
Why cul-de-sacs are bad for your health - golfstrom
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/12/10/why_cul_de_sacs_are_bad_for_your_health_happy_city_by_charles_montgomery.html
======
ynniv
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 that
they have somewhere else to be. You can lament that walking is good exercise,
or you can appreciate the ability to raise a family in a house with a backyard
while having a reasonable commute to a Fortune 500 company's world
headquarters, a startup community, or a global research university.

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.

~~~
rayiner
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. Because the parking lot is underground,
you can actually walk around window shopping and pretend it's not there.

The article absolutely hits the nail on the head with the point about parking
lots. When my wife and I go to Philadelphia, we'll walk several miles from the
federal plaza to U Penn campus, window shopping, having lunch, etc. When we go
to the mall in Newark, DE, we'll drive from the Costco to the Panera because
we literally can't figure out how to cross the road on foot.

The cities built in the 1960's need to be razed and redeveloped with
Westchester, NY as a model. There's nothing wrong with having suburbs where
you can have a back yard, etc, but structure those suburbs like small towns
with retail of their own and rail service into the core city. Actually let
people live right next to the rail and retail, instead of surrounding it all
with enormous, pedestrian unfriendly parking lots.

~~~
ynniv
_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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Beltline)]

[2 [http://atlanta.curbed.com/archives/2013/09/04/at-glenwood-
sc...](http://atlanta.curbed.com/archives/2013/09/04/at-glenwood-score-one-
for-developments-opposition.php)]

------
ChrisNorstrom
I did some research on cul-de-sacs using my own neighborhood using Google
satellite images: It's gotten so out of control that you have to drive upwards
of 4 miles just to see your neighbors when they're only a few yards away on a
neighboring street: [http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-
sac-pr...](http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2011/10/the-great-cul-de-sac-problem-
and-how-to-fix-alleviate-it/)

I can understand the allure of cul-de-sacs but perhaps a regular "street grid"
system with "pipe sprouts" would be better for everyone. Overall, our American
lifestyle is the culprit here. Just compare any small American town with a
small Italian town:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/fedesk8/7880293850/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/fedesk8/7880293850/)
and you'll notice what the cause of bad public transit and over-use of cars
is. We seem to have a passion for living far apart and having our space.

~~~
TillE
In my experience, even the most rural farmland of Germany is more walkable
than most American suburbs. Houses are quite far apart, but there's still
decent bus service, and you can walk into town in maybe 20 minutes without
crossing a highway.

Most suburbs are just bad design through and through. They're not really
optimal at achieving their goals, and they have countless terrible side
effects.

------
timjahn
I'll never understand why we continue to design our suburbs for cars and
driving with no attempt to encourage walking. Instead, we seem to discourage
walking through a lack of sidewalks, concentration of destinations surrounded
by parking lots a mile wide themselves, and burying houses in subdivisions
that require almost a mile walk just to get out of.

~~~
potatolicious
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 traffic (i.e., undesirables), and
meandering streets that run every which way helps artificially draw out the
walking distance between any two points, further hobbling any desire or
ability for people who walk/take transit to visit (i.e., undesirables).

Suburbs weren't always like this, we had walkable suburbs a long time ago, and
in some places we have them again. But the most typical archetype of a
suburban neighborhood is an exercise in _extremely_ class-conscious design.

Despite the revitalization of urban cores across the US, the mentality that
drove the construction of these suburbs still remains. The thing that jumps
into my mind is the furor over Seattle's extension of light rail into Bellevue
- a high-income suburb. All of the opposition boiled down to "but the
undesirables!".

Until we shake the whole "urban = poor" thing, we'll continue to architect our
suburbs in this way.

~~~
sliverstorm
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 because "outsiders are undesirable" but because
through-traffic is noisy

\- Reduce _speeds_ of through-traffic. Neighborhoods near thoroughfares often
wind up battling with cars whizzing through at 45mph; gently tangled roads
combats that.

You are right that it can make the neighborhoods a little less walkable
(although reduced traffic can make them safer to walk). A nice solution I've
seen is shared open spaces in the neighborhood; pedestrians and cyclists can
then navigate freely, cutting through blocks as they like.

