more than 2 people at all. Without ownership and family support, this really feels like a place nobody will be invested in making their home.
Third, how do you plan to deal with the inherent monopolies you’re building to avoid a ‘company town’ situation? For example, if residents are not allowed cars and are mostly stuck with your handpicked grocery store and restaurants, what will keep those establishments from just slacking off on service and overcharging?
Thanks for stopping by!
I spent a number of years as an institutional investor, and the people you mentioned would say they are founders of funds, firms, companies, etc., but they would say that they were the developer of something like Culdesac Tempe.
Are you guys in touch with the StrongTowns folks at all?
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScVzmWiEIoNsJiV7aPn...
1. At least to me the name Culdesac is strongly/exclusively associated with suburbs, which is really the opposite experience of what your target market wants. I almost didn't click to learn more.
2. It'd be wonderful if the local businesses in the community were owned/operated by people who lived in it. Community is more than just living in proximity, its also the investment people put into the shared experience, the emergent behavior/ideas/infra, and the adaptability to changes over time. Having lived in a master-planned community once (Irvine), it was so corporate and top-down it felt both stale and even vaguely menacing, like being a hamster in a cage rather than a part of an organic and dynamic whole. I hope this is not that model just with less cars.
Good luck on the build out!
I live in britian, so its odd and fun to see an american company making a carbon copy of a british 90/00's highstreet.
One thing I would like to point out is that you need better drainage and more trees in your shopping precinct. you have way more sun than us, so a vast expanse of brick will heat up and stay hot. putting in more planters for trees will cool the place down and make everything feel much more cozy/safe.
When my wife and I moved we completely changed what we were looking for in a house/community. We wanted a Main Street style town. We used to love master planned communities with huge houses. In our small, Main Street style town all of our kids can walk/ride to school, we have two grocery stores within 2 miles away, and all our doctors are biking/riding distance. It's changed how we live. We sold our second car. We own so many bikes. We are more active.
Cul-de-sac looks really promising. I've been following along and am excited to see what they create. We need more experiments, even if some don't work out.
The terrible layouts of US cities and neighbourhoods are what keep me in Europe. There is nothing you can do in the US without a car because it's so car dependent and it wastes so much time compared to walking or biking places. The beautifully walkable cities you find in Europe are so much more enjoyable to live in.
- Take a bus, most of which only come every 15 minutes at most
- Walk, which is doable bit adds another 20-30ish minutes to your trip depending on exactly where you're going
That would be more like 10 minutes max on a bike, which easily makes it one of the fastest ways to get around if you consider that you'll be spending several minutes just looking for parking if you were to drive. But the city still prioritizes cars above all else, making it not really a safe option. I absolutely would bike everywhere here if I felt safe enough to do so.
This is what drew me and my wife to Portland OR to start a family, and ultimately, how we decided on the neighborhood where we eventually bought a house. The entire city feels this way: pockets of walkable neighborhoods, parks, small grocery stores, restaurants, and beautiful outdoor spaces, all very intentionally designed. We've lived here for several years now, and it still feels very refreshing and lively compared to the suburbs we grew up in. It's hard to overstate the importance of thoughtful urban planning and well designed outdoor spaces on quality of life.
Without the ability to involuntarily commit people to mental healthcare facilities, or jail, the only other option is to live somewhere that is less hospitable to homeless people.
And building more to give free / cheap housing to the homeless people who do not need mental healthcare or jail is not going to work on a city or state level, especially in highly desirable areas due to induced demand.
It's great you can bike from your pricey apartment to your friend's, but try getting passed by a bunch of distracted drivers going 50mph faster than you on the arterial stroad when getting to the nearest reasonably-sized grocery store that is 10 miles away because bike infrastructure is often "man up and pretend you're a car" in the US.
Not to mention anything involving grade-separated, rail-based public transit...
What we really need are YIMBY policy changes to improve these, e.g. separate bike infrastructure (note: it has almost zero maintenance costs because bikes produce almost no pavement damage), relaxing of development policies to allowing MFU or town-house (row house?) condos to be built, or at the very least getting rid of ridiculous SFU requirements like enormous setbacks or low max-area usage (e.g. a burb house built on an enormous lot!).
One notable advancement I did like from this proposal: having a "time-share-esque" guest unit. I do enjoy having space for family members to stay with me when they visit, but it feels so wasteful to have that space all the time (requiring maintenance, insurance, more mortgage) compared to having this guest unit thing common to all units in the development.
I moved to the nicest part of my city and drive twice a week, on weekends. When I go into the office, I walk. A neighborhood like this with cars evicted to the periphery would be miles better than this. It's already possible to commute without a car. You just have to plan your life around it. Which you're already in for if you're considering moving to a planned community like this.
