this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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In the environs of Phoenix, Arizona, on a 17-acre site that once contained a car body shop and some largely derelict buildings, an unusual experiment has emerged that invites Americans to live in a way that is rare outside of fleeting experiences of college, Disneyland or trips to Europe: a walkable, human-scale community devoid of cars.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

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Click here to see the summaryJohnson has the mien of a tech founder, with his company logo T-shirt and fashionable glasses, and was part of the founding team of OpenDoor, an online real estate business.

The development’s buildings are a Mediterranean sugar-cube white accented with ochre, and are clustered together intimately to create inviting courtyards for social gatherings and paved – not asphalt – “paseos”, a word used in Spanish-speaking parts of the US south-west to denote plazas or walkways for strolling.

There is a small car park, although only for visitors, some disgorged by Waymo, the fleet of Google-owned driverless taxis that eerily cruise around Phoenix with their large cameras and disembodied voices to reassure passengers.

To calm any nerves about making the leap to being car-free, Culdesac has struck deals to offer money off Lyft, the ride-sharing service, and free trips on the light rail that runs past the buildings, as well as on-site electric scooters.

Culdesac can be seen, then, as not only a model for more climate-friendly housing – transportation is the US’s largest source of planet-heating emissions and, studies have shown, fuels more of the pollution causing the climate crisis – but as a way of somehow stitching back together communities that have become physically, socially and politically riven, lacking a “third place” to congregate other than dislocated homes and workplaces.

Driving to places is so established as a basic norm that deviation from it can seem not only strange, as evidenced by a lack of pedestrian infrastructure that has contributed to a surge in people dying from being hit by cars in recent years, but even somewhat sinister.


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