Building Good Roads
One problem in our transportation policy is that funding is unduly weighted to spending money on roads rather than spending money on mass transit. Another problem in our transportation policy is that funding is unduly weighted to building new roads rather than to doing the necessary work to maintain the roads we already have in excellent condition. But yet another problem is that there are roads and then there are roads. There are freeways, and there are boulevards. There are connected networks of streets that can be walked or biked as well as driven, and there impenetrable mazes of cul-de-sacs. See the contrast below:
And there are little things like lane-widths. Wider lanes make driving feel safer, which leads to faster driving and an environment that’s unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists and typically actually less safe for drivers. There are roads with sidewalks and there are roads without sidewalks. And obviously you’re always going to have more roads and streets than metro lines in any given city, so getting this stuff right is important.
Streetsblog has a very interesting interview with John Norquist in which he discusses some of the changes to federal policy that might help encourage better work in this regard. Fundamentally, though, the role of state and local agencies is always going to be important to this kind of decision-making, and things will only improve if people pay more attention to politics at this level.
85 Responses to “Building Good Roads”
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March 28th, 2009 at 8:48 am
The graphic is very helpful! It makes it obvious that the optimum community is the one on the left, with limited points of access to keep the niggers out, whereas the “urban grid” on the right allows all sorts of perverts to molest your children on the way to school. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Yay! Excellent post, Matt! You really get this stuff.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:19 am
James Gary, I appreciate the intent towards satire, but with the slightest effort you might find yourself capable of achieving similar levels of sarcasm in a less distasteful manner.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Notice on the left you have a vast area of connected greenery, while on the right you have it very compartmentalized. I wonder what this would do to local wildlife
March 28th, 2009 at 9:29 am
It’s not greenery, it’s houses. If half that was parkland they could just walk to school.
Anyway SimCity donut blocks FTW!!!
March 28th, 2009 at 9:32 am
The picture on the left is precisely the problem we have in the North Atlanta burbs (the second worst traffic congestion in the U.S.)
The mystery is: Why don’t more people recognize this?
March 28th, 2009 at 9:36 am
And then there are high-traffic commuter roads that DON’T have shoulders.
You should live in an area which specializes in kowtowing to every schmuck with an extra buck. Where compromise and half-assedness are relative strengths and relative virtues.
“I know there’s a traffic light just 100 yards from my parking lot, but I don’t want to attach to the frontage road. I want to go direct to the main road.”
“Consider it done, sir”
March 28th, 2009 at 9:37 am
but with the slightest effort you might find yourself capable of achieving similar levels of sarcasm in a less distasteful manner.
Sorry if I offended anyone. I stand by my original comment as an accurate representation (based on my own experience) of the mindset of the vast majority of Americans.
Regarding the local wildlife: to be completely accurate, the map on the left should be about twice its present size. It is true that local wildlife don’t have much space to roam in cities, but destruction of habitat by sprawl is, I think, as much an issue as is connectedness of green space.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:47 am
People over-estimate the value of little 20- or 40-foot-wide strips of greenery as wildlife habitat. Yes, they provide some, and some is better than none, but if it comes at the cost of spreading the developed area out so that large, contiguous wooded areas with a lot of interior area are lost, that represents a huge net loss for wildlife.
March 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am
This is just obnoxious. If you go to the comments section of the streets blog you’ll see life expressed as a physics problem, with destruction of homes as an acceptable solution to rerouting people.
Worse, if you think the grid on the right is great, imagine a 4-way stop at each and every intersection. That’s how it is here in city residential DC. I’m currently house hunting and it’s been made easier by seeing the ugliness of linear asphalt avenues, cars parked on the curbs for miles, the noise of traffic, and grind of stopping and starting each and every block. And yes, it includes the ease of unknown people to go in and out of my “territory”.
Screw “walkability”, I want privacy, safety, green space, and quiet. I’m looking at the map for areas like the left square.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:03 am
The mystery is: Why don’t more people recognize this?
Because the increase in congestion is considered worth the trade-off in exchange for the prestige of living in a “cul de sac” (or, as my parents called it, a “dead end street”).
You’d get similar geographical/planning disasters if developers decided that all new houses should be “lake houses.” Sure, who doesn’t want to live in a lake house, but if almost all houses were built on a lakes, then your communities would be a geographical mess.
I’m currently house hunting and it’s been made easier by seeing the ugliness of linear asphalt avenues, cars parked on the curbs for miles
Thus the hellhole that is Brookline, MA (though no nighttime curb parking there). Being from the northeast, I grew up in which almost all residential suburbs were built on a grid pattern. The thing is that these were older, established residential suburbs. I suspect with newer developments, it’s necessary to create these cul-de-sac patterns as a means of creating some artificial scarcity and compartmentalizing new residents as a way to keep property values stable.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Tyro, it’s interesting that living in Brookline (near Washington Square) has opened my eyes with respect to an urban form I hadn’t really considered sufficiently “city” for my tastes.
