America’s first car-free neighborhood is proving walkability works
www.optimistdaily.com/2025/02/americas-first-ca…
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Can walkable neighborhoods work in America?
Why wouldn’t they? They work everywhere else in the world. American exceptionalism isn’t that exceptional.
Car-free (i.e. automobile-free) neighborhoods were common in the US before the 20th century.
There’s a car-free neighborhood in my city and it’s been there for at least 25 years. It was not originally designed as such; they simply made a huge section of downtown pedestrian only by putting blockers on the street.
Saying this is the first “car free neighborhood” is like saying America is the first place to be built with a grid.
Where in the article does it say it’s the first car-free neighborhood ever? It just says it’s the first in America, it even has a nod to how European cities tend to be built around walking in contrast to American cities.
I’m quoting the title. It’s a subset of the sentence. I’m sure you’re 100% accurate and logical with everything you say.
“America’s first car-free neighborhood” and “first car-free neighborhood,” while both being strings present in the title, are not equivalent statements. I don’t think it would be correct to omit “America’s” in your comment.
Yeah. Left such a bad taste in my mouth so quickly that it was all I could do to make myself take-back my down-vote for the sake of how much I hate car-centric living.
I guess Seaside, FL is technically not “car-free”, but the community is built with tiny streets and is designed to be walkable, with cars discouraged.
Arizona is hot AF. Walking in that heat is going to be rough. Let’s see how that goes.
The community did this innovative thing called installing shade and keeping roadways narrow. It heavily reduces the urban heat island effect.
They also did this brand new thing called putting stores within a 5 minute walk of housing which reduces resident’s heat exposure.
Wouldn’t that kind of be part of the point? If walkable communities can work in Arizona of all places, there’s no excuse (short of “I literally can’t open my front door due to all the snow on the other side of it") for the rest of the country.
Seeing as how it has been around for 5 years now it seems to me that we have seen how it goes.
Though that doesn’t stop some people from running to the comments section to type the first thing that pops into their head.
Lol ate up a bunch of paid ads articles. Go live there, then give me your facts. https://www.reddit.com/r/arizona/comments/1bo9fqs/has_anyone_actually_visited_the_new_carfree/
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I think it’s maybe not obvious, but this actually helps people to buy fresh food regularly and reduces the need for shelf-stable foods, increasing health and quality of food.
And helps food waste! I realized if I buy ingredients on the same day I cook them a lot fewer things spoil in my fridge. But this is only viable if the store is right in my neighborhood.
Lots of neighborhoods used to be car free
I feel like north beach, SF could do well with permanently closing some streets
This place sounds like heaven and it’s literally just stuff Europe has been doing forever
I know someone who lives there and loves it, but they have had issues with petty crime. Also one developer having most of the ownership of your community is not great.
Also “America’s first car free neighborhood” is so goofy. We had neighborhoods before cars existed lmao
Arguably college campuses can be car free neighborhoods. The one I went to had dedicated “family” living arrangements, such as for a student with child, perhaps spouse or parent
Kirsten did a great video on this 2 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf0L3blkNA4
@CityNerd covered this a year ago. https://youtu.be/-xhRzM5SVpw
I love it! I’d move there in a heartbeat!
Ugh, we need parking mandates.
Would be nice to see laws that make a mandatory maximum parking spots to something like 20-50% of the building’s human capacity
No need. Developers are very profit driven so are unlikely to pay for more parking spaces than necessary
Dunno. I think it’s important to have laws so luxury apartment buildings don’t give every apartment 1-2 car spots each.
Reads like sarcasm, hopefully I’m reading it correctly.
It reads like have a minimum parking mandate until their explanation because that’s what the city has.
They are advocating for mandates with maximum parking spots, meaning limiting the total number to much less.
A studio in that development costs $1,440 USD a month.
Which is a lot, but you also don’t need any of the expense of owning a car. Not a dollar of it.
It’s also brand-new and there are only 288 units, plus it’s acting as a proof of concept as much as a housing solution. The prices reflect a supply and demand issue but hopefully this will lead to more and more of this kind of development.
Honestly, as someone who doesn’t even believe studio apartments should really be allowed at all, it’s not that bad when you actually think a little.