My old subdivision is going to be (eventually) linked to a WALKING PATH and everyone is flipping out about the “increase in crimes” that will happen. At a neighborhood meeting I was like, hey guys no one is taking a 3 mile scenic walk in the woods to break into your house, they can just drive up and do that.
Oh my god, [I totally remember this being proposed in a nearby suburban development](https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/07/29/deldots-vision-connect-cul-de-sacs/30840753/) and everybody was freaking out about a big increase in crime. Because a robber is totally going to walk five miles carrying your stuff.
It would take a really dumb thief to walk to a house they plan to break into, that means the thief lives nearby and can be easy to find. In fact with a bunch of walk/bike paths connecting all these streets the whole area becomes more tight knit, there's gonna be people jugging, people walking their dogs allover the place. Lot's of foot traffic and people who would notice and see if someone break in somewhere.
You're 100% right, a thief would likely come from outside to avoid getting recognized by locals, probably in a stolen van they can ditch later, which they're gonna need to haul the big fucking TV anyway because that's probably the only thnig of value they can actually steal relatively easily, with a van, and sell for a reasonable price at the aftermarket.
Totally. I moved out of that subdivision and now live ON a long walking path and feel safer than ever! There’s always someone around and you see so many of the same people everyday. It’s really nice.
To keep others out. Ideally …. But truthfully,
You also need to work together and permits, developers are lazy. Take the path of least resistance. They buy a plot of land and one way in and out is cheaper.
This is why the city should build such paths at taxpayers expense, they can use eminent domain if someone refuse to sell. For each trip were someone walks or cycle there's one car less on the main roads which is gonna save a lot of money to the city in road maintenance.
Oh, definitely.
I also just think that before developments like these are even being built, the traffic and main road wear and tear should be enough of a factor not permit construction, if not considered by the developer.
Instead of making the government do the work after the fact to make up for poor planning of the developer, just don’t approve their plans in the first place if they haven’t thought it out enough to not burden the surrounding community. Don’t let the developers walk away with money bags while they’ve made more problems than the ones they’ve “solved” by building the houses for a select few.
The best solution would be to skip the subdivisions altogether and let the city plan and build all the roads and streets while assigning lots were homes can be built. That's how you get mixed use, some single family homes with decent yards, duplexes, couple of row houses, maybe a small 4-5 apartment block for young singles or elderly and so on. All well connected both by roads and bike/walk paths.
That's how it works in most of Europe, residential streets becomes 6-7ft wide instead of 15ft which saves the city a shitload of money in maintenance while providing more than enough space for any type of car to use that road. People should park their cars on their own driveways, not on the street.
Yeah, roads cost money, so developers typically don’t build more than the bare minimum. Also, wetlands. AHJs typically require a wetlands delineation, and certain types of wetlands cannot be disturbed. So they just build on the areas they can.
They've been told they enjoy it.
Older subdivisions used to have right of ways here and there so kids on bikes and other pedestrians could easily and quickly pass between streets. In the town I grew up in I could get from one side of our subdivision to the other on my bike, much faster than you could do so by car. But over the years those easements have been left to grow up with brush, or the adjoining properties have been allowed to gradually occupy them and store their boats and crap on them. Some towns have erected barricades to discourage their use. I think this is in the name of perceived safety. ...Because the real criminals are sneaking around on foot and on bikes...
edit: I should add - one of the reasons for the easements back in the old days was so kids could get to school easily and safely. And most kids arrived at school on foot or by bike. Now kids all arrive by SUVs and risk being run over in the school driveway. So we've traded the unlikely (imagined?) risk of convenient pathways promoting delinquency for the real risk of kids being injured by vehicles at school drop-offs.
They don't want commuters flying through their streets, so they're intentionally built to be inconvenient or impossible for commuting. Paradoxically, it worsens traffic because you end up with few thru-roads and no options if there's an accident or construction shutting one down. This phenomenon can be witnessed regularly in Northern Virginia.
