> Culdesac is a far cry from "the incremental urbanism and thickening our cities need. A dozen or even a thousand Culdesacs can’t solve that problem," because they would lack long-term growth benefits including "the resilience of a system where many hands have built the neighborhood and have a financial stake in it" and would reflect "a zoning and finance stream that favors industrial over incremental production."
It's interesting that one of the most walkable, lively and beautiful urban centers —Paris—was not built this way, but was the result of a big reform by Eugene Haussmann that flattened the "previous Paris" and put his new version on top, which was extremely centrally planned.
The idea of a community incrementally building their infrastructure together based on arising needs and desires is beautiful. But it's not practical in the 2020s where housing is much harder to build due to regulation, zoning etc.
Plus this "incremental" approach can go wrong as well. People forget that for the longest time, cities had higher mortality because they just grew organically and some of that wasn't actually great for humans.
The things we see have survived for a reason. Most cities have gotten rid of A LOT of things that grew "incrementally".
I think this incremental approach is a romantic idea and more is right than wrong about it. But it's also the 2020s where housing is crazy expensive and we have higher expectations of buildings and neighborhoods.
Do you think there could be some sort of balance? Something between the tactical approach of redoing a single road at a time and ... flattening all of Paris?
The way I see it, it can be hard for a centrally planned approach to meet all of the needs of the residents of each area. Is there some sort of way to adapt the incremental approach for the modern era?
Indeed, every area that is underserved by retail can most cheaply be incrementally improved by adding a strip mall, but strip-malls area really shitty local maximum to get stuck in.
Hardly America's first car-free neighborhood, nor (not by a long shot) its largest.
Along the east coast there are multiple communities on islands accessible only by ferry that are foot traffic only. You can tell they're real places because they have their own U.S. Post Offices (not just mailboxes).
I can't stand usa can only achieve the effortless luxury of walkability in the vacation communities for its doctors and lawyers, but cannot make its own city centers adopt the same qualities.
I also can’t stand that when they do achieve walkability, it’s often soulless concrete covered dystopia. No trees. No art. No vibrant spaces for the public to enjoy. Just ways to herd people into stores. What happened to having a more welcoming public space?
Walkable traditional neighborhoods are reliably the most expensive real estate in the country.
The real reasons are 1) architects more interested in getting applause from architects for cutting-edge design instead of utilizing tried-and-true principles for humane spaces, and 2) these things are planned, designed, and built by people who will never live or work in them.
Architects design for coffee table books and developers+planners design for spreadsheets.
Yet all of Europe has walkable neighborhoods with restaurants and cafes that have outdoor seating, surrounded by trees, lighting and other surroundings that please the eyes. And the same people who eat there, also shop in the other shops around there. It is profitable.
It's seemingly not going to get any better soon, either. A new candidate for mayor of Boston has 3 main policy agendas [1]: Housing affordability, public school quality, and removing bike lanes.
Despite being farther from Cambridge (a different city than Boston, so they have a different mayor), I prioritize biking to places there to meet friends or go out to dinner. It is just a much more pleasant experience than nearly anywhere in Boston proper.
Pretty standard actually. Affordable housing rarely has a definition or measurable success criteria, but if something gets built it isn't going to be built where their constituents or they themselves live. Similar to how superficially progressive people are all for drug liberalization or a less heavy-handed approach to crime, as long as it has zero impact on their lives.
These same people are ostensibly liberal, "we're all for people riding bikes, or getting a stupid little condo, whatever you kids like to do for fun" they say, but in practice will do anything in their power to prevent any impediment to their car commute, even if their fear is at-best specious.
Same thing in Toronto. In Vancouver Canada we're a fair bit better about the bike lane thing, though it's still fragile, but in the affordable housing issue they actually just subsidized the huge home owners that already owned land, so a majority of new units that have come on the market are in their basements or backyard and can't be owned, furthering
a class divide. They marginally upzoned, but now a duplex or small townhouse is over a million at the low end. There isn't an incentive to make housing less expensive except the vague sense that the municipal/regional economy will eventually collapse on someone else's watch.
No, there should be fewer "bike lanes" in the US. Bike lanes are silly unless they are separate "roads" as in the Netherlands. There is absolutely zero chance of this happening in the US. Just stop with the pretense and stop giving cyclists a false sense of security. I rode a bike all over Los Angeles as a teen before the bike lane fantasies took hold. That takes a different set of survival skills and attitude than the suicidal bike lane followers of today. What we do now is just killing cyclists.
It's been very funny hearing neighbors talk about how the literal billionaire is somehow just a common Boston man and Michelle Wu is an "elitist carpetbagger". How are all these billionaires being seen as relatable and meanwhile middle class academics and scientists are all the elites?
This should be expected blowback. The billionaires are taking advantage of a large group of people who feel alienated. All the billionaires have to do is not call them racist, transphobic, nazis, and they'll get their votes. Regardless of misaligned economic interests.
Whatever you think about all those issues, and how stupid you think the hoi polloi are, there has been a massive strategic miscalculation about which issues to focus on, and how to address them over the last number of years.
