[Vision2020] Cul-de-sacs

[Steven Basoa]

Kit Craine recently mentioned cul-de-sacs in a post to Vision2020 so  
I thought I would post this article (originally from the Wall Street  
Journal).


Homeowners love cul-de-sacs; planners say they're perils

Friday, June 02, 2006
By Amir Efrati, The Wall Street Journal

One of the most popular features of suburbia is under attack.

For many families, cul-de-sac living represents the epitome of  
suburban bliss: a traffic-free play zone for children, a ready roster  
of neighbors with extra gas for the lawnmower and a communal  
gathering space for sharing gin and tonics. But thanks to a growing  
chorus of critics, ranging from city planners and traffic engineers  
to snowplow drivers, hundreds of local governments from San Luis  
Obispo, Calif., to Charlotte, N.C., have passed zoning ordinances to  
limit cul-de-sacs or even ban them in the future.

In Oregon, about 90 percent of the state's 241 cities have changed  
their laws to limit cul-de-sacs, while 40 small municipalities  
outside Philadelphia have adopted restrictions or bans. Even when  
they're not trying to stamp them out, some towns are keeping a close  
eye on how cul-de-sacs are being built. Earlier this year, the city  
of Pekin, Ill., established new rules to make cul-de-sacs more  
maneuverable for service vehicles like fire trucks and school buses.

While homes on cul-de-sacs are still being built in large numbers and  
continue to fetch premiums from buyers who prefer them, the  
opposition has only been growing. The most common complaint: traffic.  
Because most of the roads in a neighborhood of cul-de-sacs are dead  
ends, some traffic experts say the only way to navigate around the  
neighborhood is to take peripheral roads that are already cluttered  
with traffic. And because most cul-de-sacs aren't connected by  
sidewalks, the only way for people who live there to run errands is  
to get in their cars and join the traffic.

In Charlotte, where the suburbs have emerged as a leading cul-de-sac  
battleground, a recent study by transportation planners found that  
almost all of the city's heavily congested intersections were located  
near residential developments from the 1960s, '70s and '80s, which  
are filled with cul-de-sac neighborhoods. The biggest traffic  
problems aren't in the old central cities these days, says Orlando,  
Fla.-based traffic engineer Walter Kulash, "but rather in the  
suburban periphery."

Land-use planners trace the origin of the American version of the cul- 
de-sac, which means "bottom of the bag" in French, to a development  
in Radburn, N.J., in 1929. Land planner Ed Tombari of the National  
Association of Home Builders says the design became popular during  
the housing boom after World War II, when many families turned away  
from the congested grids of central cities to live on quiet cul-de- 
sacs with lawns and winding roads more reminiscent of the  
countryside. To ensure privacy, developers limited the number of  
roads leading in.

According to the Census Bureau, the population of American suburbs  
grew 12 percent from 1980 to 2000, while the total population in  
center cities grew by just 1 percent. Likewise, from 1997 to 2003,  
the total percentage of American housing units located in the suburbs  
rose to 62 million, an increase of about 9 percent. The influx of  
homes in the suburbs, and the traffic they bring, has become the  
chief concern of planners across the nation, many of whom are  
struggling to mitigate the impact of car culture.

To some of them, cul-de-sacs have come to represent a failed  
experiment that has produced more isolation and more traffic by  
forcing people into their cars. David Schrank, a transportation  
researcher with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M  
University, says the old "peak hour" of traffic in many suburbs has  
been replaced by a longer "peak period." As new developments spring  
up, he says, "sometimes the transport network isn't in place to  
support them."

In some growing suburbs, "cul-de-sac" is becoming a dirty word. At a  
meeting in April with the planning commission in Northfield, Minn., a  
suburb of Minneapolis that has adopted rules preventing the use of  
cul-de-sacs, developer Lynn Giovannelli of Miles Development says she  
was "blindsided" by a chorus of objections about a single cul-de-sac  
she was including in plans for part of a new subdivision called  
Rosewood. "The land parcel was a funky shape, and I told them the  
only way to do anything with it is to do a cul-de-sac," she says. One  
commissioner told her to put in a park instead. "Preposterous," she  
says. "I was rolling my eyes."

