When It's Home Sweet Cul-De-Sac

From: Providence Journal Date: 1/22/2007

Jan. 22--Jennifer Goldstein bought a house on a cul-de-sac in North Kingstown with her husband, Adam, in 2003, when Adam was working for Amgen. Adam recently took a job with another biotechnology firm in southern California. Their house went on the market last month.
The Goldsteins have two children, 6 and 2, and their first priority is to find a community with good public schools. The second priority is to find a safe, friendly neighborhood, and Jennifer Goldstein said she finds herself once again drawn to cul-de-sacs.
During a recent house-hunting trip in California, Goldstein found plenty of cul-de-sacs in the suburbs near San Diego, and she noticed that the prices go up as you go "further in the sac." She said that while prices are generally higher, many of the houses she has seen in California have smaller lots than those typically seen in Rhode Island.
Why does she prefer cul-de-sac neighborhoods? They have "less traffic, and more security," Goldstein said. If 10 houses are placed around a circle, she said, "you have ten houses looking at each other." There happen to be 18 houses in her North Kingstown cul-de-sac, Woodmist Way, and "we're away right now. If a moving van pulled up to our house, there would be at least 15 calls to the police" in a matter of minutes.
Goldstein had her second baby, a daughter, one year after moving to Woodmist Way, and out of the 17 neighboring households, "there were only two people that didn't come by with a gift or a card."
"You get that sense of community" in a cul-de-sac, Goldstein said. "You get to know your neighbors."
They may be favored in suburbia, especially with young parents, but to some advocates of Smart Growth and New Urbanism, traditional cul-de-sac developments feed sprawl and promote inefficient use of limited open spaces and municipal resources. Concerned about the rapid development of land, and wishing to encourage sustainable growth, Rhode Island's Division of Planning has recommended that municipalities "discourage cul-de-sac street patterns in favor of interconnected streets that encourage walking."
Critics say many suburban housing developments, with large house lots in isolated areas, also promote reliance on automobiles as the primary means of transportation. New Urbanism is a movement that champions walkable, densely populated "multi-use" neighborhoods that offer a mix of housing types in addition to stores, schools, libraries, offices and other public spaces.
Rhode Island offers generous historic tax credits for developers and homeowners to encourage renovation in older urban and village centers. Many decaying mill sites across the state have been targeted for redevelopment as a result, and many of these projects are "multi-use" and are generally supported by groups such as Grow Smart Rhode Island, an anti-sprawl public interest group.
The state planning division's "Land Use 2025" report, issued last year, outlines state land use policies and plans; many of the concerns and goals in the plan refer to Smart Growth and New Urbanist principles.
Yet in many of Rhode Island's suburban towns, the forces of post-Word War II sprawl grind on unabated. Builders keep building cul-de-sacs, they say, because buyers like them so much.
"We find families really like that style of neighborhood. Cars don't come buzzing through it. Through traffic doesn't exist. There's an appearance, and probably a reality, of safety," said builder Alex Mitchell, of Meridian Custom Homes in Providence.
"Cul-de-sacs really create such great neighborhoods ... because there isn't through traffic," said Realtor Ron Phipps, of Phipps Realty. He said many buyers also find cul-de-sacs more aesthetically pleasing than grid street patterns. Phipps said he recently met with a buyer, a parent who was looking for a house with a "good-sized, level lot" so her sons could play ball outside on her lawn. She also preferred a cul-de-sac, Phipps said, so the boys could play safely near the street.
"We have a great deal of land that comes in with a cul-de-sac plan," said Merrick Cook, interim planning director in Cumberland. Town regulations limit the length of a cul-de-sac to 600 feet, and anything longer requires a waiver from the Planning Board.
"The Planning Board is fairly reluctant to grant waivers," Cook said. "Accessibility is really a big concern."
Most communities require room for garbage collection and public safety vehicles to turn around. And some municipalities, including Cumberland and Woonsocket, limit the overall length of cul-de-sacs. "At a certain point, a long dead-end street is a public safety issue," said Joel D. Mathews, Woonsocket's planning director.
The location and configuration of many subdivisions are such that they can't be connected to existing neighborhoods, Cook said. Issues with wetlands, and geographic and topographic features, can limit options. Builders find "you have to take whatever access ... will make it work, and oftentimes, that's a cul-de-sac."
"For small parcels that cannot easily be connected to other streets, sometimes [cul-de-sacs] are the only way to go," Bristol planner Ed Tanner agreed.
"We try to discourage them if possible," Cook said. "They are accepted if they meet certain design standards."
"In rural areas, cul-de-sacs can be a good use of land," said David Schweid, interim town planner in Charlestown and a part-time town planner in Exeter. They can be particularly well-suited to small subdivisions with 8 to 16 lots, he said, but they are often less desirable for larger subdivisions. "There are very valid planning reasons why you don't want a lot of cul-de-sacs," Schweid said, "but in a rural area they're not always a bad idea."
Schweid pointed to the ideas and designs of conservation planner and author Randall G. Arendt, a Narragansett resident, who has presented "real alternatives" for suburban and rural cluster developments that combine housing with open space (see related story).
Mitchell said building regulations vary from town to town, and some municipalities are more open than others to creative development ideas.
"I think they're a great idea," Mitchell said of multi-use developments, "but it can be really tough to pull off due to local zoning regulations." Mitchell pointed to South Kingstown as an example of a community that is more open to new concepts. He recently completed a 38-lot subdivision there, and exceptions to the regulations were allowed to save more trees and leave more space untouched, he said.
Phipps said zoning rules are "well-intentioned" but often "preclude creativity" for builders and developers. "You end up with a formula that makes doing something creative with land a real challenge," he said.
Despite a cooling in the residential real estate market last year, Rhode Island's population density and small size will ensure continued development pressures.
Mathews said Woonsocket is "about 90 percent built out," but there were 60 single-family houses built in the city last year. "There has been quite a bit of interest in the few scraps of land that are left," he said.