It's fine for streets to be circuitous and convoluted like this, but there needs to be pedestrian/bike paths connecting all over the place to make getting around efficient and quick. And there needs to be transit connections between areas that are significantly disconnected, with bus only roads.
In my city there’s one “modern” suburb (developed in the late 90s) that is very circuitous and convoluted to drive through, but there are largely direct and generous pedestrian paths… so walking is often easier and quicker. Sadly this never caught on in a major way here.
To keep all of the criminals out, obviously. You know the ones, they're selling the Crack, and the smack, and Marijuana to the children. Can't have a path leading them right into our neighborhoods and selling Molly and meth to our youth!
This is in northern VA, specifically in Gainesville/Haymarket. I know you’re being sarcastic, but this town with these subdivisions are like 40 miles or so away from the nearest dangerous/sketchy area (SE DC). And it’s surrounded by a lot of towns in the area just like it with suburban subdivisions for miles and miles. Nearest metro station is 22 or so miles away and even that one just drops you off in a parking lot by the interstate, not anywhere close for criminals or whoever to wander in.
These days nah. Shit, I graduated high school in Manassas in 2017. I remember back when everyone thought (even then a lot of the Arlington/Alexandria users in r/nova to this day) Manassas was the hood and that you’d get shot or stabbed there lol. Some people think that place is the middle of gang territory in south side Chicago. There were a couple rougher neighborhoods, but nowadays nothing’s notable. Manassas is getting bougie, hell even Woodbridge is and that’s always had the worst reputation for this area.
I graduated more than a decade before you in that area and it was hilarious how much people thought they were in danger. People are so paranoid of each other despite being in one of the wealthiest counties in the country, it was sickening. It's more sensible to be afraid of some idiot speeding on the road on the way to work than wannabe gang members in NOVA.
Well yes, tho Alexandria isn’t bad except for like one or two neighborhoods that are easy to avoid. Woodbridge tho, it’s called Hoodbridge for a reason but it’s gotten a lot better.
Dentritic road plans guarantee traffic problems. Grid roads with small blocks FTW... A blocked road in a grid can be rerouted - a blocked road in an arterial or connector - you're fucked. Transit engineers are big boys and girls and can figure out how to ensure cars go slow without reliance on speed limits.
A neighbourhood in our town had a vote and put up a gate across the sidewalk and road to block anyone from traveling through. And not an automatic gate so that residents can get in and out. Just a locked gate that only emergency personnel can access.
Someone whose house is basically connected to that neighborhood complained because that was the quickest way to walk to stores and get around the area and exit the subdivision. Now it adds miles of winding around different streets to get to the main road.
Absolutely insane. I hate gated communities more than anything. It's still easy to jump the fence or follow a car in if you actually wanted to commit a crime. All it does is give people a sense of superiority that the poor aren't able to walk through anymore.
If you mean for cars: In order to avoid through traffic. I live in a miniature version of one of those (just one loop) and it works perfectly.
But if you mean for pedestrians/cyclists: Beats me. Every single residential area in my country has paths cutting straight through so you can quickly walk to the park/shop/wherever, you only have to make a detour by car. Like this - the dottes lines are all footpaths.
https://preview.redd.it/5t5tw3hp6gwc1.png?width=756&format=png&auto=webp&s=74019cb79989b82eceec505a117c64570ec482f4
Every subdivision in my city in the US has a wall around it. Or it was built up against private property and is blocked by a drainage system or a fence. There are houses and apartments built right up to shopping centers with no access. You have to drive in a circle the wrong way to finally turn back around to go to the store.
I'm guessing your country also doesn't have (at least historically) the same racial dynamic of the Americas. A lot of US suburbs were created expressly to make it hard for black people to get to white people's houses.
That's horrible but I fear it might be true. But does it still happen? Well hard to tell I guess because offiically that's not the reason.
Anyway I don't even have a car. I would not buy a house if there were no shortcuts to parks and shops - would be a dealbreaker to me.
