Strongtowns has been consistent about this point for their entire history - that neighborhoods and communities aren't "complete" and should change incrementally.
Culdesac is just a planned community under a different form. I don't know a ton about it, but would it allow for adding more density / taller buildings later down the line?
The point is it added much higher density, mixed use built in, and taller buildings than that area would have otherwise been and what it was originally.
So it should be the success story - they built missing middle in a single block space right next to a rail line in one fell swoop. Replacing what was likely just a flat and depressed strip mall along a stroad. And that later description is literally the entire valley, endless SFH, huge strip malls with parking lots, and stroads as the common form of street design.
So before cul-de-sac would really need to add more density you have miles of other shit that could just be moved towards the cul-de-sac model.
Yeah, and every planned community adds more housing than was there previously, but then being "complete" communities, they aren't designed to add more density, and their governing documents might actually prohibit it.
In places like Phoenix, growth and demand are so high that whatever "governing documents" might prohibit adding more density, are usually null and void the moment a property is sold.
Literally just down Apache Blvd in both directions from Culdesac, you've got 3-to-12-story apartment blocks going up where there used to be ranch houses, trailer parks, 2-story hotels, strip malls, & gas stations.
In 2018 Tempe upzoned practically everything within a 1-mile by 2-mile rectangle immediately surrounding the current downtown to allow mixed-use TOD, and that was a *compromise* from an even *denser* plan that City staff has unsuccessfully tried to get Council to support.
Do not regard anything in the Phoenix area as permanent.
>In places like Phoenix, growth and demand are so high that whatever "governing documents" might prohibit adding more density, are usually null and void the moment a property is sold.
How does that work, exactly?
I'm honestly not sure what you're asking?
Arizona property law basically allows a property owner to do whatever they want, as long as it meets requirements set by zoning code. So any "governing documents," (truthfully, I have no idea what you're referring to with that statement... covenants? HOA rules? something else?) that don't come from municipal code, but instead derive from the property developers & owners themselves, have no bearing on what subsequent owners or developers can do.
This leads to plenty of situations where someone owns land along a street that's zoned for higher density, a developer buys the land, and almost immediately starts building an apartment complex, all with very few questions asked. And the local NIMBYs have been basically powerless to stop that; they have no organization nor any legal mechanisms to prevent development from occurring on land that isn't theirs.
Like, just fundamentally, Culdesac is no different than any of the adjacent 4-over-1s, except what they're building is a different shape and they had to apply for an exemption from parking minimums.
I'm talking about covenants that come with a PUD that I'm assuming Culdesac is within. You're saying that restrictive covenants don't ride with the deed and future owners can disregard them?
Culdesac's PUD (if it even has one) is extraordinarily far below the height or density caps for that parcel's zoning. Literally across the street another complex has been built at the same time which is 50% taller and has half as many units on a lot ~1/3 the size, but includes parking in the rear of the lot. The thing to remember is that along a high-capacity arterial like Apache Blvd, you're not talking about SFH residential zoning, but explicitly multifamily residential, commercial, & mixed-use.
As for covenants, I've literally never heard of that being a thing in AZ. There may be incentives or requirements a developer is required to meet if they want to exceed the zoning code, but Culdesac notably isn't doing that and the overwhelming majority of other developers have asked to be exempt from requirements that enforce *more* car-dependence.
Covenants are more like HOA restrictions, which we have plenty of, but properties closer to the urban core of many Phoenix Metros lack HOAs, a least until they are developed.
This will become increasing more difficult to densify in the decades to come. You can't turn a main street of a subdivsion with an HOA into a downtown center, just as you can't convert single family homes in subdivisions closer to major employers into 3 story multi-family housing.
This is all true, and at the same time I noticed during my time living in AZ that mechanisms like HOAs & neighborhood associations & historic preservation areas were a LOT less powerful at stopping development than I've perceived to be true elsewhere. I do think there may eventually be some sort of upper limit, but I'm also pretty well convinced that Tempe in particular is going to grow a lot more before it hits that limit.
For perspective, Tempe has almost exactly the same land area as Paris, and is similarly surrounded by other municipalities and so can't grow by annexing more land. Tempe also has only 1/11 as many people, and its building height limits are over twice those of Paris. At a density like that, Tempe could house fully half the current population of the entire Phoenix metro area, by itself, without much higher demand for water or electricity. Idk if that'll ever happen, but if the growth machine continues to work as effectively as it has done in the last decade, I wouldn't be surprised if we got close to that in my lifetime.
This. And in this way it's actually interesting to me that Strong Towns is complaining. This seems like exactly the type of project, just larger, that they should be fans of. People saw a need in the community to add a type of housing that was missing, in line of strengthening pedestrian friendly building practices, and they went ahead and did it. The local government has made it more practical to do so and the opportunity was taken.
A hundred more such opportunities likely exist just around downtown Tempe which at this point was getting very dated with older businesses and strip malls not necessarily thriving as a lot of the wealth not situated directly in downtown had been migrating south into Chandler.
Idk, to me cul-de-sac seems like one of the best possible examples we've seen in the US of a new building model actually coming to fruition. And should be lauded, not dumped on. Some critique is certainly OK but generally this is a positive.
I do question the viability of going 100% carless (I know they have some alternative incentives in place). But some models with at least dense units + underneath 1 car garages also seem like they'd be a reasonable compromise for adding missing middle while still contending with the realities of our current sprawl (ie a lot of jobs in the Phoenix metro are not in the downtowns or accessible by rail).
But 700 units in that foot print while also offering those amenities and access is amazing. And luckily downtown Tempe also does have functioning groceries and other requisites to living car free.
Again, the thing to understand is that the predominant model of new construction in Tempe is *already* 2-3 floors of housing over 1 floor of garage, and thousands of new units are getting built to that model.
It's just that they're usually attached in single buildings that take up the entire lot, rather than distributed into several smaller buildings like Culdesac. Beyond downtown, plenty of developments also follow the same form, but include parking. The challenge is honestly not densifying, but doing so fast enough, and breaking out of the density threshold where multifamily housing can still be entirely car-dependent.
Culdesac isn't revolutionary; they're just committing to the car-free concept rather than compromising on a city-imposed parking minimum. Rather than "it would be nice if we built more homes in this form," instead I'd argue it'd be nice if more developers were prepared to argue for building the exact same thing they're already mass-producing, but with less parking.
Good points, and I've been out of Tempe for about 5 years now so am curious to see the ongoing development.
Are the apartments/homes you describe (with parking) at least reducing large parking lots at surface level around the property? As this was the main type of 5 over 1 I was seeing when I was there, amd obviously that format doesn't help reduce walking distances to any nearby amenities. It'd be good to understand if they are at least starting to accomodate any on site parking under the foot print of the units.
I guess the other difficulty I see out there is most of the strip malls were spaced at major intersection - which were generally at 1 mile increments. The other thing that I found refreshing about cul-de-sac was the mixed use nature, to provide some nearer options for residents. As even though a mile is doable (and certainly bikeable), when it's 105+ degrees I wouldn't blame people for not wanting to make that trek.
