Bringing Culdesac’s Car-Free Vision into Focus

April 2, 2024

By Patrick Sisson

As the bright winter sun starts waning one late February afternoon, Carmen, 25, steps out of a white, driverless, Waymo SUV. It's my first encounter with a resident at Culdesac, a newly opened car-free community in Tempe, Arizona — and it feels like I have traveled into the future.

The experience — bumping into a new resident at the development's entrance, across from a light rail stop along Apache Boulevard — is exactly the kind of serendipitous encounter Carmen says happens often in her new home. Consisting of clusters of three-story alabaster apartment complexes that have been called "Mediterranean sugar-cube white," the neighborhood is arrayed around pathways, shared greenspace, and a redbrick main walkway that runs past a row of small retail stores.

The community feels like it was "built to bring people together," Carmen says. Culdesac also provides built-in mobility options, such as complimentary light rail passes and free and discounted driverless rides, allowing her to avoid the expense of car ownership in one of the most auto-dependent areas in the U.S.

"When I found this place, it was perfect," she says. "I don't have a car and didn't want to buy one." As far as transit goes, it's not France, where she taught English for a time. But it is something new for American development. (Carmen, like some other residents quoted in the story, chose to not have her last name published.)

The startup behind this 17-acre infill experiment hopes that the blend of community-focused design and a car-lite lifestyle becomes a selling point. Since it was announced in 2019, the $170 million work-in-progress, which is roughly one-third complete, has been nothing short of an urbanist celebrity. Its rapturous reception included a feature in The New York Times, adoring videos, and excitement over the promise of car-free living — there's only onsite parking for retail customers — in a metro where more than 92 percent of households own a car.

Culdesac certainly sticks out from its sprawl-focused surroundings of asphalt and strip malls with red rock landscaping and a smattering of cacti. It's an attempt to be a hipper, car-free version of urban living — a village of Euro-style, white buildings, highlighted with multihued murals, terra-cotta accents, and an occasional green or blue door as vivid as the cloudless sky. And, with shaded brick or gravel paths, it does feel noticeably cooler than its surroundings.

The community's design and functionality offer a departure from where decades of car-centric planning have gone wrong, and a place where creative work and flexibility by urban planners and developers has made a difference. It offers an oasis of sorts — a vision of what's possible. But, like any oasis, it's a fragile ecosystem, with surroundings that aren't necessarily compatible. After all, an island of walkability surrounded by a sea of cars can only go so far.

"It takes a level of openness to say, 'Hey, codes and regulations aren't just one-size-fits-all,'" says

Ryan Levesque, deputy director of the Community Development Department's planning division in Tempe, who worked on the project. "If we bend the code or do different things here, we need to be able to self-reflect and ask if we're doing them for the right reason."

Culdesac is the brainchild of founders and Arizona natives Ryan Johnson and Jeff Berens, who saw an opportunity to add to the small supply of in-demand, walkable real estate in the U.S. The start-up and its developer partners zeroed-in on Tempe because of long-term transportation and development planning. The city long ago realized it needed to grow up and not out, and it has focused on creative ways to densify without cars, because there simply isn't much space for more, says Deborah Salon, a professor at Arizona State University (ASU), who studies transportation. She has an ongoing research project focused on transit options, Culdesac, and figuring out what infrastructure, policy, and changes can inspire mode shifts away from cars.

The Apache Boulevard area had long been a focus of redevelopment, according to Levesque, making it an ideal space for Culdesac's experiment. Once a major thoroughfare, the strip had fallen on hard times and become home to transient lodgings, mobile homes, and motels. By the time developers broke ground in 2019, the lots two miles from the ASU campus were empty. But, unlike so many sites around the Phoenix metro, it had potential for density.

When plans were announced in 2000 to run the Valley Metro down Apache Boulevard and a half-cent countywide sales tax was approved in 2004 to fund more transit options, Tempe planners seized the opportunity and adopted a transit-oriented development overlay in 2005 — the Tempe Transportation Overlay District (TOD) — that created additional incentives for higher density. Salon says those decisions made the site ripe for what Culdesac is attempting to do, as both Mesa and Phoenix's downtowns are accessible within 20-minute light rail rides.

"That's really the city's commitment to saying, 'Hey, build here, create that density so you can have alternate modes of transportation," says Levesque.

Building a 'dream project'

Designer and lead architect Daniel Parolek, of Berkeley-based Opticos Design, describes Culdesac as a dream project. An advocate of legalizing more urban infill projects — as well as the person who is credited with the term "missing middle" housing — Parolek knows from experience that "not a single zoning code in the country would allow a project like this by right."

But that didn't stop him and the Culdesac design team from proposing something significantly different. Drawing from myriad strains of vernacular architecture — coastal Italian enclaves, adobe homes across the Southwest, a handful of still-standing early 20th-century neighborhoods in Tucson, and Greek island architecture — Parolek and his team devised a kind of urban village concept, with small pods of relatively unadorned three-story buildings surrounding communal courtyards, interspersed with walking paths called paseos and knitted together with a grand walkway, a commercial main street, flanked by small, 500-square-foot storefronts.

Culdesac was designed to exemplify what housing advocates dub gentle density; by eliminating cars and standard-sized roads, which typically take up a third of U.S. developments, it achieves a density of about 40 units per acre while allocating lots of room for parks and greenspace. Parolek calls the concept "fabric buildings."

The irregular placement and angles of the buildings create nooks and crannies, some with benches and communal grills, and others that allow revelations when, turning a corner, a bright sunburst-shaped mural pops out vibrantly from a staircase wall. Lines of string lights hang overhead. And despite the closeness of roaring traffic on Apache Boulevard and numerous nearby construction crews, both seem out of sight and out of mind. The walk is relaxing and quiet, with just the ambient crunching of gravel beneath my feet and the occasional call of birds.

