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Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

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Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#211

Post by jcims »

SilverRed wrote: post #202
sokoloff wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a lot of 3D printing. Almost none of it is for replacement parts. Replacement parts sourcing has gotten extremely good online in the last 10-15 years. Need a recoil start handle for a Honda HRX 217? Dozens of vendors of the original part and more selling knock offs. Even as a Mech E and experienced 3D printer with multiple printers, it’s almost never worth my time to make a part that I can buy.

I had a 3D printer for a while but I just got so little use out of it. Designing anything was like an all day process and any time I found something I needed I would think "Do I want to spend the entire day to get this thing" and the answer was almost always no.

Fusion 360 is ridiculously good compared to anything i used previous to it. You have to spend a little time getting the basics down but once you do it is pretty damn fast. Plus you can import o part models from mcmaster carr, thingiverse, etc and tweak them. It really is better than it used to be imho

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#213

Post by hamburgerwah »

mattcantstop wrote: post #77
hamburgerwah wrote: post #59

It should be pointed out that this "neighborhood" is just a mixed use apartment complex of 760 rental units that does not currently exist yet though construction has sort of started. All pictures shown are renderings and this link is basically content marketing for it. They seem to cost ~$200-300 more per month than a market studio with parking in the same area.

I would gladly pay $200/month more for an apartment that enables me to live in a walking community without so much space being taken up by parking. Not sure if Culdesac will fulfill that goal, but "you don't even get a parking spot!" doesn't seem like a sell, to me.

I think it's a bit more like a microscopic walking oasis in an absolute megaocean of car infrastructure. Phoenix metro has probably the best car infrastructure of any US metro, maybe best in the world. Also for 3 months of the year it is not very comfortable to walk outside, day or night, because it is over 100f (yes including during the night). You won't die but it's not really comfortable.

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#214

Post by athrun »

ryanj20021 wrote: post #147

Founder here. Great to see the excitement people have for Culdesac and for Culdesac Tempe. Our vision is to build the first car-free city in the US, starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US. Join our waitlist at culdesac.com. We open next year! If you want to visit in the meantime, drop me a note. Hiring-wise, we're hiring in Tempe or remote. Our top hiring prio is to lead product de…

It's great to this an initiative like this.

Are you guys in touch with the StrongTowns folks at all?

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#215

Post by [deleted] »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #208
closeparen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try, but there are failure modes. * People don't want the things that are specified in the master plan, so there's no tenant that would be both legal and viable. * Businesses are protected from competition (for their space, and for their niche in the area) so they charge too much and deliver too little. * People want things that aren't in the master plan, and they aren't allowed to exist. (The politically eng…

I feel like 1 and 3 means your "master plan" just sucked all along. >:) It's certainly a hard thing to get right, though.

[deleted]

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#216

Post by ethanbond »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #185
ethanbond wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s a very good example. The older parts of the city (way downtown and West Village) feel way better than all the more gridded areas.

...I mean, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that! I really like the grid, it’s one of the reasons I like living here. Makes it so easy to navigate.

I’m not disagreeing with the functionality, and personally don’t find the grid to be particularly bad, but do you really think West Village isn’t dramatically more liveable feeling? I suppose this quickly veers into hard-to-define sensations so perhaps the point is moot :)

I do suspect that a lot of people would prefer to live in that part of town over the more modern areas… as evidenced by the especially insane rent.

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#217

Post by mikepurvis »

oscardssmith wrote: post #194
verall wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most American cities the bus schedules are like every 15-20 minutes and buses arrive at a near random distribution over that time. So even if traffic is so bad that driving is consistently 40 minutes, the bus-to-stop-to-bus trip is really anywhere from 40-80 minutes depending on your luck. I think people really value being able to estimate their commute and buses add a lot of variance.

That's an entirely self inflicted problem. Just run the busses every 5 or 10 minutes, and have twice as many busses.

The issue is that a lot of transit planning is politically motivated and done to maximize "coverage" rather than more meaningful metrics like ridership, usefulness, and profitability.

Planning for coverage allows you to tell individual taxpayers that they're "served" by the transit they help fund, but most will never use it because it's infrequent and the routes take forever to get anywhere. Optimizing for ridership means you focus on a smaller number of straight-line routes that are highly useful and run them at high frequency so that a smaller pool of people come to rely on them and use them regularly, instead of as a last resort.

A primer from transit consultant Jarrett Walker: https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#219

Post by elihu »

mattcantstop wrote: post #74

For 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…

I haven't read those, but I'll add a third book recommendation: A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al. It changed my way of thinking quite a bit about what makes a good house, or a good town.

Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US

#220

Post by [deleted] »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #208
closeparen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try, but there are failure modes. * People don't want the things that are specified in the master plan, so there's no tenant that would be both legal and viable. * Businesses are protected from competition (for their space, and for their niche in the area) so they charge too much and deliver too little. * People want things that aren't in the master plan, and they aren't allowed to exist. (The politically eng…

I feel like 1 and 3 means your "master plan" just sucked all along. >:) It's certainly a hard thing to get right, though.

[deleted]
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