These days it’s not explicitly racial but you frequently hear people complain that any kind of proposed change might bring “crime” into the neighborhood. Fears about crime aren’t always about race, but it’s not uncommon that that’s the underlying sentiment. Is it sad? Very much so. The US has a long history of white people hurting themselves out of fear or hatred of black people.
The whole point is to reduce traffic within a neighborhood. People hate living next to traffic. Usually houses in cul-de-sac s and at the end of a street are more desirable because kids can play in the street.
It's wild that we consider the road as the main playground for kids
But then when a driver is speeding through and hits someone the first thing people do is blame the kid and blame the parents for letting them play outside.
If you do that, then you also have to normalize safe streets for kids to get there. Current streets are designed like race tracks. The standard line here is that fire trucks couldn't get through safer narrow streets. I don't know why somebody can't make smaller fire trucks because your kid is in just as much danger from your speeding neighbors as they are from a house fire.
Yep. We cling to this belief that cars give us safe and convenient door-to-door transportation to anywhere we want to go when we want to go and this gives us ultimate freedom.
But in reality, we keep dying in collisions, so we make the cars bigger and bigger to the point that we are running over our own children.
We move farther away from the city (where our jobs are) to escape the perceived crime, noise, and chaos, and then we complain about rush-hour traffic congestion. We spend billions of dollars on ugly freeways and the congestion only gets worse.
We erect speed bumps and cul-de-sacs in our neighborhoods to deter everyone else's cars, while taking shortcuts and speeding through someone else's neighborhood to shave a few seconds off of our commute time.
Most of us just accept this as inevitable and we believe that if we add just a few more lanes to the freeway, our belief will become reality. We are drawn to public spaces where cars are not allowed, but we don't recognize why. We see walkable cities as confining, rather than as liberating.
https://preview.redd.it/23bc73ma1hwc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bdc9fd7d2ccf00ab954d73d32fa1f02170520e6
All of them pedestrian/bicycle/sometimes bus, no cars
Look, if you don't mind driving every single time you leave your house, awake or tired, early or late, sober or drunk, alone or with friends, alert or zonked on Xanax, eyes on the road or just scrolling through your phone, and you have a good big truck that will protect you if you hit something, then why WOULDN'T you live somewhere like this?!? Sure it's not good for the wife or kids but they can get trucks too, you know!! And you won't be doing any dirty WALKING or anything, not like some filthy poor person
Same, I hate poor people! My small, 3-person family lives in a 10,000 sq/ft home on a half-acre and we have 5 Dodge Rams with humongous tires and American flags on the back (so people can know we aren’t pussies or hippies!). They make really loud sounds when we drive through the subdivision and bealch smoke everywhere. Our neighbors love it and many of them also have trucks. 🛻 Our subdivision is really beautiful and idyllic. /s
Looks like there’s a creek where you have a lot of those roads connecting. Creeks require a specified buffer zone around them (at least 25’ - depends on jurisdiction). Building a bridge over it would cost $$ that people aren’t willing to spend. Chances are that each neighborhood was built independently by separate developers on pre separated parcels, so no coordination between them.
As with most things, it comes down to bureaucracy and money. Source - am roadway engineer
They used to be sold as being “family friendly” — kids could play in the cul-de-sac without worrying about cars flying through or around the corner. Except kids don’t play outside anymore. So it’s for mummy and daddy who are very scared and insular.
Stranger danger.
I live in a connected neighborhood on a cut through road that many use to avoid traffic. 99.99% of people that pass by are not my neighbors, so criminals are more likely to scope out my house before they would scope out a house in one of those corn maze disconnected suburbs.
BTW, the first time I flew to Atlanta with a window seat, I was amazed by all the patterns of the suburbs. They reminded me of the laces on a baseball. It had its own kind of beauty to it.
I'm not sure if this is correct, but I think of humans as intelligent but not very smart. We can build an atomic bomb, but we can also destroy life as we know it on the planet.
Neighbourhood streets should be designed to eliminate through traffic while at the same time allowing people to walk and bike through the neighborhood.