~~~
dasil003
> _Anything other than a perfect grid in neighborhood design is due to
> classism?_

Wow, talk about putting words in his mouth. He's referring to the status quo
for American suburbs where those meandering side streets don't connect the
arterials except at just a few choke points and there is no walking
connectivity either. Fix those things does not imply "perfect grid".

~~~
sliverstorm
He isn't complaining only about poor connections to main streets, he
references meandering side streets several times as well... Anyway, every
bullet I listed applies just as well to reducing "entry/exit points" as it
does to meandering side streets, so I would argue limited "entry/exit" also
does not mean classism was behind the neighborhood layout.

------
VLM
I can see why the story about Atlanta was contrived to run in the winter. I
spent some time in the South in my youth and you'd have to be ... overly
acclimatized to intentionally set foot outside air conditioning from June to
September or so. Its not just sauna-like, it fits the temp and humidity of a
sauna exactly. So you're going to need to own a car with AC, and you're going
to pay the extensive monthly bills if you use it or not, so may as well use
it. I never really did anything outside in the south intentionally all summer
long. I went out a couple times at night when it got down to the upper 70s as
a low, sometimes, but the mosquitos were the size of hummingbirds. Aside from
the summer weather its beautiful land and nice people.

------
nilsbunger
If each cul-de-sac just had a walking path cut out of it, I think you'd have
the ideal. That's what it's like in small-town Holland. Cul-de-sacs do have
other benefits like a quiet street and keeping your little kids "corralled".

~~~
alex-g
I agree. There are good reasons to want to live on a street that doesn't have
a lot of traffic. (That doesn't equate to a cul-de-sac, although they
trivially fit the pattern because there is only one end.) One of the problems
with the street layouts described here is that pedestrians have to follow the
same winding routes that the cars do. Another is that the larger, heavier-
traffic roads aren't nice to walk along, even if they have sidewalks.

~~~
stonemetal
>One of the problems with the street layouts described here is that
pedestrians have to follow the same winding routes that the cars do.

Why do they have to? I don't see why you couldn't build a more natural walking
path away from the street traffic that would be less objectionable to
homeowners since there wouldn't be the automotive noise and danger to
children.

~~~
alex-g
That is what I and the parent comment were saying - that they ought to do
this.

------
jackalope
I don't buy it. Cul-de-sacs experience less crime, fewer traffic accidents and
are very conducive to taking safe leisurely walks. The problem is that some
neighborhoods don't provide efficient pathways for practical pedestrian
traffic between major destinations, which isn't caused by cul-de-sacs, but
poor planning. Communities that provide pathways between cul-de-sacs _away_
from traffic that connect such points have the best of both worlds. I envy
them, because I live in a cul-de-sac that is about a mile from our schools as
the crow flies, but the _only_ available route adds 2 miles, driving or
walking.

------
Stronico
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 do on residential connective streets, which is a huge plus when you have
children of a certain age.

~~~
ch4s3
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.

~~~
Stronico
I live on a narrow street, with lots of trees, and lots of street parking,
which makes it one lane in many parts. And Speed humps. It seems to make the
cautious drive slower, but the speeders don't seem to be affected that much.

~~~
ch4s3
mileage may vary. In all seriousness, you'll never stop some people, but good
design of infrastructure does change behavior in many people.

~~~
Stronico
A valid point, but since it is a through street there are more speeders due to
the higher total of cars on the road in general - It does not take that
speeding cars to elicit fear. That was actually one of the first things I
noticed after we brought the baby home - the speeding cars.

------
rkischuk
Startup Founder. Married. 2 kids. We live in Mableton, and our office is in
midtown. I know both areas well.

Cost of "home" in Midtown, $500k:
[http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/847-Myrtle-St-NE-
Atlanta-G...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/847-Myrtle-St-NE-Atlanta-
GA-30308/2117688025_zpid/)

Cost of "home" in Mableton, $200k:
[http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4582-Somerset-Rd-SW-
Smyrna...](http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4582-Somerset-Rd-SW-Smyrna-
GA-30082/14288922_zpid/)

Midtown, local elementary school is a 2/10 on GreatSchools. Mableton, 7/10\.
If you want to live anywhere near midtown and have a decent public school,
tack on another $150k and you lose most of the touted walkability.

