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<br />Homeowners Love Cul-de-Sacs,
<br />Planners Say They're Perils
<br />By Amir Efrati
<br />From The Wall Street Journal Online
<br />One of the most popular features of suburbia is under attack.
<br />Jail 1 lV / 12/17/200701:03 PM
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<br />For many families, cul-de-sac living represents the epitome of suburban bliss: a traffic-free play zone for children, a ready
<br />roster of neighbors with extra gas for the lawnmower and a communal gathering space for sharing gin and tonics. But thanks
<br />to a growing chorus of critics, ranging from city planners and traffic engineers to snowplow drivers, hundreds of local
<br />governments from San Luis Obispo, Calif., to Charlotte, N.C., have passed zoning ordinances to limit cul-de-sacs or even
<br />ban them in the future.
<br />In Oregon about 90% of th state's ~a~ cities have changed their laws to limit cul-de-sacs, while 40 small municipalities
<br />outside Philadelphia have adopted restrictions or bans. Even when they're not trying to stamp them out, some towns are
<br />keeping a close eye on how cul-de-sacs are being built. Earlier this year, the city of Pekin, III., established new rules to make
<br />cul-de-sacs more maneuverable for service vehicles like fire trucks and school buses.
<br />While homes on cul-de-sacs are still being built in large numbers and continue to fetch premiums from buyers who prefer
<br />them, the opposition has only been growing. The most common complaint: traffic. Because most of the roads in a
<br />neighborhood of cul-de-sacs are dead ends, some traffic experts say the only way to navigate around the neighborhood is to
<br />take peripheral roads that are already cluttered with traffic. And because most cul-de-sacs aren't connected by sidewalks, the
<br />only way for people who live there to run errands is to get in their cars and join the traffic.
<br />In Charlotte, where the suburbs have emerged as a leading cul-de-sac battleground, a recent study by transportation
<br />planners found that almost all of the city's heavily congested intersections were located near residential developments from
<br />the 1960s, '70s and '80s, which are filled with cul-de-sac neighborhoods. The biggest traffic problems aren't in the old central
<br />cities these days, says Orlando, Fla.-based traffic engineer Walter Kulash, "but rather in the suburban periphery."
<br />Land-use planners trace the origin of the American version of the cul-de-sac, which means "bottom of the bag" in French, to
<br />a development in Radburn, N.J., in 1929. Land planner Ed Tombari of the National Association of Home Builders says the
<br />design became popular during the housing boom after World War II, when many families turned away from the congested
<br />grids of central cities to live on quiet cul-de-sacs with lawns and winding roads more reminiscent of the countryside. To
<br />ensure privacy, developers limited the number of roads leading in.
<br />According to the Census Bureau, the population of American suburbs grew 12% from 1980 to 2000, while the total population
<br />in center cities grew by just 1 %. Likewise, from 1997 to 2003, the total percentage of American housing units located in the
<br />suburbs rose to 62 million, an increase of about 9%. The influx of homes in the suburbs, and the traffic they bring, has
<br />become the chief concern of planners across the nation, many of whom are struggling to mitigate the impact of car culture.
<br />To some of them, cuf-de-sacs have come to represent a failed experiment that has produced more isolation and more traffic
<br />by forcing people into their cars. David Schrank, a transportation researcher with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas
<br />A&M University, says the old "peak hour" of traffic in many suburbs has been replaced by a longer "peak period." As new
<br />developments spring up, he says, "sometimes the transport network isn't in place to support them."
<br />In some growing suburbs, "cul-de-sac" is becoming a dirty word. At a meeting in April with the planning commission in
<br />Northfield, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis that has adopted rules preventing the use of cul-de-sacs, developer Lynn
<br />Giovannelli of Miles Development says she was "blindsided" by a chorus of objections about a single cul-de-sac she was
<br />including in plans for part of a new subdivision called Rosewood. "The land parcel was a funky shape, and I told them the
<br />only way to do anything with it is to do a cul-de-sac," she says. One commissioner told her to put in a park instead.
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