Are the Suburbs Getting Worse?*
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- čas přidán 30. 05. 2024
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Cul-de-sacs, loops, and separated subdivisions make it difficult for people to walk and bike in the suburbs. We've known this for decades. Have we improved our suburban street patterns in recent decades? I conducted a study to find out! I published the study in the Journal of Urban Morphology: journal.urbanform.org/index.p...
Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.
Trans rights.
I don't know if you all have noticed, but I'm doing "Suburbs Spring" on this channel! I really wanted to do a series on ways to make the suburbs better. There are two more videos in the series coming, then I'm headed to Japan to do a series on Japanese planning!
Curvilinear.
So is intersection density directly related to pedestrian access, or is it an "analogue" measurement?
@1:47 not all culldesacs are bad for walkability. I live on a cul-de-sac and it's extremely walkable because while cars can't pass beyond the end of my road, there is a footpath that leads on to a levee and a foot bridge over the creek, as well as a bike trail to the local shopping centre. It's actually faster and easier to walk or bike to the supermarket than to drive because of those.
Between dog walkers, ramblers, people going to the shops, or people just passing through my street because it's a convienient way to walk from the bus stop to the housing development beyond the creek, I'd estimate I have well over 10x the pedestrian traffic on my street than motorised traffic.
That nebula ad is so long and desperate it made me dislike the whole idea, sounds like stuff you make just before something fails. Vision? Isn't it a business first and foremost? Also, lifetime pay? Virtually all companies that offer these soon find themselves in trouble, if not now then 5 years down the line, simply because money from these runs out quickly but costs remain forever so "lifetime" is often being cancelled to not drag company down as soon as it becomes inconvenient...
@@dernwine Except most of people who move to suburbs are either xenophobic types or simply scared by fox lies BS and hearing this, would do everything to ban such paths...
Imagine living in a far flung suburb in Phoenix and walking to the nearest store in the summer. Literal chance of dying.
Meanwhile japanese subrubs give you a cozy feeling while having stores near waling distance
I'm in "far flung suburb" of Orlando and grateful for my eBike.
Closet convenience store is 2.5 mi / 4 Km with just over half of it with a sidewalk. Closest grocer is 3.5 mi / 5.6 Km. Closest AFFORDABLE grocer / super-center is 5.7 mi / 9.1 Km.
Temperature highs has been around 95F/35C with VERY high humidity.
@@HSR107 eBike seems like a good solution for that. For most errands I can walk/bike where I am on southern Vancouver Island. But when I need to drive and it’s rush hour it’s absurd, often taking up to an hour to go just 15KM to the nearest city.
@@HSR107 ebikes are cool in walkable / bikable cities, too. I live in Karlsruhe, Germany, which is the most bikable city of its size or bigger in Germany (population: 300k), and an ebike is a game changer. I'm anywhere in the city within 15 minutes, and it's just plain fun.
Phoenix is like living on Mars for 3 months of the year.
I don't understand why subdivisions aren't linked with footpaths.
In the UK we have similar cul-de-sac patterned suburbs, but there are usually lots of footpaths providing connectivity
Generally, the people who live in culs-de-sac don't want "those kind of people" (millennials/zoomers, minorities, etc.) walking/cycling near their property.
Yeah. I'm British too and was thinking the same. It's like sooooooo cheap to just build a simple pathway. The only down side of them is they can be a bit scary at night for vulnerable people if too long/enclosed and not lit well, but there are ways around that with good design.
It's because people don't want strangers cutting right past their yards all the time, especially if the neighborhood does not have high walls around each yard.
In Calgary there are tons of these walkable connections between cul-de-sacs and different loops. The only issue is zoning which keeps the commercial stuff farther away depending on which end of the neighborhood you are in.
@@timogul then build a fence around your garden
I grew up in a 1920s suburb and while it's still car-dominated, the difference between it and what we've built since the 1960s is night and day. Newer cities are so much worse.
Like the ghosts, sidewalk streets, coal shoots, ...
Because back then, most still did not have cars. It was only until WW2 did most have their own cars
I have a house that is one block from 2 former streetcar routes. It really makes it a great place to live. I have a walkscore of 99, a bikescore of 98 and a transit score of 65. The latter just means that I have only one bus route a block away that runs every 12 minutes, but if I am willing to walk for five minutes I can get to 9 more. They will take me to 2 international airports and 3 Amtrak stations as well as the regional commuter rail trains that run every 10 or 20 minutes. Never had a need for a car and I'm 77 now.
@@danielcarroll3358you are living the dream!
The difference is that it is possible to live car free, it's car lite in a streetcar suburb, but that's virtually impossible in a post-WWII suburb.
I've noticed in my city that new suburbs have far fewer walking trails and playgrounds. A kid in these places wouldn't have the freedom to easily go anywhere on their own.
I think this is by design. Many people manage to afford a house by not having any kids these days, or maybe only having one. If you only have one kid, you are going to want to control their every move, terrified at the possibility of any harm befalling them. I can tell you from having two kids that I was forced to stop monitoring the first as heavily when the demands of another newborn were placed on me. Makes sense kids weren’t monitored as much when having 5 or 6 was typical, and there weren’t video games to keep them busy indoors. Mothers WANTED them out of the house! 😅
Worse, people are paranoid enough that they will immediately call CPS when they see a child without parents
And they're in their rooms on their computers for some unrelated reason
Haven't you noticed all of those Uber for Teens ads?
It is by design. Generally, modern dead-end subdivisions are designed to keep nonresidents out. They provide a false sense of safety even without gating.
5:41 it's all houses, there's nowhere to go to, it's not enough to have an empty plot and call it a park, they're too spread apart from each other, it's like a giant flat desert with some bunker houses where people can hide, there's no shade on the sidewalk to protect one from the scorching sun, no tribe can live there, that is a place of death.
There are plenty of trees, look closer. They just haven't gotten big yet
@@TheGreatAtario they better grow up to be 3 stories tall and not some overgrown bush. Still only 1 out of 3. And it even has a terrible mall up on the right corner of the picture.
If they had built row/terraced houses there, people could have had larger backyards.
I love flat desserts! Delicious!
@@garryferrington811 They're even better with a mountain of whipped cream on top.