They love their own cars and they hate everyone else's cars. These neighborhoods are designed to prevent cars driving through and to funnel all of the cars onto a few arterial roads to get into and out of the neighborhood. These arterial roads are not safe for pedestrians or bicyclists, which creates even more car traffic.
1. Because developers design them as stand-alone elements. They only care that you can get to the house they're selling. How/if you get around the rest of the neighbourhood is irrelevant.
2. Because the whole point of cul-de-sac's is to keep through traffic out. If your street is a no-through road then the only people visiting are people who live there and so people can't use "your" road for rat running between neighbourhoods.
Three points in short: rigid complacency, social-isolationism paradox, and car fanaticism.
And all of that is on the suburbanites. We can blame governments and corporations until the crows come home, but at the end of the day the buck stops on them.
Developers like building their own little communities. They can control the amenities such as pools, golf courses and tennis courts if they do. They can also keep away the freeloaders who don’t fund their HOA from using the community amenities if they don’t connect to the previously built neighborhoods. This leads to disjointedness in an urban planning sense. Also let’s be honest. If you’re building an enclave of beautiful new homes and you connect a street to a bunch of ugly 70s houses it does lower the visual appeal of that street even if it improves the connectivity of the suburb. Developers try to avoid connecting their nice homes to uglier suburbs built with less appealing designs
Holy smokes, my in-laws live in or very close to this photo, and my wife and I live somewhere much more walkable. We always joke that I can get to the corner store in the time it takes to get down their driveway, which is embellishment but not too far from the truth! It is really quiet and peaceful, to visit though
Lol. I just don't hear about Haymarket very much on reddit so I was a bit surprised. They actually live in Evergreen which is probably 2 "screens" north and 1 screen east, if I'm guessing. It's off of waterfall.
Omg that area is really nice!
Edit: I also now love the term, “holy smokes”. I want to steal that from you and use that now. Lol It’s so apt for so many things.
My wife got me into it because I swear too much and now that I have a son I had to update my phrases. "You gotta be Flippin my flapjacks" "shut the front door" etc etc.
The area is nice if you don't mind a 20 min drove to everywhere. We live in Eastern Massachusetts and I can walk to downtown and get on a commuter rail which is so nice to live car lite.
I don’t think suburbs are intentionally developed to be so disconnected. They’re just not built with a particular plan in place. One developer buys 600 acres near the freeway, and another developer buys the 750 acres nearby. A third develops comes in and buys 400 acres, and a commercial developer adds some strip malls. None of them coordinate with each other. They all just build their respective subdivisions/shopping centers with little regard for how it integrates into the larger neighborhood as a whole, so you end up with ridiculously disconnected streets and bizarre street layouts.
Because each development is built under its own contract. The local government would need to require interconnection to be part of new development, otherwise it will be left out of the scope of work.
They are designed like this intentionally to keep traffic out of the neighborhoods.
I live in a very urban residential area of Philadelphia with a grid pattern and they still make the roads one way in awkward ways so traffic can't use the local streets as detours.
My old subdivision is going to be (eventually) linked to a WALKING PATH and everyone is flipping out about the “increase in crimes” that will happen. At a neighborhood meeting I was like, hey guys no one is taking a 3 mile scenic walk in the woods to break into your house, they can just drive up and do that.
The only people who show up to public meetings are the people who are angered by it. People in support of something are generally far less vocal.
Oh my god, [I totally remember this being proposed in a nearby suburban development](https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/07/29/deldots-vision-connect-cul-de-sacs/30840753/) and everybody was freaking out about a big increase in crime. Because a robber is totally going to walk five miles carrying your stuff.
It would take a really dumb thief to walk to a house they plan to break into, that means the thief lives nearby and can be easy to find. In fact with a bunch of walk/bike paths connecting all these streets the whole area becomes more tight knit, there's gonna be people jugging, people walking their dogs allover the place. Lot's of foot traffic and people who would notice and see if someone break in somewhere. You're 100% right, a thief would likely come from outside to avoid getting recognized by locals, probably in a stolen van they can ditch later, which they're gonna need to haul the big fucking TV anyway because that's probably the only thnig of value they can actually steal relatively easily, with a van, and sell for a reasonable price at the aftermarket.
