Car-Free Neighborhood Being Built in Arizona

Car-Free Neighborhood Being Built in Arizona
Car-Free Neighborhood Being Built in Arizona
Culdesac
  • A developer named Culdesac is building an apartment complex with 636 units in Tempe, Arizona, that it claims to be the first in the country to ban private cars.
  • There is no parking, either on-site or off-site, for residents.
  • There will still be plenty of transportation options—just not private cars—and the developer intends to take this idea to other U.S. cities next.

    If something is described as "car-free," we're generally not interested in reading any further. There isn't much that is more antithetical to what we are all about at C/D. But we want to call your attention to a new community in Tempe, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, that is deliberately being built with a "zero residential parking" mandate and declares itself the first sign of a coming "post-car era."

    The development, Culdesac Tempe, says it's going to be the first residential community in the United States with a ban on cars. Not only can people not drive inside the boundaries of the development; there also won't be a parking spot for any of the 1000 renters living in the community, whether on- or off-site. The $140 million development will be the first for Culdesac, which has raised $10 million in venture capital funding and states in an article called "Introducing Culdesac" that it plans to build other such developments around the United States.

    The community will be designed to be walkable, with both public and private transit options easily accessible for residents. Within the development will be a grocery store, a co-working space, a coffee shop, and other spaces and retail for residents. The development is located along the Valley Metro Rail light-rail system, and Culdesac also says there will be a shuttle bus, designated ride-sharing pickup areas, and scooters and bikes for short-distance travel. Car sharing will allow residents to travel outside the reach of the other transit options.

    In the introductory article about Culdesac, CEO Ryan Johnson writes that "cars are exceptionally needy" and use up more than their share of space, resources, and environment. Urban areas are increasingly reconsidering the use of space and the role that cars play, especially as cities become more and more congested and polluted as a result of transportation.

    Last month, the city of San Francisco approved a $604 million project to ban private vehicles on Market Street and renovate the space for public transit and pedestrians. In downtown Detroit, what was formerly a street open to traffic is now a public space completely closed to cars. Oslo, Norway, banned cars on some streets and replaced all of its on-street parking with bike lanes and public spaces, effectively ridding the city of cars.

    New York City has embarked on its own projects to bolster the viability of public transit on its streets. In early October, the city banned private vehicles other than buses—including taxis and Uber or other ride-sharing vehicles—on 14th Street, a central artery in Manhattan that previously saw 21,000 vehicles a day.

    But Culdesac Tempe will be the first community in the U.S., according to its founders, to be built specifically as a car-free neighborhood. The absolute lack of parking required a specific exception from the city of Tempe; typically, there are parking requirements for new developments so they don't contribute to parking shortages in cities.

    Nonetheless, it remains to be revealed who is going to live there. For all the trend pieces written about millennials not buying cars, they are, and they're doing so at the same rates as the generation before them. Automotive News projected in 2017 that millennials are expected to represent 40 percent of the U.S. new-vehicle market by the end of the decade.

    Culdesac Tempe is being built on a template that leaves out cars, but the surrounding areas were built for cars, or at least with the assumption that cars were how people got around. That, coupled with the heat—four months of the year in Tempe have average temperatures of 100 degrees or higher—could make travel outside the development challenging.

    Construction started this month, and it is slated to open in the fall of next year. Then what? Culdesac CEO Johnson writes: "Shoutout to cities like Denver, Dallas, and Raleigh-Durham: We are looking at you next."

    Source:caranddriver.com