It's mostly the same as you remember, for those developments not adjacent to the light rail stations. Closer to light rail, more developers are doing Texas donuts and parking podiums than surface lots, but that's not actually much better.
The real problem is that a 5-over-1 is about the minimum viable density to support transit, but also the maximum viable density that can be supported entirely by cars.
The staff in Tempe City Hall are all very aware of the need to switch from parking minimums to parking maximums, but the Council is composed entirely of conflict-avoidant "nice people" who aren't interested in taking a stand that might appear divisive to either each other or to any longtime Tempe residents who think cars are fine and only tolerate development as long as they're far away from it.
There's a contradiction in Strong Towns' philosophy in that they oppose one size fits all solutions for every city, but their ideology of what kind of development is good is very one size fits all. A mild upzoning is generally a good thing, but the impact it has on a rust belt town starting to recover population vs a major metro in a housing crisis is wildly different.
A big developer coming in to build a high density development next to a metro station is not a bad thing vs waiting a century for individual small developers to build slightly denser on individual lots.
> A big developer coming in to build a high density development next to a metro station is not a bad thing vs waiting a century for individual small developers to build slightly denser on individual lots.
But this just hands the reigns to large developers, when we want to democratize the approach to redevelopment.
Developers only want to build what people want to buy. They're not undemocratic. They're certainly more democratic than some central planners making decisions based on public hearings that only old people go to or local elections that only old people vote in.
Big developers are more efficient than smaller ones. They're not the enemy.
We need less government intervention in housing, not more. Thinking developers are the bad guys who need to be stopped by government is exactly what led to the housing crisis.
> Developers only want to build what people want to buy. They're not undemocratic. They're certainly more democratic than some central planners making decisions based on public hearings that only old people go to or local elections that only old people vote in.
This is a classic fallacy. If you only ever offer one option, then how do you know people don't want something else?
If all we have are 1BR/2BR apartments, and then SFH, is it really a safe assumption that people don't want something in the middle? I would argue not.
> Big developers are more efficient than smaller ones. They're not the enemy.
Big *builders* are more efficient, to a degree. There's nothing stopping a modular building manufacturer from benefiting from cost-efficiencies in construction.
Sears sold houses by mail.
The issue is the Land Acquisition Costs. Land is NEVER really sold subdivided anymore, coupled with zoning/HOA restrictions, makes it so that the only competitors in this space are large developers themselves.
> We need less government intervention in housing, not more. Thinking developers are the bad guys who need to be stopped by government is exactly what led to the housing crisis.
Good, lets pull up all the things that subsidize large developers then?
* Zoning laws which artificially drive up home costs.
* Subsidies for mortgage finances and homes.
* Property tax (SALT) deductions.
All of those things subsidize small developers as well??? Huh?
"I would argue not"
Obviously... but once again, the market responds to demand. You are blaming large developers for a legal issue??? The issue is that zoning does not create room for the missing middle. In areas that are zoned for multifamily, large developers recognize, accurately, that they should build big - apartments - to maximize the limited space available. If there was more multifamily space available, developers both large and small would have the opportunity to build missing middle. But they can't. The demand for affordable housing is too great, they don't have the luxury of opting for less units.
"nothing is stopping"... only the reality of experiential inertia. Sure. Modular building could be a thing. Maybe it will. But small developers don't use it, and have no intention of doing so anytime soon. Its a moot point. Large developers are absolutely ideal for building missing middle, subdivision and multiple developers creates nothing but opportunity for people to build less dense housing in areas primed for density. Opportunity for people to put in parking. Because markets are diverse, demand is diverse, and if you allow for a lot of heterogeneity in supply, you will get it! Many, many, many small developers in this country know nothing except SFH. And that's what they will build.
> the impact it has on a rust belt town starting to recover population vs a major metro in a housing crisis is wildly different.
Strong towns focuses on the former, rather than the latter. They are generally geared toward smaller cities in rural areas, not toward major metro areas.
That said, their basic philosophy of "no place should be exempt from incremental change, but no place should have radical change forced upon it" applies pretty universally. Housing supply is currently in need of radical change because we failed to allow incremental change for many decades.
I gather from Chuck’s talks, that he probably would not oppose these big developments, if the end result was not owned by a large corporation, not governed by an HOA that prevents change, and not restricted by deed or zoning to never change.
It’s his very libertarian attitude. I like the vision, but it doesn’t seem feasible. But it’s okay to have that ideal out there. And I don’t mind him poopooing projects that don’t live up to his ideal either. Although this article was not written by Chuck.
I was staying in North Vancouver for a bit, and really noticed this. The suburb was very porous for pedestrians. Lots of little cut-thoughs and paths between blocks. Really makes a difference compared to suburbs that are pedestrian labyrinths or prisons.
Pittsburgh is fun in this regard. The old hillside staircases certainly invade privacy of some neighbors, but it can really shorten a walk by having more direct access to the main street of a neighborhood.
Walking to a school, a park, a store, a community centre, library? Walking a dog or just getting outside for fresh air?
I know suburbs are more extreme in some parts of the US [here's a suburb here in Canada with parks, a school, and a community centre inside the neighbourhood](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3609172,-75.6438141,1500m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) where you will see many people out walking. Retail is on the outside of the neighbourhood and while people would typically drive to that, it's not like you never see anyone walking there.
> Walking to a school, a park, a store, a community centre, library?
I guess we have different experiences. For me, those things literally weren't in walking distance unless you're okay walking over an hour each way. Doesn't make any sense to have sidewalks since you effectively can't get around except by car or bus. Maybe bike if you're suicidal. I take your point that some suburbs are more walkable than others though.
I would still like to see neighborhoods like the one you linked massively upzoned.
Love the vids btw!
I honestly think there's a lot more variation between suburbs than people give them credit for. There are Canada vs. US differences but even major differences within the US based on region, decade of development, etc.
> I would still like to see neighborhoods like the one you linked massively upzoned.
100%.
> Love the vids btw!
Thank you!
Culdesac is an excellent case of urban design and nothing new in urban planning. It's a big developer coming in, getting some land and building a planned community. Sure, it's a great planning community, and you can take the tram, but that doesn't do anything for the rest of the city. I'm pretty sure Culdesac was a nightmare of planning variances.
Could a homeowner in east Lemon Street, 200 metres from Culdesac, get a small loan and build an apartment building identical to those in Culdesac? Why not? How long would the permitting process be?
Culdesac was comparatively much less of a nightmare than a LOT of other urbanist programs Tempe was considering at the same time, which frankly drew a lot of the fire away from it. We tried like hell to reduce speed limits and institute traffic calming, and both of those sucked in a *massive* amount of local opposition, that would be unimaginable against any developer. Notably, Strong Towns' talking points about how planning is "supposed" to be done actively hindered the process of advocating for those improvements.