As a streetcar suburb not only in heritage but in present reality (northeast of Rt. 9 & Chestnut Hill Ave., at least) we have modestly twisting streets, a nice mix of single family houses and apartment/condo buildings. It’s nicer than I expected.
But you can’t live here without realizing that this pleasant state of affairs is possible, in part, because of the money. So people are willing to require that every car owner have off-street parking, and that every store avoid excessive signange. (There’s a story in this week’s Brookline Tab that wrings its hands over the fact that there is much less control over the signange in the newly abundant vacant storefronts.) It keeps the riff-raff out, I suppose.
So unlike Cambridge and Somerville we don’t have parked cars permanently uglying up both sides of already-narrow streets, nor do we have many streets with unattractive triple-deckers lined up shoulder to shoulder.
I happen to want to move back to Cambridge — more of my tech-geek crowd lives there than here. But now I see the attraction of a *mild* application of the “picture on the left” philosophy of development.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Cars parked on the curb?
People you don’t know?!?
Hold me, mommy.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Richard,
What you are describing is still the picture on the right.
My street features about 9 units per acre (about 5000 square foot lots). Every house is a single-family. Every house has a parking lot that can fit at least two cars. Every house has a lawn (even if some of them are about the size of a parking space. On-street parking is occasional. I once held a cook-out for 30 people on my property.
And yet, we have a completely connected grid of streets, a little neighborhood-district-level commercial node three blocks away, sidewalks all over the place, and narrow streets.
The pattern on the right is a suburban pattern; it’s just a better one.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Cul-de-sacs are a way to keep automobile speed down so that kids can play in and near the street.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:44 am
To me, the one on the left looks European, while the one on the right North American (gross simplification). In Europe the one of the left would have parks, footpaths and cyclelanes between the cul-de-sacs and would therefore be friendly to non-driving modes of transport.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:46 am
That’s odd. I don’t know how I managed to write ’signange’ twice, but there it is.
It’s also worth mentioning that the streets in my neighborhood were laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, and he included public, signed walkways as part of his plan. So cars have to twist around the streets, which may have an effect somewhat like more current “traffic-calming” schemes, but pedestrians can make a bee-line for Washington or Beacon streets.
And, coming to think of it, my impression of modern New Urbanist developments is that they take at least as much inspiration from streetcar suburbs as they do from the classic city-center pattern of a continuous row of multi-story townhouses.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:49 am
The map is deceptive. The “green space” people here talk about is not green space at all. It will be full of houses and pools and barbecues, and until the housing density is known, you don’t even know how big those yards would be. Wildlife don’t like people, and when people encroach too closely, the animals move on. Another thing I notice is how many here talk like they swallowed property developer salespeak as though it were gospel truth. I’m in a city where both ways of living are available, and only #2 shows any efficiency for getting people from A to B. The people in A are very good at wanting to have things both ways, though. They want restricted access AND easy road and transit availability. So we get wasteful living at its ugliest.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I live in an area like the one on the right (except the school is in the middle, and close to the left side border), with a lot of on street parking (which I generally like). What’s amusing and charming is that the walkways that schoolkids use to get from place to place, through backyards and over fences etc, looks more like the layout of streets on the left.
Jeffrey Davis is right about automobile speeds — we do have problems with residents from other bucolic communities using our bucolic streets as relatively high speed commuting routes. Stop signs everywhere (which I see people run all the time) and speed bumps help but don’t cure.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Kids are not SUPPOSED to play in the street. Transportation dollars are not SUPPOSED to be spent on asphalt playgrounds like cul-de-sacs. That is s-t-u-p-i-d wasteful spending. Tranportation dollars are supposed to be spent on efficient transportation networks, not play areas for nanny neighborhoods.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:54 am
I think that Shooter242 (#10) and Jeffrey Davis (#15) make the best arguments for why the model on the left is more appealing for some people.
Look, some people want to live in a suburb where they are in the thick of things, with great ease at getting anywhere and with lots of hustle and bustle.
Others want things quieter and more private.
We are going to have a combination of the left and right based on what type of life peopel prefer. I don’t agree with anyone who wants to essentially impose one or the other models on everyone.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Actually I am saying DOTs should be imposing and only build the Right Model. If people want the Left Model they should find a private development that doesn’t use public money to build or maintain the cul-de-sacs. Public money should build efficient transportation networks. Private money can build circular asphalt playgrounds.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Having lived in both, and being in full agreement with the observations of joe from Lowell in #14 (*), honesty compels me to point out that the map on the left would suck less if there were common pedestrian/bicycle pathways connecting the cul-de-sacs. But there aren’t: private property stands wall-to-call in each chunk of the subdivision and the sections are usually divided by fences. You are not _allowed_ to walk from bottom right (say, a house) to top left (say, a grade school) even if you want to.