While the plan was ultimately approved, it wasn't unanimous. "We  
might be prejudiced," says Jim Herreid, one of two commissioners who  
voted against the plan. "But we just don't like cul-de-sacs because  
they restrict the ability to get around town easily."

For all the criticism aimed at them, cul-de-sacs do seem to have one  
last defender: the free market. Real-estate brokers say that despite  
the recent opposition by policy makers, homes on cul-de-sacs still  
tend to sell faster than other homes -- and often command a  
comfortable premium. Ralph Spargo, the vice president of product  
development for Standard Pacific Homes in Irvine, Calif., says his  
company charges as much as 5 percent more for a home located on one.  
(For a house that sells for the April 2006 national median price of  
$223,000, that works out to about $11,000).

Rochelle Johnson, a 38-year-old real-estate agent from Lakeville,  
Minn., who grew up on a cul-de-sac, says she doesn't worry about the  
"isolation" -- she welcomes it. From her home on a cul-de-sac in a  
development called Wyldwood Oaks, Mrs. Johnson says the minimal  
amount of traffic gives her the peace of mind to allow her two  
children to play soccer in the street. "I don't know why somebody  
wouldn't want to live on a cul-de-sac," she says.

While suburban planners aren't trying to retrofit existing cul-de- 
sacs, they are making a concerted effort to make sure that new  
developments don't repeat some of their perceived faults. In cities  
like Boulder, Colo., and San Antonio, where suburban-style  
development is still taking place within city limits, new regulations  
have narrowed street widths in some new developments to make them  
easier to cross by foot. In a host of cities in Oregon, including  
Portland, lawmakers have shortened the acceptable length of street  
blocks to about 500 feet, down from 800 to 1,000. And in Rock Hill,  
S.C., which changed its rules in March, developers who build cul-de- 
sacs are required to cut pedestrian paths through their bulb-like  
tips to connect them to other sidewalks and allow people to walk  
through neighborhoods unimpeded.

By reducing cul-de-sac construction, developers say, local  
governments are depriving them of one of the most popular -- and  
lucrative -- housing types at a time when the housing market is  
slowing down in many regions. In Ames, Iowa, developer Chuck  
Winkleblack of Hunziker & Associates says new regulations on cul-de- 
sacs there have reduced choices for buyers. In the 1980s, when his  
company built a neighborhood called Northridge, there were 23 cul-de- 
sacs in the 410-home community. By contrast, Northridge Heights, a  
project set to be completed in 2009, calls for 350 single-family  
homes and 150 townhouses and apartments with only two cul-de-sacs. "I  
had to beg and plead to get those in," says Mr. Winkleblack.

Although the campaign against cul-de-sacs continues, lawmakers are  
making some concessions. As a trade-off for limiting them, cities  
like Nashville, Tenn., are letting developers put more homes,  
including townhouses and apartments, on less land. And in some  
places, measures being planned to increase traffic flow have been  
beaten back. In late 2004, when residents of two upscale subdivisions  
in York County, S.C. -- Eppington and Knight's Bridge, with homes in  
the $500,000 to $600,000 range -- got wind of a plan to connect them,  
by roads, to a proposed development called The Reserve, which had  
lower-priced homes, residents of the wealthy areas pressured the  
county council to nix the proposal.

In the meantime, Beth Bowlds, a speech pathologist and mother of  
three living on a cul-de-sac in McKay's Mill -- a subdivision in the  
Nashville suburb of Franklin -- says she understands the traffic  
issues cul-de-sacs can create and why the local planners have taken  
steps to limit them. Yet when she and her husband were shopping for a  
home two years ago, she was immediately drawn to the cul-de-sac  
anyhow. "It's nice having your little corner that's not as public."
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