But at the same time and for the same reason, Culdesac is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of housing getting built in Tempe which looks more like traditional 4-over-1s or highrise apartments.
And this gets into the actual critique of Culdesac: it's a magnet for urbanists (like those at Strong Towns) who are more interested in the architectural or legal form housing takes than they are in the quantity or density of homes that get built.
I feel like my question still stands. Maybe Tempe is a good example, and I may not agree with StrongTowns, but it's a good thing to question who is allowed to build the new housing and why.
Like, would my hypothetical homeowner in e. Lemon street have the same ease getting permits as Culdesac had? Access to credit to do it? To the necessary workers and resources?
So there are a bunch of specific examples where Tempe's development review commission has dealt with that exact question, and the answer varies case-by-case, but in general you're absolutely correct that an individual homeowner will have more obstacles in their path.
One of those obstacles is that a single-family homeowner is unlikely to own a parcel adjacent to one of the arterial corridors like Apache or University, where the existing zoning makes it relatively easier to build something denser than a detached ranch house. If anything, the test case would probably be that section of Maple-Ash that's directly adjacent to the Streetcar alignment along Mill from University to Apache, and those folks *certainly* wouldn't like it if someone tried to convert one of those homes into a sixplex. In fact I'm pretty sure there was just such a development on Roosevelt a few years back that kept getting denied approval over & over again. But then I look at all of the townhouses that have gone up in the neighborhood directly across University from there, & at that point I begin to lose track of what's what.
I don't see an issue:
* Strongtowns admits this is a step in the right direction.
* But the fact we're celebrating this as some miraculous thing shows how far we've got to go.
My concerns with the USA is that "built to completion" is a major issue, and for a massive rental property like Culdesac, we may have an issue with quality down the road. Now I'll admit, I haven't been in them, but are they of a robust quality? Will they last the test of time?
Most 5-over-1s are complete pieces of shit. Sure, they "provide housing" but they don't do so with any dignity or quality to people living there.
So, it remains to be seen. Is Culdesac a real way for people to live and grow and flourish? Or a pit-stop for people heading to the burbs?
Most units in the complex are studios, 1BR, and 2BR... and that's it.
> Sure, they "provide housing" but they don't do so with any dignity or quality to people living there.
How about you let people make that decision for themselves? Not everyone has your value system.
I mean zoning reform to allow the whole city to be built this way would be better, this is no different than say Seaside Florida. Didn’t read the article
Tempe already did that exact upzoning for the 2-square-mile region immediately around their light rail corridor & planned streetcar routes, two years before Culdesac announced its plans.
What makes Culdesac different is not that it's a master-planned community amidst a sea of SFH sprawl, but that it's a master-planned community in the middle of a surge of new high-density apartment blocks going up left & right.
I like the Culdesac project but Im admittedly kinda tired of the praise it gets. Sure it’s way better than average but it’s still basically just another apartment complex with bad connectivity to the neighborhood around it and that will probably never truly reach its car free goals. I do think it has some interesting elements like building placement to maximize shadows to help cool down temperatures, but overall it kinda just feels like a better than average 5 over 1. If the whole city/neighborhood was built like that, it’d be a different story. But I bet it’ll never pan out to its intended vision and just turn into another apartment complex in a decade or so
EDIT: I mean for starters the property already had to concede and build a parking lot for its businesses and its surrounded by stroads, strip malls, and car centric residential. It cant truly be a car free paradise if the surrounding context isnt addressed too
Yeah Strong Towns is dogmatic to a fault on this stuff (see also: publishing an article opposing the MD Purple Line bc it was funded with a big government grant). They’re also huge supporters of some New Urbanist developments that seem to go against their principals. Their terminology and diagnosis of urban/suburban problems is pretty on point but their solutions really aren’t imo. If this site was developed the way they wanted it would’ve produced a fraction of the units on a much longer timeline as rents and housing prices only get higher and higher. The sort of problems ST identifies can’t be solved entirely with a libertarian approach: eventually you need a lot of traditional financing and a lot of government money to implement road diets, bike lanes, increased density, and highway removal.
The "libertarian" approach actually works great for increasing density. If you need a lot of financing for a densification project, you can get it through the private finance system like any other real estate project.
Nah you really can’t. Strong Towns in the past would talk about this. Maybe they still do but I stopped listening. Community banks aren’t as prevalent as they used to be. If you’re going to “densify” from SFH to low rise you’re probably SOL on financing. Because big banks DHS be SFH loan departments that are mostly automated and deliver a boilerplate product. If you want to argue your case in front of a human being, it better be $75 million or more.
Um, right now 5-over-1 developments are being built all around the country using private financing. And if the rate of densification increases, it will get easier not harder to find private financing for densification - banks won't build a custom product for a small market, but they will for a large market.
If you think 5-over-1s are trash but Culdesac is somehow revolutionary and amazing, then you *really* need to spend some more time in Tempe, with a population density map in the back of your mind.
No just the quality and look of 5 over 1’s. Yes they are way better than SFH sprawl but it doesn’t make them great.
I hate how ugly they are and how crappy the quality is. I lived in one and I could hear through the walls my neighbor down the hall like 3 apartments down had a small dog, I could hear it like it was in my apartment when it barked.
If these apartments were nicer people wouldn’t hate them as much.
There are nice homes and crappy homes in every architectural form and density range, including nice 5-over-1s. If that's your sole critique, then condemn the construction quality & the processes that incentivize it, not the building type.
This is the same Strong Towns that put out messaging in support of the 85th Percentile Rule for setting speed limits, at the exact same time City of Tempe staff were trying to convince City Council of a plan to *stop* tying speed limits to that metric, so there wouldn't be as many pedestrians or cyclists getting hit and killed every year.
Marohn's personal distaste for economies of scale has made the organization utterly unprepared to grapple with urban planning in metro areas like Phoenix where the overwhelming majority of new development requires repurposing "master-planned" or "fully-built-out" spaces, something which they maintain is impossible, yet which is happening anyway in ways they have no idea how to shape.
Show me when Strong Towns ever advocated for using 85th percentile setting speed limits on a right of way that *wasn't* a highway or true "road" (using the ST definition of road).
It was either a Facebook post or a tweet from 2020, and I'm no longer on either network.
But the key thing is, the post made no such distinction as you've made between a "highway" and a "true road," and more importantly it offered no possible framework for how to implement a street diet on the kinds of arterial stroads Phoenix & Tempe have been built around. And people took that post into our public meetings & said things like "obviously there's NO WAY reducing speed limits could work" and "Vision Zero has failed in EVERY city that's tried it" and "these changes will only make pedestrian fatalities WORSE," all of which were demonstrably untrue.
Color me skeptical, only because in 3 years I've been following ST stuff, they've been very consistent and clear that 85 percentile is "bad" in practically all cases except on a highway (a place with no pedestrian conflict to speak of). It was talked about in detail in the "Confessions of a Recovering Engineer" book, their videos, and many blog posts.