Cranky
(*) I can show you dozens of neighborhoods in Chicago similar to what joe describes. I actually get a bit nostalgic for Mixmaster showing up in these threads and stating with great authority that it is an impossibility of design for such a neighborhood to even exist then ignore my offers to conduct him around Chicago. Now that the Radical Right appears to have lost funding for its counter-blogging effort I hope he has found a real job.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:20 am
> And, coming to think of it, my impression of modern New
> Urbanist developments is that they take at least as much
> inspiration from streetcar suburbs as they do from the
> classic city-center pattern of a continuous row of
> multi-story townhouses.
Most of what third-generation exurbanites consider “the inner city” is actually the suburbs built in the 1880-1920 period. Interestingly, while they tend to be shocked by the 1880s areas because they have (of course) no provision for automobiles, they also tend to just not see the provisions the 1920s designers made for families to live with one automobile whilst not allowing those provisions to dominate the design. As did the Mixmaster of yore they just can’t accept that such design was (and still is) possible.
Cranky
March 28th, 2009 at 11:22 am
There’s a compromise between the two images. You can have the setup on the right, with all its various travel options and shortened routes, and the spaciousness on the left. Just make the green squares bigger and reduce the number of roads.
The underlying rationale is to provide more access points, not to reduce overall living space.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:34 am
The underlying rationale is to provide more access points, not to reduce overall living space.
This is partially a flaw in the original drawings. In my experience, both sorts of suburbs have houses of similar size and plots of land. The difference is how that space is used and the number of access points. The drawing makes it look like the community on the left has larger houses and more land. Or, alternately, the communities on the left have smaller houses and smaller plots of land but are quieter, have less traffic, and are more homogenous than communities build in a more grid-like fashion of the same size (possibly).
The suburb I grew up in was not particularly pedestrian friendly (few sidewalks), and there wasn’t much “hustle and bustle,” but, having been designed in the early part of the 20th century, it was grid-like, with streets in at least one direction running the entire length connecting it to the neighboring towns. Access to modern satellite images does show a rather stunning contrast between my town and the more recent developments which tend to have the patterns shown in the left image.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:35 am
There’s nothing wrong with the configuration on the left, so long as there is a pedestrian/bike route from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac. In the second configuration the danger is that cars will use the grid as a shortcut, which isn’t good for anyone including pedestrians and bikers in the neighborhood. Roads are for cars, so design the road grid in a way that puts cars where you want them, and design a non-car overlay that takes care of the rest.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:40 am
> In the second configuration the danger is that cars
> will use the grid as a shortcut, which isn’t good for
> anyone including pedestrians and bikers in the neighborhood.
That is an axiom of post-1970 US suburban “planning”, but having grown up on the right-hand grid at a time when kids were expected to walk/bike most of the time, and also lived in the left-hand for a while, I have deep skepticism about said axiom.
Again I would urge everyone in this discussion to read both _Edge Cities_ (which is a bit fluffy but does delve into the mind and thinking of suburban land developers) and _Crabgrass Frontier_ (which puts the research meat behind many of the thoughts that MY and Atrios express in these threads.
Cranky
March 28th, 2009 at 11:42 am
joe from lowell wrote, People over-estimate the value of little 20- or 40-foot-wide strips of greenery as wildlife habitat. Yes, they provide some, and some is better than none, but if it comes at the cost of spreading the developed area out so that large, contiguous wooded areas with a lot of interior area are lost, that represents a huge net loss for wildlife.
Damn straight. I’ll say it again: damn straight.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Cranky, it all depends where you live. If the primary grid is overcrowded, people will shortcut through the secondary grid, especially for short trips. That was the case in my town, until barriers were put up–which basically turned the right-hand configuration into the left-hand one for care, while preserving the grid for pedestrians and bikes.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Some people don’t get that figure A would not include pedestrian/bike access through the development, because it would defeat the purpose of restricting movement. Each neighborhood is meant to be whole unto itself and not be reachable except through the one or two access points provided. I’ve seen enough of these developments, and any pedestrian/bike access through the development is almost never in the plan. I always wondered how much time and fuel is wasted, not just by the residents, but by every service that has to enter and leave these neighborhoods, from the UPS truck to the school bus.
The idea of a cul-de-sac as a children’s playground (something I saw all the time) shows how bereft of such common things as easily accessible parks and playgrounds are in these developments. The kids have no way to get to a park or playground easily, so they played in a dead-end street. In the neighborhood I grew up in, there were two parks and a school playground within walking distance. Yes, it was an old streetcar suburb. You learned valuable things, too. Like how to cross streets and bicycle safely.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
“I suspect with newer developments, it’s necessary to create these cul-de-sac patterns as a means of creating some artificial scarcity and compartmentalizing new residents as a way to keep property values stable.”
Bingo.
