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August 27, 2006
National Perspectives

Why Some Towns Place Roadblocks on Cul-de-Sacs

By CARLA BARANAUCKAS

NORTHFIELD, Minn.

ON a crystalline day in early August, grumbling yellow bulldozers and excavators dug into a broad swath of black earth just east of the city limits here, within earshot of both the farm operation the acreage had been part of and the suburban landscape into which it will be absorbed.

Tucked inside the fifth addition to the subdivision Rosewood is Larkspur Court, the type of cul-de-sac that has long been an iconic feature of American suburbs.

But here and in other areas across the country, this staple of suburban development is drawing criticism from a growing number of planners and government officials, who say it should become an endangered species.

Highly popular after World War II, the cul-de-sac is essentially a dead-end residential street, often but not always ending with a large circular patch of pavement allowing vehicles to turn around. The form was initially embraced as something that promoted security, neighborliness and efficient transportation.

Homeowners found that the cul-de-sac limited traffic, creating a sense of privacy, while encouraging ties among neighbors, who could hardly avoid one another. Developers liked the cul-de-sac because it made it possible to build on land unsuited to a grid street pattern and because home buyers were willing to pay a premium to live on one.

Now the cul-de-sac is excoriated in certain quarters, especially by New Urbanists, as a detriment to security, community and efficient transportation.

Michael Lykoudis, dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, grew up on a cul-de-sac in West Lafayette, Ind., but finds himself among the critics. He notes that suburban neighborhoods are difficult, if not impossible, for pedestrians to navigate, making cars virtual necessities. “The president says we are addicted to oil, but in fact it’s not a voluntary addiction,” he said.

And while people within a cul-de-sac may know one another well, they are less likely to know people who live on other streets. “What was lost is a sense of community,” he said.

In Northfield, a city of 17,000 about 45 miles south of Minneapolis, cul-de-sacs are more than out of fashion. “This city has tended toward not liking them,” said Dan Olson, the city planner.

The City Council passed an ordinance several years ago saying that cul-de-sacs can “only be used to the extent that the topography, wetlands or other physical features necessitate their use.”

“They really don’t provide connectivity and ease of access to other areas of the city,” Mr. Olson said.

In 1998, when the preliminary plan for Rosewood’s fifth addition was approved, the subdivision included three cul-de-sacs, Mr. Olson said. The developer agreed to make two of them through streets but insisted that the remaining one was vital to the project. The single cul-de-sac provoked vigorous debate in the planning commission before the revised plan was finally approved in April, with two dissenting votes.

In her blog, Tracy Davis, one of the commissioners who voted no, wrote a few days later that the city was essentially sanctioning “cul-de-sac starter castles and monotonous ’burb developments.”

Don Mitchell, professor of geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, grew up on a cul-de-sac in Moraga, Calif., and has seen both sides of the debate. “It’s a quiet street that all us kids could play on without too much fear of traffic,” he said. “And there was pretty good surveillance by our parents when we were out in the street.”

But those advantages can also be disadvantages. “They’re quite insular,” he said. “They tend to almost induce a circle-the-wagons sort of atmosphere, so anybody becomes a stranger who’s on the street. They don’t often act like public streets. We always knew when there was someone who wasn’t a regular on our street, and yet they had every right to be there.”

Originating in England, where they have also come under criticism lately, the cul-de-sac has evolved since it was introduced in the United States in the late 1920’s.

Eugenie L. Birch, chairwoman of the department of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, noted that in Radburn, N.J., site of some of the earliest American cul-de-sacs, the street pattern had been used to create more public space.

“The houses were designed so the backs of the houses would be on the cul-de-sac,” she said. “In other words, the cul-de-sac was a service street.” The fronts of the houses looked out on either pedestrian walkways or large interior parks.

But even that created a problem in the 1920’s, before the clothes dryer became a standard appliance in the home, Dr. Birch said. Residents debated whether their clotheslines should be in the backs of their houses and therefore on the cul-de-sacs or away from the street and in the fronts of their houses.

“I become suspicious when people just say no, no, no, you can’t have them, because there are lots of ways one can be imaginative about them,” Dr. Birch said. “Unfortunately, most of our land development has not been particularly imaginative about them.”

Although planners may be turning away from cul-de-sacs, people who actually live on them are willing to fight for them.

Just a 25-mile drive north from Northfield, the cul-de-sac is quite welcome in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan. By 2005, the number had grown to more than 650 in the community of 69,000 residents, from about 100 in the late 1970’s when the population was about 17,000.

But in 2004, residents of Wellington Way were dismayed when they learned that their flat-ended cul-de-sac would become a through street as the adjacent Diamond T Ranch, a horse ranch, is developed into a residential subdivision called Steeplechase of Eagan. They petitioned the city to keep their cul-de-sac, but the Dakota County Plat Commission insisted that the cul-de-sac, which had been planned for a through street as far back as 1985, be extended.

Residents argued that when they bought their homes nothing indicated that the street would ever be anything but a dead end. Eagan officials sided with the residents, and the plan, which was also disputed because of wetlands use and density, went back and forth between the city and the county for a year before the city finally relented.

Since then, Eagan has posted signs on about 40 cul-de-sacs saying “Future Through Street.”

“They have been very highly regarded in Eagan, and there has never been any issue about getting rid of them or taking them out of our design standards,” said Thomas L. Hedges, city administrator in Eagan and a cul-de-sac resident.

Brent D. Ryan, associate professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-director of the City Design Center, grew up on a cul-de-sac in Branford, Conn.

He noted that by about 1960, cul-de-sacs became the favored street pattern, and in many places the street grid was discouraged or forbidden.

“Now we’re creating new sets of standards that either permit or require gridded street systems again,” he said.

“The thing you can say most about cul-de-sacs,” he added, “is what goes around comes around.”