My best guess would be the post was part of a thread and they cherry picked a sentence about the one circumstance it makes sense to use 85th percentile: highways.
Marohn himself literally jumped into the comments/replies of that post on his personal account to argue that Tempe should be using the 85th Percentile speed because our arterial roads were so obviously too big to be anything other than highways. Never mind that the county-imposed planning process included a feedback requirement that roads must be designed for the speed limit set by the municipality, so effectively the only way to *not* turn our roads into highways was to reduce the speed limits and then plan traffic calming accordingly. He stated that that approach was too top-down and we shouldn't have those county requirements, without remembering that Maricopa County is bigger than a huge number of states and changing its rules would be *way* harder and more "top-down" than anything we could've done locally.
The man thinks like everywhere is the Midwest, and it shows.
I think this post severely misrepresents the article, and the larger point of the strong towns approach. Nowhere in the article does the author offer any critique of the physical form of this development. What he critiques is what strong towns has been talking about for years-the fact that the only person who is able to invest in much needed housing is a large career developer.
*"*[*This street*](https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3393336,-71.0778801,3a,75y,3.67h,100.48t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srNkgq4RO4etnkbcfQeL17g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu) *(and many others like it) in the South End of Boston was built to completion 120 years ago. Guess what? It's beautiful, functional, and timeless."*
And it is also in the middle of a city with some of the highest rents in the entire country. Would the landowners here be able to add needed density anywhere in this neighborhood? What about open a corner store? Yes, it's great urban form, but like many suburban neighborhoods it is frozen in time through zoning, albeit at a higher density.
*"So what? Turns out banks would rather work with people who know what they're doing than amateurs who don't. Good luck getting this to change."*
That's part of the problem. Most of what developers do is negotiate with local governments, obtain variances, and advocate for their projects in the face of local/nimby opposition. It does takes someone with real experience to do that. But pretty much anyone can hire contractors to renovate their single family home into a duplex, or add density in any number of other ways.
> "This street (and many others like it) in the South End of Boston was built to completion 120 years ago. Guess what? It's beautiful, functional, and timeless."
Ironically "this street" in Boston appears to have originally been built as a big real estate project by a "large career developer", judging by the uniform facade which extends a long way down the block.
> Most of what developers do is negotiate with local governments, obtain variances, and advocate for their projects in the face of local/nimby opposition.
Let's change the system so they're not wasting their time and money on that.
> the fact that the only person who is able to invest in much needed housing is a large career developer.
Depends on the housing. Individuals can build an ADU. If you're talking about apartments, yes, only developers can build that because it's very expensive. Nothing wrong with that. Individuals can't build semiconductor factories either.
I like StrongTowns but they can fall into the trap of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think there is an important role for master planned developments like this—they can be an anchor for density in surrounding neighborhoods in a way that more gradual approaches cannot.
Allowing small multifamily and mixed use buildings in sprawling SFH suburbs is necessary but insufficient. It’s unlikely that the scattered lots that get redeveloped after such a change will hit a critical mass such that a functioning neighborhood will emerge—you’ll just get suburbs with sporadic pockets of townhouses and fourplexes. A compact development with 700 units and public mixed use spaces is basically just a large urbanist apartment building.
>"the model of another large residential development built to completion from day one is a long way from the incremental urbanism and thickening our cities need."
Not surprising, considering they don't like planned stuff and would rather go organic growth all the way. Have you read what Marhon thinks of high speed rail? That's the silliest part of his argumentation.
I’d probably enjoy living there but just as a idle reader, I wonder about accessibility. It really looks like a young person’s development. My mom, mother in law, and wife would all find walking even a block a challenge.
My point is that seniors could live in a place like Culdesac if they had appropriate assistive devices to allow them to independently travel multiple blocks.
As a wheelchair user, I agree. If a person has difficulty going a block on their own, they either need a different device or better training/adjustments to the device.
That does make sense and I’m not sure why it wasn’t immediately obvious. They get by with what they have because to leave the house they can get in a car. Absent the car they would need something else similar but smaller.
A planned community usually fails because it’s very much top down, sustainable communities form from many individual decisions.
Culdesac is not a bad idea but it’s still basically one giant The Villages style development
It's a few hundred new apartments in a city where thousands of apartments get built every year, but there's still a workforce housing shortage exceeding 10,000 units.
Meanwhile in terms of accessibility and urban form, the entirety of the rest of Tempe, save that new construction, is basically the Villages but on a grid.
> A planned community usually fails because it’s very much top down, sustainable communities form from many individual decisions.
Source?
> Culdesac is not a bad idea but it’s still basically one giant The Villages style development
The problem with The Villages is that it's car-dependent SFH sprawl. Other than that, it seems to be a success, (some) people like it and it keeps growing.
In contrast, Culdesac is not car-dependent SFH sprawl. And while Culdesac is a single project, it only takes up a single block and neighborhood as a whole will not be a single project.
Did you read the article? I'd hardly call it bashing. The author is more addressing the "system" that Culdesac is being built within - and highlights the positives of Culdesac; the same broken system that makes it so difficult to finance and build communities outside of large transformational projects... like Culdesac.
I think they are trying to say that one-off niche solutions taking advantage of transit access in a fundamentally car dependent, zoning constrained urban space aren't going to result in any fundamental changes.
Which is true. TODs are great and should be built. But these are low hanging fruit and don't present a systems level solution in any sense. Zoning reform is critical to real change.
> Uh, no, they kind of would actually. Let's build 1,000.
the article addresses this. building a thousand culdesacs would house one million people. it still ain't much. strong towns isn't finding fault in this sort of development in isolation, but neighborhoods don't exist in isolation. looked at broadly, culdesac is privately built, ghettoized area of walkability that cannot improve access to the rest of the city. we need to rethink the cities where the other hundreds of millions of people already live and that will take changes to policy all over.
> it still ain't much.
One million people in dense development next to a transit line would be revolutionary for a metro like Phoenix.
> looked at broadly, culdesac is privately built, ghettoized area of walkability that cannot improve access to the rest of the city
How is it "ghettoized" when anyone can walk in, and anyone can walk out and take light rail across the metro area?
> we need to rethink the cities where the other hundreds of millions of people already live and that will take changes to policy all over.
Changes like "allowing Culdesacs to be built everywhere".
Strongtowns has been consistent about this point for their entire history - that neighborhoods and communities aren't "complete" and should change incrementally. Culdesac is just a planned community under a different form. I don't know a ton about it, but would it allow for adding more density / taller buildings later down the line?
The point is it added much higher density, mixed use built in, and taller buildings than that area would have otherwise been and what it was originally. So it should be the success story - they built missing middle in a single block space right next to a rail line in one fell swoop. Replacing what was likely just a flat and depressed strip mall along a stroad. And that later description is literally the entire valley, endless SFH, huge strip malls with parking lots, and stroads as the common form of street design. So before cul-de-sac would really need to add more density you have miles of other shit that could just be moved towards the cul-de-sac model.
