Cul-De-Sacrilege!

Development

4 minute read

April 2, 2008

Living on a cul-de-sac should be every child’s dream….if that child happens to have advanced awareness about urban planning…

One of the more popular neighborhood designs has come under fire lately by planners, and this culminated with an article in the Toronto Star in Saturday’s special “Earth Day” edition of the paper…

culdesac.JPG

The only reason I can think of why I’m not currently playing in the N.H.L. is because my parents refused to move to a quiet, cul-de-sac where I could play hours and hours of road hockey as a child.  Well, that and my lack of hockey skill….but I digress…

Even before I ever knew the term “cul-de-sac,” I always pointed to that “dead end” street in the neighborhood and longed for a place where you wouldn’t even have to bring the hockey nets in at night.  Surely you could go hours without even seeing a moving car.

When I got my first skateboard in about 1986, it was a new-school version of the “old school” board, which a bunch of kids told me today is so old that it’s actually back in style, meaning it’s “new school.”  But that’s old news.  My point, is that my mother didn’t let me ride my skateboard on the street since there were so many cars on Parkhurst Boulevard, so I just decided not to ride it at all.  “That’ll show her!” I thought.  But I still made use of it by putting stickers from inside Cheerios boxes on the underside of the board…

Oh, to live on a cul-de-sac!

The truth of the matter is that most cul-de-sacs are found in sub-divisions or planned communities; relatively new areas across North America.  Take areas in Richmond Hill, Markham, Pickering, and Ajax, for example.  What used to be vacant, rural land was eventually transformed into neighborhoods with winding roads, street lights, backyards, and over time as the area around it becomes more built up, people discontinue those “sub-division” thoughts and just consider it a “neighborhood.”

I had actually been planning to write a piece about cul-de-sac’s for quite some time now, and ironically there was a full article about it in last Saturday’s Toronto Star.

The article dealt more with the actual sub-divisions themselves, and the general thinking was that cul-de-sac’s and dead-end streets are inefficient, and what once was “ingenious planning” in order to allow kids their precious road hockey games and quiet streets has now become “poor planning” in that it creates a virtual maze and the only way out is by car.

Oh, right….Saturday was Earth Hour!  No wonder there’s an article trashing cul-de-sacs and somehow surmising that they are helping to kill the ozone layer, melt the arctic, and spill oil on cute baby birds….

Well, I guess a good enough argument can convince anyone, of anything.

“Straight, interconnected streets allow people to walk or bicycle, and make transit more efficient,” the article says.

Today’s urban planners and environmentalists consider cul-de-sacs to be “a dead end of planning that immobilizes its inhabitants in suburban mindlessness.”

The general points that the article tries to convey, against the cul-de-sacs:

-they create car-dependant zones and all the traffic from the cul-de-sacs pour onto the same collector roads

-residents spend much more time behind the wheel, and thus their waist-lines suffer

-they inspire crime

-they add to the difficulty of municipal services such as snowplowing and firefighting

-they become “cesspools of self-absorption and pettiness that turn their backs on the wider world”

Okay, that last one is a little far-fetched, don’t you think?

Whoever wrote that article must have an ex-wife living on a cul-de-sac or something…

But cul-de-sacs have been actually been banned in municipalities across North America, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for the elimination of cul-de-sacs in urban planning.  With certain parts of the world moving to a more green-friendly frame of mind, investigations into unnecessary pollutants seems to reveal that the way we create our living space on the ground is harming the very earth we live on.

Consider a different type of cul-de-sac, like the one below:

reverse.JPG

While I’m not sure if this type of cul-de-sac has an actual name, I’d refer to it as a reverse cul-de-sac.  Reason being, the garden-variety cul-de-sac features a circle of houses with the road on the inside.  This version here has a circle of houses with the road on the outside and the backyards merge into one large, common area.

If anything, this layout would provide (or force) a reason for neighbors to socialize, and congregate in their common green space.  This way, you get to know both your neighbors on the street as well as the neighbors on the street behind your home.

But the critics still maintain that anything but a grid-system of roads will create excess car usage and ultimately inhabitants of cul-de-sac zones will emit four times as many greenhouse gases as those living in the most efficient neighborhood layout.

Surely there must be some sort of common ground; some sort of compromise, no?

Isn’t there something to be said for a beautiful, winding road?  Or how about a long, tree-lined street that comes to a halt at the front of a municipal park?

Have we become so afraid of anything but the most efficient use of fossil fuels and minimization of anything remotely bad for the environment that we cease to have any imagination or inclination for creativity?

Well, what can you say about a population so dense that they’ve run out of room for people to live on the ground, and have been forced to create living space in the sky?

Perhaps whether a street is circle shaped or straight is truly the least of our worries…

(Story “End of the road for the cul-de-sac?” by Peter Gorrie, Environmental Reporter for the Toronto Star)

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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2 Comments

  1. Antionette Morquecho

    at 11:01 pm

    I really like gathering utile info, this post has got me even more info! .

  2. Marc Sultanti

    at 3:26 pm

    Hello there. Enjoyed this article, as I am doing some reasearch on the bylaws, in regards to cauliflower du sacs, as I live on 1, my family since 1977, and we have a house turned into a multi rental unit. Are there any laws that I can use to fight this. Thank you.

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