Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
We’ve really been designing communities that make us drive more, make us less safe, keep us disconnected from one another, and that may even make us less healthy.
The seminal article on this is from Scientific American in 2000:
http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssueP...
–
–
I spent my middle school and high school years living on a cul-de-sac. Not a fan. You only approach and leave from one direction. I just took a walk to the park and back tonight, and I left in one direction, looped around, and returned from the other.
Not to mention that there wasn't a park in walking distance where I grew up. :/ There, I used to walk my dog to a place with a few undeveloped lots. Then they developed those.
"He’s even found that foreclosure hotspots tend to be focused in places with the least location efficiency – in spread-out subdivisions, where a family already stretched to the limit can go broke driving 10 miles each way for a gallon of milk."
Not surprising, but that really hits home. I live in a moderately affluent town, and I can see the change as I wander from sub-division to sub-division. I would caution though that the correlation the author is drawing has many other factors that affect it. I don't hear so much about the driving distance as it is just the social expectations of people - newer, nicer houses are built in these cul-de-sac littered areas, so people try and purchase them even though they can't afford it.