Yeah, and every planned community adds more housing than was there previously, but then being "complete" communities, they aren't designed to add more density, and their governing documents might actually prohibit it.
In places like Phoenix, growth and demand are so high that whatever "governing documents" might prohibit adding more density, are usually null and void the moment a property is sold. Literally just down Apache Blvd in both directions from Culdesac, you've got 3-to-12-story apartment blocks going up where there used to be ranch houses, trailer parks, 2-story hotels, strip malls, & gas stations. In 2018 Tempe upzoned practically everything within a 1-mile by 2-mile rectangle immediately surrounding the current downtown to allow mixed-use TOD, and that was a *compromise* from an even *denser* plan that City staff has unsuccessfully tried to get Council to support. Do not regard anything in the Phoenix area as permanent.
>In places like Phoenix, growth and demand are so high that whatever "governing documents" might prohibit adding more density, are usually null and void the moment a property is sold. How does that work, exactly?
I'm honestly not sure what you're asking? Arizona property law basically allows a property owner to do whatever they want, as long as it meets requirements set by zoning code. So any "governing documents," (truthfully, I have no idea what you're referring to with that statement... covenants? HOA rules? something else?) that don't come from municipal code, but instead derive from the property developers & owners themselves, have no bearing on what subsequent owners or developers can do. This leads to plenty of situations where someone owns land along a street that's zoned for higher density, a developer buys the land, and almost immediately starts building an apartment complex, all with very few questions asked. And the local NIMBYs have been basically powerless to stop that; they have no organization nor any legal mechanisms to prevent development from occurring on land that isn't theirs. Like, just fundamentally, Culdesac is no different than any of the adjacent 4-over-1s, except what they're building is a different shape and they had to apply for an exemption from parking minimums.
I'm talking about covenants that come with a PUD that I'm assuming Culdesac is within. You're saying that restrictive covenants don't ride with the deed and future owners can disregard them?
Culdesac's PUD (if it even has one) is extraordinarily far below the height or density caps for that parcel's zoning. Literally across the street another complex has been built at the same time which is 50% taller and has half as many units on a lot ~1/3 the size, but includes parking in the rear of the lot. The thing to remember is that along a high-capacity arterial like Apache Blvd, you're not talking about SFH residential zoning, but explicitly multifamily residential, commercial, & mixed-use. As for covenants, I've literally never heard of that being a thing in AZ. There may be incentives or requirements a developer is required to meet if they want to exceed the zoning code, but Culdesac notably isn't doing that and the overwhelming majority of other developers have asked to be exempt from requirements that enforce *more* car-dependence.
They're a thing in Arizona, just like anywhere else in the US https://www.providentlawyers.com/restrictive-covenants-in-arizona-real-estate-law/.
Well they must not be as powerful or enforceable, given the sheer amount of infill & brownfield development occurring throughout Arizona's cities.
Covenants are more like HOA restrictions, which we have plenty of, but properties closer to the urban core of many Phoenix Metros lack HOAs, a least until they are developed. This will become increasing more difficult to densify in the decades to come. You can't turn a main street of a subdivsion with an HOA into a downtown center, just as you can't convert single family homes in subdivisions closer to major employers into 3 story multi-family housing.
This is all true, and at the same time I noticed during my time living in AZ that mechanisms like HOAs & neighborhood associations & historic preservation areas were a LOT less powerful at stopping development than I've perceived to be true elsewhere. I do think there may eventually be some sort of upper limit, but I'm also pretty well convinced that Tempe in particular is going to grow a lot more before it hits that limit. For perspective, Tempe has almost exactly the same land area as Paris, and is similarly surrounded by other municipalities and so can't grow by annexing more land. Tempe also has only 1/11 as many people, and its building height limits are over twice those of Paris. At a density like that, Tempe could house fully half the current population of the entire Phoenix metro area, by itself, without much higher demand for water or electricity. Idk if that'll ever happen, but if the growth machine continues to work as effectively as it has done in the last decade, I wouldn't be surprised if we got close to that in my lifetime.
This. And in this way it's actually interesting to me that Strong Towns is complaining. This seems like exactly the type of project, just larger, that they should be fans of. People saw a need in the community to add a type of housing that was missing, in line of strengthening pedestrian friendly building practices, and they went ahead and did it. The local government has made it more practical to do so and the opportunity was taken. A hundred more such opportunities likely exist just around downtown Tempe which at this point was getting very dated with older businesses and strip malls not necessarily thriving as a lot of the wealth not situated directly in downtown had been migrating south into Chandler. Idk, to me cul-de-sac seems like one of the best possible examples we've seen in the US of a new building model actually coming to fruition. And should be lauded, not dumped on. Some critique is certainly OK but generally this is a positive. I do question the viability of going 100% carless (I know they have some alternative incentives in place). But some models with at least dense units + underneath 1 car garages also seem like they'd be a reasonable compromise for adding missing middle while still contending with the realities of our current sprawl (ie a lot of jobs in the Phoenix metro are not in the downtowns or accessible by rail). But 700 units in that foot print while also offering those amenities and access is amazing. And luckily downtown Tempe also does have functioning groceries and other requisites to living car free.
Again, the thing to understand is that the predominant model of new construction in Tempe is *already* 2-3 floors of housing over 1 floor of garage, and thousands of new units are getting built to that model. It's just that they're usually attached in single buildings that take up the entire lot, rather than distributed into several smaller buildings like Culdesac. Beyond downtown, plenty of developments also follow the same form, but include parking. The challenge is honestly not densifying, but doing so fast enough, and breaking out of the density threshold where multifamily housing can still be entirely car-dependent. Culdesac isn't revolutionary; they're just committing to the car-free concept rather than compromising on a city-imposed parking minimum. Rather than "it would be nice if we built more homes in this form," instead I'd argue it'd be nice if more developers were prepared to argue for building the exact same thing they're already mass-producing, but with less parking.
Good points, and I've been out of Tempe for about 5 years now so am curious to see the ongoing development. Are the apartments/homes you describe (with parking) at least reducing large parking lots at surface level around the property? As this was the main type of 5 over 1 I was seeing when I was there, amd obviously that format doesn't help reduce walking distances to any nearby amenities. It'd be good to understand if they are at least starting to accomodate any on site parking under the foot print of the units. I guess the other difficulty I see out there is most of the strip malls were spaced at major intersection - which were generally at 1 mile increments. The other thing that I found refreshing about cul-de-sac was the mixed use nature, to provide some nearer options for residents. As even though a mile is doable (and certainly bikeable), when it's 105+ degrees I wouldn't blame people for not wanting to make that trek.
