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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

#281

Post by kolinko »

fy20 wrote: post #138
milkytron wrote: post #41

Earlier 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…

Which country? In both of my post-communism neighborhoods citizens decided to keep all the green areas, and there is a better public transit than it used to have.

Most people still take bus/subway to work, although the car traffic increased.

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

#282

Post by ShroudedNight »

mikepurvis wrote: post #217
oscardssmith wrote: post #194

Earlier 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.

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…

> 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.

That's definitely my experience in York Region (north of Toronto for those unfamiliar) and Ottawa. Far too many bus stops, but wait times > 15 minutes _per route_ outside all but the most peak parts of rush-hour. Including on their "bus rapid transit" trunk lines. You almost end up feeling like a patsy every time you decide to take public transit.

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

#283

Post by rblatz »

Thorentis wrote: post #103

Unfortunately 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…

This isn’t a town, it’s an off campus dorm. Or at most a big apartment complex. A lot of ASU students and recent grads live in that part of town. I lived right down the street 7 years ago, it was a very party atmosphere. They also had a gym and a pool and right on a light rail stop with commercial space on the first floor. But they also had a giant parking garage and a public light rail park and ride (hint that’s where a lot of the residents will park their cars).

It’s an interesting concept, but it’s applicability outside of this location is not clear to me.

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

#284

Post by prawn »

lstamour wrote: post #79

By the time I scrolled to the swimming pool render, I started to think that the photos weren’t very realistic. Then I realized why: everybody was white in the renders. There was a token person of colour here or there. But it was poorly added. The black guy at the swimming pool is in the back. And unlike everybody else, he forgot his swimwear… This is one of the first times I’ve seen “Corporate Memphis” illustrations…

I downvoted because it looked like there were people of various skin colours there to me, in the renders, in the illustrations and in the wait-list headshot illustrations. People in renders often look awkward. I appreciate diverse crowds in these sorts of things also, but I think you're reading into it too much here.

Saw renders of an Aboriginal arts building locally where you could tell they struggled to find Aboriginal figures in their set of 3D models, so they seemed to include Indian families. Skin tone was generally fine, but the attire was miles off!

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

#285

Post by rblatz »

solox3 wrote: post #195

Calling it "The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US", and then mentioning "zero private cars means zero hassle" (so there are other private vehicles, like trucks?), "Rideshare" (what are we sharing if not a car?) and "On-site car share" (so there ARE cars?), makes the headline inspirational - and with the best will in the world - a bit misleading.

It’s also built between two massive public parking lots that serve as park and ride locations for the light rail.

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

#286

Post by brnt »

stemlord wrote: post #69
jrsdav wrote: post #18

I 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…

99.99% of the Netherlands is planned construction, we seem to be doing allright.

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

#287

Post by johncoltrane »

drewr wrote: post #198
ethanbond wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think it may indeed be an illusion. Paris, for example, was extremely planned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...

You would have to consider Paris to be one of OP's "best cities in the world", though.

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

#288

Post by JoshTriplett »

kolinko wrote: post #277
JoshTriplett wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The post I was responding to suggested that it wasn't necessary to arrange for at least one grocery store in the walkable neighborhood, and that leasing to retail establishments could be entirely up to the building owners. I was observing that if that results in no grocery stores located in the neighborhood, that would make the neighborhood much less walkable.

(Even if there's one in walking distance, hopefully it has an excess of carts and doesn't mind them going home with people...)

And unless you want to go out for groceries far too often, you're going to end up with a quantity of groceries that's incompatible with taking a bus. You'd need a car, or a bike trailer for a very dedicated cyclist, or a delivery service and the ability for them to deliver.

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

#289

Post by TeMPOraL »

ethanbond wrote: post #116
notJim wrote: post #109

Earlier 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?

> Maybe this is an illusion?

It's a virulent meme. Planned towns are bad. Organic growth is good. Planning is tyranny, is oppression, is taxation. Please read "Seeing Like a State". Organic growth is freedom, is markets, is good.

It's not entirely wrong, just extremely misleading. Urban planning doesn't have to create complete, inflexible designs, managing every tiny bit of life. And outside some failed experiments[0], it almost never is.

Think of planning towns as growing gardens. You work with the forces of organic growth, not against them, but still nudge and direct them to create a result that's better[1] than what would be there on its own.

--

[0] - Some planners got high on cybernetics/system thinking, in an era we could not computationally support designing complex systems - then others used this to push political ideologies; mix in power struggles and regular corruption, and of course it fails. What's annoying is that it gets painted as "planning bad", "cybernetics bad", "central bad", instead of recognizing the incentive failures in the mix.

[1] - Better according to the gardener. Nature optimizes for its own thing. It's important to remember that natural, organic growth rarely optimizes for the benefit of individual units, whether plants or people.

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

#290

Post by Asooka »

jrsdav wrote: post #18

I 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 thing that gets me is it seems to all be for rent. How can you have a real community when people don't own the land they live on?
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