Cars and electric bikes are banned, but horse drawn carriages are still present.
The island itself is somewhat bicycle friendly if you can manage hills, but other than the touristy downtown, all the housing is spread out and definitely not what anyone would think of as walkable, especially in winter months.
For context the island is 3*4km. Assuming MAX distance (4km), it seems reasonable for most with a little adaptation time. perhaps a bit harder if it’s been decades someone lives under controlled AC and move every km with a car but a 4km walk is definitely achievable by most and is in the perfect walk range to become healthier. A muscular bike might help to ease the first trips.
Weather is only a matter of clothes. The cold might be disturbing at first but you get used to it, and a good coat keeps you safe. Plus: walking or biking keeps you warm.
This seems like a large apartment/condo complex with a variance for number of parking spaces.[0] I think the distinction between this and a conventional neighborhood is that the central organization retains property ownership. Culdesac Tempe has "700+ furnished and unfurnished apartment homes for rent." The proportion of property owned vs rented is significant because of the skin in the game a person with an ownership has and how that drives different tradeoffs. I suppose neighborhoods with super-powerful and intrusive Home-Owners Associations would be similar to Culdesac Tempe.
Exactly. This is an apartment complex with some so-so on-site retail situated on a light rail trunk line, just outside of a university and eventually downtown Phoenix. Reduced parking but still accessible to delivery drivers. In most other cities this would be just a 5-over-1.
Exactly. I’ve driven by it before and it is just a regular apartment complex without parking. Neighborhoods are made out of multiple complexes. Their marketing must be working though because I keep seeing articles about them.
I didn't see it mentioned in the article. But how do people get to groceries, doctors appointments, hospital visits, or school? I assume you need some sort of wagon. When we lived in an apartment, we pulled up as close as possible to our building and took several trips up and downstairs. But there is no car in this scenario. Family of four consumes a lot every week.
Also I imagine that because its apartment based, people are more inclined to spend time outside rather than couped up in their apartment?
In theory when you live within walking distance to a grocery store it becomes much easier to do many smaller trips, rather than a once weekly "shopping trip". Your right though this article doesn't really talk about that.
We live in a city down the street from a grocery store. We sort of treat the store as an extended pantry. When we need to make something, we just go down to the store and get the stuff and make it. Door to door time to the store is 2-3 minutes, the lines are usually never long because it's a smaller store but they have about as much staff as a larger one.
Whenever we need to get a little more we just bring one of the carts from the store up to our apartment via the elevator and bring it back.
As for the rest of the things. Again if you can walk or take good transit there is no need to drive.
Its more of my own ignorance and lack of experience to be able to appreciate that kind of lifestyle because we have a two story home with lots of space, two car garage, and three cars. There is a lot of freedom but lack of walkability. We have to drive to walk somewhere like an outdoor style mall. Or to plaza's to doctor's, optometrist, Target, Walmart, Aldi's, etc
I lived outside the US most of my life. Never owned a car. Public transport, and the occasional car rental. Even with 2 kids. Unfortunately now that I'm in the US, we have to have a car.
a somewhat related anecdote (at the time i had no kids though). i too never owned a car. never even learned to drive. and when i got a job in the US, in san diego which is very spread out too, i thought "this is it, i'll have to learn to drive now". to my surprise, i didn't. i managed to arrange my life such that i could either walk or take a bus to work, shopping etc. the same in los angeles and later in auckland, nz, also a very car centric city. again, i was single without kids, so i didn't have to consider the needs of others when choosing where to live. now with kids we live in places with better public transport and i still haven't learned to drive.
Culdesac has on-demand car rentals for $5/hr so you can do things that transit or rideshare aren't well suited for. Most activities can be done with transit or rideshare in that part of Tempe though. It's mainly a student/young professional area, not a lot of families with 2.5 kids that need huge grocery hauls.
The article interviews a family with kids and a car-free area is a great location for an elderly person who can still take care of themselves other than driving (many elderly people end up driving well after it is no longer safe.)
Granny trikes acquired the name for a reason. It seems like 40 years ago old people were far more likely to do the car-free / car-light lifestyle than younger people.
My grandparents lived within walking distance to grocery stores, supermarkets, friends, and restaurants; they continued to walk to those places well within their 80s. It kept them mobile, healthy, and part of the community; probably more so than their children (my parents), who are trapped in their suburban homes and have nowhere to walk to, even if it was socially acceptable.
A lot of the elderly become weak and fragile due to lack of exercise, not due to age. Now we expect them to drive everywhere with failing eyesight, slow reflexes, and questionable judgement, with unfortunate results.
The cheap $20 versions of those things have awful wheels and are pretty much unusable anywhere that has weather or uneven pavement. I had one and never used it. But then I started using a $500 baby stroller. Of course at first I only did it including a baby, but once the baby got too big for the stroller I kept using the stroller for groceries because it worked well. Eventually I replaced the baby stroller with a "garden wagon". https://www.google.com/search?q=garden+wagon
in any sufficiently developed place those shopping carts are good enough. my grandmother had one with three wheels on each side connected to a central axis allowing her to pull it up on stairs with much less effort. as a kid i found that fascinating.