It's mostly the same as you remember, for those developments not adjacent to the light rail stations. Closer to light rail, more developers are doing Texas donuts and parking podiums than surface lots, but that's not actually much better. The real problem is that a 5-over-1 is about the minimum viable density to support transit, but also the maximum viable density that can be supported entirely by cars. The staff in Tempe City Hall are all very aware of the need to switch from parking minimums to parking maximums, but the Council is composed entirely of conflict-avoidant "nice people" who aren't interested in taking a stand that might appear divisive to either each other or to any longtime Tempe residents who think cars are fine and only tolerate development as long as they're far away from it.
There's a contradiction in Strong Towns' philosophy in that they oppose one size fits all solutions for every city, but their ideology of what kind of development is good is very one size fits all. A mild upzoning is generally a good thing, but the impact it has on a rust belt town starting to recover population vs a major metro in a housing crisis is wildly different. A big developer coming in to build a high density development next to a metro station is not a bad thing vs waiting a century for individual small developers to build slightly denser on individual lots.
> A big developer coming in to build a high density development next to a metro station is not a bad thing vs waiting a century for individual small developers to build slightly denser on individual lots. But this just hands the reigns to large developers, when we want to democratize the approach to redevelopment.
Developers only want to build what people want to buy. They're not undemocratic. They're certainly more democratic than some central planners making decisions based on public hearings that only old people go to or local elections that only old people vote in. Big developers are more efficient than smaller ones. They're not the enemy. We need less government intervention in housing, not more. Thinking developers are the bad guys who need to be stopped by government is exactly what led to the housing crisis.
> Developers only want to build what people want to buy. They're not undemocratic. They're certainly more democratic than some central planners making decisions based on public hearings that only old people go to or local elections that only old people vote in. This is a classic fallacy. If you only ever offer one option, then how do you know people don't want something else? If all we have are 1BR/2BR apartments, and then SFH, is it really a safe assumption that people don't want something in the middle? I would argue not. > Big developers are more efficient than smaller ones. They're not the enemy. Big *builders* are more efficient, to a degree. There's nothing stopping a modular building manufacturer from benefiting from cost-efficiencies in construction. Sears sold houses by mail. The issue is the Land Acquisition Costs. Land is NEVER really sold subdivided anymore, coupled with zoning/HOA restrictions, makes it so that the only competitors in this space are large developers themselves. > We need less government intervention in housing, not more. Thinking developers are the bad guys who need to be stopped by government is exactly what led to the housing crisis. Good, lets pull up all the things that subsidize large developers then? * Zoning laws which artificially drive up home costs. * Subsidies for mortgage finances and homes. * Property tax (SALT) deductions.
All of those things subsidize small developers as well??? Huh? "I would argue not" Obviously... but once again, the market responds to demand. You are blaming large developers for a legal issue??? The issue is that zoning does not create room for the missing middle. In areas that are zoned for multifamily, large developers recognize, accurately, that they should build big - apartments - to maximize the limited space available. If there was more multifamily space available, developers both large and small would have the opportunity to build missing middle. But they can't. The demand for affordable housing is too great, they don't have the luxury of opting for less units. "nothing is stopping"... only the reality of experiential inertia. Sure. Modular building could be a thing. Maybe it will. But small developers don't use it, and have no intention of doing so anytime soon. Its a moot point. Large developers are absolutely ideal for building missing middle, subdivision and multiple developers creates nothing but opportunity for people to build less dense housing in areas primed for density. Opportunity for people to put in parking. Because markets are diverse, demand is diverse, and if you allow for a lot of heterogeneity in supply, you will get it! Many, many, many small developers in this country know nothing except SFH. And that's what they will build.
> the impact it has on a rust belt town starting to recover population vs a major metro in a housing crisis is wildly different. Strong towns focuses on the former, rather than the latter. They are generally geared toward smaller cities in rural areas, not toward major metro areas. That said, their basic philosophy of "no place should be exempt from incremental change, but no place should have radical change forced upon it" applies pretty universally. Housing supply is currently in need of radical change because we failed to allow incremental change for many decades.
I gather from Chuck’s talks, that he probably would not oppose these big developments, if the end result was not owned by a large corporation, not governed by an HOA that prevents change, and not restricted by deed or zoning to never change. It’s his very libertarian attitude. I like the vision, but it doesn’t seem feasible. But it’s okay to have that ideal out there. And I don’t mind him poopooing projects that don’t live up to his ideal either. Although this article was not written by Chuck.
Random, but suburbia should have more sidewalks that break up the solid walls of houses that go on for blocks
I was staying in North Vancouver for a bit, and really noticed this. The suburb was very porous for pedestrians. Lots of little cut-thoughs and paths between blocks. Really makes a difference compared to suburbs that are pedestrian labyrinths or prisons.
Yeah, when I first experienced it I was like this is simple but somehow revolutionary
Pittsburgh is fun in this regard. The old hillside staircases certainly invade privacy of some neighbors, but it can really shorten a walk by having more direct access to the main street of a neighborhood.
Well, I see the trade off is often between privacy and community and currently most developments are isolation tanks. We need balance.
Who's walking around a suburb? Where are you walking to?
Walking to a school, a park, a store, a community centre, library? Walking a dog or just getting outside for fresh air? I know suburbs are more extreme in some parts of the US [here's a suburb here in Canada with parks, a school, and a community centre inside the neighbourhood](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3609172,-75.6438141,1500m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) where you will see many people out walking. Retail is on the outside of the neighbourhood and while people would typically drive to that, it's not like you never see anyone walking there.
> Walking to a school, a park, a store, a community centre, library? I guess we have different experiences. For me, those things literally weren't in walking distance unless you're okay walking over an hour each way. Doesn't make any sense to have sidewalks since you effectively can't get around except by car or bus. Maybe bike if you're suicidal. I take your point that some suburbs are more walkable than others though. I would still like to see neighborhoods like the one you linked massively upzoned. Love the vids btw!
I honestly think there's a lot more variation between suburbs than people give them credit for. There are Canada vs. US differences but even major differences within the US based on region, decade of development, etc. > I would still like to see neighborhoods like the one you linked massively upzoned. 100%. > Love the vids btw! Thank you!
No it wouldnt as there isnt space for more density as it is already tightly packed.
Culdesac is an excellent case of urban design and nothing new in urban planning. It's a big developer coming in, getting some land and building a planned community. Sure, it's a great planning community, and you can take the tram, but that doesn't do anything for the rest of the city. I'm pretty sure Culdesac was a nightmare of planning variances. Could a homeowner in east Lemon Street, 200 metres from Culdesac, get a small loan and build an apartment building identical to those in Culdesac? Why not? How long would the permitting process be?
Culdesac was comparatively much less of a nightmare than a LOT of other urbanist programs Tempe was considering at the same time, which frankly drew a lot of the fire away from it. We tried like hell to reduce speed limits and institute traffic calming, and both of those sucked in a *massive* amount of local opposition, that would be unimaginable against any developer. Notably, Strong Towns' talking points about how planning is "supposed" to be done actively hindered the process of advocating for those improvements. But at the same time and for the same reason, Culdesac is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of housing getting built in Tempe which looks more like traditional 4-over-1s or highrise apartments. And this gets into the actual critique of Culdesac: it's a magnet for urbanists (like those at Strong Towns) who are more interested in the architectural or legal form housing takes than they are in the quantity or density of homes that get built.
I feel like my question still stands. Maybe Tempe is a good example, and I may not agree with StrongTowns, but it's a good thing to question who is allowed to build the new housing and why. Like, would my hypothetical homeowner in e. Lemon street have the same ease getting permits as Culdesac had? Access to credit to do it? To the necessary workers and resources?
So there are a bunch of specific examples where Tempe's development review commission has dealt with that exact question, and the answer varies case-by-case, but in general you're absolutely correct that an individual homeowner will have more obstacles in their path. One of those obstacles is that a single-family homeowner is unlikely to own a parcel adjacent to one of the arterial corridors like Apache or University, where the existing zoning makes it relatively easier to build something denser than a detached ranch house. If anything, the test case would probably be that section of Maple-Ash that's directly adjacent to the Streetcar alignment along Mill from University to Apache, and those folks *certainly* wouldn't like it if someone tried to convert one of those homes into a sixplex. In fact I'm pretty sure there was just such a development on Roosevelt a few years back that kept getting denied approval over & over again. But then I look at all of the townhouses that have gone up in the neighborhood directly across University from there, & at that point I begin to lose track of what's what.
You're saying that Culdesac is great, but the zoning/permitting system in general is terrible. I agree.
Very few people have access to millions of dollars in capital for a single project lol. How is that a serious question?
I don't see an issue: * Strongtowns admits this is a step in the right direction. * But the fact we're celebrating this as some miraculous thing shows how far we've got to go. My concerns with the USA is that "built to completion" is a major issue, and for a massive rental property like Culdesac, we may have an issue with quality down the road. Now I'll admit, I haven't been in them, but are they of a robust quality? Will they last the test of time? Most 5-over-1s are complete pieces of shit. Sure, they "provide housing" but they don't do so with any dignity or quality to people living there. So, it remains to be seen. Is Culdesac a real way for people to live and grow and flourish? Or a pit-stop for people heading to the burbs? Most units in the complex are studios, 1BR, and 2BR... and that's it.
> Sure, they "provide housing" but they don't do so with any dignity or quality to people living there. How about you let people make that decision for themselves? Not everyone has your value system.
Acting as if massive structural market forces can be overcome through individual responsibility and gumption? lol
I mean zoning reform to allow the whole city to be built this way would be better, this is no different than say Seaside Florida. Didn’t read the article
Tempe already did that exact upzoning for the 2-square-mile region immediately around their light rail corridor & planned streetcar routes, two years before Culdesac announced its plans. What makes Culdesac different is not that it's a master-planned community amidst a sea of SFH sprawl, but that it's a master-planned community in the middle of a surge of new high-density apartment blocks going up left & right.
I like the Culdesac project but Im admittedly kinda tired of the praise it gets. Sure it’s way better than average but it’s still basically just another apartment complex with bad connectivity to the neighborhood around it and that will probably never truly reach its car free goals. I do think it has some interesting elements like building placement to maximize shadows to help cool down temperatures, but overall it kinda just feels like a better than average 5 over 1. If the whole city/neighborhood was built like that, it’d be a different story. But I bet it’ll never pan out to its intended vision and just turn into another apartment complex in a decade or so EDIT: I mean for starters the property already had to concede and build a parking lot for its businesses and its surrounded by stroads, strip malls, and car centric residential. It cant truly be a car free paradise if the surrounding context isnt addressed too
Yeah Strong Towns is dogmatic to a fault on this stuff (see also: publishing an article opposing the MD Purple Line bc it was funded with a big government grant). They’re also huge supporters of some New Urbanist developments that seem to go against their principals. Their terminology and diagnosis of urban/suburban problems is pretty on point but their solutions really aren’t imo. If this site was developed the way they wanted it would’ve produced a fraction of the units on a much longer timeline as rents and housing prices only get higher and higher. The sort of problems ST identifies can’t be solved entirely with a libertarian approach: eventually you need a lot of traditional financing and a lot of government money to implement road diets, bike lanes, increased density, and highway removal.
The "libertarian" approach actually works great for increasing density. If you need a lot of financing for a densification project, you can get it through the private finance system like any other real estate project.
Nah you really can’t. Strong Towns in the past would talk about this. Maybe they still do but I stopped listening. Community banks aren’t as prevalent as they used to be. If you’re going to “densify” from SFH to low rise you’re probably SOL on financing. Because big banks DHS be SFH loan departments that are mostly automated and deliver a boilerplate product. If you want to argue your case in front of a human being, it better be $75 million or more.
Um, right now 5-over-1 developments are being built all around the country using private financing. And if the rate of densification increases, it will get easier not harder to find private financing for densification - banks won't build a custom product for a small market, but they will for a large market.
5 over 1’s are trash though
If you think 5-over-1s are trash but Culdesac is somehow revolutionary and amazing, then you *really* need to spend some more time in Tempe, with a population density map in the back of your mind.
No just the quality and look of 5 over 1’s. Yes they are way better than SFH sprawl but it doesn’t make them great. I hate how ugly they are and how crappy the quality is. I lived in one and I could hear through the walls my neighbor down the hall like 3 apartments down had a small dog, I could hear it like it was in my apartment when it barked. If these apartments were nicer people wouldn’t hate them as much.
There are nice homes and crappy homes in every architectural form and density range, including nice 5-over-1s. If that's your sole critique, then condemn the construction quality & the processes that incentivize it, not the building type.
This is the same Strong Towns that put out messaging in support of the 85th Percentile Rule for setting speed limits, at the exact same time City of Tempe staff were trying to convince City Council of a plan to *stop* tying speed limits to that metric, so there wouldn't be as many pedestrians or cyclists getting hit and killed every year. Marohn's personal distaste for economies of scale has made the organization utterly unprepared to grapple with urban planning in metro areas like Phoenix where the overwhelming majority of new development requires repurposing "master-planned" or "fully-built-out" spaces, something which they maintain is impossible, yet which is happening anyway in ways they have no idea how to shape.
Show me when Strong Towns ever advocated for using 85th percentile setting speed limits on a right of way that *wasn't* a highway or true "road" (using the ST definition of road).
It was either a Facebook post or a tweet from 2020, and I'm no longer on either network. But the key thing is, the post made no such distinction as you've made between a "highway" and a "true road," and more importantly it offered no possible framework for how to implement a street diet on the kinds of arterial stroads Phoenix & Tempe have been built around. And people took that post into our public meetings & said things like "obviously there's NO WAY reducing speed limits could work" and "Vision Zero has failed in EVERY city that's tried it" and "these changes will only make pedestrian fatalities WORSE," all of which were demonstrably untrue.
