Gridded street map3/24/2023 ![]() “They have been very highly regarded in Eagan, and there has never been any issue about getting rid of them or taking them out of our design standards,” said Thomas L. Since then, Eagan has posted signs on about 40 cul-de-sacs saying “Future Through Street.” Eagan officials sided with the residents, and the plan, which was also disputed because of wetlands use and density, went back and forth between the city and the county for a year before the city finally relented. Residents argued that when they bought their homes nothing indicated that the street would ever be anything but a dead end. They petitioned the city to keep their cul-de-sac, but the Dakota County Plat Commission insisted that the cul-de-sac, which had been planned for a through street as far back as 1985, be extended. By 2005, the number had grown to more than 650 in the community of 69,000 residents, from about 100 in the late 1970’s when the population was about 17,000.īut in 2004, residents of Wellington Way were dismayed when they learned that their flat-ended cul-de-sac would become a through street as the adjacent Diamond T Ranch, a horse ranch, is developed into a residential subdivision called Steeplechase of Eagan. Just a 25-mile drive north from Northfield, the cul-de-sac is quite welcome in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan. We always knew when there was someone who wasn’t a regular on our street, and yet they had every right to be there.” They don’t often act like public streets. “They tend to almost induce a circle-the-wagons sort of atmosphere, so anybody becomes a stranger who’s on the street. “And there was pretty good surveillance by our parents when we were out in the street.”īut those advantages can also be disadvantages. “It’s a quiet street that all us kids could play on without too much fear of traffic,” he said. ![]() ![]() In her blog, Tracy Davis, one of the commissioners who voted no, wrote a few days later that the city was essentially sanctioning “cul-de-sac starter castles and monotonous ’burb developments.”ĭon Mitchell, professor of geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, grew up on a cul-de-sac in Moraga, Calif., and has seen both sides of the debate. The single cul-de-sac provoked vigorous debate in the planning commission before the revised plan was finally approved in April, with two dissenting votes. ![]() The developer agreed to make two of them through streets but insisted that the remaining one was vital to the project. In 1998, when the preliminary plan for Rosewood’s fifth addition was approved, the subdivision included three cul-de-sacs, Mr. “They really don’t provide connectivity and ease of access to other areas of the city,” Mr. The City Council passed an ordinance several years ago saying that cul-de-sacs can “only be used to the extent that the topography, wetlands or other physical features necessitate their use.” “What was lost is a sense of community,” he said.Ĭredit. “The president says we are addicted to oil, but in fact it’s not a voluntary addiction,” he said.Īnd while people within a cul-de-sac may know one another well, they are less likely to know people who live on other streets. He notes that suburban neighborhoods are difficult, if not impossible, for pedestrians to navigate, making cars virtual necessities. Michael Lykoudis, dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, grew up on a cul-de-sac in West Lafayette, Ind., but finds himself among the critics. Now the cul-de-sac is excoriated in certain quarters, especially by New Urbanists, as a detriment to security, community and efficient transportation. Developers liked the cul-de-sac because it made it possible to build on land unsuited to a grid street pattern and because home buyers were willing to pay a premium to live on one. Homeowners found that the cul-de-sac limited traffic, creating a sense of privacy, while encouraging ties among neighbors, who could hardly avoid one another.
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