99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-29- Cul de Sac

Episode Date: June 17, 2011

When people critique cul-de-sacs, a lot of the time, they’re actually critiquing the suburbs more generally. The cul-de-sac has become sort of like the mascot of the suburbs– like if suburbia had a flag, it would have a picture of … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. When people critique cul-de-sacs, a lot of the time they're actually critiquing the suburbs more generally,

the cul-de-sac has become sort of like the mascot of the suburbs. Like if Suburbia had a flag, it would have a picture of a cul-de-sac on it. I can still remember how strange that word sounded to me. When my mom told me we were moving from the city of Atlanta to the suburbs of Denver,

and that we'd be living on one of these things. Hey, that's producer Katie Mingle-Dum. I worked this week. Hi, Roman. The cul-de-sac is a French term, literally meaning the bottom of the bag, or the ass of the bag. So it's no wonder the French themselves prefer to use the word impasse. Another fun fact, the plural of cul-de-sac is actually cul-de-sac, but Katie and I have agreed that it isn't possible to refer to them this way,

without sounding like a couple of ass-backs. It isn't possible to refer to them this way without sounding like a couple of aspects. I've always felt a little embarrassed by my suburban roots, by the cul-de-sac especially, which with its uterine shape and having the word sack in it, gave me the feeling that I spent my early years cuddled and sheltered in an asphalt womb. Living on a cul-de-sac has come to symbolize kind of everything that young hipsters or just people who are who don't see suburbia as the American dream have come to despise and it's taken on the symbolic role. That's Matt Lasseter and I think he just called you a hipster. Yep I think he did. It's

come to epitomize suburbia both in the myth of the kind of happy nuclear family American dream and in the way that critics condemn it as a facade. Matt teaches a history of the suburbs course at the University of Michigan. And the great age of the cul-de-sac is the 1950s and 1960s. Matt says that by the 70s and 80s our faith in the nuclear family and in the suburban American dream was starting to break down, and it's evident all over pop culture, like in the 1980s classic ET. At the beginning of the film, we learned that Elliot's parents are divorced and his

father is down in Mexico with his girlfriend and his mom's there alone and the family sitting around the table and they're very sad. Nothing like that, penis breath! Oh, yes! Sit down! Dad would believe me. Maybe you ought to call your father and tell him about it. I can't use a Mexico with Sally. I can't use a Mexico with Sally. And then ET comes from outer space, you know, almost like a savior figure, to bring happiness back to this sad, broken, suburban family.

And I think it's really striking in the film the way that Elliott can kind of, can find freedom and excitement in the suburbs by riding his bicycle, you know, to the end of the cul-de-sac, and then beyond into the woods, in the kind of magical friends where the subdivision stops and the wilderness begins. ET is devastating to me, and I get last year's point about E.T. providing the escape hatch to the horrible, oppressive cult asack, but I also think you can't deny the fact that the kids in E.T. ruled the neighborhood. I mean the boys outmaneuver the feds on their dirt bikes. It's a great place to be if you're seven years old and you want to ride your big wheel out in the street,

but it's not a great place to live, I would argue if you're 14 years old and want to get out of the neighborhood and you don't have a car, then you start feeling trapped. Culdasacks do tend to be isolating. They aren't connected to other streets and they're far away from town centers. But even though culdasacks are experiencing a backlash right now, they were themselves part of a design backlash against urban living and the traditional grid pattern streets that make up most cities. We think about the cul-de-sac-based subdivision and its opposite,

which is the urban grid pattern. But if you go back before World War II, there was a third alternative, which was the early garden suburbs that had curvilinear streets, but they were designed to fit in with the landscape, to create buffers between the houses, to integrate people into parks and lakes and other natural features. And so it was the opposite of the grid pattern, but it wasn't great people into parks and lakes and other natural features. And so it was the opposite of the grid pattern, but it wasn't the coldest sack based

kind of into the road dead end pattern. The streets almost always came back around to other streets. It was when the suburbs became mass-produced after World War II that the worst aspects of suburban design began to dominate. Whether or not you buy the idea that cultists acts are psychologically oppressive or stifling to the freedom of those that live there, they have some real quantifiable design flaws. Right, like imagine being a garbage collector or a street cleaner, and instead of driving down one long street and collecting all the garbage from that street and then taking a right onto the next street and so on, you've to turn around and all of these cul-de-sacs