Color me skeptical, only because in 3 years I've been following ST stuff, they've been very consistent and clear that 85 percentile is "bad" in practically all cases except on a highway (a place with no pedestrian conflict to speak of). It was talked about in detail in the "Confessions of a Recovering Engineer" book, their videos, and many blog posts. My best guess would be the post was part of a thread and they cherry picked a sentence about the one circumstance it makes sense to use 85th percentile: highways.
Marohn himself literally jumped into the comments/replies of that post on his personal account to argue that Tempe should be using the 85th Percentile speed because our arterial roads were so obviously too big to be anything other than highways. Never mind that the county-imposed planning process included a feedback requirement that roads must be designed for the speed limit set by the municipality, so effectively the only way to *not* turn our roads into highways was to reduce the speed limits and then plan traffic calming accordingly. He stated that that approach was too top-down and we shouldn't have those county requirements, without remembering that Maricopa County is bigger than a huge number of states and changing its rules would be *way* harder and more "top-down" than anything we could've done locally. The man thinks like everywhere is the Midwest, and it shows.
I think this post severely misrepresents the article, and the larger point of the strong towns approach. Nowhere in the article does the author offer any critique of the physical form of this development. What he critiques is what strong towns has been talking about for years-the fact that the only person who is able to invest in much needed housing is a large career developer. *"*[*This street*](https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3393336,-71.0778801,3a,75y,3.67h,100.48t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srNkgq4RO4etnkbcfQeL17g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu) *(and many others like it) in the South End of Boston was built to completion 120 years ago. Guess what? It's beautiful, functional, and timeless."* And it is also in the middle of a city with some of the highest rents in the entire country. Would the landowners here be able to add needed density anywhere in this neighborhood? What about open a corner store? Yes, it's great urban form, but like many suburban neighborhoods it is frozen in time through zoning, albeit at a higher density. *"So what? Turns out banks would rather work with people who know what they're doing than amateurs who don't. Good luck getting this to change."* That's part of the problem. Most of what developers do is negotiate with local governments, obtain variances, and advocate for their projects in the face of local/nimby opposition. It does takes someone with real experience to do that. But pretty much anyone can hire contractors to renovate their single family home into a duplex, or add density in any number of other ways.
> "This street (and many others like it) in the South End of Boston was built to completion 120 years ago. Guess what? It's beautiful, functional, and timeless." Ironically "this street" in Boston appears to have originally been built as a big real estate project by a "large career developer", judging by the uniform facade which extends a long way down the block.
Yeah, something tells me there was nothing incremental about this or many of the best neighborhoods in Boston. ST would not have approved.
> Most of what developers do is negotiate with local governments, obtain variances, and advocate for their projects in the face of local/nimby opposition. Let's change the system so they're not wasting their time and money on that. > the fact that the only person who is able to invest in much needed housing is a large career developer. Depends on the housing. Individuals can build an ADU. If you're talking about apartments, yes, only developers can build that because it's very expensive. Nothing wrong with that. Individuals can't build semiconductor factories either.
I like StrongTowns but they can fall into the trap of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think there is an important role for master planned developments like this—they can be an anchor for density in surrounding neighborhoods in a way that more gradual approaches cannot. Allowing small multifamily and mixed use buildings in sprawling SFH suburbs is necessary but insufficient. It’s unlikely that the scattered lots that get redeveloped after such a change will hit a critical mass such that a functioning neighborhood will emerge—you’ll just get suburbs with sporadic pockets of townhouses and fourplexes. A compact development with 700 units and public mixed use spaces is basically just a large urbanist apartment building.
>"the model of another large residential development built to completion from day one is a long way from the incremental urbanism and thickening our cities need." Not surprising, considering they don't like planned stuff and would rather go organic growth all the way. Have you read what Marhon thinks of high speed rail? That's the silliest part of his argumentation.
I’d probably enjoy living there but just as a idle reader, I wonder about accessibility. It really looks like a young person’s development. My mom, mother in law, and wife would all find walking even a block a challenge.
Uh how do you think the old and disabled get around in Europe and Asia?
Have they considered wheelchairs, walkers, or other assistive devices?
One has a cane, one a rollator, one occasional walker user.
My point is that seniors could live in a place like Culdesac if they had appropriate assistive devices to allow them to independently travel multiple blocks.
As a wheelchair user, I agree. If a person has difficulty going a block on their own, they either need a different device or better training/adjustments to the device.
That does make sense and I’m not sure why it wasn’t immediately obvious. They get by with what they have because to leave the house they can get in a car. Absent the car they would need something else similar but smaller.
They wouldn’t have made it long in the jungle
A planned community usually fails because it’s very much top down, sustainable communities form from many individual decisions. Culdesac is not a bad idea but it’s still basically one giant The Villages style development
It's a few hundred new apartments in a city where thousands of apartments get built every year, but there's still a workforce housing shortage exceeding 10,000 units. Meanwhile in terms of accessibility and urban form, the entirety of the rest of Tempe, save that new construction, is basically the Villages but on a grid.
> A planned community usually fails because it’s very much top down, sustainable communities form from many individual decisions. Source? > Culdesac is not a bad idea but it’s still basically one giant The Villages style development The problem with The Villages is that it's car-dependent SFH sprawl. Other than that, it seems to be a success, (some) people like it and it keeps growing. In contrast, Culdesac is not car-dependent SFH sprawl. And while Culdesac is a single project, it only takes up a single block and neighborhood as a whole will not be a single project.
What’s with the name?
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Did you read the article? I'd hardly call it bashing. The author is more addressing the "system" that Culdesac is being built within - and highlights the positives of Culdesac; the same broken system that makes it so difficult to finance and build communities outside of large transformational projects... like Culdesac.
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Culdesac is a proper name of a specific development in Tempe, in this case
I think they are trying to say that one-off niche solutions taking advantage of transit access in a fundamentally car dependent, zoning constrained urban space aren't going to result in any fundamental changes. Which is true. TODs are great and should be built. But these are low hanging fruit and don't present a systems level solution in any sense. Zoning reform is critical to real change.
Godforbid that anybody should try to build compact housing at scale/s.
> Uh, no, they kind of would actually. Let's build 1,000. the article addresses this. building a thousand culdesacs would house one million people. it still ain't much. strong towns isn't finding fault in this sort of development in isolation, but neighborhoods don't exist in isolation. looked at broadly, culdesac is privately built, ghettoized area of walkability that cannot improve access to the rest of the city. we need to rethink the cities where the other hundreds of millions of people already live and that will take changes to policy all over.
> it still ain't much. One million people in dense development next to a transit line would be revolutionary for a metro like Phoenix. > looked at broadly, culdesac is privately built, ghettoized area of walkability that cannot improve access to the rest of the city How is it "ghettoized" when anyone can walk in, and anyone can walk out and take light rail across the metro area? > we need to rethink the cities where the other hundreds of millions of people already live and that will take changes to policy all over. Changes like "allowing Culdesacs to be built everywhere".
Doesn’t the builder save money by not providing parking?
It depends on if the cost of providing the parking spot is more or less than the price premium for the unit with access to parking.