It's strange to build Mableton up as the straw man for Atlanta suburbs since
it's only 10 miles from midtown and a ~25 minute commute to several of
Atlanta's job centers, and is probably more diverse both racially and
economically than midtown. A place like Kennesaw, 20 miles out, 45+ minute
commute, and less diverse would be a smarter target.

So much of these discussions seem to be single people arguing against places
they've never lived, trying to convince people whose lifestyles they don't
understand.

------
jordo37
This is interesting and I always love urban planning discussions, but I feel
there is something a little off about this. It seems to be suggesting that
that reason people in non-urban areas are overweight / drive is because of
dendritic street patterns, but those exist and are emblematic of a lower
population density.

If you took my grandfather's fully rural town in the middle of Nebraska, there
isn't much in the way of cul-de-sacs but people still drive everywhere because
of - what seems to me - the more dominant issue of population density.

~~~
philwelch
Density is an effect and not a cause of design. My dad grew up in Bend, Oregon
during the Depression. People had cars but walked to work, typically at the
sawmill. Bend was a small town and not the tourist destination it is today,
but it was apparently designed to be walkable. Go to Bend today though, and
it's been rebuilt for cars rather than humans.

~~~
VladRussian2
>it was apparently designed to be walkable.

was it really "designed"? To me one of the issues with modern development is
that it is explicitly "designed/planned" and thus diversity and vibrancy is
naturally limited by the views/imagination of the designers/developers and
politicians. (an illustration from another area - it is like "planned" economy
vs. naturally evolving/developing capitalist economy)

~~~
philwelch
That's a good point. Someone unavoidably had to lay out the streets but
walkable cities and towns are quite a bit more organic than designed.

------
geetee
Recently I was trying to find a new place to live in the suburbs where I could
walk to a train. Time and time again, a nice short walk by the way the bird
flies. Triple that if you don't want to walk through people's yards. I didn't
even get so far as seeing if there were sidewalks.

------
jstalin
Some people like dead-end streets and large yards. Some people want to prevent
people from having such an option.

~~~
slurry
Some people like high-rise apartments right next to the train station. Some
people want to prevent people from having such an option.

~~~
jstalin
I'm fine with both, as long as both parties are bearing the costs of their
chosen option.

------
redthrowaway
>Why do most people fail to walk even the 10,000 daily steps needed to stay
healthy?

Where does that figure come from? A lazy guestimate of 1m/stride puts that at
10km/day. That's 2 hours of walking a day. Who the hell spends 2 hours a day
walking?

~~~
VLM
Extensive personal experience with a fitbit indicates that:

1) Its downright difficult to get thru even the laziest day without 4000 or so
steps

2) 10K means you "exercised" perhaps an hour. I'm not talking about sprint
training but went out for a walk, hiking, etc. Half hour at lunchtime won't
quite do it (maybe if you speedwalk?)

3) Its really easy to leave the GD thing in your pocket and wash it. Although
running thru a dryer cycle immediately will fix it.

4) low power BT is kind of like NFC. There's apple products, and a couple
android devices claim to half A support it but in reality it doesn't work. So
in real world practice its apple or nothing for NFC and low power BT aka BT
4.0. And its been that way for some years.

~~~
michael_h
I dramatically increased the number of steps that I take per day by drinking
more water and tea. I hit 8K before I go home easily everyday.

------
rietta
This strikes me as an interesting read. I live in an Atlanta suburb.

The closest shopping center is more than half a mile away and the one I go to
most, and where I go to check my company's mail, is 2.5 miles away. The
distances themselves are not so bad, but the main road is a 4 lane highway
with a posted speed limit of 55 - but people drive faster. Frankly, the
thought of walking or biking along that road is scary from a safety point of
view, so yes, in general I drive everywhere. Ironically, if I want to go run
laps at the closest city park, I have to drive to that too.

The area that the author is describing is 25 miles away and takes at least 45
minutes to an hour each way by car, so I go there as infrequently as possible.

Frankly the situation is not too bad, because telecommuting is the best work
situation ever. The internet beats commuting - be it by bus, train, or
automobile - any day!

------
lucaspiller
> Aesthetics matter. We walk farther when streets feel safe and interesting.
> People who live in central New York or London typically walk between a third
> to a half mile to go shopping. That’s a four- to 10-minute stroll.

I don't think aesthetics is really the main point. Older cities like New York
and London aren't designed for cars. High rise buildings don't have parking
for every home / desk so it isn't an option to have that many cars in the
city.