over and over again. It takes more time, you use more gas. They're expensive to maintain, and now some governments, like the one in the state of Virginia, are starting to ban them in all new developments. For many homeowners, when it comes to moving into a new subdivision, they try to find a cul-de-sac because they say it is the best spot to be in. But now, leaders in the Commonwealth are telling developers if they build a new subdivision, they can leave these cul-de-sacs out. Kim Nelson and her two kids moved into this new subdivision eight months ago.

She specifically picked this street because it was the cul-de-sac. We like living in a cul-de-sac area because it gives us an opportunity for children to play in a very safe environment. Like many other owners, Nelson says they don't have to worry about speeding cars or streets with a lot of traffic. Wait, who are we calling? My mom. Hey mom.

Hey honey. You know, I've been doing all this research about cul-de-sacs. And I guess I'm wondering how you could move our family to such a depraved place. You love to cul-de-sac. Because it was A place where you know you were allowed to go out there all hours of the day and night and play and Be pretty much unsupervised. Oh, she sounds nice She's the nicest and it's true. I did love the cul-de-sac I didn't like school and I didn't fit in there But none of that seemed to matter on the cul-de-sac.

On the cul-de-sac, it was all about ghost in the graveyard and finding the guts to launch off the skateboard ramp. And that was a world I shined in. My parents though, they always seemed like they lived there just for me. And after I moved away, eventually they did too. Now my mom and dad live in a new development that urban planners would refer to as mixed use. That's shops and houses and restaurants all mixed in together. They love it. They live right above the gap.

There's a library within walking distance. My dad helps lead a lecture series in their condo. And I like that as they get older, they won't need to be dependent on a car to get what they need. It's perfect for them. But for a kid? Where do the kids play? Where do they play? Yeah. But one family that I'm thinking of who lives up on the fifth floor, their children are pretty young and they have talked about they go to different parks around the area quite often. Going to parks with mom and dad doesn't sound nearly as cool as taking over an entire

street every night. It's really a type of suburban development that's organized around the needs of five year olds or eight year olds or ten year olds. Professor Laster argues that we shouldn't be designing our neighborhoods exclusively around the needs of five year olds. And new studies are showing that is gas prices rise and people become more ecologically conscious. We're already seeing a reverse flight back out of the suburbs and into cities. There are even fears that suburbs will turn into ghost town slums and ghettos of the future. I would really give ghosts in the graveyard a whole new edge.

Indeed. 99% invisible was produced this week by Katie Mingle from the Great Third Coast International Audio Festival to look it up and me Roman Mars. With support from Lunar, making a difference with creativity, it's a project of KALW, 91.7 local public radio in San Francisco, the center for architecture and design and the American Institute of Architects San Francisco. To find out more, go to the website. It's 99%invisible.org. Everyone is Roman again. And during this little section of the podcast last week,

I asked you to review the show and iTunes and maybe go like us over on Facebook. And I was so overwhelmed by the response. It was so sweet and kind and generous. And I think we got like 60 or 70 more reviews last week because of that call out. And over 100 more people on Facebook. So thank you so much. I can't, I mean, it was just amazing.

It was more successful than I ever thought possible. So if you did take the time to review the show, that was really sweet. And if you haven't yet, I'm happy just to have you as a listener. But if I can put you over the edge to write a review, that would be fantastic too. Because I swear, those reviews kept me in the top 50 ranking for arts podcasts all week long and it wasn't because I got some huge spike in downloads.

It was just because of your reviews. That's how it works. It was amazing. So thank you so much. It was so sweet to read the response too. It was really, really beautiful. And the final thing is 99% of visible is now on Stitcher. So, check it out on Stitcher. It's like an iPhone app that that chains together podcasts into little playlists and it actually works really well and it's very fun. And I just wanted more people have a chance to hear it and maybe get new ears.

So if you use Stitcher, I like the show, let's do it again and maybe it'll go up the rankings there too and new people will find it. Alright, thank you so much, I'll talk to you next week. Take care. you.