Did I offend anyone already? After years of being educated about the problems associated with cul-de-sacs, I suddenly have a change of heart.

Cul-de-sacs have been given a bad reputation mainly because of its hinderance to provide direct transit and pedestrian access from Point A to Point B. These road patterns have been built mainly as a way to deter vehicles from bypassing certain neighbourhoods. It forces drivers to use larger arterial roads, in which these cul-de-sacs are fed into. Because of this great luxury of having a peaceful, quiet, and kid-friendly streets, homebuyers in the past have preferred these ‘courts’ over others.

These road forms became so popular in the 1980s and 1990s that there are some urban areas that literally have nothing but cul-de-sacs. It’s actually quite abysmally disgusting to see aerial photographs of suburban areas in Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, Calgary, and even Milton Keynes, In these places, the impermeability of the street network meant that it may require a 10-minute drive just to get to an adjacent property.

So while these ‘courts’ are intended to allow people to play safely in the streets, it also meant that residents would need a car to get to any destination outside the street proximity. Transit wouldn’t be sustainable, just because it would have to weave through these squiggly routes that were essentially designed to discourage through-way access. This criticism is essentially the New Urbanism school of thought.

While we think that the GTA’s sprawl is bad, it really isn’t in relative terms. The GTA has never religiously adopted this pure cul-de-sac road network, but that doesn’t mean we’re not guilty of transit-unfriendly street patterns, as we too have adopted a strict hierarchial curvilinear road network structure in residential neighbourhoods from the 1970s to the 1990s.

As a way to reverse these old mistakes, and to encourage more permeability for car and pedestrian gtraffic around the neighbourhood, New Urbanist principles have since been adopted in almost all new low-rise residential subdivisions in Greater Toronto. It can easily be witnessed in new developments in Markham, Vaughan, and to a lesser extent Brampton.

Wow, my love for cul-de-sacs ended up being a long discussion about planning. I apologize as it really wasn’t my intention. Yes, I love cul-de-sacs. But as a disclaimer, I’d like to say that I love cul-de-sacs, but only in close moderation.

Cut to the chase…
I’m going to segue into a small anecedote about numerous conversations I have had in the office today.

But first, some context: Our beloved Paolo tells me that he has frequent street parties and BBQ events with families on his cul-de-sac street in London. He tells me while we all talk about the issues of cul-de-sacs, he actually enjoys his close-knit street-oriented neighbourhood, and it actually is quite refreshing to see how much life there can be in a suburban neighhourhood. Because seriously, I doubt there are many closely-knitted surburban neighhourhoods like Wisteria Lane.

Anyways, on the the story— while talking with one fellow co-worker on Monday, he told me that he, too, had a street BBQ, and quickly, I asked him whether he lives on a cul-de-sac.

He told me he did. Wowsers. I thought to myself if it was a tradition for cul-de-sac residents or something.

Surprise surprise? I truly do think that the way that homes in cul-de-sacs are oriented towards a centre loop encourages more social cohesion. Also, I figure that they know and can easily spot their neighhours because there really is no reason for outsiders to be entering the street.

I am very jealous of these neat street parties, and I seriously doubt that anything could be organized on my Markham pseudo-crescent street.

To all the residents of cul-de-sac streets, I salute you.

Cul-de-sac - [wikipedia.org]
New Urbanism - [wikipedia.org]