My father and stepmother lived in the one on the left. Not only did you have to drive everywhere, all the green space was manicured like a gold course green, complete with enough pesticides to kill any misguided wildlife that happened to get within range. Not that it mattered to them: although in the middle of the “country,” that house was sealed, with central heating, central air, and blinds drawn all day to prevent any sunlight from bleaching the furniture or the rugs (low-e windows, or indeed any additional insulation, would have cost the developer more; he preferred to have the residents shoulder more of the costs in the form of burning fossil fuels to heat and cool the place).
This golf course ambiance and “exclusivity” with non of that hippy environmentalist nonsense was exactly what my stepmother was looking for, of course, despite the fact she was overweight, had Type II diabetes, etc. Of course, once you can’t walk a block, not having to walk a block becomes a feature rather than a bug.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Folks can live as they please, even if they make sucky choices. I for one will never venture into one of those hell holes on the left again. I once went out to look at a car that was advertised on Craigslist. It was in one of those no access rectangles and by the time I finally found my way to the house, the seller was exactly the kind of asshole person I would expect to be living there. He told me that while I was stuck in the maze he had sold the car, but if I’d like to make an offer over what he had been asking I was welcome to do so. I know its not right, but I do really hate the suburbs. More for the people live there than the layout.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
The cul-de-sacs didn’t fall out of the sky. The fact that people can’t get from here to there via cul-de-sacs is the feature not a bug.
I grew up on a dead end road, in a house next to a house next to the dead end. My parents chose that house, because they wanted only one family driving past our house. Next door on the other side was the riskier house with 3 families further down (one on the other side of the street).
Nearby there was the amazing error of google maps (which did not exist and has since been corrected). A street that was, in the plans, cut through. In reality it turns into a footpath and back. This created problems once when there was a brushfire and the firemen were planning to drive fire engines down that which they didn’t know was a footpath.
People want to live in an impenetrable maze. They are willing to drive more to get their kids to school to avoid the risk that other people drive over said kids while taking their (other) kids to school.
I know you grew up in Manhatten and survived, but lots of people are terrified of the cars to which they are addicted.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
That’s right, Henk, let your hate fester. Everybody in a grassy neighborhood is exactly like that guy. They’re all 100% assholes with no redeeming qualities. Don’t even visit.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
> People want to live in an impenetrable maze. They are
> willing to drive more to get their kids to school to avoid
> the risk that other people drive over said kids while taking
> their (other) kids to school.
I think I spot tags in RW’s #34, but I’m not sure. So I will only respond indirectly by again urging a read or re-read of _Edge Cities_. Land developers in the 1970-1990 period found that powerful fear-based marketing speak could be built up around the “dangerous traffic” and “safe streets” memes and used to great effect in selling plots and houses.
Doesn’t mean it was true though. Among other things the cul-de-sac/limited access arterial model requires families to have at least one additional car for every two teenagers (and today often one per teenager), and there are many more 16 year old teenagers driving many more miles. Teenage boys, in particular, who view things such as cul-de-sacs as good places to test out their NASCAR fantasies.
Cranky
March 28th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
“They’re all 100% assholes with no redeeming qualities. Don’t even visit.”
No, they’re not all assholes. But the ones who aren’t can come to the city to visit me. The rest can stew in the mess they’ve made for themselves.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
That’s funny – no Preview function but it took out my SARCASM tag between the words “spot” and “tags” in my #36.
Cranky
March 28th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Re Henk (#33) — I understand your conclusion. There must be some secret widespread zoning requirement for one asshole per block, though obviously some locations are way over their minimum.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
That only allows you to move in and around your little development. If you shunt any and all traffic to the surrounding access roads, then these tend to be four land plus monstrosities that make it difficult for any bike or foot traffic to leave the area.
Imagine there is a major shopping center just off the bottom of both diagrams. In which case do you think it would be easier to get to on a bicycle?
March 28th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
If the primary grid is overcrowded, people will shortcut through the secondary grid, especially for short trips.
You see this in Arlington, Virginia, where much of the design was pre-WWII, and most of it was pre-cul-de-sac era. In most cases, You have many choices to get from point A to point B, so if there is a problem with one, You can use another. This of course leads to people using the secondary grid (defined as streets occupied by politically well-connected people who don’t want other people using their streets) instead of the primary grid (defined as those streets clogged with traffic because they are carrying more traffic than they were designed for). Fortunately, Arlington County government is responsive to this problem, closing off streets in the “secondary grid” and forcing traffic onto the packed primary grid. As a result, in certain areas you have to drive several blocks to get one block from where you are, much like the pattern above on the left. This generates increased traffic congestion, pollution and stress. (And if you’re not familiar with the area, it can be much worse than going a few extra blocks, as you drive in circles or get lost trying to find the alternate path on the “primary grid” to the one-block path on the “secondary grid.”)
