>Book a Guest Suite or day in the Makerspace through the Culdesac app and we'll handle the rest.
The neighborhood has its own app? That sounds horrific.
Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
101–110 of 384 posts
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#102I'd love to live in a car-free neighbourhood. My town centre had blocked off all the on-street parking to make extra-wide walkways during the pandemic. Just last week they've removed the bollards and resumed the parking. It's awful. Ugly cars lined up taking up all the space. I can't believe I'm the only one who notices how much worse it is. I've lost hope in anything changing, though. People are just too dependent on their cars to let them go.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#103Unfortunately this project lacks two things which are essential to a long-lasting, sustainable, and human-friendly town.
1) Architecture that inspires, elevates the soul, and will last the test of time. All I see is soulless pre-fabs. It looks like you're living in a shopping mall.
2) The freedom to create buildings and institutions that are meaningful to the residents who reside there. Churches, schools, sporting clubs. Trusting the company behind this to provide for your every need is naive. Maybe it will work for some people. But will people want to move and raise children here?
Creating one-off experiences is not the way to create the sustainable towns and cities of the future. This is like Airbnb taken to an obscene level. We should be designing car-free towns where people can buy property, design beautiful homes, participate in a small local economy, work locally and start small businesses, create the local institutions that their children and their children's children will participate in. I don't want to rent my space in a town I'm only partially attached to. I want to put roots down, and build things that will last.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#104These efforts seem well-intentioned but doomed to fail because it requires government action to make the rest of the area work , i.e. be more walkable / bikeable. It's great you can bike from your pricey apartment to your friend's, but try getting passed by a bunch of distracted drivers going 50mph faster than you on the arterial stroad when getting to the nearest reasonably-sized grocery store that is 10 miles away…
The apartment complex that I lived at in 2009 had a fully furnished 1br apartment available to rent nightly by tenants for their guests. I used it a few times and it was very convenient to have guests stay there onsite instead of at a hotel. Definitely agree it is a great amenity for them to advertise.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#105For those who are interested in what makes a great town, I recommend two books: Happy City by Charles Montgomery, and Strong Towns by Charles Marohn. Both were red pill/blue pill books for me on what makes a great city. When my wife and I moved we completely changed what we were looking for in a house/community. We wanted a Main Street style town. We used to love master planned communities with huge houses. In our sm…
Definitely agree! I would recommend the YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes" which has a series about the book Strong Towns and in general focuses on better city planning: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A The terrible layouts of US cities and neighbourhoods are what keep me in Europe. There is nothing you can do in the US without a car because it's so car dependent and it wastes so much time compa…
A lot of East Coast US cities are a lot more walkable -- the image of the sprawling US city is mostly true of West Coast cities that underwent their primary growth after WWII and the ubiquity of cars. For example, I live in Washington DC (well technically a suburb, but near a Metro station) and don't drive. I have grocery stores and restaurants within walking distance and can take the Metro for other things.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#106Given how cheap land is in the far north part of California, I've always wondered why there isn't a city built specifically for walking and bicycling up north of Sacramento.
Seems like with everyone telecommuting, if you build a community with a good school and with walkability and bikeablity, you could probably attract some families from the Bay, where prices are so high that people are looking for alternatives that are within 2 - 3 hours drive of the Bay Area.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#107Manhattan is a car free neighbourhood in the sense that as a resident you don't need a car. This is an apartment complex with couple of shops.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#108This looks worse than many of the suburban neighborhoods in and around Atlanta, GA. There are no trees. (Granted, I live in Atlanta and we're spoiled af with marvelous tree cover.) There's no clear demarkation of where to walk or bike. It's not safe to intermix the two without indications of direction. One elongated dog leash (ugh) or elder person and there will be problems. There's little privacy from neighbors. May…
There are thousands of neighborhoods in metro Phoenix that are designed exactly how you're suggesting. Anyone who wants that is positively spoiled for choice already. I don't see the harm in one or two developments exploring other types of urbanism, especially in the middle of a college town.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#109I live in a master planned community (Daybreak, Utah), and while you can definitely scoff at the building quality (state of things everywhere right now, it's all done fast and with low quality materials), it's been fantastic, especially during the pandemic. The whole neighborhood is designed to be walkable, with parks, pools, trails, train stations, grocery stores and restaurants (added in the later phases, which are…
Ive seen several attempts at master planned neighborhoods with little town center type things with the idea that youd rarely have to leave, around South Florida growing up, and even lived in one for a few years. They all failed miserably. I feel like ones that succeed are just lucky. These communities can have basic predetermined guidelines to how growth can happen but the actual growth needs to happen organically. Y…
I’m skeptical that all planning is necessarily doomed to fail. Towns already do a considerable amount of planning via their zoning rules, and subdivisions are planned as well. The example here just seems like a subdivision, but planned for walkability rather requiring you to drive. Where did the place you lived in go wrong?
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#110that's call the ghetto projects. damn they really just rebranded them.