Going completely car-free is always going to a tough thing to ask for for a country as spread out as the U.S..
I expect in the next 20 years we'll start getting streets back into urban centers to replace the stroads*.
I own a car and while I don't use it to go to work (1km distance), I wouldn't want to miss it. The urban center is also car free aside from buses and taxi. Still, cars are extremely practical, there is just no denying it and I doubt we will go back from individual traffic any time soon.
There is a low-end grocery store a mile away (on a divided stroad) and nicer grocery stores within two or three miles. The main virtue is that it's along the Metro light rail line, so if you're really committed to using that, you're not in bad shape.
With an e-bike, 2 miles is nothing.
This could theoretically be good for someone who works from home primarily, but you really do need access to a car to get around Phoenix in general. Some day you're going to want to visit, say, the Renaissance Faire and biking from Tempe to Apache Junction is unlikely to be an attractive option for most people. And I pity any Uber drivers that get contracted to help get someone through the traffic jam for that.
There are a decent amount of bike lanes and whatnot, but the city was optimized for cars, which is why all the self-driving tests are there and you can see a Waymo every other day or so, including that new smaller car.
The light rail is great if you want to go to downtown Phoenix or the ball park and maybe for ASU, but a bit less attractive for many other destinations. Meikong Plaza and H-Mart on Dobson aren't very far from the light rail, but walking ~1 mile in 45C weather with groceries only works for the younger and healthier folks. Asiana or Fujiya are probably non-starters for someone using the light rail, being 2-3 miles away. Don't get me wrong, you can take your bike onto the light rail (or bus) and get there, but it's a significant effort and if it's one of those few days that hits 50C, most people's willpower will give out.
I'm surprised they don't compromise a bit and have a handful of community cars that are shared by some agreement. Then again, I suppose that Uber/Waymo can take over there. It honestly looks pretty cool, but we tend to use the cars a lot and outdoor stuff is only attractive between October and May or so.
Cars need ACs because they are a mobile greenhouse.
Only if air temperature is less than your body temperature, which is not the case when it is 50C outside. Going fast in 50C would feel like blowing a hairdryer in your face.
But my point was more that this is only doable for the younger and healthier types. A lot of the people who go to live in Phoenix are retired midwesterners.
I have friends who only travel by e-bike. The maximum distance they will go is about eight miles, but they average about six miles a day in hot weather. Their batteries are removable so they can go something like 40-50 miles a day if they needed it. My point is that they don't travel very far in their respective communities.
Regardless of the infrastructure, which is just passable by US standards in the downtown area, people just are not expecting cyclists.
This gets the cause and effect totally backwards. Phoenix and the surrounding cities are all designed for cars at the expense of bikability, transit and walkability, and people need cars because of that. There are lots of walkable cities in places with more uncomfortable climates than Phoenix (ever been to Bangkok?). Walking in Phoenix would be a lot more tolerable if the city wasn’t so spread out and had better public transit.
Two miles is a long way to walk?
Edit: I forgot snow removal and salting
Maintenance is essential, otherwise you end up with overgrown hedges; fallen trees and uncomfortable riding surface from tree roots.
I get that you want to depict walkable attractions, but couldn't it have been a small pop-up stand or some other kind of thing that is not a car?
Culdesac: Building car-free neighborhoods from scratch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21600773 - Nov 2019 (9 comments)
Culdesac: Car-free neighborhood built from scratch in Tempe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21574850 - Nov 2019 (136 comments)
Other background on Culdesac: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/business/culdesac-tempe-p...
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/2025+E+Apache+Blvd,+Temp...
Early iterations won’t be perfect, though I think with what the future holds this will become standard development and created mixed-use walkable neighborhoods.
I am sure it would be desirable for the owners of the community, since they can charge the stores more money since they are basically giving them a monopoly within the community.
Looking at the rents I think their prospective clientele will be able to handle it no problem.
High time or monetary cost of travel which causes one to do more business (buy food, get a job, etc) more locally is a classic poverty trap though.
I might know that. You might know that. But does the average yuppie DINK who is looking to move out of the city and into one of these developments know that? These seem to be positioned as the suburban equivalent of luxury condos and targeting the same demographics with their messaging.
41 du/ac / 636 units
- 456 one bedroom
- 134 two bedroom
- 8 three bedroom
- 38 live-work one bedroom
Disappointingly, it shows some 152 vehicle parking spots on-site — it seems the exemption they got only applies to the residential parking requirements, and the commercial spaces are still fully parked.
The reduction to three stories (from five) also seems like a shame — the added shade and density from taller buildings would likely have made it a more livable site.
And yeah, a lot of A/C, misters, big outdoor fans, and the biggest of all, shade. Which, interestingly, is not highlighted in some of these sketches/mockups.