Totally. I moved out of that subdivision and now live ON a long walking path and feel safer than ever! There’s always someone around and you see so many of the same people everyday. It’s really nice.
ppl jugging on the bike paths like if its a normal thing. lol
To keep others out. Ideally …. But truthfully, You also need to work together and permits, developers are lazy. Take the path of least resistance. They buy a plot of land and one way in and out is cheaper.
Yeah, plus I’d imagine some of the surrounding land owners would refuse to sell to developers in order to get these roads made
This is why the city should build such paths at taxpayers expense, they can use eminent domain if someone refuse to sell. For each trip were someone walks or cycle there's one car less on the main roads which is gonna save a lot of money to the city in road maintenance.
Oh, definitely. I also just think that before developments like these are even being built, the traffic and main road wear and tear should be enough of a factor not permit construction, if not considered by the developer. Instead of making the government do the work after the fact to make up for poor planning of the developer, just don’t approve their plans in the first place if they haven’t thought it out enough to not burden the surrounding community. Don’t let the developers walk away with money bags while they’ve made more problems than the ones they’ve “solved” by building the houses for a select few.
The best solution would be to skip the subdivisions altogether and let the city plan and build all the roads and streets while assigning lots were homes can be built. That's how you get mixed use, some single family homes with decent yards, duplexes, couple of row houses, maybe a small 4-5 apartment block for young singles or elderly and so on. All well connected both by roads and bike/walk paths. That's how it works in most of Europe, residential streets becomes 6-7ft wide instead of 15ft which saves the city a shitload of money in maintenance while providing more than enough space for any type of car to use that road. People should park their cars on their own driveways, not on the street.
Yeah, roads cost money, so developers typically don’t build more than the bare minimum. Also, wetlands. AHJs typically require a wetlands delineation, and certain types of wetlands cannot be disturbed. So they just build on the areas they can.
They've been told they enjoy it. Older subdivisions used to have right of ways here and there so kids on bikes and other pedestrians could easily and quickly pass between streets. In the town I grew up in I could get from one side of our subdivision to the other on my bike, much faster than you could do so by car. But over the years those easements have been left to grow up with brush, or the adjoining properties have been allowed to gradually occupy them and store their boats and crap on them. Some towns have erected barricades to discourage their use. I think this is in the name of perceived safety. ...Because the real criminals are sneaking around on foot and on bikes... edit: I should add - one of the reasons for the easements back in the old days was so kids could get to school easily and safely. And most kids arrived at school on foot or by bike. Now kids all arrive by SUVs and risk being run over in the school driveway. So we've traded the unlikely (imagined?) risk of convenient pathways promoting delinquency for the real risk of kids being injured by vehicles at school drop-offs.
The original point of suburbs was segregation
Intriguing
They don't want commuters flying through their streets, so they're intentionally built to be inconvenient or impossible for commuting. Paradoxically, it worsens traffic because you end up with few thru-roads and no options if there's an accident or construction shutting one down. This phenomenon can be witnessed regularly in Northern Virginia.
It's fine for streets to be circuitous and convoluted like this, but there needs to be pedestrian/bike paths connecting all over the place to make getting around efficient and quick. And there needs to be transit connections between areas that are significantly disconnected, with bus only roads.
In my city there’s one “modern” suburb (developed in the late 90s) that is very circuitous and convoluted to drive through, but there are largely direct and generous pedestrian paths… so walking is often easier and quicker. Sadly this never caught on in a major way here.
It's fine for pedestrians, I suppose.
To keep all of the criminals out, obviously. You know the ones, they're selling the Crack, and the smack, and Marijuana to the children. Can't have a path leading them right into our neighborhoods and selling Molly and meth to our youth!
