I'm just thinking about the status quo in America. Like, we all have cars, we all drive them, we all think they're totally normal, and yet we do fear them for our kids. Like, how many people are gonna let their kids just go outside and play? They might frame it as “stranger danger,” but a lot of times they're just scared of them getting hit by a car in the road.
And of course, that makes sense if you're talking about, like, some big rural highway or suburban stroad or something. But, like, people even act that way with this kind of fear of cars (reasonably, logically) in their own subdivision.
My subdivision is literally a loop. It’s just a loop with, like, a little connecting road connecting the two pieces of the loop. So, like, a figure eight. And people are really scared of kids going to the road. And I struggle with this because I want my kids to have at least some sense of agency, but I don’t want them to, like, die.
And the thing is, even though it’s a residential road, the width is still too wide. That’s the thing. You look at European or Japanese neighborhood streets. They’re a lot narrower, usually, which automatically, geometrically forces people to psychologically just slow down a little bit. So it’s not as scary for kids. If you look at Japanese neighborhoods, people literally walk in the middle of the street because they’re so small and so narrow and the buildings are right up against it. The street is safe.
So here, we have 70 years of cultural knowledge of how cars work and how to stay safe from them, and what is our solution? In what neighborhood can kids finally play in the street with impunity, without being squished or without their parents freaking out about them being squished?
Cul-de-sacs. That is literally it.
But even in a cul-de-sac neighborhood, what percent of houses are actually at the end of the cul-de-sac? Obviously, very few. A lot of times these cul-de-sac neighborhood streets are just as wide as any other road. Our traffic engineers don’t seem to have put two and two together about width of roads and streets. So a lot of times, people will blast from their end of the cul-de-sac way up through the neighborhood to get out onto the main road. So there’s a lot of unsafe driving happening between the arterial and the end of the cul-de-sac.
So it's literally those privileged few; those privileged three, four, or five houses at the fat end of the cul-de-sac; they get to enjoy the “cars-not-squishing-kids zone.” And that is apparently, in suburbia, our solution to keeping kids safe from cars:
- Don’t let them go anywhere unless you live at the very, very end of the cul-de-sac.
- Then you can play in the little round part of the cul-de-sac.
And that’s it.
And apparently most of us think that that is a sufficient solution for the problem cars pose to children. I’m just like, is that the best we could do in 70 years? That’s not great.
You're still building everything too big. I live in a safe cul de sac because the road is so tight, delivery vans have to reverse down it. I wish people wouldn't park on the pavement but nobody is zooming anywhere, it's impossible til you go round three corners to the main road (and the road before that has speed bumps).
So long as people expect to live on big lots, it's going to be tricky to pair that with narrow roads with enough street furniture to really slow cars down.
I mean I'm totally agreeing with you about the status quo but it has to be a holistic move away from the American suburban dream.
Our loop neighborhood road is 16 feet wide, but that doesn't stop a not insignificant group of people from choosing to drive 40-50 MPH down the street. I also have neighbors whose kids actually ride their bikes to the end of the loop by the main road and when they go to get to the school bus in the morning and then ride them home after school. It is a 6 minute walk to the furthest house from the main road.
The laziness and apparent urgency to hurry everywhere is ingrained in Americans from birth.
Yep, we've made a society where you pay to have less drivers go by where you live, because drivers suck, but then everyone drives if they can (everyone doesn't drive in the USA. About 35 percent of people can't drive (young, old, disabled) and a further 15 percent don't have access to a car. It's fifty percent of people here in the USA that are excluding the other fifty percent from using the public right-of-way without two tons of body armor).
Older neighborhoods in the city I live in often has alleys behind the house. While drivers still use these alleys to get to their garages, these are narrow and the speeds are low, so I'd think these are more likely to be suitable as a place to play instead of the real road or in lieu of a cul-de-sac.
In my opinion, alleys should have never been abandoned in modern building practices--it prevents curb cuts and driveways from interrupting sidewalks. Additionally, houses get to keep their actual facades, and the residents could decorate their front yard however they like. The front of houses being unique and reflective of its residents contribute a lot to the "feel" of the neighborhood. It is far superior from having a garage door as the primary feature in a home's facade.
Just as a commentary, I grew up in South East Asia. While it is true that neighborhood I grew up in had much narrower streets than anything in North America, I don't think that was the largest contributor to the possibility of street play. Car ownership was pretty common in my neighborhood. Each house had 1-2 cars, so the streets could be busy at times. However, work-life balance is horrid there, that a child's schedule is completely out of phase with a parent's schedule. Kids would get home from school in the early afternoon (1-3pm), and parents wouldn't come home from work until the evening (7-8pm). This meant that traffic is low during prime playtime (4-6pm).
Obviously, having poor work-life balance is bad, but the combination of kids being way more independent and parents being too busy to be home was beneficial for neighborhood play.
I must be missing cultural context here, I spent my youth playing "hockey" on the road during winter and I wasn't living in a cup de sac.
It can work, safely, in low traffic areas.
Said it yourself, in your youth. Times have changed, things are a lot more violent now
just adding my random semi-related 2¢ as someone who lives at the very apex of a cul-de-sac, every single time i am entering or leaving i drive really slowly because my neighbors idiotically let their cat roam outside and he has no fear of cars whatsoever, so im constantly watching for the flash of orange. i wish people cared about their pets as they do their kids, its so frustrating being the only one that gives a fuck about this cat's life.
The only culdesac neighborhood that I've truly liked had bike paths connecting them all together along a trail to both the school and shops. Cars had to take the long way around while kids and adults alike can still ride between a lot faster. Surprisingly this was in Houston of all places.
Its still single family zoning, but at least it tries to do more with it compared to other neighborhoods.
This is key! Make people realise that if they're on foot (or bike) they get shortcuts. I hate seeing neighbourhood designs that have everything fenced off, so that pedestrians have to take the same route as a car.
You might like letgrow.org, though last time I checked they weren't terribly infrastructure focused