Developer Plans Car-Free Neighborhood in 'Walker's Nightmare'

Well known for being a walker’s nightmare, the metropolitan area of Phoenix will now be home to the first car-free neighborhood in the country. Publications have deemed Phoenix as the world’s least sustainable city, a suburbanite wasteland, and it makes the list for one of the worst cities for pedestrians, according to the New York Times. But a developer plans to funnel $170 million into building Culdesac Tempe, which will host 761 apartments, 16,000 square feet of retail, and 1,000 residents with nowhere to park. No parking is not an option, it is a contractual agreement.

The people who live there will be contractually forbidden to park a car on site or on nearby streets, part of a deal the development company struck with the government to assuage fears of clogged parking in surrounding neighborhoods.

Culdesac Tempe is a proving ground for a start-up also called Culdesac, which was founded in San Francisco and moved to Tempe during the pandemic. Started in 2018 by two native Arizonans, the company announced the project last year to a mixture of curiosity and doubt. Urbanists cheered it as a bold and important step toward a future with fewer cars, while suburban developers said the concept could never work on a large scale.

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