Cul-de-sacs moving out of favor – Planners are now looking to connectivity, linking gridded streets, retail and homes

Builders have designed new housing developments around cul-de-sacs since the 1950s, advertising them as ideal environments that reduce traffic and give children safe play environments. But critics are now starting to question the thinking.

Are they, instead, barriers that keep neighbors from getting to know each other while, at the same time, forcing them to get up close and too personal?

By Claire Walter
Special to The Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2349147,00.html

Highlands Ranch may be Colorado’s cul-de-sac poster child, with more than 600 of the dead-ends looping across the landscape. Yet residents of one tidy cul-de-sac made headlines last year when they took a three-year feud to court. Their squabbles, which some could characterize as inconsiderate skating and undercover surveillance, fractured the neighborhood.

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They’re not the first to find that by clustering strangers in cul-de-sacs, developers can bring them too close for comfort. City officials in Charlotte, N.C., now discourage developers from building cul-de-sacs, and officials in Raleigh, N.C., are exploring similar kinds of zoning changes.

Experts who study the health of modern cities are not surprised.

"With their curved streets, odd-shaped lots and houses at odd angles, cul-de-sacs tend to produce a highly disorienting settlement pattern and create profoundly uncivic environments," said James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere" (Free Press, 1994).

"Uncivic behavior"

Rather than getting to know each other by moving throughout the neighborhood on foot – and developing what Kunstler calls "civilizational glue" – these neighbors learn only to recognize each other’s cars as they pull into their garages and each other’s quirks in landscaping and child-raising philosophies.

Says Kunstler, "Typically, disputes (between neighbors) involve behavior or behavior-related property issues … and the friction produces uncivic behavior."

Instead of working out differences with friends they have grown to like and respect, he explains, they turn to homeowner associations and sheriff’s departments when problems erupt.

In the Highlands Ranch incident, retirees Fred and Fran Zickert objected to children playing roller hockey in their street and installed surveillance cameras to monitor the cul-de-sac. They called the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department to report the youthful offenders and ask that they be ticketed; pro-hockey residents countered by asking the Douglas County commissioners to designate their block a "play street."

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Tim Moore told The Denver Post that "this is no longer about kids playing street hockey, but about personality issues and people who just can’t get along."

"You can’t live on a cul-de-sac in Highlands Ranch and not expect to see kids playing," resident Susan Hook is quoted as saying. "They ought to move somewhere where there aren’t any kids."

So far, three families have moved from the 14-house cul-de-sac, and a fourth has their house on the market.

With 50 million Americans living in the country’s 260,000 managed communities, it is not surprising that conflicts arise – sometimes dramatic, sometimes trivial.

The Community Associations Institute, a Virginia-based national organization for managed community administrators, advocates that residents engage in open, honest and respectful dialogue, and, where possible, remain open to compromise. But, said institute spokesman Frank Rathburn, "When residents have a problem with their neighbors, they often go to the manager."

Not all cul-de-sac residents have problems, of course. Some find everything they expect from their new neighborhoods. Tom and Mona Mesereau found everything they were looking for when they moved into the Clarke Farms subdivision in Parker, for example.

"We all moved into a new neighborhood," Mona said of her young family and their neighbors. "We saw our children grow up together. The kids traveled in packs, and wherever they ended up at lunchtime, someone would feed them."

A decade later, they moved to a bigger house in The Pinery and, she said, "we still are closer with our old neighbors than our new ones."

New linkage

Even so, 21st century planners have become disenchanted with designs that ring limited-access neighborhoods with traffic-heavy arterials. They’ve replaced that concept with a focus on "connectivity," a new buzzword that means linking developments with one another and providing easier access to commercial/retail centers, schools and other community services.

Another growing trend is new urbanism, which advocates not only connectivity to ease transportation problems but also promotes gridded streets lined with welcoming residential buildings to replicate traditional neighborhoods. Instead of formidable house fronts of multi-car garages, new urbanism calls for single family homes with garages accessed from alleys behind them.

Longmont’s Prospect New Town is the Denver area’s most prominent example of this new urbanism approach. It mixes single-family and multiunit buildings of varying designs and colors, gives them front porches, adds inviting public spaces and provides multiple roads into and through the development. Its goal is to combine the appeal of new construction with traditional neighborhood ambiance.

In addition to connecting homeowners with their surroundings, Prospect developers also hope to encourage people to connect with each other. If they succeed, they may be able to stem homeowners’ association feuds.

"It’s not every cul-de-sac separate from every other cul-de-sac," says Prospect developer Kiki Wallace. "People share small parks and public spaces."

After having lived together for a while, Wallace said, they should be well enough acquainted to care about each other and about how they work together to resolve the differences that inevitably crop up between neighbors.