I like the idea of a community that truly doesn’t need cars. I don’t like the idea of living in a community built and owned by a YC company. I don’t need Uber for housing.
Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
271–280 of 384 posts
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it may indeed be an illusion. Paris, for example, was extremely planned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...
This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing. It’s hard to tell what the specificity of the planning was… it seems to have included the street layouts and the below-ground infrastructure, but unclear on the facades and the shop/business distribution? I didn’t know about this but it makes a lot of sense. Those enormous boulevards are clearly not original nor unplanned.
The 19th century equivalent of driving freeways through poor districts in American cities.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very similar situation here. Master planned community with meh build quality, but our neighborhood is designed to be transit oriented. We don't have a lot of amenities within the community, mostly just a bike trail, and a light rail stop. Hopefully some retail and a grocery store open up nearby soon, because about 500+ units are all being built within a quarter mile. And well over 1000+ within a half mile. The bike t…
> The odd thing is that nearly everyone in the community still drives everywhere, and some own multiple cars. Parking is a disaster and everyone complains about it, but these were all new builds and the buyers all should have known that parking would be limited. This sounds a lot like communities built during Soviet times. At the time the idea was everything you needed was in your community, and if you ever needed to…
If you need twice the time on public transport than in a car, then your public transport is just not very good.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Well… most towns/subdivisions with zealous planning suck. The best cities in the world appear to be very organically grown. Maybe this is an illusion?
Half of Polish cities were rebuilt using central urban planning and came up awesome (build quality aside). There were a few rules:
- 5-10 min walk to kindergarden/school and local stores - 3-5 min walk to a bus stop - tons of green space - taller buildings but varied in size and angles so that there is both ample space and variety
This is my place I lived in when studying: https://goo.gl/maps/VQqNEY8rcjScsGFg6 (not even the greenest one)
And this is my place where I grew up (street view not available because cars not allowed)
https://goo.gl/maps/Q3MwszTjQDqqNFS28
I literally had no streets to cross when I had to go to an elementary school, and literally 1000 other kids had 1-2 small streets to cross at most, walking 10-15 min or less.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#275Why not just move to a dense city or downtown? How can a random developer-planned concrete mixed use fortress possibly achieve the nature of a city? A street in a city is a market. People compete to offer the best goods/services/experiences based on the what the local people want and this organically grows into something interesting. If one person plans it all out from the get-go it kind of loses the sheen of any level of culture/unpredictability that makes living in this setting appealing. This feels like a repackaging of those McMansion neighborhoods in a cute urban millenial flavor.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People need to get off the notion that those working the most entry level jobs should be living in the newest housing. The infrastructure in the US is old and dilapidated. Newer housing is energy efficient, safer, and more conducive to modern living requirements (high speed internet, solar, heat and cooling), regardless of what kind of job a person keeps.
A new Tesla is all of those things too, but expecting a construction laborer or call center worker to drive one is delusional.
... you clearly don't know much about construction laborers.
Construction laborers (in the U.S.) typically make fucking bank, as it's impossible to hide the fact that they're ruining their body doing the work.
This is where the stereotype of construction laborers driving brand new stupidly large lifted trucks comes from. They have money.
Given the fact that "Wealthfront helps you build wealth by doing nothing. We make it easy to maximize your returns, lower your taxes, and grow your money effortlessly." Is the first thing to come up when searching for your employer, I guess it's not hard for me to imagine the source of your disconnect though.
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of mandating a grocer, mandate that the first floor of buildings be for retail. Let the owner lease it to whatever business he wants to.
In a small neighborhood, that would shatter the illusion that you never need to leave, at which point the distant walk to your car for actual shopping becomes a problem. (Or, alternatively, the lack of delivery services because they can't actually reach both your home and the place they shopped using the same mode of transportation.)
Walkable neighborhoods don’t need to be small, and they can have car traffic - it’s more about how you design that car traffic.
This is a main corner and main street in neighborhood near my home place. It has car traffic, but it is perfectly walkable.
The main street has ground floor dedicated to commerce.
https://goo.gl/maps/W46KUsJtAtto2yUE7
You have a bus stop with buses getting to city center every 3-5 min, and the supermarket store around a corner has literally all grocery things I needed when I lived around (it’s the size of 3-4 medium Wallgreenses)
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#278Founder 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…
So I assume most people just park their cars at the giant park and ride at Apache and McClintock, or are ASU students that didn’t have a car anyway. Is this accurate or am I missing something?
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an entirely self inflicted problem. Just run the busses every 5 or 10 minutes, and have twice as many busses.
In Seattle, a typical local bus trip costs the transit company around $10, while the ticket costs around $3. Running twice as many buses would result in cost of something like $18-20 per ride, which would make it require even more subsidies than it already receives.
That assumes the buses would be similarly packed. With a denser and reliable schedule you get more people using the bus and it can actually require fewer subsidies.
(In other words: instead of a half-empty bus every 20 minutes you end up with packed buses every 5 min)
Re: Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US
#280I 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…
The shared makerspace seems like a neighborhood level thing. There's all sorts of services / hobbies that make more sense to be neighborhood based instead of nationally based. Tools and workshops are like that. The biggest issue with tools/workshops is liability. Someone's going to lose a finger, or a rotary tool will pull out their hair / a piece of their scalp... (even with all the safety precautions, its going to…
This seems to be a trend with American dysfunctions. Can't have nice things because of liability. Its pretty interesting to me that a society with such an emphasis on individualism is also the same one which legislated against personal responsibility when it comes to environmental hazards.