As a third-generation Tucsonan (one of the oldest continually inhabited places in North America), the heat is both something to be mindful of as it is something that you simply get used to.
The most glorious Monsoons are both a blessing and a curse. One of the wettest in my recent memory, but the humidity is as bad as my time in the summer at Ft. Gordon, GA; really did feel like your skin was melting off your bones...
I think it great for someone to do something and try to make the world a more decent place for the subset of customers that might be looking for a walkable community to live in. I selfishly hope this takes off, iterates and improves, and becomes commonplace.
But more seriously, won't this be like living in a vacation resort? Fine for a week or two, but a bit grating after that. One restaurant, one grocery store...
The car-freeness is amazing but it seems a little small to be really livable. I am glad that someone is trying and paving a trail - we need things like this.
Wait, what am I saying. Americans want to retire to somewhere like this too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida
"Urban" my butt. Still, beats the hell out of North Korea.
The first is pedantic. The US was formed in the 1700s, roughly a century before the first car was invented. Most, if not all, neighborhoods prior to that were built from scratch.
The second is less-pedantic. It is hard to imagine that the various communes and utopias designed/built throughout the twentieth century in the US all required a car in order to live in them and be a part of the community.
Initially when I first saw the page, I figure it was some virtual community. All the computer-generated graphics looked like some version of Second Life. (If that is stilla thing).
It says "Coming to Tempe, Arizona in 2022" "Located at 2025 E Apache Blvd, Tempe, AZ 85281"
In Google maps it looks like it has a long way to go before it is finished.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/2025+E+Apache+Blvd,+Tempe,...
The Google images can be years out of date, so it might not be a fair assessment.
Still to develop something like that has to require enormous amounts of money and resources.
The area such as pictured in Google Maps does not look like a foundation it is easy to build this neighborhood on.
The link to their "capital partner" does not load for me but that may be a local glitch.
The link to "resize your home on demand" goes to a blog with no relevant information.
They want people to send them $100 to reserve a spot.
What is the timeline? What has been achieved? How much of it is funded? What permits have been obtained? Rezoning?
To me this looks like a quickly and poorly cobbled together website with at best somebodies' vision for what could one day in the far future be built, but at present consist of this website and nothing else.
American culture, cars and food. Enough said.
This puts studios and 1bdrs in the low end of the largest rent band in Tempe ($1-1.5k) per Yardi Matrix, and on par with the average rent in Tuscon. All AZ cities are seeing 14% or higher YoY increases in rent. I'm very curious how solid those prices are, and how quickly they escalate ("starts at" pricing is really frustrating, however common it might be).
Most apartments available on Apartments.com for less are in complexes between University and Broadway closer to campus. Apache Boulevard is between University and Broadway east of campus, and this Culdesac is much closer to US Hwy 101 than campus.
One nearby traditional "luxury" apartment complex has studios for $1,040/mth and 1bdrs for $1,350/mth.
I wonder if there is any public space or if all the walkways are privately owned, allowing the owners to outlaw any persons or ideologies they dislike?
While there isn't much in the way of infrastructure at this part of Tempe at the moment, it's close enough to the main boulevard, called Mill, and close enough to downtown phoenix.
The entire Phoenix area is quickly becoming a popular place to live and lots of tech is moving here. Phoenix is, _in general_, a decent third or fourth choice across a ton of different metrics. Tech jobs, decent university system, growing economy.
Yeah, the weather can be downright terrible, but lots of people from CA are moving here during the pandemic. Indeed, Arizona State University (based in Tempe) is a tremendously popular school for high schoolers from CA.
I'm going to recommend investing in real estate to everyone I know in the area.
It's pronounced "TEM-PEE" with both syllables accented.
I recently watched a video [1] about the planned cities built by the Soviets and it all seems really nice. One advantage in their case is that they planned industrial activity as well so they built residences within bicycling distance from factories (with green space in between) so people could get to home, shops, and work with a walk or bike ride.
Actually I remember that Japan has done a lot of industrial planning too, but I don’t know if they paired that with residential and commercial spaces. Something to look in to. (Please comment if you know.)
(And I have lived in Manhattan and in a mid-sized city in Germany, although I currently live in Los Angeles.)
My mom thought republicans were the devil until a guy with a trump flag helped her change a tire.
Can a community be designed so that the people working there can also afford to live there?
The infrastructure in the US is old and dilapidated. Newer housing is energy efficient, safer, and more conducive to modern living requirements (high speed internet, solar, heat and cooling), regardless of what kind of job a person keeps.
Construction laborers (in the U.S.) typically make fucking bank, as it's impossible to hide the fact that they're ruining their body doing the work.
This is where the stereotype of construction laborers driving brand new stupidly large lifted trucks comes from. They have money.