Of course, not all of the redirected traffic goes on to the primary grid. Much of it goes on to other streets on the secondary grid (see definition above), leading to demand for more street closures on the secondary grid, slowly transforming the map on the right to the one on the left.
Fortunately, Arlington County seems to have an unlimited budget for closing streets, or reducing numbers of lanes, or eliminating turning lanes. For some reason, though, there is never enough money to improve traffic flow (e.g. add turning lanes, eliminate roadblocks).
March 28th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I live in the configuration shown on the left. Allowing my son to walk to school along the narrow road with a speed limit of 45 mph is not even an option. If he could wind his way through some of the intervening neighborhoods, it could be much more attractive. This is a real problem, and, of course, by having bought a house here I am part of the problem, but in every other way the house is exactly what we were looking for.
March 28th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I give you … Sunriver Oregon. A resort community that for *cars* is laid out much like the map on the left but for *bikes and pedestrians” has the easy access you see on the map on the right.
In fact, bike lanes are not only prevalent but they are also always completely isolated from the streets — never a painted lane in the right 3 feet of a busy roadway that motorists routinely ignore. And when bikes cross roadways stops or yield signs are extremely prominent.
One result is that the residents frequently use bikes to visit the market, the parks, the pools, etc. (Most of the cars you see driving to these locales are the vacationers who rent some of the homes.) Of course their are lockable bike stations everywhere, and law enforcement to prevent bike thefts.
You CAN encourage biking by making it convenient. People will respond by using the bike trails and by acquiring bikes that can carry sufficient goods from markets.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Matt writes, the role of state and local agencies is always going to be important to this kind of decision-making, and things will only improve if people pay more attention to politics at this level.
This may be the case, but the problem, I think, has more to do with the people who staff MPOs and the issues they believe they are trying to deal with. Conceptually, the dichotomy is between accessibility and mobility. The traffic engineers that staff MPOs care more about the latter than the former. Note that the latter is an issue of flow and more scietific than the former which could be perceived as “aesthetic” (gasp!). This dovetails nicely with the other important factor at play…the suppliers of housing.
Say what you will about them, I think it is safe to say that a house on a cul-de-sac has probably been perceived as being a better investment than the highly connected house that would appear in the map on the right. Developers, recognizing (encouraging?) this, have built such environments.
As it stands, there has been enormous opposition to interconnectivity measures by local governments by homeowners. People are paying attention. They are just against the policies proposed if it risks their “investment”. The problem, much like what created the housing crisis, is the same…conflating a living space with an asset that is supposed to increase in value.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I think the “cul-de-sacs slow down traffic and keep children safe” argument is neatly refuted by post #10, by Shooter242:
Actually, I can imagine that. I can imagine that it keeps motorists from accelerating to dangerous speeds before they get to the next intersection. And, as if by magic, kids can play touch football in the street with plenty of time when a car comes.
I confess, I’ve never thought of cars parked on the street as an eyesore. But now, that you mention it, I still don’t. Nor does the “grind” of driving in the city offend me much. But aren’t both of these really arguments for more and better public transportation?
As far as “the ease of unknown people to go in and out of [your] ‘territory,’” the idea that the cul-de-sac prevents that is a fantasy. Foot traffic does not increase crime rates: it increases the number of witnesses and bystanders who help keep crime down.
March 28th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
45: Actually, my old neighborhood in Chicago (grid, as on right), not only had a 4-way stop at each intersection, but a grass-covered circular island in the middle of each intersection to slow drivers down that much more.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
FWIW, because one iteration of the right-hand map may have had stops on all intersections does not mean that all iterations will.
One thing to think about is the possibility that more traffic regulation doesn’t necessarily lead to safer roads.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
As Sam @18 suggests, you can have interconnected cul-de-sacs without the kind of subvisisionitis that you see in areas like the Atlanta exurbs. It involves having footpaths (especially ones that aren’t sidewalks), shared space, and integrated non-residential elements like schools and retail.
What differentiates contemporary North American from European planning models is that the latter doesn’t simply divide the land between road and housing lot, with no space for anything else (i.e. anything that can’t be sold). You could see the influence of subdivision planning creeping into private housing developments in Britain during the late 80s and 90s, but even that was offset by the stipulation for sidewalks, footpaths, cycleways and other non-residential use.
What’s fascinating about the exurban cul-de-sacs is that they don’t feel conducive to unstructured kids’ play, with their manicured get-off-my-lawns and little room to wander. Instead, parents end up assembling timetables of planned activities which either involve driving Little Johnny somewhere, or having his friends driven to the doorstep.
This, however, ties into my argument about the influence of public rented housing. I live near a project that literally has one point of access: it has interstates to the east and south, and steep slopes with unconnected roads to the north and west. When you treat public housing like a ghetto, that’s what you end up with; conversely, if you have a robust and non-stigmatised public housing agency, you can develop with an eye on encouraging living patterns conducive to community, instead of trying to wring every penny out of every square inch of land.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The trend is for the design patterns on the left and the right to converge to the same effective result.
Neighborhoods on the left build bike / walking paths to connect one side to another. Neighborhoods on the right block off streets to vehicular traffic to create things like pedestrian malls. (or just to prevent cut throughs)
There is also the case where neighborhoods on the left are built like that even in old line suburban neighborhoods because the center space contains a right of way for previous or current used transportation alternatives i.e. trains.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
This also may be the first time ever that you’ve advocated using federal funds for building more roads.
(btw, I’m trying to figure out what Norquist means by ‘the potomac freeway’ (anacostia freeway? SE/SW freeway?)
March 28th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I live in what was a suburb in the 1950’s but is now in the middle of the city in South Minneapolis. We are on a grid like the one on the right.
There are speed bumps and stop signs that make it really hard to drive fast. There are always kids (safely) playing in the street.
I have 3 bus lines running within walking distance, a nice park 2 blocks away, and an elementary school 3 blocks away. There a small grocery store, a pet store, a gas station, a coffee house, and a real butcher shop all within a few blocks.
When there is a blizzard I don’t even need to dig my car out if I don’t want to. My yard is plenty big for a garden in the summer.
There are always lots of people out walking their dogs, night and day, so it is very safe here. It is very infrequent (I don’t remember the last time) for people’s houses to be broken into.
And it turns out that I made a better investment buying here than I would have in the exurbs – their house values have dropped much more than mine have.
This is such a superior way to live, I’m really baffled why neighborhoods would be designed in any other way.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
But that’s a false choice. Do you think that people with homes on Market Street in the left drawing have a great deal of privacy and quiet?
Heck, even the main roads in the cul-de-sac subdivisions on the left are going to have more traffic on them than most of the side streets in the map on the left.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
It also strikes me that the exact thing Norquist is aiming for is something like how New York Avenue is in your neighborhood, which you have complained about frequently.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Many of the comments above seem to imply that patterns like those on the left are a product of twentieth century American city planning. What it reminds me of is the typical structure of the residential areas of medieval Arab cities. There, the limited access residential mazes were a form of protection from perceived outside threats, and I suspect the same is true here. These limited access patterns result from fear of outsiders, not really from urban planning per se, and as such, are going to continue to exist as long as potential residents feel threatened.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Er, map on the right, that is.
All of the traffic into and out of the developments on the left is channeled onto a few main streets, which will be busier than the distributed street system on the right.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Comment 1 and 54 got it right. Cul-de-sac burbs are the product of raging paranoia caused by listening to too much Limbaugh and watching too many “murder of the week” cop shows on TV.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
(btw, I’m trying to figure out what Norquist means by ‘the potomac freeway’
A quick google indicated that this is an alternate name for I-66. I find this strange because it is the GW Parkway, not I-66, which runs right along the Potomac.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Tyro-
thx. I always called it (and heard it called) the Custis Freeway or most often just I-66.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
That should be Custis Parkway, not Freeway.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
A slight modification of the cul-de-sac model could work better than either existing model. Each single-access cul de sac is a gated community that people get around by walking, biking or golf carts. No private cars allowed in. At the entrance to each gated community there is basic minimal commerce–grocery store, drug store, a few restaurants, a brightly lit well protected guarded parking structure for all the members’ cars (overseen by a corps of trusted security-guards-car-watchers who fulfil the old function of NYC apartment doormen), and–this is the key– a mass transit stop.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
What it reminds me of is the typical structure of the residential areas of medieval Arab cities. There, the limited access residential mazes were a form of protection from perceived outside threats, and I suspect the same is true here.
That’s an interesting observation, though the rabbit warren of cities like Fez or Marrakech isn’t just an Arab phenomenon: the Great Fire of London and Hausmann’s Paris redevelopment tore out that kind of building. In addition, those areas were accompanied by vertical containment. In outer-ring ‘burbs, the psychological confinement (for those who aren’t in cars) is achieved by flattening the vertical and extending the horizontal.
I was trying to find good examples of different planning models in Europe, and the rings of development around Oxford seem to fit the bill. You have the Victorian houses of “leafy north Oxford”, the early 20th-c suburban growth in Headington and New Marston (absorbing old peripheral villages), the old auto-factory-worker area of Cowley. Then you have the more modern growth outside the city in places like Kidlington and Abingdon (5 and 8 miles away respectively) which use cul-de-sac layouts, but ones that look very different from your average Vista Village Pointe at Ranch Hill exurban development.
March 28th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I live and work on opposite sides of an area exactly like that on the left and must drive through it every day. Despite dozens of streets, there is really only one path through the maze of cul-de-sacs between home and work, and it is always jammed with traffic. The plethora of cars there also makes this sole path off-limits to any sort of pedestrian or bicycle traffic.
It does indeed keep traffic out of the cul-de-sacs, which the local owners love (and, despite his tasteless phrasing), James Gray is exactly right. It is a conscious attempt by the local white upper-middle class neighborhood to keep the people from the nearby black neighborhoods from driving through their neighborhood. (Any black/latino driver that veers off the one path through the maze will immediately get pulled over by the local police, all under the guise of “helping” that “lost” person).
So yeah, the people in that neighborhood love its setup, but its a real pain for the rest of us. Heck, I’d love to just be able to bike through it to get to and from work, but I’m too scared to try due to the traffic, lack of bike lane, shoulder, etc. This coming from someone who used to bike through Manhattan every day! I’d take the crazy cabbies on 5th avenue over the cell-phone talking suburbanites in their SUVs blindly speeding through the curvy roads any day of the week.
PS. There are no forms of public transportation through that maze. How could there be? There aren’t even sidewalks for people to get to and from any bus stops even if they wanted to add some (much less room for buses to pull over at a stop).
March 28th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Cul-de-sacs are a sign of the growing influence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Witness his influence on the map on the left!
March 28th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Oh Nylund, you’re not even funny. cul-de-sacs are racist! Power to the people!
GROW UP!
March 28th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
GROW UP!
Wouldn’t a conservative call to “Grow Up” be an invitation for liberals to “grow up and admit the reality of the fact that people really just like and need to be able to keep out others from their housing developments and stop acting like it’s a bad thing, because this is just how the world works”?
What, exactly, are you calling upon Nylund to Grow Up and do?
March 28th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
I don’t know how practical this is on a large scale, but the neighborhood I grew up in (ladds addition portland or) had connected streets, but it was not lined up with the city grid. For the most part people didn’t cut through because unless you were familiar with the streets it was very east to get turned around. At various points various traffic control methods were used to prevent people from cutting through easily. I do think it could be possible to build streets like those on the right that are not grids or perfectly straight lines except for the main arterial streets. Yes some people would find shortcuts, but most people who stick to the main roads for the simple reason that it is easier.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
A town not too far from me has spent money and a lot of effort over the past decade refurbishing its network of pedestrian stairways and paths. You can get to downtown from anywhere, avoiding narrow roads, even from up in the hills. God, I love those staircases. Kids can get to school that way, commuters can get to buses, and plenty of people just get some good exercise exploring them. The town and county have also been working hard on bike paths. It’s considered the suburbs, but these are older towns with actual centers to them, not developments. Plus, on average, it’s more affluent than not, and there’s always been a commitment to green space and protection of open space. I’m lucky. Very lucky.
March 28th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
The post is not about density. It is not about forcing every neighborhood to have a checkerboard street pattern. It not about traffic safety.
The post is not against quaint ‘European’ layouts. I have been in many European and U.S neighborhoods with layouts that look like the one on the left. They tend to be very different because neighborhoods like that in the US do not have bike or walking paths to local community centers, and in any case there are usually have a dozen residential areas like that crammed together, so any business or community center is too far away anyway, even if there were paths.
This post is about neighborhoods that require an automobile to do anything at all other than putter around your house, and those that do not. That is all.
The pictures are EXAMPLES.
I don’t mean to be impolite, but there seem to be a lot of very ignorant, arrogant, and perhaps very simple, fools who comment on this site, with a lot of obscure axes they like to grind and incoherent nits they like to pick at any and every inappropriate opportunty.
March 28th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
There is no one “correct” layout for residential streets. A grid layout and a cul-de-sac layout each have advantages and disadvantages. The image in Matt’s post purporting to show that the grid layout improves mobility is highly misleading. The need for stop signs/lights at intersections and the greater likelihood of speed bumps or other traffic “calming” features in the grid layout means that the trip to the school may take just as long or longer despite the more direct route. Safety, privacy and a greater sense of community are other features that may attract buyers to housing in cul-de-sacs.
March 28th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Near us here in N. Virginia there’s a development containing about 3,000 houses, mostly McMansions, that has a single entrance from the main road (Rt. 15). There are four disjoint internal subdivisions, each with its own guardhouse and gate. Also two 18-hole golf courses, two elementary schools, a large supermarket and strip mall.
There are houses that have back yards facing Rt. 15, but the occupants have to drive four miles to get out onto it.
It’s a Toll Bros. development, the result of Disney buying up land for a theme park but then backing out. Imagine if everyone ever needs to get out at once.
Public transportation? We don’ need no stinking buses!
March 28th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
The need for stop signs/lights at intersections–
Not necessarily. See the link at comment #47. See also comment #69.
Safety, privacy and a greater sense of community are other features that may attract buyers to housing in cul-de-sacs.
Non sequitur. Those three things are not “features”; they are marketing claims.
March 29th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Do suburban kids play in the street? Weird. I thought the whole reason to move to the suburbs was so that the kids would have a yard to play in and not have to play in the streets. Do suburban kids have bedrooms? I never really got the suburban thing. It’s hell for teenagers, and most kids wind up being teenagers at some point or another.
The big problem with cul de sacs is that they cost other people money. If you had a number of through streets, you wouldn’t have to upgrade the few through roads as often. I know this is a big issue in Fairfax County, VA. The county is getting tired of having to pick up the costs that should be paid for by the developer and cul de sac homeowners. Then again, another big selling point of the suburbs is getting by on other people’s subsidies.
Of course, it is possible to have safe cul de sacs and a grid. Just put the cul de sacs in a grid. In my old neighborhood we called the cul de sacs alleys, and kids did indeed play in them. I could get halfway to my junior high school just following alleys and crossing streets mid-block.
By the way, shouldn’t it be culs de sac, not cul de sacs? Isn’t cul just French for ass? So isn’t a cul de sac the ass end of a bag? I think I’ll shut up now.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:01 am
If you want wildlife go to the country. If you don’t limit the size of the urban/suburban zones you will have to go farther and farther out to find some. I realize that this problem of urbanization is very complex and there are ideological debates still raging, but the basic problems have been identified. The primary reason town “planning” if you can call it that has been so catastrophic is that greed and selfishness have won the day. Just like in those other great engines of wealth such as the fantastic financial industries the foxes are guarding the hen house. Who actually dictates town planning in most areas? From what I have seen, it is usually people with an interest in unbounded development of new communities. And we the public just love them! We buy them! We fund this behavior. And then, when we see that the whole idea is unsustainable we look around in shock. And those developers? They have moved on the next community, usually in Florida. Unfortunately, just like in everything else, creating valuable, working sustainable communities requires planning, expertise, cooperation, moderation, realistic objectives, pure motives, and passion. That sounds like work.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
So, why do you think that the left is the norm? City planning has been around for a while. Are there benefits of the plan on the left? I can think of one potential one–what if you need to stop by the market after picking up your kid from school?
Things exist the way they are for a reason, and if you want to change them, you’re going to have to–most likely–recognize and cater to that reasoning. People feel more secluded in a cul-de-sac, and are willing to pay more money for a house that feels less like a “row house”. Higher home values=more revenue for the city, county, and state.
I’m not saying that the picture on the right is bad, per se-I’m just saying that I doubt that it would help home values. Since home values are nearly negative right now, you might have a better chance of making change in emerging communities!
March 29th, 2009 at 10:39 am
> If you want wildlife go to the country. If you don’t
> limit the size of the urban/suburban zones you will
> have to go farther and farther out to find some.
Google “Cook County Forest Preserves”. Lotta corruption in Cook County in the 1940s and 50s, but a lot of foresighted urban design as well. Probably because the politicians were still giving orders to the land developers, not the other way around.
> So, why do you think that the left is the norm? City
> planning has been around for a while. Are there benefits
> of the plan on the left? I can think of one potential
> one–what if you need to stop by the market after picking up
> your kid from school?
>
> Things exist the way they are for a reason, and if you
> want to change them, you’re going to have to–most likely–
> recognize and cater to that reasoning.
Trying my best not to belly-laugh. Again, read Gerrard’s _Edge Cities_ and his chapter on how exurban developments are “planned” and sold. Hint: the land developer that manages by hook or crook (more likely by crook) to get the interceptor sewer routed closest to his land wins. After that there can be as many heartfelt “planning & zoning” meetings and presentations by disciples of Jane Jacobs as you like: the game is over and the bulldozers are already rolling to the blueprints that support the marketing memes.
Cranky
March 29th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I am disappointed that Kaleberg’s pressing question is being ignored. Wikipedia, however, confirms Kaleberg’s suspicion and even notes that Voltaire found the mental image inappropriately vulgar!
March 29th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
DTM,
While there are a lot of factors besides demand that shape housing supply, market prices for houses in a cul-de-sac indicate that they are preferred. If you’ve ever tried to buy a house, you’ll find he ones in culs-de-sac to be >10% more expensive than similar houses in the area. The reduced noise and traffic for those houses are worth a premium to buyers.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Non sequitur. Those three things are not “features”; they are marketing claims.
Yes, that must be it. It’s all just a matter of “marketing.”
Damn those evil developers, with their diabolical marketing schemes, for hoodwinking the American people into buying homes in cul-de-sacs!
March 30th, 2009 at 9:30 am
“Cul-de-sac” is French for “dead end”.
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I wouldn’t mind the version on the left so much if the four subdivisions within the superblock connected up at the middle point. As a cyclist, I don’t need a perfect grid. All I need is at least one low-speed route (25 mph) that runs roughly parallel to every busy arterial street.
I don’t have a problem with off-street paths, but they aren’t my preference, as I don’t like having to deal with the dog-walkers, joggers, baby strollers, and slow bikers. I’d rather force the motorists to deal with me, although I’d rather not do it under highway-like conditions on the arterials