It will forever baffle me that we as a society decided to build cul-de-sacs because we didn't like living next to busy roads, and then proceeded to build them in a way where no one could ever go anywhere without a car and end up with even busier roads
Did you ever see a picture of an 19th century English manor? They all have a large lawn in front of it. Miniature versions of those were built beginning in 1890 in the first US suburbs for the first upper middle classes. When workers began to earn good money in 1946, they wanted to be like the well-off folks, so developers built even smaller versions with a little house on a lot 15 meters wide & 35 meters deep. All those new home owners wanted to show that they were EXCATLY like the rich and had a nice lawn in front. When their children also got jobs they too wanted the same, just bigger, which is the suburbs you see in the video. To ensure that everybody did the same thing, the local people passed zoning laws & laws about the front lawns to issue fines to anyone who failed to keep their lawn nicely maintained.
@@gregorybiestek3431 the funniest part of this is now people are building houses so big they take up the whole lot and barely have any yards at all. which is honestly worst. you can turn a yard into a garden, but you gotta expend energy to cool down all the rooms you'll never use
@@cassinipanini That just proves my point that Americans do NOT want what Europe offers. Americans like their own plot of land and they like big homes. To get those things require a car-centric urban area. For better or worse, THAT is what Americans WANT!
Cul-de-sacs are awesome. All you need is an opening of 3-4 feet that allows foot/bike traffic. It will be walkable, and without through traffic kids can actually play outside with the neighbors' kids. I grew up in a European suburb that allowed by discouraged through traffic we used to play on the street.
I agree, and they can be made from regular roads: take a through road, put a modal filter in the middle, you've now got two cul-de-sacs, with all of the traffic reducing characteristics of purpose built ones. I wouldn't be surprised if the people that rant against LTNs also sing the praises of cul-de-sacs.
well, those openings and good public transport options.
Many years ago, I read a news article about a study that found children living in cul-de-sacs were more likely to be run over.
I grew up in a suburb just like that in North Vancouver. Aside from not having any commercial nearby, it was actually really great for walkability as a kid. You skip from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac and walking is faster than driving.
If those subdivisions have open backyards, they organically do something like this, if you’re willing to walk through private property that may not be maintained
For comparison: Very new subdivisions here in Germany usually have 1-2 access points for cars and many (!) more (in one case it's 1:8) for bikes and pedestrians. If there's only one regular car access, one other is wide enough, but blocked with a bollard - this serves as a fallback if the regular is blocked by construction or such. This secondary access is also often placed as inconvenient as possible, leading you only to the next subdivision (with the benefit of having a very wide/fast bike connection between them!).
Sounds like a road in a city just outside Toronto except in this case I suspect that it was not the original plan.
The road would be the main road through the neighborhood especially as it runs straight into a more busy and long road through the next neighborhood after crossing a major road.
However the road is blocked by barriers half way along its distance.
Bicycles and pedestrians can get through but not cars.
I suspect that originally there was no barrier but that people living on the street complained about there being too many cars cutting through the neighborhood on their street
and got the city to put up a barrier.
The rest of the streets in that neighborhood are a bit of a maze that nobody is going to try to negotiate so the barrier ensures that the particular street and the neighborhood has only local traffic while drivers travelling further stick to main roads.
One thing that Toronto sometimes has in old neighborhoods with a grid pattern is one way streets that change direction every time the streets reach an intersection with another side street.
So one can't simply take a long narrow side street all the way from one major road to another major road to avoid a traffic jam or lights on a main road.
One could possibly take one side street and then jog over at a certain point to get to another side street to then continue in the direction one wants to go but most people aren't going to bother.
That’s very good to build it that way to not encourage cars to access the subdivision for faster way
In a major city in the United States there was once where cars drove through a neighborhood when there was too much traffic on the exit access road through the highways, and the neighbors finally voted to Block it in One Direction put a few speed bumps to discourage cars from taking that route so schoolchildren could be safe and still walk to school in their area
It took a child to be hit by a car to change things.
@@enjoystraveling retrofitting existing neighborhoods here is also much more difficult - with car lobbyists complaining how this would slow down emergency vehicles (far less that idiots parked in the wrong spot…) or just how it's an "oppression of drivers". A maze of one-way streets (with two-way cycling) is a lot easier to sell, but might get ignored or is just much less effective in the era of Google Maps.
Only being aware of the concept from your description, I'm curious about emergency access? I suspect that large entrance with a bollard could be used for fire fighting and ambulances?
@@CatFish107A lot of these bollards are the ones that sink into the ground. This can be activated by emergency vehicles.
Can you make a video about gated communities? In North America specifically the last video is old and needs to be updated
YOU MEAN Florida.. HOA in an Hoa in an Hoa yep
I would love a video about gated communities. Look at an area like North Scottsdale, AZ. Literally hundreds of little gated suburbs in the middle of the desert.
He has. It’s called “Are gated communities bad”
@@finnrummygaming Yes I've seen it
@@MazinElrayah mb Idt you clarified earlier that you thought it needed updating. Tbh it’s a pretty good vid despite its age and a lot of it is still relevant today
If I had a penny for every "access point" that hasn't been connected, i'd have a fleet of private jets on 24/7 standby
I live in a very wealthy suburb (more like a village) just outside of Los Angeles. The housing developments were designed largely in the 70's and 80's. There are lots of terrible things about how everything is spread out, but they did account for an incredible amount of walkable parks, easy access to grocery stores by foot, and most importantly, walkways and paths between developments.
A lot of people gawk at where I moved, but it actually feels more urban than Hollywood in a lot of ways. It feels more like a walkable city than the flats of Los Angeles.
I’m curious. What suburb is this? I’m moving from NYC to Palmdale California. From a dense walkable metropolis, to an exurb of Los Angeles 😂
@@dlazo32696 agoura hills
@@dlazo32696 also. Have you been to Palmdale? I moved from Brooklyn to Hollywood and it was a huge transition. Palmdale is like moving to mars
@@ShaneOConnorRec Yes I have haha. My wife’s family lives out in Palmdale and Rancho Cucamonga. She wants to be close to them in California.
You’re right though, it’s like Mars. It’s another world out there in the desert. Certainly different from LA. I know what I’m getting myself into haha. It’s VERY suburban out there.
All suburbs should be built like villages, nestled around heavy rail with their own light rail network.
I feel like the easiest fix to this is to incorporate pedestrian pass-throughs into current and planned developments to make it actually possible to walk/bike to retail areas from a residential area
not making mixed used spaces illegal would be nice. that way shops are closer to where people live.
@@tann_man hell at least slap in a tiny commercial zone every here and there for a convenience store, that's effectively how it's done in sweden a lot of the time and while obviously not perfect it's perfectly functional.
@@tann_man
Jane Jacobs would agree with you on that.
She liked having a mixture of uses of land in the same neighbourhood.
@@swedneckyeah my neighbourhood has something similar to that, but the convenience stores are located under 3-5 stories of residential.
Where I live, the gated communities block everything. Most wealthy or higher middle class live like elitist, while the rest of us don’t live in those communities. I’m tired of looking at all of the walls. My area, despite the condos is not walkable. You can get killed. There’s people who don’t have cars. I don’t know how they deal with public transportation. It’s very unreliable.
I honestly don’t mind loops and cul d sacs, I just think they need walking/biking paths between them. It’s not that much different than blocking urban roads to through car traffic. It’s easy to add those small paths as well, which massively increase walkability.
Exactly!
They can also put hedges so people living in the houses next to such paths don’t get their privacy offended
I live on the inner bend of a cul-de-sac. Before it was fenced, people WOULD try to use our land to get through. If they hurt themselves, WE were the ones that would get sued. So, we fenced it off. Our neighbors all did the same. So long as government doesn't think that it can take my property to build a trail through to the other street behind us. They can do what they want with new subdivisions, but they aren't going to find that any of the old ones, like mine built in the 80's, are going to be willing to let them. I'm not giving up my land.
all of this doesn't address the the underying problem of suburban desolation. sure, it would be a step in the right direction to increase interconnectivity between sub-devisions by modes other than cars but if you can't use this new connections for anything other than meeting up with other suburbanites in their home, you've gained very little. exclusive zoning is still your number one enemy when it comes to walkability.
9:57 I think it is a matter of how far you are willing or able to bicycle. With reasonable weather and an e-bike, it is possible for most people to go quite far.
You are right though, It is only possible to improve suburban desolation (great word) to a point.
When everything other than your neighbor's homes are outside walking distance
@@barryrobbins7694 Most people? What about pregnant? Kids? Disabled? Sick? Elderly? I had a knee surgery once and I'll tell you walking on a crutch (and I was lucky enough to still walk, I didn't thankfully need a wheelchair) does a lot to debunk "walkability" assumptions of young healthy people, and gives you real clue how it should be done...
@@KuK137
Most = the greatest part; the majority.
Other options don’t go away even if most people choose to travel by bicycle.
@@KuK137 I used to live in Germany and because people still walk and bicycle throughout the decades it’s quite common to see men and women in their 70s and 80s still bicycle quite a lot to get around.
As for children, they’re bicycling to school and they’re bicycling with their parents on the weekend to other villages for fun.
For people that have a hard time walking or have knee surgery there’s public transportation and perhaps knee surgery doesn’t happen as often because people are more active and I’ve never seen more people that need knee surgery than in the United States. I don’t know if that has a connection, but I’m thinking it does also with, obese people
Abandoned railways need to be turned back into railways for better transportation links. I'm for trails, but not on abandoned railways.
Many "abandoned railways" in cities were only ever used for industrial goods--providing a link to bring raw materials in and ship finished products out. Many would not make sense today as the factories are gone and pathing unsuitable for transit.
A lot of abondonded railways were artifacts of competition between different private companies, when they each had their own stations. Trying to reopen them in a lot of cases would just end up splitting up existing service between multiple routes and would likely mean lower quality service with higher expenses.
The railways that we abandoned were never built with transporting people in mind, but industrial cargo, and many of them pass through such areas of town. Reactivating them in most cases would be useless.
@@tHebUm18You could pair them with redevelopments for the industrial areas. They’re often large tracks of land that are going unused, especially in the Rustbelt. And brownfield remediation has lead to quite a few vibrant communities.
And there are some abandoned rail lines that would make sense for transit as is.
Definitely depends on the city (NYC, for example, has no excuse not to build rail) but generally a trail is a smarter investment, if it's capitalized on. It's cheaper, so cities can do it without federal money, and can yield just as much housing as a light rail line would, albeit with a tiny bit more parking. But the best thing is that when you have that density, it's then really easy to just add a rail line alongside the path.
The Atlanta Beltline is a fantastic example of how trails can go a super long way. Its built a shit ton of housing, and will likely get a streetcar at some point in the future.
I used to live in Wake County. I left in '95 or '96 and when I went back to visit about 20 years later the sprawl was just crazy. And yes, I think the suburbs *are* getting worse. These newer, denser suburbs give you the bad parts of city life (congestion, noise, traffic) without the good parts (walkable neighborhoods with things actually worth walking to).
a lot of the farther out satellites like Clayton and Wake Forest are getting hit hard by this type of suburbization right now
Linking subdivisions with foot and bike paths should be mandatory. I think road access and standard intersections aren't necessarily the healthiest approach, anyone who's lived in a neighbourhood with streets parallel to a busy arterial can tell you the horrors of trying to get people not to speed through because they see your street as an alternate route and not a place where people live. It's also important because it provides a direct incentive to use other means of transportation; if it's faster to walk or bike to my favourite restaurant or library then weather permitting I'll do that instead.
I support you funding all this. You’re a good guy. You can deal with all the eminent domain issues
@@AustrianPainter14 Why is a literal Nazi trying to act like he gives a crap about eminent domain? Follow your leader, bud.
Holy cringe I need a shower after that retort. Don’t you have a live aid to attend for your benefit?
Love that you used Wake County as your example here. The intense sprawl and lack of walk/bike-ability is one of the main reasons we left to live in a walkable town in the NE!
what's crazy to me is that planners had a chance to do better with Cary, and dropped the ball.
@@DavidSaundersPostsless money to be made by developers. Gotta shove as many houses in there as possible
"I'm old, but I wasn't born in 1980."
Don't make me beat you with my cane.
“I’m old, but even I wasn’t born in 1980.”
I felt that.
Smh. Its not even old in terms of people years (myself being born in 1980🥴)
But yeah, from a “we collected and are still reporting data from 44 entire years ago” - it’s absolutely ridiculous 😅
I took that personally
So did I. ::cries in 1967::
“I’m old, but even I wasn’t born in 1980.”
Making light of those older than you?? Oh you can bet that’s a paddling.
I live in Wake County NC, and growing up in the suburbs of Raleigh was what made me interested in urban planning. Your videos helped me get into it and now I’m going to school for a minor in Urban Studies.
US suburbs make Canadian ones look urban and functional... and ours are such depressing sprawl.
US suburbs are so lonely and depressing!
Same for Australia. I go to the outer suburbs here and I get really depressed, but then I see the U.S. and I'm like "Oh right, our suburbs are not so bad."
And do you why American *exurbs* (get it right) are so sprawling? Guess what goes on in the cities and who lives there that we have to evade.
@@AustrianPainter14 White flight due to racism. We know.
@@AustrianPainter14sounding a lot like an Austrian painter there, though the crime stats fully support you
In the UK, we moved towards cul-de-sac style development patterns in the 1960s. Many 1970s estates (subdivisions) are well laid out with quiet streets and lots of off-road paths connecting the cul-de-sacs. These '70s estates also tend to have a major footpath through the middle of them that acts as a spine in the walking/cycling network, linking the cul de sacs together with other areas of the town. Cars have to go around the edge. But I think things have got much worse since the '90s and '00s - many new housing estates are completely cut off from the surrounding town, and the only access for pedestrians is via the 1 or 2 main road access points, forcing pedestrians to take the same long routes as cars. The UK has always been much more walkable than the US, but we have been building more and more car-dependent developments in recent decades.
My city designed suburbs to be walkable with shops in the centre of each suburb and sidewalks, paved footpaths and parks allowing shortcuts across the street network. The shops might be a small supermarket, a bakery, newsagent, doctor, takeaway etc around a carpatk. Plus an adjacent petrol station, sometimes a single-story office building.
It mostly still works well - especially in wealthier areas where restaurants and bars became typical tenants - but some of these little shopping centres weren’t viable and lost shops and the few worst ones have boarded up shopfronts. The petrol stations mostly closed as well.
A cluster of a dozen or so suburbs, about 60,000 population, would surround a mall and a light industrial/retail/office precinct, the whole gridded with dual carriageways connecting the township to adjacent towns and freeways.
Then radial bus routes serving the town centres and express bus services connecting the various town centres. The city is starting the replace the express bus routes with light rail, which is expensive and controversial, but the city government has won several elections with light rail as its main policy.
I grew up in suburbs that were built in the 60's and 70's. All of the cul-de-sacs and subdivisions were connected with walking paths, so visiting my friends or walking to school was easy and I didn't have to ask my parents to drive me. It blows my mind that many newer developments don't have these paths.
Just thinking that I could bike to school and walk to a cafeteria or arcade from my home already screams countless benefits.
From a planning perspective, footpaths have to be mandated or there won't be effective connections. Cul-de-sacs usually don't run all the way to the boundary of a subdivision because that's extra pavement and other infrastructure instead of a lot.
Tees that can be extended are much more flexible, but it's been a few decades since they were preferred. The size of fire trucks is one of the reasons: they can't really turn around in a tee that's only the width of a roadway.
Thanks for mentioning the concept of walk/bike-ways between cul-de-sacs. Here in Mountain View and Los Altos my occasional walks are greatly facilitated by being able to avoid some of the stroads. And kids can bike to and from schools more easily and safely. That said, we have a lot of fragmentation. One reason is that we have a diversion channel that separates my neighborhood from another except on two back streets so a gridiron would have required too many bridges for the city to approve it. I'm going to hazard a guess that other cities have to deal with natural waterways as divisions as well.
Have to say that America has some of the worst urban planning in the western world. How is it possible to just completely omit to include a space for pedestrians to walk in, in the suburbs - when designing them????
As a Brit, this would drive me nuts - having to drive everywhere...even for a 2 minute journey... because of the absence of sidewalks.
Seriously, the consideration for pedestrians is zero, outside the city centres. It's mind blowingly bad. America is far too 'car centric'. Could never live there tbh.
Did you ever see a picture of an 19th century English manor? They all have a large lawn in front of it. Beginning in the 1890s, the new USA middle class wanted to be like the rich & wanted to live in semi-park conditions. The new middle class also wanted to ensure that none of the undesirable immigrants (southern & eastern Europeans) lived near them so they limited the height, arrangement of each building as well as the number of families that could live there. When the immigrants moved up the social ladder from 1946 to 2000, they wanted to live exactly the same way. Owning a piece of property and a car was seen as proof of achieving the "Dream". As the kids of immigrants went to university, more of them could afford the quiet suburb neighborhood, with shops & restaurants within 5-to-15-minute drives, and one-hour commutes to the city centers. Now most people enjoy living in very quiet residential-only areas, and personal vehicles, which require roads big enough for the smooth flow of traffic at posted speeds (about 60-80 km) which allow them to go where they want when they want.
Raleigh resident here, the urban planing here definitely has a long way to go and I really appreciate you bringing light to not only the issues but also solutions!!
1:31 This! 🤬 It's a two-mile walk/drive to visit the neighbor behind me. And while the grocery store is 2.5 miles away, it isn't walkable unless you want to walk on a 45mph road with no sidewalks and no shoulder.
2.5 miles to a grocery store is worse than living in an old village since even villages had their own stores. What prevents some person from opening a store right in the neighborhood on their own and selling some common necessities?
@@NJ-wb1cz Zoning laws. It's residential only, and a violation to conduct business from your home per HOA.
@@dlight9849 but it's a democracy so just change those laws. What kind of silly idea is it to _outlaw_ basic food availability, entertainment availability, education availability?... Let alone how it goes against the foundations of capitalism and bans capitalism without even any socialist benefit, like a government run store.
Old villages often had a shop and a community center and a primary school etc, most of the essentials people would need near the place where they live. Artificially limiting that is something an evil feudal lord could do to his peons, not the people themselves to themselves
I have a Walmart 4 miles north and a Kroger, Aldi and HEB 4 miles east. Any food store closer is a convenience store with lack of choice and high, high prices. People choose to live in these subdivisions for a reason; if they wanted to live in the city, then they would.
@@NJ-wb1cz I'm gonna take a guess and say the residents in the gated subdivision aren't wanting a convenient store amongst their million dollar homes. Not to mention, said convenient store would be frequented by us low-income HUD tenants -- the exact people they don't want around which is why they gated the subdivision.
I'm glad that someone has looked at positive ways to implement a cul-de-sac neighborhood... always peeved me when people rubbished them because I grew up in a 1980s neighborhood where all the culs-de-sac were joined because some of the land was a mild flood risk. Parents didn't worry about their kids biking to friends because the routes were largely car free.
I remember in school, playing SimCity, I liked to brainstorm cities where greenways and footpaths snaked through the entire town, like one continuous park connecting every neighborhood. I thought it was a pipe dream at the time. I resigned myself to the idea that my urban hikes would always be blockaded by some inhospitable five lane road. It's only in the last few years that I've learned my aspirations are shared by many people and even favored by contemporary urbanism. It gives me hope. Maybe someday I won't need my car to find new and hidden worlds within my city.
I agree, I've thought the same way for a long time, but it's only recently it's become a movement that's actually gaining significant traction. There's hope!
Having a network of footpaths beyond the roads is key. I live in York, England, which has superb walkability due its offroad paths. My family doctor is about 2.3 miles from where I live and less than half a mile is alongside a busy road, making the journey pleasant to walk despite the length. My walk to the city centre is about 1.2 miles, but I only need to cross one busy road then it's mostly a riverside stroll.
I don't know how such a network can be built from scratch. It almost seems as though a different mindset is needed: that walking is its own mode of travel, that it's non--destructive and has very low intrusiveness, thus developers need to explain why they haven't included footpaths, rather than their provision being exceptional. They can even be provided at zero cost: many footpaths in England are simply dirt tracks worn by walkers: the landowner have to allow access but they don't (often) need to provide much beyond that.
"I'm old but even I wasn't born in 1980"
=O "old"? * groans in born in 1967 *
A guy on the bike trail yesterday commented on my Bell V1 Pro bike helmet. He said 'That's from 1982!' I had to think for a moment and I concluded it WAS from 1982, which was before he was born. He must be super into bicycle stuff to know the age of a bicycle part from before he was born!
I teach Gen Z -- they make me feel old every day!
1980s is old. 1960s is ancient
@@MTBSPD Did bike helmets exist in 1982? Perhaps for mountain bikers?
Regardless, the plastic will have deteriorated so in the unlikely event you actually need it, I doubt it will make any difference!
1967? Damn
These type of developments also make public transportation basically impossible to build in an effective manor that people would actually want to use .
"I'm old, but even I wasn't born in 1980."
Great, and now I feel like I sipped from the wrong Grail.
I grew up in a cul-de-sac-heavy subdivision built in the 1980s. At that time, there was no interconnection between streets other than trespassing between houses as my friends and I did. In the last 20 years, though, the developers of newer subdivisions nearby have built paths connecting streets to one another. It's like they realized that people actually like to walk places.
In my neighborhood in Dublin, we have many cul-de-sacs, but they are all connected to the next cul-de-sac by a short pathway. The cul-de-sacs are often only separated by a single wall. This makes it great for kids to play in the street and a nice quiet neighborhood, but also allows people to get around on foot and by bike very easily. You will see many such examples if you look around Clontarf in Dublin.
Great video, especially like the focus on "how can we improve the suburbs" rather than "burn it all down". For multi-use paths and cul-de-sac passthroughs, I find that newer subdivisions in my Northern California suburb all have these built-in, even gated neighborhoods have multi-use-path access points... I think its great and a practical solution that I appreciate about my own neighborhood. The paths are an amenity that a lot of buyers expect if they're paying $$$$ for homes. Not directly tied in, but it would be interesting to evaluate where we should re-assess how walkability is evaluated given the rise of remote work... Obviously not everyone can work remote, but a "walkable neighborhood" for someone who works from home may mean "I can walk my kids to school, walk the dog, walk to the park, do small errands on foot", whereas urban walkability is often about "can I get to work without a car".
There is a late victorian and Edwardian suburb around the eastern end of Clifton Drive in the town of Lytham in Lancashire northwest of the UK called Lytham Avenues and it is so beautiful red brick buildings with amazing bay windows and bargeboards, stained glass and stone and terracota detailing. The amazing thing is the wider area has so many other rows of beautiful houses, but these ones stood out to me. There is even a little turret designed as an artist studio facing the estuary and sea beyond. In terms of street pattern it's in rows and all connected, no cul-de-sacs. It's also a 15 minute walk from the town centre and originally had a tramway going through the middle of it. So yeah in terms of have suburbs got worse oh yeah a lot worse if we go back to the invention of them. But as you have said luckily there might be a shift in design principles in the future.
Just got back to Canada from a few weeks abroad in Taipei. The thing that kills be with Canada is that it is nearly completely un walkable. In Taipei you are at any time 5 minutes away from everything that you need.
Great video, and an excellent observation regarding access points.
Inner suburbs, outer suburbs, or far-flung suburbs, not all suburbs are equal. I'm sure there are nice walkable suburbs out there somewhere, Evanston Illinois comes to mind.
I wouldn't consider it a great example, being a suburb bordering one of the largest most prominent cities in the world, with a large university encompassed inside. It gives the vibes of Cambridge, MA, or Berkeley, CA
@@F4URGranted But on the Evanston Wikipedia page, they called themselves a suburb north of Chicago in the second sentence. I used to live in Chicago, and that's how I've always heard it described there. Long Beach California also comes to mind.
Evanston is a city that acts like a suburb at times. I live in Rogers Park so I visit often. Evanston even has its own pseudo inner-ring suburb around its downtown.
@@willrobinson4976 true, I lived out close to Naperville so for us exurb people it all seems like the city! Even Berwyn and Cicero
this is true of Raleigh. The suburbs inside whats considered the 'traditional' city limits are not the same as the ones built in North Raleigh (not a different town, just newly developed area up towards the lake). The inner suburbs are tighter, with lots of trees. The outer ones have less trees, bigger houses, more affluence with less nearby. And those are still different from the ones that are popping up in the numerous satellite towns like Clayton, Rolesville, Knightdale, even farther out like Wendell. The development out in these farther areas is insanely isolated and almost Vivarium-esque.
I remember having a problem where smaller subdivisions > smaller streets > less walkability > more cars parked on street > tight narrow streets full of residents cars > fire truck couldn't navigate the tights streets full of cars > house on fire couldn't be saved.
That's why lots of newer communities have strict parking restrictions. Smaller streets are good to fight heat island effect in places where heat are a problem... also smaller streets that are shorter mean slower speeds safer for kids and walking pedestrians.
Foot/bike pathing in subdivisions would be so, so easy, but requires developers to be less greedy. They have to be willing to give up square footage for sale to be used. Or the city themselves to force it.
That's what's frustrating: seeing so much potential for activity squandered.
Much as I dislike developers, this one isn’t entirely on them. They have to own the property on both ends of the connection, in order to build them in the first place. But if they do own it, they can raise prices due to “amenities” when they build it. After the fact you’ll never build it due to homeowners not wanting a bunch of random strangers walking through their “quiet neighborhoods”.
As always, excellent content! I've been a long-time viewer and have loved watching your channel grow over the years
One thing I've noticed about trails is that they aren't all that well connected to the road networks around them either, at least in my city.
Idea for another video?
In Europe, we would call these greenways out of town and pass-throughs or gap-in-the-walls in town. A common solution with busy roads is culverts or underpasses. You would be able to pass through on foot or by bike but not by car. it makes going to yer neighbour much easier and allows for easier mobility through the estate by means of local mobility without getting the traffic overrun. I know these don't solve the density problem, but it's putting a low-impact band aid on an existing problem. It is easy enough to create a pass-through through an estate
As a floridian I can say that the suburbs in the orlando and Miami area are bigger and more sprawling than ever before. Our governor is even overriding the will of local governments to favor H.O.A. corporations to drive the Florida Panther to Extinction. The F.D.O.T. has just recently started widening the Dade City Bypass portion of U.S. Highways 98 and 301 when in its two lane form there were no traffic jams there to begin with. A historic 1950s era sign gantry was scrapped and I would have rather seen wide median protected 2-lane bikeway, a 10 foot two way pedestrian trail on the Southbound Side and an 8 foot sidewalk added to the Northbound side with good landscaping and a 35mph speed limit. Even worse they redirected Southbound Through traffic onto Dade City's Mainstreet not to mention the unnecessary widening of the Florida Turnpike North of Orlando to 8 lanes when 4-lanes was just fine and the push to construct the unecessary Central Polk Parkway. Eastern Polk County has literally been annexed into Orlando. Also someone with ties to China are intentionally trying to destroy our great citrus industry. Someone must have brought citrus greening as a bioweapon so we are dependent on China (the Worlds largest orange producer) for oranges and orange juice. Not to mentionI was appaled that in the era we are trying to phase out plastics that Tropicana would switch from coardboard cartons to large single-use plastic bottles that pollute natural ecosystems. There are many of them in the rivers, lakes and oceans.
Great video, love hearing you talk about your research
Hey! Raleigh, my home town!
Grats on publishing!
Thanks!
The information display at the start of your video is so unique and cool!!!
Used to live in Wake County, NC and chose to live there due to perceived growth opportunities.
It was hands down one of the most boring, soul crushing, and cliquey places on earth. Made me realize only way to get a walkable neighborhood is to vote with your feet and pick a place that already has it.
In Wake County, there’s no point in driving anywhere to do anything if all there is for hundreds of miles in any direction is YET ANOTHER sprawling big box shopping plaza with YET ANOTHER Walmart, Bojangles, Target, and/or Carrabba’s.
"I'm old, but even I wasn't born 1980" - Ouch, I felt that.
Yeah, really not a fan of the casual ageism. We want these spaces to be inclusive for people of all ages, because the more people who learn about and champion good urbanism, the better our cities and towns become
I feel it when I need to put my birth date into a system and I have to scroll more than once now.
In California, in my experience, yes. The newer your house, the more likely your house is far away from shops and schools.
I moved to the Research Triangle a year ago to work for one of the major universities. I lived in Morrisville and now Durham. Lots of townhomes and apartments being built, which is good; but the urban pattern is pretty much the same as in the ex-burbs, where residential is built in a community with an entrance and everything. And a shopping center/strip mall is usually built on the corner main roads, abutting the community. They sometimes create walking paths from the community to the shopping center. But most people still get on their car and drive to the corner shopping center to do their groceries. There is no public transport except on the main corridors, so there is no way to get around except by car. Again, it's like the suburbs, but townhomes instead of single-family. If you visit these townhome communities to lease, they'll sell you on the nearby country trails and hiking nature paths. When you ask about shopping, they'll point you to a shopping center or strip mall where you obviously need a car to get there; for them that's nearby. It is still very much a country/suburban mentality here.
I don’t understand using walking paths for shopping. How are you going to carry the things you buy?
Shared use paths connecting cul-de-sac neighborhoods is the perfect solution. People in the suburbs want space and quiet away from busy streets, so there will always be a demand there. If you do a future video, I'd recommend researching Columbia, MD and Reston, VA, which are very old master planned communities that have neighborhoods connected by a large trail network, very cool!
The county/suburbs are quiet and nice. Unlike the inner cities
They are like this because suburbanites are clogging up city streets during commutes. Cities aren't loud, cars are.
Distance problem is how far is the school and grocery store, let me guess... car industry design suburbs
In my country only gated neighborhoods have so few access points to the rest of the city, normal neighborhoods are almost always grids.
I currently live in what could be considered a cul de sac but it happened accidentally because a renovation a decade ago severed the street from the avenue nearby when a park was constructed, I don't complain because it's nice having a park like 20 meters away from my house.
Love the research and use of data to investigate things!
One big problem with one or few access points (for driving) is that that's how many access points fire trucks and ambulances have too. If there's a big and spreading fire, an entire neighborhood can be at risk if multiple fire trucks can't physically get into the space quickly.
I was in San Diego when it mostly burned to the ground, nothing mattered. The biggest problem was the bureaucracy.
Emergency equipment is usually allowed to use pedestrian infrastructure for that purpose.
@@highlorddarkstar Allowed to and Can physically fit are two different things.
@@julietardos5044 true, but they do make smaller fire equipment than the American models.
Suburbs were never good in the first place.
You mean car dependent suburbs. Plenty of suburbs are absolutely fine. Take what is referred to as "Metro-land" in NW London. Built in the first half of last century, they have great rail connections to the centre of London, all the shops and services you need within walking distance, mostly semi-detached houses with gardens, public amenities, etc. There is no reason a similar pattern couldn't be repeated elsewhere.
Better than Indian towns
Car dependent suburbs*
Streetcar suburbs are not so bad. Belmont, Massachusetts is a perfect example of a pretty good one with decent transit options. Yeah, some neighborhoods are cut off from commercial spots like bodegas due to zoning but for the most part even urbanism fans can appreciate them.
Hard disagree. Some of the nicest neighborhoods in Atlanta are old pre-car suburbs. All interconnected street grids, mixes of small commercial areas among a mix of housing types (from single family detached to low rise apartments), and with train connections. I personally prefer a good, well built up downtown to live in for where I'm at in life, but streetcar suburbs can be incredibly nice too.
It wasn't until sometime in the past decade did my subdivision see a crosswalk signal for crossing the highway at the original access point. Before then we had a sidewalk that terminated just short of the road with no crosswalk signal. Students now can now walk or bike across to get to a school on either side of the road but most still take the bus. I suspect a more direct walking/biking path will be created to connect our subdivision with the one that directly abuts us once the old farm field gets developed. I guess I should also mention that our subdivision is a municipal pene-exclave as the neighboring city annexed county land that would otherwise connect us via road.
Really need those access points to increase. Not only is it a detriment to pedestrian ease, but its just dangerous. A natural disaster happens that cuts the one road into a culdesac off and suddenly those people could be in real danger.
Where I live, that would happen regardless. I live in Alabama. It is a very heavily wooded State and gets a lot of tornadoes. When the winds knock over the trees, nobody is going anywhere, whether it is road or trail. That is why many folk here own gas-powered chainsaws. You have to cut your way out. Nearly after every big storm, you'll hear the chainsaws buzzing. Even the suburbs are full of trees. Generally, most of the storm-related deaths are from trees landing on folk.
I am realizing that having just bought a house in Yonkers (which is a city, not a suburb, but I live in a suburban part) how valuable the fact that this is an old, old part of the country (well, since it was stolen) helps, because there are a lot of access points, few cul de sacs, and the town-connecting Bronx River Pathway is right there for walking, biking, running.
You weren't born in 1980, you're not old. Probably a 7 year old will believe that you're old.
This was the reason i moved to Chicago - pedestrian friendly - parking in the back alley of the houses. Unfortunately, Chicago is starting to change to a car dependent city. Much more old buildings are being torn down to build parking lots.
"I'm old but even I wasn't born in 1980" I feel attacked! Lol.
This has become very apparent to me after getting an e-bike and trying to figure out the best way to get around. The neighborhoods built before say the 1960s are way more connected than newer ones, and unfortunately where I am in our city there are mostly newer neighborhoods. Pedestrian/bike connectivity needs to be required by code.
I see your point but I'd argue that it takes a special kind of stupid to not connect adjacent cul-de-sacs with a 3 feet wide path for pedestrians...
Calling them stupid is letting them off the hook too easily. This is xenophobia paired with lobbying to make their cities as car-dependent as possible.
@@Coffeepanda294 I don't see the connection with xenophobia? Besides I'm sure that there has been massive lobbying originally, I think now, it may also be a culture that has been acquired by the administration and the public for decades and they can't envision a different way of doing things...
@@SH3V3K_14 "I don't see the connection with xenophobia?"
The suburbs were originally a way for middle and upper class white people to get away from the cities where the minorities lived. If you read the comments here (especially if you sort by Newest first), you'll find lots of people who like suburbs as they are because if there were footpaths, you'd have 'strangers' passing through their neighbourhood, and they can't have that, they could bring crime, don'tchaknow.
@@Coffeepanda294 OK. I know that the suburbs were originally used to separate races, but I don't think that there would be white people living in one cul-de-sac and black people in the next one?
@@Coffeepanda294 nah, just run-of-the-mill capitalist greed. it would cost like $10 more per home to build paths.
Kind of awesome to be listening to this while I'm walking on the beltline and hearing you talk about it
I used to work designing subdivision layouts in the Atlanta area a few years ago, and aside from oddly-shaped parcels one of the other things that often resulted in us including lots of cul-de-sacs was topography. Many of remaining the parcels being developed now are very hilly, and the combination of stream-buffers and road and sewer steepness requirements often meant that the easiest layout would have the roads follow the ridgelines, creating a tree-like pattern inverse to the layout of the streams and creeks below.
One access point. What happens in the event of a bushfire and that ONE access point is blocked?
Probably the same thing that happens to some of the small subdivisions near where I live when they are unable to get out by a freight train stopped on the track - they wait and maybe even die if it is a life threatening emergency. We've had problems with the trains around here stopping on tracks, sometimes for an hour or more. We've had ambulances unable to get aid to patients. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to sue the train companies.
I tried to use the light rail to visit a friend in Highlands Ranch in the south part of the Denver metro yesterday. I rode an eScooter from my apartment to the station near me, then planned to ride it from the station nearest his place (the Mineral station on the D line if you know the area.)
It was supposed to be a 3 mile ride, but the single trail that "conveniently" took me to his place was closed. I had to turn around and take a huge circuitous detour of about 7 miles because none of the roads had sidewalks let alone bike lanes.
My scooter died about half way there and I got to experience just how *shit* suburbs are for anyone outside a car. I finally arrived about 2.5 hours later. No wonder everyone complains about how bad the traffic is. You literally can't get anywhere without driving. Highlands Ranch is a relatively new development founded in 1981; the newest ones up by the airport that are being built now are even worse. The traffic is so bad getting to them that they've now started a two year project to widen the highway going to the airport
Suburbs are definitely getting worse in the Denver metro.
How good is the light rail?
Around here, stubs seem to have been a thing in the 70s and are absolutely ignored now. And I find, anecdotally, that home buyers do not want connectivity. Particularly focused on cars, but it extends to other modes also - neighbors want to "exclude" people that don't live there. 🤷♂️
The conflict in thinking is almost funny. Neighborhoods with access to greenways or other multiuse paths are more desirable and with more. But - ask homeowners to approve a new path project - even a sidewalk - through or beside, and you'll get a resounding "NO".
Yes, we want to know who is coming and going from our neighborhoods. It provides us with more protection. It keeps kids safer.
"Cul-de-sacs are great for people who don't want cars zooming by their house."
*immediately cuts to a cul-de-sac where cars zoom by everybody's houses*
4:57 Why is a Pokemon in the bottom right corner?
Omg it's gonna steal ya Soul kidz run awayyyyy. Pokemon you gots pokemons trade or apps LOLZ
@@AMPProf What?
For the suburban sprawl lobby, car-centric infrastructure is not a bug but a feature. Any walkable infrastructure is an existential threat to them.
"I'm old, but even I wasn't born in 1980." *Crumbles to dust having been born in 1979*
I think that it becomes walcable when the density increases, as long as there is no density everything is too far away to walk anywhere
Do not advocate for shared use paths on abandoned railways! They’re graded linear paths that are perfect for building a new passenger rail network off of. W&OD in NOVA is the best example that a shared use path while great, robs the public of a quality passenger train line
Shared use paths on abandoned railway lines are a great way for preserving alignments that would otherwise be built on. Re-opening a line might not be possible now, but if it's sold, you'll never open the line.
Well, they're better than having the right of way sold off entirely. While it does make reestablishing the railway more difficult, it's nowhere near as big of an obsticle as if the whole strip has been choped up into seperate titles and built over.
Obviously the railway is better still, but in many places convincing the relevant entities to actually do anything about that is something of a pipe dream.
@@laurencefraser Yes, one near me (The Borders Railway) was closed in 1969, and was reopened with great success in 2015. The greatest expense was overcoming the parts that had been built on (mainly for car infrastructure).
The suburbs should not exist. They are unsustainable and soulless.
@@castorcarvi - Fine. Pay for it yourself instead of mooching off the cities.
@@castorcarvi - renter? I own my condo in the city. I think you're just mad because you can't afford to live in civilization, so you have to be dependent on a car for every trip. Sucks to be you.
@@castorcarvi You're happy living in car dependent suburbia and yet you subscribe to an urbanist channel? Hmmm🤔
No they should definietly exist because having a home always gives greater comfort, independence and quality of life. They just need to be improved a little to have more small shops near people, and more bike/foot connectivity to them. Add some rail transit and park and ride lots to that to avoid excessive commuter traffic.
@@castorcarviyour lifestyle is subsidized
7:40 - I just wanted to say that. Keep cul-de-sacs for cars, but add pedestrian and bike paths. Crucial to that doing nay good is having basic amenities like kindergarten, primary school, gorceries/markets and public transit access within, say, 10 minute walk.
The residential complex I live in is doing the opposite, there was already an existing pathway perfectly sealed and everything connecting to the neighbourhood at the back, but they have purposefully closed it with wire fencing and created a totally gated community with a single access-way(I assume it's for "security"?). Now if I wanted to access shops or parks in that direction by walking, I would have to walk all the way out to the main roads and walk a big circle beside busy multi-lane car traffic, needless to say I haven't been walking much since that happened.
There was a hole ripped through it by someone with a wire-cutter for a while but unfortunately they have since fixed that...
Born in 1980 . Pffft!
I got out of the U.S. 21 years ago and have no regrets. This is one small reason among many. I fear the U.S. is irredeemable.
Look out everyone, real cool guy here
Cul-de-sac subdivisions are great for NIMBYs, karens, and developers. The suburban street pattern is actually not only anti-pedestrian but also anti-car. You may ask, "Wait . . . how can that be??". It is because it is really designed to be against _other_ people's cars since people want their exclusivity and preventing so-called "cut-through" traffic.
I personally think it's a misconception that today's development patterns are car-centric at the expense of being pedestrian oriented. Its lack of connectivity is worse for pedestrians *and* automobiles. The truth is: it's not pedestrian- vs. automobile-oriented development, but the kind that's friendly to both vs. _developer_-oriented development.
They are. The suburb I live in was built in the 70s, has many bike trails everywhere. This is not the case more recently
it's pathetic this form of development is not outlawed already
Ok, I'm halfway through this. Are you paid by burglars or rapists or something? You can't think of why we don't want walking paths behind our homes or 15 different entrances?
Have you heard of an invention called a fence?
Thank you for all this! Great stuff!
Awesome video and great research! I don't think calculating and generating stats for the edge area ratio for the subdivisions would be any more difficult than what you've already done. It could get at the irregularity patterns you noticed (if you haven't already done this outside of your published study). I'd be interested in learning about whatever patterns emerge from that.
Yeah, I mentally had that in mind for a next step, then three years went by and I kind of lost motivation (and some of my data). Maybe I'll come back to it!
Thank you! You’re work is a gift to humanity!❤️
6:07 Having a long history with Raleigh and Wake County and beyond familiar with the growth of the area, I've seen these stubs often. They are usually because the other side isn't yet developed or redeveloped, but that gigantic house with the pool makes me suspect that there's a different reason in this case.
I'd also say that you are correct that the plots of available land for larger subdivisions has already been developed close in to the city.
Lastly, and for reference/context, Wake County has grown from about 300,000 in 1980 to about 1.2 Million today.
It's possible a rich person bought the land and developed it themselves
10:28 That picture looks like big chunks of neighborhoods in Calgary. Was always fun knowing the local trails that kept you away from the cars.
Some walking/bicicle roads should be planned. It's quite usual in Europe. It's quite nice when walking and driving roads are separated (not sidewalking)