Given the fact that "Wealthfront helps you build wealth by doing nothing. We make it easy to maximize your returns, lower your taxes, and grow your money effortlessly." Is the first thing to come up when searching for your employer, I guess it's not hard for me to imagine the source of your disconnect though.
Skilled trades make bank. General labor doesn't https://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/lab/d/tempe-construction-...
$30K / yr. That's a perfectly fine starting point, on par with what I made in the Marines. So I have a pretty good idea how much money that is, and it isn't anywhere that you are thinking about renting an apartment that has an actual marketing department and gets discussed here.
They should continue to want one. We should get rid of whatever gets in the way.
One wheelchair in all the mock-ups; and one of the smaller ones at that, that you can't zoom in on.
No prams. Anywhere.
This one's tricky, I'll admit, but, well, it looks really crowded. Any thought to low-arousal environments?
I guess this was designed. But for who?
Seems like with everyone telecommuting, if you build a community with a good school and with walkability and bikeablity, you could probably attract some families from the Bay, where prices are so high that people are looking for alternatives that are within 2 - 3 hours drive of the Bay Area.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/2025+E+Apache+Blvd,+Tempe,...
Nothing about it looks friendly or organic.
I would imagine there is a disasters HOA.
Now that I am done ranting.
I would love to see this happen organically all over the world.
New neighborhoods are quite nice, e.g. https://www.irvinepacific.com/homes/eastwood-village
There is a cat in one of the images near the top. I thought maybe they were being sarcastic or something.
Geez! :)
Big problems being
1. Distance
2. Heat (120f+ 50c+) in the summer
3. Very car centric city, everyone is driving fast so the sidewalks are narrow and the cars are loud
Here in Copenhagen, everybody loves the 100-200 year old areas way more than the newly built ones.
The undercurrent behind https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/articles/why-medieval-... is our romanticized notion of the past actually under-emphasizes the planning that did occur. After those overzealous tower-and-park modernists, we did a big romantic counterrevolution in aesthetics that ironically justifies the even more current neoliberal weak state planning as the default.
I recommend https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/why-you-hate-contempo... for trying to weave the needle right for yes planning but also yes a little relativism and humility.
I like the concept, I'm just worried when it's over capacity.
Yes, there's sarcasm in there.
But part of long term human sustainability is well, figuring out the areas we should not fight the environment ( more than reasonable ) to be able to sustain a human population.
This is one of the first times I’ve seen “Corporate Memphis” illustrations where the skin colours are exclusively shades of white and pink.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the nice drawings and car-free ideals, but those renders and illustrations seem rather tone-deaf for 2021…
Also, if you’re downvoting me, please reply with why I’m being downvoted. I smell astroturf… This is a legitimate concern about the project. I’m not saying anything particularly negative, but if Culdesac Toronto ever wanted to kick off, they would need a more multi-cultural set of renders than this. It’s incredibly distracting to the point of being clearly offensive.
Departures from this pattern are indeed noticeable.
Saw renders of an Aboriginal arts building locally where you could tell they struggled to find Aboriginal figures in their set of 3D models, so they seemed to include Indian families. Skin tone was generally fine, but the attire was miles off!
The neighborhood has its own app? That sounds horrific.
And where do you park your personal car? I REALLY mean it. There are many "car-free" developments with well-placed parking areas for residents who choose to have a car. Even when I was able to live in a bike/walk/train situation, I still drove 2-3 times a week. (And, no I wouldn't have used a car share service, even if was easily available.)
in Their name,
amen.
If you want to build an actual car free place you need high density buildings and a subway system. A place like NYC or Tokyo is the true future of cities.
My makerspace also put its popular tools under webcam so you could check if it’s in use before heading out.
As if the resources are infinite.
HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND MAY NO ONE BE LEFT BEHIND!
Wow, I never heard of such a thing. Or, I heard many years ago of something vaguely like that, and also how it wasn't viable financially. I think Click & Clack said they'd tried to run a do-it-yourself-with-our-tools garage and there were too many idiots.
I wasn't aware of any such thing existing in my area, anyway.
There are no trees. (Granted, I live in Atlanta and we're spoiled af with marvelous tree cover.)
There's no clear demarkation of where to walk or bike. It's not safe to intermix the two without indications of direction. One elongated dog leash (ugh) or elder person and there will be problems.
There's little privacy from neighbors. Maybe that isn't a problem, but yards are pretty dope and provide ample opportunity for gardening, customization, and dog/kid playground/activities.
Again, I don't get the anti-car, anti-yard, anti-suburb meme. And I say this as I live in a densely populated condo in Atlanta city proper.
Cul-de-sacs (the "old-school" car kind) have their place.
I've posted this video on another thread, but it really needs to be spread out more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM