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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

#311

Post by raffraffraff »

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…

Better than no planning. I live in a part of Dublin (Ireland) that was rapidly developed back in the 1950s to house families that were being rehomed from condemned tenement buildings in the city. The design came from "garden cities", a design from England in the early 1900s. It wasn't very "organic". Entire housing estates were built. These were modest family homes with gardens, and the estates included ample green spaces. Roads still cope well enough with today's traffic. At several places within 10 minutes walk from my house, there are purpose-built shop-front buildings that housed butchers, grocers, maybe even a pub. This was the high watermark of planned development in Dublin. These houses fetch 450k today, and while building regulations were atrocious back then, I km wouldn't trade my old house for anything that's been built since the 2000s at double the asking price. Sincere those good old days, the government and local councils have basically stopped building entirely and leave it up to private building contractors to hoard land, wait for property prices to hit a profitable price and then apply for permission to build multi-story one-bedroom apartments with minimal parking or greenspace, and no thought given to other amenities whatsoever. Because "We have a housing crisis!!" permission is usually granted.

There is a chasm between the Truman Show and a vertical hellhole. If I had to choose, I'd live in the Truman Show.

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

#312

Post by tomaskafka »

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…

> You cant just plot and build every house in town at the start, and you cant expect that things wont change as things pan out.

I wonder if you have ever talked with actual urbanist, as I have, and this definitely not how they think.

Urbanism can actually be very ‘agile’, with a difference that you have a vision for the outcome you want to reach (which good agile in sw development is adding as well).

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

#313

Post by 55555 »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #308
guynamedloren wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 small, Main Street style town all of our kids can walk/ride to school, we have two grocery stores within 2 miles away, and all our doctors are biking/riding distance. It's changed how we live. We sold our second car. We…

I've always been curious about Portland. The pictures are gorgeous but the headlines are scary.

A friend of mine just moved across the US to Portland because of all the hype and immediately left after being put off by what they described as a very public homelessness and hard drug problem.

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

#314

Post by mellavora »

xyzzyz wrote: post #234
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.

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.

Luxembourg made all public transit free.

Including commuter rail.

And it all runs pretty regularly (bus, tram, train)

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

#316

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

raffraffraff wrote: post #311
stemlord wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Better than no planning. I live in a part of Dublin (Ireland) that was rapidly developed back in the 1950s to house families that were being rehomed from condemned tenement buildings in the city. The design came from "garden cities", a design from England in the early 1900s. It wasn't very "organic". Entire housing estates were built. These were modest family homes with gardens, and the estates included ample green s…

It's pretty much the same story in the UK. Early c20th slum clearances, followed by well planned council estates built around a community, later (late 60s or 70s) the estates started to fall out of favour with tower blocks taking their place, which was a disaster and led to the justification for the private development free-for-all that we've had to put up with since the 80s which has resulted in terrible American-style, car-dependent suburbs filled with poorly built and poorly designed houses with no services within walking distance.

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

#318

Post by ClumsyPilot »

WalterBright wrote: post #262
stemlord wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Medieval European towns managed to do it.

And cavemen managed, but how well?

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

#319

Post by tomaskafka »

djrogers wrote: post #192
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…

Welcome to HN. Couple of thoughts; first, it’s kinda weird for you to introduce yourself as a ‘founder’ - I’ve been around developers and real estate all my life, and I’ve never heard anyone use that term to describe what they do. Makes me wonder if you see this as more of a housing subscription service than a community? Which leads to my second thought - what’s the thought process behind this being a rental-only thi…

Wow, thank you for the questions! At first I thought “awesome, America is learning livable towns”, but living as a captive customer of a rent-only company town sounds like dystopian hell. Sigh.

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

#320

Post by yodelshady »

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…

> will say though, the US is poorly equipped for bicycle commuting. Even our neighborhood doesn't have many dedicated bike paths, opting instead to share the road with cars. Most diehard cyclists I know will tell you it's a matter of "when" not "if" you have a scary encounter with a driver.

My country is far from perfect, but the US simply culturally hates cyclists. I see outright dehumanisation - comparison to insects and the like - from US media on the regular.

It's extremely unattractive, and given the role of transport patterns in climate change - well.

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