The existing plot shows numerous roads and existing infrastructure. In what way do they mean "from scratch"?
https://www.google.com/maps/place/2025+E+Apache+Blvd,+Tempe,...
Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
151–160 of 384 posts
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively in the real world, one grocery store will die because a Wal*Mart opened an hour away and is replaced by an hour's drive instead of a brief walk to pick up groceries because people can't resist a dollar cheaper and ten more in gas.
No, that’s not how the real world works. People go to the Walmart and deal with that misery because groceries for the week cost $100 instead of $200. People on a budget absolutely pay attention to the cost of gas.
That absolutely is how the real world works. I'm not well-off myself, I keep track of prices, and this recently happened in my own town.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#153Unfortunately 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 cl…
> All I see is soulless pre-fabs. It looks like you're living in a shopping mall.
Spot on. Like a town from Greece or Portugal, Spain, Italy, Mexico... but with a dystopian feel.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#154I 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…
I was in Utah for a while and thought Daybreak looked great. Glad to hear that residents like it there. If I ever move back it’s towards the top of my list of areas I’d be interested in.
Outside of a few neighborhoods in Salt Lake City, Provo, and rural areas, I feel like the vast majority of Utah is the epitome of American suburbs, and all the issues that come with that, so I can see why many Utahns might scoff at something different like Daybreak.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#155Unfortunately 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 cl…
I tend to agree.
Communities need to be built organically. Let's say a town has 5,000 buildings in it; is somebody going to pay an architecture firm to design 5,000 buildings for them? Or are they going to pay them to design 40 buildings and copy and paste 125 times?
Neighborhoods in the United States have a tendancy to look like shit, and that's because most of them are planned developments that were designed and constructed all at the same time. Each neighborhood is a snapshot in time of what "modern" "new" and "interesting" looked like some number of decades prior. IMHO the best thing about these houses is that they're not designed to last for 40 years. So 50 years from now after half of the houses are torn down and replaced with something different -- maybe worse, maybe better -- they have a chance of being nice.
If you compare Factorio to Cities:Skylines, the best and worst feature of Factorio is that it lets you copy-paste, and C:S doesn't.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#156I 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…
I decided to take a look at Daybreak on google maps, but I'm having a hard time understanding how the layout is different than other developments. I do notice that the lane system looks nice as opposed to just having alleys. Is there other stuff you like?
I’m not the OP, but I’ve seen Daybreak I think emphasis there is smaller single-family home lots, and lots of multi family buildings, all built within walking distances to amenities like restaurants, entertainment, grocery stores, clinics, the light railway station, etc. It kind of feels like a hybrid between large urban downtowns you might find in the US and elsewhere, and traditional American suburbs. Not remotely as dense or large scale as say NYC, but far more walkable and mixed use than standard suburban life.
I’m sure many non-Americans would fail to see what makes that unique, but for American neighborhoods it definitely is.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#157Unfortunately 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 cl…
> But will people want to move and raise children here?
It's pretty telling that not one of their CGI promotional images includes a family, or even a child.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well Manhattan, for example—obviously at first it developed organically, but the upper part of the island was largely planned, with a strict grid system of streets and avenues and a large park in the center! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaIOfgz8FVY
Planning works great for public utilities- roads, libraries, parks etc. The moment we cross that are have a planned bank, grocer, retail I think it falls apart. The grocery shop needs guarantee on revenue to be setup, and then they will slack off because they won’t need to compete or innovate. People will realize once the HOA bill runs in to several hundred dollars and have to deal with shitty services. In the real w…
Doesn't zoning largely let you choose where private businesses go? Maybe you can't select exactly where to put the bank versus the grocery store, but you can select categories of businesses, to create the feel you want.
(I'm not sure whether zoning is a "good" thing or not in general, but there are certainly lots of successful towns and cities with zoning rules.)
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#159Looks pretty bad compared to what we have in most cities around the world. Uninspiring to say the least.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#160So, there are some concept images, but no real plan of the territory yet, right? Or did I miss it?
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