Culdesac Tempe: The first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by Aeolun » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:25 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #239

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…

I know I’m an outlier but, in a city I feel generally safer riding on the road in traffic than on dedicated lanes and paths. In traffic with cars, everyone knows the rules, has the opportunity to see and use signals, and has regulated safety standards. I’ve ridden on separated bike lanes that were so dangerous I opted to use the main road and still felt safer with people trying to run me off the road honking and scre…

> I know, I’m in the minority on this.

That’s because it doesn’t make sense? Even if you consider you might hit a tree, another bicyclist, or a unlighted lamp post on the regular, it’s still much safer than being hit by a two ton car just a single time.

Everyone knows the rules and uses signals on bike lanes as well.

I genuinely do not understand how you arrive at feeling a road full of cars is safer.

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

#342

Post by raffraffraff » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:26 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #332

raffraffraff wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same thing in the UK, council housing was high-quality and affordable for new families. Blame Thatcher for selling off council housing (amid her many disastrous policies). It's amazing how many problems in the UK and the US today can be traced back to Thatcher and Reagan respectively.

And our gombeen men followed them

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

#343

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:30 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #288

kolinko wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Zoom Google Maps into almost any town in continental Europe[0] and search for "grocery store" or "supermarket". [1]

Or look at one supermarket and see how many shops they have [2].

Depending on the size of the household and personal preference, people might use these shops every 2-4 days, perhaps using a bicycle or trolley to take things home.

[0] I'm sure there are exceptions, like Arctic areas, mountains, tourist towns, etc.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery+store/@51.8962239...

[2] https://netto.dk/find-butik/?mapData={%22coordinates%22:{%22...}

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

#344

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #37

_huayra_ wrote: post #27

These efforts seem well-intentioned but doomed to fail because it requires government action to make the rest of the area work , i.e. be more walkable / bikeable. It's great you can bike from your pricey apartment to your friend's, but try getting passed by a bunch of distracted drivers going 50mph faster than you on the arterial stroad when getting to the nearest reasonably-sized grocery store that is 10 miles away…

Not doomed to fail. Just doomed to not deliver what you're asking for, true car-free living. I moved to the nicest part of my city and drive twice a week, on weekends. When I go into the office, I walk. A neighborhood like this with cars evicted to the periphery would be miles better than this. It's already possible to commute without a car. You just have to plan your life around it. Which you're already in for if yo…

Not only for the US, I live in a car free zone in Europe. Residents are allowed to drive there, but you wouldn't notice that. It is nice and quiet, but it didn't reduce overall cars owned in the slightest. You cannot even see a change in the statistic when the policy was introduced, it is still a steady and slow growth, traffic has just shifted a little bit outside.

I own a car and while I don't use it to go to work (1km distance), I wouldn't want to miss it. The urban center is also car free aside from buses and taxi. Still, cars are extremely practical, there is just no denying it and I doubt we will go back from individual traffic any time soon.

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

#345

Post by throwaway0a5e » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:55 AM UTC

crazcarl wrote: post #5

I live about 10 min drive from there, and I honestly don't see how it's going to work. Yes it is right on the lightrail line, but otherwise it's not a very walkable area. I guess they are hoping to lock everyone into just doing most of their eating and shopping onsite. Is that actually desirable?

> Is that actually desirable?

Looking at the rents I think their prospective clientele will be able to handle it no problem.

High time or monetary cost of travel which causes one to do more business (buy food, get a job, etc) more locally is a classic poverty trap though.

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

#346

Post by vidarh » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #223

drewr wrote: post #198

Earlier 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.

Even the facades in Paris were planned to the point that there were regulations on color and material and design [1]. Regulations were eventually loosened up somewhat.

[1] https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/reconn...

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

#347

Post by caslon » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 12:01 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #181

caslon wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, you either didn’t read what I wrote or you haven’t been living on a budget. Poor people don’t waste more money on gas than they save by going to Walmart. They go to Walmart because it’s significantly cheaper to do weekly shopping there than even other big retail grocery outlets, let lone little ones. My parents absolutely fucking hate going to Walmart but they go there weekly because it’s $50/week difference just…

I definitely have been living on a budget, having been literally born into poverty and never quite able to move up a level. It's been with me my entire life and I assume it'll continue to be so for the rest of it. Kroger's a rich people store; there are plenty of stores that aren't that have been actually driven out of business by Wal*Mart.

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

#348

Post by vidarh » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #288

kolinko wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

I live in a London suburb. I don't have a car, or even have a drivers license because I've always lived places where having a car isn't important enough to weigh up the cost and nuisance (to me).

Before delivery services, I'd walk to the grocery store every few days. It was perfectly fine. When I commuted I'd just pop by on the way home from work. There are at least 4 small-ish shops within 10 minutes walk, and half a dozen bigger ones within 20 minutes walk or a short bus ride (that would also coincide with the commute for a large portion of the people living around me).

And I live in perhaps the worst location locally in this respect - I'm pretty much equidistant from three 3-4 different shopping areas, dead centre of a very low density residential area with few shops.

Overall, the key thing to maintain a walkable neighbourhood is simply that enough people who live there actually want to walk. In that case there will be enough shops nearby. The problem occurs when too many of the people in these neighbourhoods like to live in an area that is walkable, but still prefer to use the care.

I think the key to make such neighbourhoods work is fewer parking spaces to explicitly ensure a sufficient portion of the people living in them actually bring foot traffic to the nearby retail spaces. Do that and you get grocery stores without any need for detail regulation.

Where I live the council won't approve planning applications with more than 1.5 parking spaces per living unit on average. It could probably be significantly lower.

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

#349

Post by taylorhou » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 12:33 PM UTC

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…

If you don't want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to managing the rentals, my company runs the back office to many of the Co living and property management businesses around America. Happy to help.

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

#350

Post by raptor99 » Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

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…

So locals don't like it, and all the outsiders that moved in are questioning why aren't more communities built this way...