Mine sucked at curbs. It worked, so probably "good enough". It was just annoying and I preferred to just carry my groceries before the baby and their stroller arrived. But if your grandma was handling stairs with hers, curbs likely wouldn't have been an issue.
They are nice to have in general, not necessarily for daily use, or shopping. Just for when something large and heavy comes, or has to go. Like fridges, washing machines, ovens, or laaarge screens :-) Can be stowed away easily for being ready just in case.
Makes sense. Have to get past looking homeless pushing them as people who do push those in my areas are homeless. Its just a mindset shift though not insurmountable.
> Right but look at groceries, that's a ton to haul if they don't have a grocery store there.
If you go every 1-2 weeks and do a mass/bulk purchase, perhaps.
If the grocery store is between the transit stop and your home, or on your cycling route, you can pick a few things up in an ad hoc manner in smaller batches.
I walk to the grocery store, which is about a 25 min walk one way, once a week. I get about 90% of my groceries for the week in that trip and they fit in my backpack + one shoulder bag for crushable vegetables.
Do it from +40C to -20C through the year. I am in my late 30s, and do not find this difficult at all.
My grocery store is across the street. I will walk there in the morning just for a gallon of milk for my coffee when I run out. It's hard to convey how little an inconvenience it is when groceries are a four minute walk away.
After reading peoples comments, people don't realize how bad car brain is. Yes, there have been countless car free cities and many studies show that they're vastly better. However, the auto industry brain washing is so effective that everything an American does starts with a car. They are unable to think without one.
That's basically similar to some historical centres in some cities in italy (eg. Pisa, Firenze). Although in italy, traffic is reduced and not zeroed, mostly limited to only people living there. This way, people can still use a car to move when they need, but it's still walkable for everybody
So, Europe, basically. My metropolitan area can be accesed by bus/train and even boat in some shores. You don't need a car at all. Heck, parking your car in the center of the city is almost wallet-suicidal as you have to actually pay per hour.
I don't know why people think Europe is homogenous. Go to somewhere like Hamburg and you'll see roads wide enough for cars and for buses to run on time along side them.
That aside, it's just working 'so so' on many lines. I prefer my bicycle mostly, when I'm there. Which opens its own can of worms, because danger of theft, or heavy weight of chains and locks, and fumbling with them. And that fucking card system of theirs, for ppl who have no Deutschland-ticket is rather stupid. Maybe I should get one, but makes no sense for only a few weeks per year (Or so I thought).
Just because you don't have a car doesn't make a neighborhood care free though. Like you still have to interact with them when you cross the street and such.
if you are not in a car you should be immediately arrested until proven innocent. the prowlers, spotters, and other professionals casing your car-based neighborhood are usually car-free.
The first quote is from a 50-year-old mother of two who left her husband and kids in British Columbia to do ocean research in Arizona so that’s the kind of weirdo you’ll be living with
What a weird headline. Cars were invented long after America became a country, so every neighborhood in America for about 150 years was a car-free neighborhood. This can't be the first one, and may not even be the newest one either, since it's two years old.
Whenever I come across a "density Density DENSITY" story I do some looking at the background of the individuals running/promoting the effort.
I'll go to the "our team" and "about us" page of the org, look at who runs it and then google them and find the interview they did five years ago in their palatial suburban estate, sitting jauntily atop a stool next to the island in their 500 square foot kitchen.
They are all hyper-rich arrogant dickheads who want the masses stacked on top of each other in habicubes where they have to listen to couples fighting, smell the stench of their neighbor's disgusting cooking, and feel constant compression from crowding shoulder to shoulder up against each other as they march from their in-office job to their tiny, cramped, habicube.
My only question is why the rich dickheads who run media outlets and non-profits obsessed with turning everyone into the renter of a high-density nightmare hovel doesn't take their own medicine?
Why are they giving interviews to Dwell or A+U about how everyone should live in a dense city from inside their gated 30,000 square foot fortress of solitude?
There's a reason that the first thing anyone, anywhere, does when they get some money is buy an SUV or (in Europe and Japan) a station wagon and move out to an American-style suburb.
Once you get out of your "hip young urban professional" or "broke-ass" phase you realize the only thing that matters is sitting by yourself in a lawn chair on your wasteful suburban Bermuda grass lawn watching the sprinkler move back and forth in peace and fucking quiet.
You may be speaking from your experience, which is valid, but please don’t extrapolate to everyone. People want and value different things, and the way the US is set up makes it very hard for many to get the kind of environment they would value. I want walkability and density, but not urban high rises, and that kind of place could exist more if we had more non-car infrastructure, as roads force sprawl.
I can't speak to whether or not this is still the case, but in August 2023 the CEO of Culdesac was living in a Culdesac Tempe apartment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttDeYzINSV8
> There's a reason that the first thing anyone, anywhere, does when they get some money is buy an SUV or (in Europe and Japan) a station wagon and move out to an American-style suburb.
Maybe if you have kids, otherwise that's just self-imposed exile. Not much fun to be had in a suburb if you're loaded and childless. Lots of driving though.
