A thing about North-American cul-de-sac suburbs that I don't understand is why there are no footpaths to take shortcuts between the dead-end streets. That would make them much less hostile to pedestrians, would allow you to visit neighbours more easily, and it seems to me that you don't lose anything. Is it just an oversight or is there some reason for that? It should even increase social safety: always an escape route.
When I was a kid in the 90s (in Australia, not the US), we lived in a cul-de-sac suburb, and every cul-de-sac had a footpath to nearby streets and parklands.
In the early 2000s, residents realised they could petition the local government to have the footpaths removed and the land would be allocated to the neighbouring properties. Within the space of a few years, the route I used to walk to my school bus stop was completely blocked off because all the footpaths were removed. I went from having 4-5 different routing options to none. Also made it so that instead of riding my bike to my friend's house through parks and away from the road, I had to be driven (because my parents didn't like me riding near a high traffic road which I can understand).
Me and Mum were the only people on the "against" side to show up at the council meetings.
There is a view held by some that they actually decrease safety by providing somewhere for undesirables to loiter, or a means of escape after committing crime, or simply attract more foot traffic to an area than a cul-de-sac therfore increasing the chance of opportunistic crime.
I suspect this is a situation where the benefits of the shortcuts to society may be greater than the possible downsides to the nearby homeowners, but more power lies with the local residents, or developers who want to sell homes. It would be interesting to know if there is any research on whether there is any effect on crime from this sort of development.
We have a creek trail at the end of our cul-de-sac, and it definitely has been used by people who walk up and down neighborhoods to check for open cars. It's especially useful in the day of home security cameras - people that drive tend to get their license plate lifted.
That said, I wouldn't trade it for that kinda "safety". I'd rather just lock my car or not leave valuables in it. Being able to take my kids for a walk and actually do something without a car is more valuable.
I don't have a trail at the end of my dead end (Through oddities of lot sizes, I don't live on a cul-de-sac so much as, we need to put a road here so one guy can access his property.)
People have still come and looked through my car despite the clear lack of escape route.
I bet you're right on what's driving this. The last two houses I have lived in are very close to each other, but one is on a quiet culdesac while the other is on a through street convenient for foot traffic. There is definitely a small but noticeable difference in the amount of crime and sketchy behavior between the two. This bums me out though, because I would much rather live in a more walkable community, even with the tradeoffs. Unfortunately many Americans feel differently.
Some of the more humane subdivisions are built with walking trails e.g. behind the backyards. A developer may or may not feel that they need to spend the extra money for that to sell the houses.
Customers for these very deeply nested cul de sac homes tend to value privacy a lot. They don’t want people they don’t know passing through, and may be even more suspicious of pedestrians than drivers.
> Customers for these very deeply nested cul de sac homes tend to value privacy a lot. They don’t want people they don’t know passing through, and may be even more suspicious of pedestrians than drivers.
In which direction does the causation go? If I ended up on a partially closed road I would also become suspicious of people and start to value "privacy".
I suspect it goes the other way, stroads polarizing people against ever wanting to live near active corridors.
But either way, that’s how the vast majority of American housing development has been since the 40s, and it’s the only way people have ever lived in the cities that got their growth in the postwar period. So either way they have the preference.
Yeah there is a reason, it's that the developers don't usually set aside public space, especially not in small quantities like that. If they're required to, they will typically lump it into one large park with something like a stormwater retention pond. They are trying to maximize lot size and not really think about pedestrian circulation.
Also, on the topic of North American cul-de-sac suburbs, I made a Twitter bot that is working its way through every census-designated cul-de-sac in America. Here's a good example of one with pedestrian access: https://twitter.com/culdesacbot1/status/1604474398442156033
I live in a suburb north of Dallas and on a short walk can see footpaths at the end of cul-de-sacs, former paths walled off with bushes, and former paths walled off with brick. The places where you can see the old sidewalk under the brick wall are particularly sad, I think. Speculatively, I agree with the people who have commented on the hostility to "undesirables". Here, I think road expansion is at play, too. As the streets these cul-de-sacs face become 4+ lane 45 MPH roads, the walls become necessary to manage road noise and walking down said road becomes more and more unpleasant. Notably, the brick walls are consistently and obviously low quality, and tend to fall apart until they eventually break at the bottom, sag, collapse, and are replaced. It's a pattern I only saw when I moved here (though I was never properly suburban before that).
In my area, the dead-end streets do have walking path connection to the opposite dead-end streets. These also connect to the walk/bike paths that surround the neighborhood.
My neighborhood was built in the 1960s, not with cul-de-sacs, but curvy streets and no direct routes through. Still, there's a network of shortcuts, paved like sidewalks, that radiate out from the school.