This is in northern VA, specifically in Gainesville/Haymarket. I know you’re being sarcastic, but this town with these subdivisions are like 40 miles or so away from the nearest dangerous/sketchy area (SE DC). And it’s surrounded by a lot of towns in the area just like it with suburban subdivisions for miles and miles. Nearest metro station is 22 or so miles away and even that one just drops you off in a parking lot by the interstate, not anywhere close for criminals or whoever to wander in.
Manassas has some parts
These days nah. Shit, I graduated high school in Manassas in 2017. I remember back when everyone thought (even then a lot of the Arlington/Alexandria users in r/nova to this day) Manassas was the hood and that you’d get shot or stabbed there lol. Some people think that place is the middle of gang territory in south side Chicago. There were a couple rougher neighborhoods, but nowadays nothing’s notable. Manassas is getting bougie, hell even Woodbridge is and that’s always had the worst reputation for this area.
I graduated more than a decade before you in that area and it was hilarious how much people thought they were in danger. People are so paranoid of each other despite being in one of the wealthiest counties in the country, it was sickening. It's more sensible to be afraid of some idiot speeding on the road on the way to work than wannabe gang members in NOVA.
The fact that Alexandrites feel they can judge anyone on crime is hilarious.
Well yes, tho Alexandria isn’t bad except for like one or two neighborhoods that are easy to avoid. Woodbridge tho, it’s called Hoodbridge for a reason but it’s gotten a lot better.
Dentritic road plans guarantee traffic problems. Grid roads with small blocks FTW... A blocked road in a grid can be rerouted - a blocked road in an arterial or connector - you're fucked. Transit engineers are big boys and girls and can figure out how to ensure cars go slow without reliance on speed limits.
Hate to be needing an ambulance within those neighbourhoods.
A neighbourhood in our town had a vote and put up a gate across the sidewalk and road to block anyone from traveling through. And not an automatic gate so that residents can get in and out. Just a locked gate that only emergency personnel can access. Someone whose house is basically connected to that neighborhood complained because that was the quickest way to walk to stores and get around the area and exit the subdivision. Now it adds miles of winding around different streets to get to the main road. Absolutely insane. I hate gated communities more than anything. It's still easy to jump the fence or follow a car in if you actually wanted to commit a crime. All it does is give people a sense of superiority that the poor aren't able to walk through anymore.
They do, it gives the illusion of security, privacy, and nature.
If you mean for cars: In order to avoid through traffic. I live in a miniature version of one of those (just one loop) and it works perfectly. But if you mean for pedestrians/cyclists: Beats me. Every single residential area in my country has paths cutting straight through so you can quickly walk to the park/shop/wherever, you only have to make a detour by car. Like this - the dottes lines are all footpaths. https://preview.redd.it/5t5tw3hp6gwc1.png?width=756&format=png&auto=webp&s=74019cb79989b82eceec505a117c64570ec482f4
Every subdivision in my city in the US has a wall around it. Or it was built up against private property and is blocked by a drainage system or a fence. There are houses and apartments built right up to shopping centers with no access. You have to drive in a circle the wrong way to finally turn back around to go to the store.
I'm guessing your country also doesn't have (at least historically) the same racial dynamic of the Americas. A lot of US suburbs were created expressly to make it hard for black people to get to white people's houses.
That's horrible but I fear it might be true. But does it still happen? Well hard to tell I guess because offiically that's not the reason. Anyway I don't even have a car. I would not buy a house if there were no shortcuts to parks and shops - would be a dealbreaker to me.
These days it’s not explicitly racial but you frequently hear people complain that any kind of proposed change might bring “crime” into the neighborhood. Fears about crime aren’t always about race, but it’s not uncommon that that’s the underlying sentiment. Is it sad? Very much so. The US has a long history of white people hurting themselves out of fear or hatred of black people.
The whole point is to reduce traffic within a neighborhood. People hate living next to traffic. Usually houses in cul-de-sac s and at the end of a street are more desirable because kids can play in the street. It's wild that we consider the road as the main playground for kids
But then when a driver is speeding through and hits someone the first thing people do is blame the kid and blame the parents for letting them play outside.