> Not much fun to be had in a suburb if you're loaded and childless.
Depends on what you want to do. Most childless couples I know moved away from their younger city lives. They don’t think of being “exiled” from restaurants or whatever. They’re closer to parks, hiking, friend. They’re able to do hobbies you can’t in the city like woodworking or whatever. And as for driving - it is much easier and painless away from cities. High density without matching roads makes driving painful. But low and medium density with lots of parking makes it great - driving then just becomes a means to live a high quality life.
> There's a reason that the first thing anyone, anywhere, does when they get some money is buy an SUV or (in Europe and Japan) a station wagon and move out to an American-style suburb.
Yep. HN and other echo chambers like Reddit are VERY bad at recognizing this reality. Almost no one wants to live in a super dense urban environment. When you are young, there is appeal to going to the newest bar or whatever, but that wears out very quickly, and then you spend the rest of your life wanting something away from people, away from small apartments in high rises. That means more space and single family homes. That means suburbia or rural areas.
i'd like to add that it is not just individualism per se but also lack of tolerance. in the US (and all western countries really) i want to be away from people because to many are bothered if i do anything different than them.
in china and other places that i have been to, people don't get bothered by such things, or at least they don't embarrass themselves or others by constantly complaining about it. more tolerance and friendliness would go a long way towards a friendly community that one wants to be part of and not run away from.
> Almost no one wants to live in a super dense urban environment.
And yet that's where so many people choose to live, hence that aforementioned super density. If almost no one wanted to live there it wouldn't be dense at all. Not to mention people usually pay a premium cost for that density you think they hate.
Choosing to live, or need to live? I think it’s a bit of both. As the parent comment mentioned, you have to look at these things based on factors like age and income. I think the ones that are truly choosing to live in very dense environments are often younger and value some of the access they get in a city. I think there’s another population that doesn’t choose it but has to be there for work or to afford things or whatever (depending on the city). But most cities have a pattern where people on average move further away from city cores as they age, and there’s a reason for that.
I thought this cited criticism is interesting:
> Culdesac is a far cry from "the incremental urbanism and thickening our cities need. A dozen or even a thousand Culdesacs can’t solve that problem," because they would lack long-term growth benefits including "the resilience of a system where many hands have built the neighborhood and have a financial stake in it" and would reflect "a zoning and finance stream that favors industrial over incremental production."
It's interesting that one of the most walkable, lively and beautiful urban centers —Paris—was not built this way, but was the result of a big reform by Eugene Haussmann that flattened the "previous Paris" and put his new version on top, which was extremely centrally planned.
The idea of a community incrementally building their infrastructure together based on arising needs and desires is beautiful. But it's not practical in the 2020s where housing is much harder to build due to regulation, zoning etc.
Plus this "incremental" approach can go wrong as well. People forget that for the longest time, cities had higher mortality because they just grew organically and some of that wasn't actually great for humans.
The things we see have survived for a reason. Most cities have gotten rid of A LOT of things that grew "incrementally".
I think this incremental approach is a romantic idea and more is right than wrong about it. But it's also the 2020s where housing is crazy expensive and we have higher expectations of buildings and neighborhoods.
Tokyo is an example of incrementalism making a beautiful resilient city, while still maintaining safety standards.
Tokyo burned to the ground 80 years ago and got to be rebuilt from scratch then.
Kind of orthogonal to the point. It isn't a planned city in the same way that Paris is a planned city.
Also, most of the worst parts of American development have happened since 1945.
Tokyo also has 3 million cars, so walkable/transit city and car free aren’t the same.
Do you think there could be some sort of balance? Something between the tactical approach of redoing a single road at a time and ... flattening all of Paris?
The way I see it, it can be hard for a centrally planned approach to meet all of the needs of the residents of each area. Is there some sort of way to adapt the incremental approach for the modern era?
Indeed, every area that is underserved by retail can most cheaply be incrementally improved by adding a strip mall, but strip-malls area really shitty local maximum to get stuck in.
> where housing is much harder to build due to regulation, zoning etc
The central planning must increase to overcome the downsides of central planning.
Hardly America's first car-free neighborhood, nor (not by a long shot) its largest.
Along the east coast there are multiple communities on islands accessible only by ferry that are foot traffic only. You can tell they're real places because they have their own U.S. Post Offices (not just mailboxes).
For example: https://villageofoceanbeach.org/about
I can't stand usa can only achieve the effortless luxury of walkability in the vacation communities for its doctors and lawyers, but cannot make its own city centers adopt the same qualities.
I also can’t stand that when they do achieve walkability, it’s often soulless concrete covered dystopia. No trees. No art. No vibrant spaces for the public to enjoy. Just ways to herd people into stores. What happened to having a more welcoming public space?
It isn't profitable.
Walkable traditional neighborhoods are reliably the most expensive real estate in the country.
The real reasons are 1) architects more interested in getting applause from architects for cutting-edge design instead of utilizing tried-and-true principles for humane spaces, and 2) these things are planned, designed, and built by people who will never live or work in them.
Architects design for coffee table books and developers+planners design for spreadsheets.
Except for all the places that do that, become desirable and hence profitable.
I assume the real reason relates to "abuse of the commons" and the American problem of "why we can't have nice things" outside of "gated" communities.
Yet all of Europe has walkable neighborhoods with restaurants and cafes that have outdoor seating, surrounded by trees, lighting and other surroundings that please the eyes. And the same people who eat there, also shop in the other shops around there. It is profitable.
It's seemingly not going to get any better soon, either. A new candidate for mayor of Boston has 3 main policy agendas [1]: Housing affordability, public school quality, and removing bike lanes.
Despite being farther from Cambridge (a different city than Boston, so they have a different mayor), I prioritize biking to places there to meet friends or go out to dinner. It is just a much more pleasant experience than nearly anywhere in Boston proper.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/boston-mayor-josh-kraf...
I would have thought a mayor prioritizing affordable housing would also prioritize _more_ bike lanes, not fewer. That's odd.
Pretty standard actually. Affordable housing rarely has a definition or measurable success criteria, but if something gets built it isn't going to be built where their constituents or they themselves live. Similar to how superficially progressive people are all for drug liberalization or a less heavy-handed approach to crime, as long as it has zero impact on their lives.
These same people are ostensibly liberal, "we're all for people riding bikes, or getting a stupid little condo, whatever you kids like to do for fun" they say, but in practice will do anything in their power to prevent any impediment to their car commute, even if their fear is at-best specious.
Same thing in Toronto. In Vancouver Canada we're a fair bit better about the bike lane thing, though it's still fragile, but in the affordable housing issue they actually just subsidized the huge home owners that already owned land, so a majority of new units that have come on the market are in their basements or backyard and can't be owned, furthering a class divide. They marginally upzoned, but now a duplex or small townhouse is over a million at the low end. There isn't an incentive to make housing less expensive except the vague sense that the municipal/regional economy will eventually collapse on someone else's watch.
No, there should be fewer "bike lanes" in the US. Bike lanes are silly unless they are separate "roads" as in the Netherlands. There is absolutely zero chance of this happening in the US. Just stop with the pretense and stop giving cyclists a false sense of security. I rode a bike all over Los Angeles as a teen before the bike lane fantasies took hold. That takes a different set of survival skills and attitude than the suicidal bike lane followers of today. What we do now is just killing cyclists.
Bike lanes work quite well in the city I live in. Make cycling -- which I do regularly -- much safer than without.
if you're cycling on US roads in 2025, you're primarily motivated by feelings other than safety.
It's been very funny hearing neighbors talk about how the literal billionaire is somehow just a common Boston man and Michelle Wu is an "elitist carpetbagger". How are all these billionaires being seen as relatable and meanwhile middle class academics and scientists are all the elites?
This should be expected blowback. The billionaires are taking advantage of a large group of people who feel alienated. All the billionaires have to do is not call them racist, transphobic, nazis, and they'll get their votes. Regardless of misaligned economic interests.
Whatever you think about all those issues, and how stupid you think the hoi polloi are, there has been a massive strategic miscalculation about which issues to focus on, and how to address them over the last number of years.
People eat up propaganda, that's how.
Billionaires have PR people and whole social networks to polish their image. Most academics and scientists do not.
There's also Mackinaw Island in Michigan, which has banned cars at the end of the 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island
It only had a population of 583 permanent residents at last count, though. It's mostly a tourist destination.
Cars and electric bikes are banned, but horse drawn carriages are still present.
The island itself is somewhat bicycle friendly if you can manage hills, but other than the touristy downtown, all the housing is spread out and definitely not what anyone would think of as walkable, especially in winter months.
For context the island is 3*4km. Assuming MAX distance (4km), it seems reasonable for most with a little adaptation time. perhaps a bit harder if it’s been decades someone lives under controlled AC and move every km with a car but a 4km walk is definitely achievable by most and is in the perfect walk range to become healthier. A muscular bike might help to ease the first trips.
Weather is only a matter of clothes. The cold might be disturbing at first but you get used to it, and a good coat keeps you safe. Plus: walking or biking keeps you warm.
Perhaps in the summer there are no cars but from their photo I can see several cars.
I see a few trucks, which might be needed for hauling heavy items, but not any passenger cars.
The road next to the tennis courts definitely looks like passenger vehicles to me.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d2a6bf9a14008...
Funny how you spotted cars in the picture, and had to make the argument about the weather... yet you missed this :
> Except for emergency and essential services, vehicles are generally not permitted.
>> Funny how you spotted cars in the picture, and had to make the argument about the weather... yet you missed this :
Funny how you apparently read the entire article.. yet you missed this from the first paragraph.
> And in the summer, there are no cars!
>> generally not permitted.
These are the kind of weasel words that mean yes. I guess you're the kind of guy that thinks boneless wings contains bones [1].
[1]: https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2024/SCO/0725/230293.asp
To be fair, Ocean Beach is much larger than a single neighborhood. Semantics I guess.
Was Midnight Mass shot there? This place reminds me of it a lot.
(not from the US obv.)
Yeah but small islands are a completely different category.
This seems like a large apartment/condo complex with a variance for number of parking spaces.[0] I think the distinction between this and a conventional neighborhood is that the central organization retains property ownership. Culdesac Tempe has "700+ furnished and unfurnished apartment homes for rent." The proportion of property owned vs rented is significant because of the skin in the game a person with an ownership has and how that drives different tradeoffs. I suppose neighborhoods with super-powerful and intrusive Home-Owners Associations would be similar to Culdesac Tempe.
0. https://maps.app.goo.gl/NhiVJuSChWh2pvUP6
Exactly. This is an apartment complex with some so-so on-site retail situated on a light rail trunk line, just outside of a university and eventually downtown Phoenix. Reduced parking but still accessible to delivery drivers. In most other cities this would be just a 5-over-1.
Superblocks are such a great idea, and a way to incrementally make cities more walkable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_block#Superblock
Barcelona a good example of this
That's not a neighborhood. That's an apartment complex! It covers roughly 200 by 300 meters.
For comparison, the average officially recognized neighborhood in San Francisco is around 3.3 km². That "neighborhood" covers around 0.07 km².
Exactly. I’ve driven by it before and it is just a regular apartment complex without parking. Neighborhoods are made out of multiple complexes. Their marketing must be working though because I keep seeing articles about them.
I didn't see it mentioned in the article. But how do people get to groceries, doctors appointments, hospital visits, or school? I assume you need some sort of wagon. When we lived in an apartment, we pulled up as close as possible to our building and took several trips up and downstairs. But there is no car in this scenario. Family of four consumes a lot every week.
Also I imagine that because its apartment based, people are more inclined to spend time outside rather than couped up in their apartment?
In theory when you live within walking distance to a grocery store it becomes much easier to do many smaller trips, rather than a once weekly "shopping trip". Your right though this article doesn't really talk about that.
We live in a city down the street from a grocery store. We sort of treat the store as an extended pantry. When we need to make something, we just go down to the store and get the stuff and make it. Door to door time to the store is 2-3 minutes, the lines are usually never long because it's a smaller store but they have about as much staff as a larger one.
Whenever we need to get a little more we just bring one of the carts from the store up to our apartment via the elevator and bring it back.
As for the rest of the things. Again if you can walk or take good transit there is no need to drive.
Its more of my own ignorance and lack of experience to be able to appreciate that kind of lifestyle because we have a two story home with lots of space, two car garage, and three cars. There is a lot of freedom but lack of walkability. We have to drive to walk somewhere like an outdoor style mall. Or to plaza's to doctor's, optometrist, Target, Walmart, Aldi's, etc
I lived outside the US most of my life. Never owned a car. Public transport, and the occasional car rental. Even with 2 kids. Unfortunately now that I'm in the US, we have to have a car.
a somewhat related anecdote (at the time i had no kids though). i too never owned a car. never even learned to drive. and when i got a job in the US, in san diego which is very spread out too, i thought "this is it, i'll have to learn to drive now". to my surprise, i didn't. i managed to arrange my life such that i could either walk or take a bus to work, shopping etc. the same in los angeles and later in auckland, nz, also a very car centric city. again, i was single without kids, so i didn't have to consider the needs of others when choosing where to live. now with kids we live in places with better public transport and i still haven't learned to drive.
Culdesac has on-demand car rentals for $5/hr so you can do things that transit or rideshare aren't well suited for. Most activities can be done with transit or rideshare in that part of Tempe though. It's mainly a student/young professional area, not a lot of families with 2.5 kids that need huge grocery hauls.
I see. A lot of the photos do show a lot of fit and young people. No families and no one over age 30 probably. I am not the target market.
The article interviews a family with kids and a car-free area is a great location for an elderly person who can still take care of themselves other than driving (many elderly people end up driving well after it is no longer safe.)
Granny trikes acquired the name for a reason. It seems like 40 years ago old people were far more likely to do the car-free / car-light lifestyle than younger people.
My grandparents lived within walking distance to grocery stores, supermarkets, friends, and restaurants; they continued to walk to those places well within their 80s. It kept them mobile, healthy, and part of the community; probably more so than their children (my parents), who are trapped in their suburban homes and have nowhere to walk to, even if it was socially acceptable.
A lot of the elderly become weak and fragile due to lack of exercise, not due to age. Now we expect them to drive everywhere with failing eyesight, slow reflexes, and questionable judgement, with unfortunate results.
Adaptive cycling. I've met folks well into their 80s riding trikes to get places (hip replacements and all).
That's what ZipCar was supposed to do (not sure how popular it became)
Walk, bike, bus, tram, train, ferry, boat?
Right but look at groceries, that's a ton to haul if they don't have a grocery store there.
I live somewhere that a car is required so the concept is foreign to me.
I've seen people occasionally walking around NYC with personal(?) shopping carts.
They look different than anything in the store so I assume they got them for themselves.
ex. https://www.amazon.com/Lifetime-Home-UPGRADED-Waterproof-Gro...
The cheap $20 versions of those things have awful wheels and are pretty much unusable anywhere that has weather or uneven pavement. I had one and never used it. But then I started using a $500 baby stroller. Of course at first I only did it including a baby, but once the baby got too big for the stroller I kept using the stroller for groceries because it worked well. Eventually I replaced the baby stroller with a "garden wagon". https://www.google.com/search?q=garden+wagon
in any sufficiently developed place those shopping carts are good enough. my grandmother had one with three wheels on each side connected to a central axis allowing her to pull it up on stairs with much less effort. as a kid i found that fascinating.
Mine sucked at curbs. It worked, so probably "good enough". It was just annoying and I preferred to just carry my groceries before the baby and their stroller arrived. But if your grandma was handling stairs with hers, curbs likely wouldn't have been an issue.
Hackenporsche! ( 'Porsche' (jokingly) which you pull behind you, and occassionally into your own heels (hacken/fersen in german) :-) )
Or https://www.amazon.com/s?k=shopping+trolley
I've used something like this in the past, when not using my bicycle:
https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-Climbing-Heavy-Duty-Telescoping...
combined with something like from here for fully 'professional' modularity:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ortlieb+dry+bag
They are nice to have in general, not necessarily for daily use, or shopping. Just for when something large and heavy comes, or has to go. Like fridges, washing machines, ovens, or laaarge screens :-) Can be stowed away easily for being ready just in case.
Makes sense. Have to get past looking homeless pushing them as people who do push those in my areas are homeless. Its just a mindset shift though not insurmountable.
> Right but look at groceries, that's a ton to haul if they don't have a grocery store there.
If you go every 1-2 weeks and do a mass/bulk purchase, perhaps.
If the grocery store is between the transit stop and your home, or on your cycling route, you can pick a few things up in an ad hoc manner in smaller batches.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk
* "Can Groceries Be Delivered TOO Quickly?!": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpavEMVQpW8
Depends on how you shop. I lived in a large metropolis with 2 kids and we didn't have a car (not in the US, of course).
I walk to the grocery store, which is about a 25 min walk one way, once a week. I get about 90% of my groceries for the week in that trip and they fit in my backpack + one shoulder bag for crushable vegetables.
Do it from +40C to -20C through the year. I am in my late 30s, and do not find this difficult at all.
You can carry a lot if the bags are suitable. Grocery delivery is also becoming very popular.
If a grocery store is walking distance, you don’t need to do a massive haul once a week.
Perhaps but who wants to go to the store everyday?
My grocery store is across the street. I will walk there in the morning just for a gallon of milk for my coffee when I run out. It's hard to convey how little an inconvenience it is when groceries are a four minute walk away.
Who wants to go for a short walk everyday?
> Perhaps but who wants to go to the store everyday?
Someone who wants to get some fresh air during their lunch break.
Cargo bike?
Wonder if this works for everyone. Like if you have an infant, where would you put it ?
Lots of different logistics to figure out
The front loading variety can fit car seats for infants. My 2yo fits on a rear seat no problem.
Might not work for absolutely everyone but it sure works for some.
After reading peoples comments, people don't realize how bad car brain is. Yes, there have been countless car free cities and many studies show that they're vastly better. However, the auto industry brain washing is so effective that everything an American does starts with a car. They are unable to think without one.
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That's basically similar to some historical centres in some cities in italy (eg. Pisa, Firenze). Although in italy, traffic is reduced and not zeroed, mostly limited to only people living there. This way, people can still use a car to move when they need, but it's still walkable for everybody
So, Europe, basically. My metropolitan area can be accesed by bus/train and even boat in some shores. You don't need a car at all. Heck, parking your car in the center of the city is almost wallet-suicidal as you have to actually pay per hour.
I don't know why people think Europe is homogenous. Go to somewhere like Hamburg and you'll see roads wide enough for cars and for buses to run on time along side them.
Ach wirklich? https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/pendler-aufgepasst-verdi-ruft-no...
That aside, it's just working 'so so' on many lines. I prefer my bicycle mostly, when I'm there. Which opens its own can of worms, because danger of theft, or heavy weight of chains and locks, and fumbling with them. And that fucking card system of theirs, for ppl who have no Deutschland-ticket is rather stupid. Maybe I should get one, but makes no sense for only a few weeks per year (Or so I thought).
Europe is not America's first car-free neighborhood.
Stores in .de (mostly/everywhere?) have free parking for the duration of shopping.
The parts of the USA I know, and live in do too.
Amazing lack of real photos and, seemingly, people.
Every neighborhood is a car-free neighborhood if you’re rich enough, poor enough, or determined enough.
Source: Me, determined enough.
Just because you don't have a car doesn't make a neighborhood care free though. Like you still have to interact with them when you cross the street and such.
Playing IRL Frogger keeps you fit.
You have managed to get your neighborhood car-free?
another determined enough me here. it started out of necessity, but at this point, i trudge through berms and through parking lots out of spite.
if you are not in a car you should be immediately arrested until proven innocent. the prowlers, spotters, and other professionals casing your car-based neighborhood are usually car-free.
The first quote is from a 50-year-old mother of two who left her husband and kids in British Columbia to do ocean research in Arizona so that’s the kind of weirdo you’ll be living with
These damn socialists are taking over our god-fearing car-centric American cities and DESTROYING OUR WAY OF LIFE
On a more serious note, it's unfortunate that US cities aren't more walkable and there are very few places where you can survive without a car.
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What a weird headline. Cars were invented long after America became a country, so every neighborhood in America for about 150 years was a car-free neighborhood. This can't be the first one, and may not even be the newest one either, since it's two years old.
Whenever I come across a "density Density DENSITY" story I do some looking at the background of the individuals running/promoting the effort.
I'll go to the "our team" and "about us" page of the org, look at who runs it and then google them and find the interview they did five years ago in their palatial suburban estate, sitting jauntily atop a stool next to the island in their 500 square foot kitchen.
They are all hyper-rich arrogant dickheads who want the masses stacked on top of each other in habicubes where they have to listen to couples fighting, smell the stench of their neighbor's disgusting cooking, and feel constant compression from crowding shoulder to shoulder up against each other as they march from their in-office job to their tiny, cramped, habicube.
My only question is why the rich dickheads who run media outlets and non-profits obsessed with turning everyone into the renter of a high-density nightmare hovel doesn't take their own medicine?
Why are they giving interviews to Dwell or A+U about how everyone should live in a dense city from inside their gated 30,000 square foot fortress of solitude?
There's a reason that the first thing anyone, anywhere, does when they get some money is buy an SUV or (in Europe and Japan) a station wagon and move out to an American-style suburb.
Once you get out of your "hip young urban professional" or "broke-ass" phase you realize the only thing that matters is sitting by yourself in a lawn chair on your wasteful suburban Bermuda grass lawn watching the sprinkler move back and forth in peace and fucking quiet.
You may be speaking from your experience, which is valid, but please don’t extrapolate to everyone. People want and value different things, and the way the US is set up makes it very hard for many to get the kind of environment they would value. I want walkability and density, but not urban high rises, and that kind of place could exist more if we had more non-car infrastructure, as roads force sprawl.
I can't speak to whether or not this is still the case, but in August 2023 the CEO of Culdesac was living in a Culdesac Tempe apartment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttDeYzINSV8
> There's a reason that the first thing anyone, anywhere, does when they get some money is buy an SUV or (in Europe and Japan) a station wagon and move out to an American-style suburb.
Maybe if you have kids, otherwise that's just self-imposed exile. Not much fun to be had in a suburb if you're loaded and childless. Lots of driving though.
> Not much fun to be had in a suburb if you're loaded and childless.
Depends on what you want to do. Most childless couples I know moved away from their younger city lives. They don’t think of being “exiled” from restaurants or whatever. They’re closer to parks, hiking, friend. They’re able to do hobbies you can’t in the city like woodworking or whatever. And as for driving - it is much easier and painless away from cities. High density without matching roads makes driving painful. But low and medium density with lots of parking makes it great - driving then just becomes a means to live a high quality life.
I don’t live car-free in a city because I dislike driving in the city, I live car-free in a city because I dislike driving, period.
> There's a reason that the first thing anyone, anywhere, does when they get some money is buy an SUV or (in Europe and Japan) a station wagon and move out to an American-style suburb.
Yep. HN and other echo chambers like Reddit are VERY bad at recognizing this reality. Almost no one wants to live in a super dense urban environment. When you are young, there is appeal to going to the newest bar or whatever, but that wears out very quickly, and then you spend the rest of your life wanting something away from people, away from small apartments in high rises. That means more space and single family homes. That means suburbia or rural areas.
1/3rd of the US population lives in urban cores, not "almost no one".
Urban cores is a pretty loose term. Lots of urban cores that aren’t NYC or similar have single family homes in their urban core.
if that is true then how come that apartments in those urban centers are among the most expensive?
away from people
that's a problem caused by north american individualism. most of the rest of the world does not want to be away from people.
i'd like to add that it is not just individualism per se but also lack of tolerance. in the US (and all western countries really) i want to be away from people because to many are bothered if i do anything different than them.
in china and other places that i have been to, people don't get bothered by such things, or at least they don't embarrass themselves or others by constantly complaining about it. more tolerance and friendliness would go a long way towards a friendly community that one wants to be part of and not run away from.
> Almost no one wants to live in a super dense urban environment.
And yet that's where so many people choose to live, hence that aforementioned super density. If almost no one wanted to live there it wouldn't be dense at all. Not to mention people usually pay a premium cost for that density you think they hate.
Choosing to live, or need to live? I think it’s a bit of both. As the parent comment mentioned, you have to look at these things based on factors like age and income. I think the ones that are truly choosing to live in very dense environments are often younger and value some of the access they get in a city. I think there’s another population that doesn’t choose it but has to be there for work or to afford things or whatever (depending on the city). But most cities have a pattern where people on average move further away from city cores as they age, and there’s a reason for that.
> But most cities have a pattern where people on average move further away from city cores as they age, and there’s a reason for that.
Yeah, it's called kids. The thing people keep having less of.