~~~
MAGZine
Underground parking provides plenty of avenues for people to own a car if they
want. However, these cities are so well connected that it doesn't make sense
to own a car because it's easier to walk, and given the option, people
wouldn't want to navigate streets if they have the option of walking to work
or shopping.

Cul-de-sacs on the other hand are the signature of urban sprawl. If you live
in a cul-de-sac, odds that walking to shopping isn't very convenient. You also
probably have a car, so why bother?

~~~
lucaspiller
In London at least there is very little underground parking. Most buildings
are 50+ years old, and even in new builds it isn't very common.

When I was working there, in a building with ~2000 desks, the underground car
park had a spacious 80 spaces. I lived a bit further out, so I actually had a
driveway, but if you live in the centre you are lucky to even get on-street
parking.

Still, as you say, it makes no sense to have a car due to the easy
availability of public transport. It's a catch 22 really :)

------
clarebear
Walkable neighborhoods are like environmentally friendly homes... people won't
usually pay as much more than what they cost as they will for McMansions, so
builder's don't want to build them. I live on a cul de sac and my kids play
games on the street with the neighbor kids, but we are the only family on the
block that walks to the local park just outside of our neighborhood. We do
walk to that park, but drive to the indoor play/swimming complex 2 miles away.
So the rules of thumb in this article apply to my family, but not the others
on my block.

~~~
lanaius
Not that it directly relates to your comment, but Midtown Atlanta is filled
with brand-new high-rise condominium buildings at an incredibly high price.
They continue to build more of them even right now, so there is still healthy
demand there.

~~~
runako
Worth noting since this is on HN: pretty much nothing in Atlanta is an
"incredibly high price" by the standards of America's coastal cities.

Things may be relatively higher in Midwtown than places much further away, but
none of it will be "expensive" for folks reading this.

~~~
wmeredith
You presume too much. I live in a suburb just east of Kansas City and my money
goes a long way here.

~~~
svachalek
I need to get out my atlas, I coulda swore Kansas City was not on the coast.

~~~
wmeredith
I was referring to the assumption that all of HN's reader base is located in
coastal cities.

------
genwin
My more ideal city would have higher density housing but with small private
yards, if only decks that seem like yards, something like this:
[http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/mountain-
dwellings-...](http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/mountain-dwellings-
urban-development-copenhagen)

In the US we have high density housing (condo skyscrapers) and low density
housing (suburbs) but not much in-between that's nice.

~~~
enjo
That's not true for any city I've been to in the U.S. I'm seriously trying to
think of a single one that doesn't have sprawling bungalow neighborhoods near
the center of the city. These are historically known as "streetcar suburbs",
as most cities had actual fixed transit networks throughout the city itself.

Today these are close-in neighborhoods full of generally smaller homes with
yards. They tend to have small yards, as they are generally built pretty close
together.

I live in Denver which has an enormous number of those homes ringing Downtown.
New Orleans has the garden district and surround. San Francisco fits that bill
with the huge number of row-homes in the city(although the costs are nuts).
Portland most certainly has a lot of that stock. Capitol Hill all the way to
the Queen Anne in Seattle fits that bill. Dallas has the park cities. New York
City has queens. Little Rock even has an excellent selection of inner-city
bungalows (the neighborhoods are in poor repair, but they exist).

The issue we have in the U.S. is cultural. I think it's a widespread mental
disease. We're willing to drive enormous distances, spending huge chunks of
our lives in cars, so that we can own giant houses full of rooms we don't even
use. It's nuts.

~~~
genwin
If it's too expensive or inner-city or a money pit or ugly or cheaply-built
it's off my radar. That includes Capitol Hill and Queen Anne-type areas, or
anything built prior to 1950 and most stuff built after 1990. Given my
criteria, in Denver a 1960s+ small house would likely still have a big lot. If
not a big lot it tends to have parking for only 1 car. Albuquerque has the
best type of higher-density housing I've seen with quality townhouses, having
small private yards and 2-car garages in the suburbs.

------
colinake
Atlantan here.

I lived in West Midtown for five years post-college. It's the epitome of hip
re-urbanization and all that comes with it. I walked from my house to a local
restaurant or shop exactly 0 times during those five years.

I moved to a cul-de-sac in a northern suburb six months ago. I'm 1 mile from
270,000 ft^2 of retail shopping and 1 mile from a walkable downtown with tons
of shops and restaurants.

Do I drive 60 miles to and from work every day? Yes. I've also walked to
restaurants and shops on numerous occasions. And as pointed out by rkischuk, I
live in a house I couldn't begin to afford in West Midtown and we live in good
school districts.

If you want to live in a small apartment in a high density area away from cul-
de-sacs, good for you. Let me make my decisions based off what I've optimized
my life for without demonizing me because we place different levels of
importance on different items in life. I am happy spending $33/day to commute
in exchange for a walkable area, larger house, better schools and more family-
friendly environment.

~~~
runako
Atlantan also.

>> happy spending $33/day to commute

Just curious, how do you factor in an hour+ of commuting per day? For me, that
seems like it would far outweigh the costs of moving further away from the
office. Time away from kids, time not working/sleeping, etc. Money can be
earned or received in investments, but Founder time is a finite resource at
the business. Obviously if you're married with kids there are a lot of factors
that determine living situation, but in isolation it seems like a false
economy.

It seems like just multiplying by your effective comp rate would make this
commute far more expensive than living closer. For instance, if you bill at
$100/hr, you've just told me your commute costs a minimum of $133/day
(~$2,660/mo) [at $150/hr, that's $3,660/mo, etc.]. This should easily cover
the price delta between e.g. midtown and 30 miles out. And that's before
factoring in the other benefits that come along with not spending that much
time on the road every day.

I can't make the math work, I'm wondering how others justify it.

~~~
colinake
My commute is about an hour a day.

There are many ways to turn this into productive time. Think. Listen to
audiobooks/podcasts. Run through a few key work phone calls. Catch up with
friends.

I really enjoy my commute.

I'll also point out that while that's theoretically $3660/mo if you aren't
productive throughout any of the drive, that's not actually something many
people can convert into cash. Many people spend time during the day with
various items to unwind or provide a mental break from work. Working more is
not always a goal. I don't want all my time to be spent working or sleeping.

You also have to account for where you spend your down time. I chose to live
near friends and family in a place I can raise my kids. If I didn't live where
I do, I'd be driving out here on the weekend and maybe once a week.

In addition, if you're living in town with kids and you want a quality
education, you might be able to bill more $ a month (presuming you're building
a business where you're selling your time, which I'm not and I don't want to
do), but you're going to spend more money on a quality education or a house.

Everyone has different circumstances. My math works out for me. It might not
for you.

------
adrusi
Where I live, Columbia MD, roads meander, have a hierarchical structure and
there are A LOT of cul de sacs. It's a very walkable town, however, because it
has walking paths that penetrate at least every other residential street, and
provide direct walking routes to important sites, such as shopping plazas,
schools and the mall.

It's not optimal, because commercial and residential area are zoned apart, so
things aren't as close as they could be, but at least the routes between then
are efficient.

I'm a 15 minute's walk from a grocery store, a mall, the elementary, middle
and high schools that my house is districted to.

------
dmerrick
As a minor nitpick, the plural of cul-de-sac is 'culs-de-sac' (not 'cul-de-
sacs' as appears in the title).

------
webXL
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
peatmoss
It more relates to the relative size of the service area and the fact that
pedestrians have a steeper distance decay function than other modes.

------
halcyondaze
I grew up on a double cul-de-sac street so I am clearly the most unhealthy.

