The traditional suburban street design of winding roads and cul-de-sacs is just as responsible for U.S. car dependency as the distances created by sprawl, according to new Yale research.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/66706376
nothing new imo, but now we are even surer
https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/suburban-street-design-thats-been-driving-emissions-wwiiOpen linkView original on feddit.org
The problem with the US is that they have too much land, they waste it building insane suburban hellscapes.
A normal European suburb is usually built around public transport first, you have local bus stops connecting to suburban centers where larger busses on express routes or local commuter trains provide a fast and convenient access to cities and jobs.
I find it amusing that you assume the available land has to do with it, but then in your explaination you dont even mention the lesser availability of land in Europe.
Eh, in the US land is cheap, companies buy it, build cheap houses a and sell for profit, built with limited thought on how it actually integrates with other communities, thus creating isolated islands of communities where the only logical transport is a car.
Here we have less land available and communities are planned with more focus on integration with other parts of the community.
"traditional"
I feel like "common" would be a better choice there, given just how recent and modern those suburbs actually are, compared to older streetcar suburbs.
cul-de-sacs are so frustrating because just 2 fucking minor tweaks would make them basically okay: Add pedestrian and bike shortcuts every here and there, and slim down the roads so you can't comfortably drive fast.
You don't even need to remove on-street parking, just use the saved width to make proper parking pockets.
I worked at a place that involved housing and maps for a while. I remember seeing one map that was a layout for a suburban housing situation. A giant cluster of single family houses along windy little paths. It looked like the bad place.
The houses at the back would have required an extensive and winding trip just to get to a main road, and then who knows how far it is from there to anything commercial. If you live there, you're not walking anywhere.
Winding streets and cul-de-sacs can be great at reducing speed and therefore collisions. They have to be build right though, with modal filters and cut thoughts for walking/cycling. You still then need the clusters of commercial space close by, but you can make it so it’s quicker to walk or cycle than driving.