Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health • Hacker News Board

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#71

Post by rayiner » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

officemonkey wrote: post #35

bcoates wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article wasn't complaining about density but about structure; a fences-and-backyards suburb arranged on a grid or some other well-connected layout is much more walkable than the same density suburb where all traffic must pass through a distant trunk to a major street. This makes it possible to actually connect useful mass transit to the suburb, which as the article explained, people will use if it's there.

Chicago nails this. The grid road network throughout the entire city means there is regular N-S and E-W bus service every half mile or so. And there are business districts in pretty much every neighborhood. This happens is areas of low housing density (single-family homes in Jefferson Park) and high density (high-rises in Lincoln Park.)

Andersonville in Chicago is wonderful. https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Andersonville,+Chicago,+IL&hl...

That's just blocks away from this:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Andersonville,+Chicago,+IL&hl...

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#72

Post by webXL » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

tl;dr

Connectivity counts: More intersections mean more walking, and more disconnected cul-de-sacs mean more driving. People who live in neighborhoods with latticeworklike streets actually drive 26 percent fewer miles than people in the cul-de-sac forest.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#73

Post by ynniv » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 8:57 PM UTC

Jakob wrote: post #66

ynniv wrote: post #10

The article mentions that Atlantic Station sits on a large parking deck, but doesn't explore how its 7,200 parking spaces can make an otherwise small outdoor mall very busy at popular times. Cars remove you from your immediate surroundings, but they also enable you to temporarily be part of a community physically distant from where you live. The answer to why Atlantans drive so much is not that they are lazy, but tha…

”Atlanta, like all cities, used to be walkable and people actually lived IN the city instead of commuting 50 miles every day.“ This article highlights the parts of the city which are 100% dedicated to parking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6883589 tl;dr: Cars take up too much space, inflating a city artificially.

(Originally https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=lNCOH0M1fh7uhr9viMZvek)

Yes, there are a lot of parking lots in Atlanta. As I commented on the original submission, they aren't there because of the market for parking, but because it's an easy use for commercially zoned land while you wait for someone to build a highrise on it. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3514352)

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#74

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 8:59 PM UTC

webXL wrote: post #72

tl;dr Connectivity counts: More intersections mean more walking, and more disconnected cul-de-sacs mean more driving. People who live in neighborhoods with latticeworklike streets actually drive 26 percent fewer miles than people in the cul-de-sac forest.

That's a darned shame. Because streets use a shameful fraction of our city surface area. Cul-de-sacs can be quite efficient. Kind of like a dendritic structure, every endpoint served with a relative minimum of cement.

I imagine the stats are because folks like to walk a circuit, not walk out-and-back on the same route, because its boring.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#75

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

Stronico wrote: post #50

Two observations: 1. There are far, far more differences between Midtown and Mabelton than urban planning (Midtown is a young, liberal, much higher than average percentage of gay residents, close proximity to Georgia Tech) and Mabelton is pretty much in the opposite direction in every way possible. It is an apples to oranges comparison. 2. A huge advantage of cul-de sacs is that people don't speed down them like they…

Re: 2. Narrower streets do the same thing for traffic speed. For an added bonus, tree lined streets slow traffic even more due to how nearby moving objects in your peripheral vision change your perception of how fast you're moving.

So, you can get the desired effect of the cul-de-sac without the cul-de-sac.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#76

Post by VLM » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

jeffasinger wrote: post #20

potatolicious wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of it is crime and/or race. The modern subdivision - full of meandering streets and poor connectivity to nearby arterials - is deliberate. It creates the gated neighborhood effect without the need to put up any unsightly walls or gates, and in effect keeps its residents separated from the world outside. The world outside presumably filled with undesirables. The lack of connectivity discourages through tr…

Yes, this is why you'll see malls removing bike racks, and fighting against an extension of bus service to them in some areas.

The solution to this problem which has been implemented locally is you set up a bus service regardless of any complaining, to keep one group happy, then you cut the service times and arrange the routes into insanity such that no one can use it, to keep the other group happy.

When I was a kid, living in the same city, I could afford the time to burn to spend 2 hours taking the bus to a friends house and 2 hours back (this is in a roughly 4 sq mile city). When its 8 degrees and snowing, or 105 and sunny outside this is not all that bad of an idea... when its 70 degrees you take a bike or walk.

Also make sure NOT to coordinate your local city bus service with neighboring cities. You can transfer between systems, if you're willing to stand in the rain for up to 45 minutes at times and pay two fares of course.

This is how you have a 100K person small city, major suburb of a 4M big city, and yet from my car when I look into passing bus I never see more than one or two teens, maybe an old person, that's about it. Out of 100K potential passengers.

I could take mass transit to work. I charted it out once at about 2 hours each way. Of course I can drive door to door in a bit less than 30 mins... I would save about $2 a day and that works out to about $1.33/hr which is a microscopic fraction of my current pay rate and tolerance for labor to save money. So I drive.