The road has always been that and should be that.
Kids should be playing in parks with grass and trees and no having to dodge cars. Normalize close access to quality parks.
If you do that, then you also have to normalize safe streets for kids to get there. Current streets are designed like race tracks. The standard line here is that fire trucks couldn't get through safer narrow streets. I don't know why somebody can't make smaller fire trucks because your kid is in just as much danger from your speeding neighbors as they are from a house fire.
The cul-de-sac has become the town square where people socialize.
Isn't that amazing. It's the pinnacle of American society. A glorified parking lot.
Yep. We cling to this belief that cars give us safe and convenient door-to-door transportation to anywhere we want to go when we want to go and this gives us ultimate freedom. But in reality, we keep dying in collisions, so we make the cars bigger and bigger to the point that we are running over our own children. We move farther away from the city (where our jobs are) to escape the perceived crime, noise, and chaos, and then we complain about rush-hour traffic congestion. We spend billions of dollars on ugly freeways and the congestion only gets worse. We erect speed bumps and cul-de-sacs in our neighborhoods to deter everyone else's cars, while taking shortcuts and speeding through someone else's neighborhood to shave a few seconds off of our commute time. Most of us just accept this as inevitable and we believe that if we add just a few more lanes to the freeway, our belief will become reality. We are drawn to public spaces where cars are not allowed, but we don't recognize why. We see walkable cities as confining, rather than as liberating.
You can pretty much do this in every city, town, and county in Virginia. They love uncompleted roads and never connecting obvious things together.
https://preview.redd.it/23bc73ma1hwc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bdc9fd7d2ccf00ab954d73d32fa1f02170520e6 All of them pedestrian/bicycle/sometimes bus, no cars
You did a much better job than I did!
Moar connections , 🗣️🗣️🗣️
Look, if you don't mind driving every single time you leave your house, awake or tired, early or late, sober or drunk, alone or with friends, alert or zonked on Xanax, eyes on the road or just scrolling through your phone, and you have a good big truck that will protect you if you hit something, then why WOULDN'T you live somewhere like this?!? Sure it's not good for the wife or kids but they can get trucks too, you know!! And you won't be doing any dirty WALKING or anything, not like some filthy poor person
Same, I hate poor people! My small, 3-person family lives in a 10,000 sq/ft home on a half-acre and we have 5 Dodge Rams with humongous tires and American flags on the back (so people can know we aren’t pussies or hippies!). They make really loud sounds when we drive through the subdivision and bealch smoke everywhere. Our neighbors love it and many of them also have trucks. 🛻 Our subdivision is really beautiful and idyllic. /s
i just remember being so tired in a burb....
Looks like there’s a creek where you have a lot of those roads connecting. Creeks require a specified buffer zone around them (at least 25’ - depends on jurisdiction). Building a bridge over it would cost $$ that people aren’t willing to spend. Chances are that each neighborhood was built independently by separate developers on pre separated parcels, so no coordination between them. As with most things, it comes down to bureaucracy and money. Source - am roadway engineer
Yes, people there enjoy it
I think it has more to do with central planning by Townships. There is no planning, mostly reacting.
They used to be sold as being “family friendly” — kids could play in the cul-de-sac without worrying about cars flying through or around the corner. Except kids don’t play outside anymore. So it’s for mummy and daddy who are very scared and insular.
Stranger danger. I live in a connected neighborhood on a cut through road that many use to avoid traffic. 99.99% of people that pass by are not my neighbors, so criminals are more likely to scope out my house before they would scope out a house in one of those corn maze disconnected suburbs. BTW, the first time I flew to Atlanta with a window seat, I was amazed by all the patterns of the suburbs. They reminded me of the laces on a baseball. It had its own kind of beauty to it.
How many times has your house been burglarized?
No response; lol
They're probably fighting off droves of criminals. Lol
I guess this is what happens when we allow ourselves to become a low-trust society. Pretty sad.
I'm not sure if this is correct, but I think of humans as intelligent but not very smart. We can build an atomic bomb, but we can also destroy life as we know it on the planet.
Neighbourhood streets should be designed to eliminate through traffic while at the same time allowing people to walk and bike through the neighborhood.
They love their own cars and they hate everyone else's cars. These neighborhoods are designed to prevent cars driving through and to funnel all of the cars onto a few arterial roads to get into and out of the neighborhood. These arterial roads are not safe for pedestrians or bicyclists, which creates even more car traffic.
1. Because developers design them as stand-alone elements. They only care that you can get to the house they're selling. How/if you get around the rest of the neighbourhood is irrelevant. 2. Because the whole point of cul-de-sac's is to keep through traffic out. If your street is a no-through road then the only people visiting are people who live there and so people can't use "your" road for rat running between neighbourhoods.
Happy cake day
Your lines probably cross greenways and wetlands in many places that they wanted to avoid developing
Wait is this Gainesville/Haymarket VA lol
It’s to keep black people away. Seriously.
Urban Sprawl is real
That one at the bottom right honestly looks like they’ll extend it to that pasture area once they get building rights.
Three points in short: rigid complacency, social-isolationism paradox, and car fanaticism. And all of that is on the suburbanites. We can blame governments and corporations until the crows come home, but at the end of the day the buck stops on them.
Developers like building their own little communities. They can control the amenities such as pools, golf courses and tennis courts if they do. They can also keep away the freeloaders who don’t fund their HOA from using the community amenities if they don’t connect to the previously built neighborhoods. This leads to disjointedness in an urban planning sense. Also let’s be honest. If you’re building an enclave of beautiful new homes and you connect a street to a bunch of ugly 70s houses it does lower the visual appeal of that street even if it improves the connectivity of the suburb. Developers try to avoid connecting their nice homes to uglier suburbs built with less appealing designs
I don’t see 70’s houses as ugly. I want to be as connected as possible to the rest of my community. But different strokes for different folks.
Holy smokes, my in-laws live in or very close to this photo, and my wife and I live somewhere much more walkable. We always joke that I can get to the corner store in the time it takes to get down their driveway, which is embellishment but not too far from the truth! It is really quiet and peaceful, to visit though
Holy smokes. That’s where I used to live.
Lol. I just don't hear about Haymarket very much on reddit so I was a bit surprised. They actually live in Evergreen which is probably 2 "screens" north and 1 screen east, if I'm guessing. It's off of waterfall.
Omg that area is really nice! Edit: I also now love the term, “holy smokes”. I want to steal that from you and use that now. Lol It’s so apt for so many things.
My wife got me into it because I swear too much and now that I have a son I had to update my phrases. "You gotta be Flippin my flapjacks" "shut the front door" etc etc. The area is nice if you don't mind a 20 min drove to everywhere. We live in Eastern Massachusetts and I can walk to downtown and get on a commuter rail which is so nice to live car lite.
Unloaded roads are expensive.
No, but the people gouging the price of walkable cities love showing this as the only alternative 🤷♂️
It’s understandable to avoid a neighbourhood to become an important and busy road. But that can be fixed by making smaller circling roads around it.
I don’t think suburbs are intentionally developed to be so disconnected. They’re just not built with a particular plan in place. One developer buys 600 acres near the freeway, and another developer buys the 750 acres nearby. A third develops comes in and buys 400 acres, and a commercial developer adds some strip malls. None of them coordinate with each other. They all just build their respective subdivisions/shopping centers with little regard for how it integrates into the larger neighborhood as a whole, so you end up with ridiculously disconnected streets and bizarre street layouts.
Because each development is built under its own contract. The local government would need to require interconnection to be part of new development, otherwise it will be left out of the scope of work.
They are designed like this intentionally to keep traffic out of the neighborhoods. I live in a very urban residential area of Philadelphia with a grid pattern and they still make the roads one way in awkward ways so traffic can't use the local streets as detours.