So that's the "correct" way to implement bus service keep everyone on both sides happy.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#77

Post by enoch_r » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:11 PM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #10

The article mentions that Atlantic Station sits on a large parking deck, but doesn't explore how its 7,200 parking spaces can make an otherwise small outdoor mall very busy at popular times. Cars remove you from your immediate surroundings, but they also enable you to temporarily be part of a community physically distant from where you live. The answer to why Atlantans drive so much is not that they are lazy, but tha…

> Walking everywhere is nice as long as you know exactly where you want to live, you don't care about space, and can afford high rent.

Taking this piece by piece:

> can afford high rent

From the article: "The average working adult in Atlanta’s suburbs now drives 44 miles a day."

The IRS estimates that the average automobile cost about 55 cents per mile. At Atlantian levels of driving, that's almost $700 a month. That's a huge amount of rent money--but I think driving expenses are spread out, less visible, and less predictable, which leads people to underestimate them.

> you don't care about space

Yeah, this is a tougher one, although you can get a surprising amount of space in walkable and transit-able areas--for example, neighborhoods in Portland manage to combine great walkability with quite a bit of space and single-family homes. (It's worth mentioning that these residential streets are laid out in a grid pattern without many cul de sacs.) But yeah, commuting does allow us to live where land is cheap, so if you really need a lot of private space, you might need to live further out.

> you know exactly where you want to live

Well, it depends, doesn't it--the denser your area, the more options you'll have within walking distance. I very much doubt that I have more options within a 15-minute drive of my Orange County apartment than I would within a 15-minute drive in a typical urban center. On the other hand, without a car, my options in Orange County are extremely limited. A city like Boston, where other modes of transport preceded and then occasionally took precedence over the car, has great amenities (including Fortune 500 companies, startup communities, and global research universities). You just don't need to drive to them.

Lastly, the article isn't about "walking everywhere." It's about being able to walk to a grocery store safely and conveniently. It's perfectly possible to walk to the corner store every few days, but hop in the car when you need to travel longer distances.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#78

Post by ynniv » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:11 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #62

ynniv wrote: post #10

The article mentions that Atlantic Station sits on a large parking deck, but doesn't explore how its 7,200 parking spaces can make an otherwise small outdoor mall very busy at popular times. Cars remove you from your immediate surroundings, but they also enable you to temporarily be part of a community physically distant from where you live. The answer to why Atlantans drive so much is not that they are lazy, but tha…

I like Atlanta. I lived there for 7-8 years. People in Atlanta drive because the urban planning is a disaster. It's a place where you can live in the city proper right next to retail and still have to trek across a giant parking lot in order to go to the store. The giant parking lots everywhere in the city utterly destroy the street life. As the article notes, Atlantic Station is actually much better in that regard.…

People in Atlanta drive because the urban planning is a disaster.

In my view it's more complicated than that.

Actually let people live right next to the rail and retail, instead of surrounding it all with enormous, pedestrian unfriendly parking lots.

Yup, that's what people are trying to do[1]. It's unpopular with commercial developers, so local government has to convince them to accept higher costs without causing a lawsuit or driving them away entirely[2].

[1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Beltline]

[2 http://atlanta.curbed.com/archives/2013/09/04/at-glenwood-sc...]

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#79

Post by Pxtl » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:12 PM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #10

The article mentions that Atlantic Station sits on a large parking deck, but doesn't explore how its 7,200 parking spaces can make an otherwise small outdoor mall very busy at popular times. Cars remove you from your immediate surroundings, but they also enable you to temporarily be part of a community physically distant from where you live. The answer to why Atlantans drive so much is not that they are lazy, but tha…

Somehow cities all over the world manage to offer that kind of facility without oceans of parking lots. Parking takes up space, which pushes things further apart, which makes it impossibly to serve with transit, which demands cars, which requires more parking. Skip the parking and build up and you find that you can have a nice back yard and a bus-stop at the end of the street that will take you to a subway or train-line that will take you to work.

There is nothing magical about big, vertical cities that demands they be horribly expensive. They're expensive because they're rare. They're rare because of city planners who don't push back on developers that want to build sprawl.

Re: Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health

#80

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Dec 10, 2013, 9:15 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #70

sliverstorm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything other than a perfect grid in neighborhood design is due to classism? Sounds like bullshit to me. Mildly meandering side-streets: - Block some of the noise from nearby major streets - Obscure the view of traffic - Give the neighborhood a less "uniform" feel (think of how you feel in a neighborhood with 20 identical houses in a row. Arrow-straight roads contribute to that feeling) - Reduce through-traffic- not…

There a dramatic amount of understatement here. "A little less walkable" is untrue. Meandering suburban layouts are dramatically less walkable - we're not talking about even the same order of magnitude. Here's a commonly cited diagram of the difference in walkability between a grid layout and a sprawl-suburb. Both of these are real places, not hypothetical illustrations: http://hbr.org/hb/article_assets/hbr/1005/F100…

See, now you are arguing there are ways to do it better, and I agree. But that doesn't prove sprawling suburbs were designed under the influence of classism. That's really the key thing I disagree with. Are you ceding that part?

As for "a little less walkable", that was me hedging my speech because I don't know exactly how walkable the worst offenders are, and I consider "how much less walkable" to be tangential to the point I was trying to make anyway. I was not trying to argue that "the tradeoffs are balanced" or anything like that.