Initially, another developer had proposed a more traditional project for the lot in 2016, aiming to meet existing TOD standards with a three-tower development that included 1,000 parking spots. But Culdesac and developer Sunbelt Holdings convinced the other developer to sell them the land. Then, they shared their vision with Tempe planners — who spent a year working with the Culdesac team to create a Planned Area Development master plan that could meet the developer's vision and be approved by the city's Development Review Commission.

Parolek says it was an extensive lift and credits the collaborative nature of planners for making the whole thing possible. Parking requirements were waived due to the extensive investment in mobility resources. Culdesac offered to build a protected sidewalk to access the light rail stop to encourage more rail trips (Salon's research found about a quarter of those moving into Culdesac came from car-free households). The development also worked to test the city's new mobility hub concept, working with planners to design their bike- and car-sharing areas so they could be used as a feasibility study for future development. Developers included bike parking, showers, space for scooters and bike repairs, as well as granting a bike shop prime retail space facing Apache Boulevard.

The partnership helped the city refine its own vision, says Chase Walman, Tempe's principal transportation planner, creating a model they could later show to developers and that will help the city create an eventual network of such hubs.

"This isn't on an island," he says. "It's not by chance this is happening, it's a design supported by the Transportation Overlay District and the city transportation master plan." The city-developer collaboration also has carried over into the infrastructure expansion, as Walman says future bike boulevard projects are under development to connect Culdesac to other bike paths.

"Once Culdesac came in, it really elevated the importance of filling in this system gap," he says.

One significant sticking point was the main paseo. Culdesac wanted a narrower street, to match the rest of the development, but Tempe planners needed to make sure that even in a pedestrian-first environment, emergency vehicles could access every unit. Overall, the development is set to have 636 rental apartments when complete. The compromise widened the main paseo to 26 feet to fit ambulances and emergency vehicles but left the overall pod structure intact.

Other big questions around trash pickup and the color of the buildings — Tempe didn't authorize white exteriors for fear of glare but settled for slightly off-white — slowly were resolved. To avoid additional external staircases and fire escapes, they agreed to hide ladders within chimney elements on the buildings. They even relaxed certain building code rules about downspouts and color variation on the exteriors. 

Biweekly meetings helped refine the project. Since it was set to be done in phases, Levesque says the city approved a special site plan that allows the staff to administratively approve additional phases to avoid additional design reviews and speed up the process. He adds that the parking was finished in the first phase to ease the city's concerns.

Culdesac's biggest challenge

While sitting out at the wooden tables laid out on the main walkway in Little Cholla plaza, and under a steel shade structure, I meet a couple coming back from a morning workout. Frankie, 27, and Stephanie, 26, have spent six months in Culdesac — they were among the first 30 residents — and love having easy access to the on-site gym. They say it's easier to meet people at Culdesac than in other places, including the CEO, Ryan Johnson, who is also a resident. There are barbecues in the pods and weekly nighttime markets on Thursdays.

"We like New York but wanted outdoor space; and we loved LA but hated driving — so, [we] thought this was a nice middle ground," says Frankie, a designer and engineer. "It felt like something historic was happening, and we wanted to experience it."

"We jumped at the chance to sell the car," says Stephanie, an illustrator. "We're both big city people, and I think we've felt the same sense of comfort here."

It hasn't all been easy, mostly because Tempe itself simply isn't set up for life without a car. Frankie described it as operating within a "zone of convenience." Outside a relatively small radius where car-free living is simple, transportation can be challenging.

But when it works, it really works. Ally Mershant, 23, an actress who lives at Culdesac, can take light rail to and from her production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Mesa Arts Center. On the right night, you might hear her practicing her Shakespeare on the westbound train.

Still, unless a destination is directly walkable from a light rail stop or walkable from Culdesac — unlikely, as the development has a railroad on one side and a string of mostly under-development apartment complexes along Apache Boulevard — it's inconvenient without a car.

Case in point: the previous weekend, Frankie and Stephanie wanted to go to an escape room. What would typically be a 20-minute drive would be 90 minutes using public transportation. A ride-hailing service was charging $50 each way. Ultimately, they booked a Culdesac-provided rental vehicle for $25 total.

Brad Biehl, a former Culdesac intern and now resident who operates a recording studio in one of the micro-retail spaces, where he also records his own urbanism-focused podcast, Good Traffic, says the challenge is that the community does a great job of supporting you with the right infrastructure, but Phoenix and Tempe don't. And while he is comfortable, with years of experience, biking down a busy main arterial road on an e-bike, other residents new to the experience may not be.

But perhaps the biggest challenge facing Culdesac right now is reaching critical mass. During my short stay, I don't witness the utopian vision that promoters have been selling — that car-free life can knit together a neighborhood culture otherwise ruined by autocentric development. There aren't spontaneous meetings in the shared common spaces, or neighbors walking together from the train stations, or flocks of cyclists heading to work. To be fair, the Little Cholla Markets on Thursday, which I'm not able to see during this visit, are said to be big draws. But I mostly see more staff members in Culdesac-branded shirts than Culdesac residents.

I see very few cyclists during my stay — maybe in part due to the subpar biking experience on nearby streets, especially the main drag, which just has painted bike lanes. On a neighborhood ride, a few motorized scooters and bikers buzz by, rarely straying from the sidewalks. But change is coming: a forthcoming bike lane is anticipated to start construction this year that will connect Culdesac to a nearby mall; paths and trails exist within a short ride; and Salon says there are extensive ongoing efforts to expand the bike network. As Culdesac property managers there tell me, residents overwhelmingly use the light rail.

Even as construction workers toil away on the upcoming phases of Culdesac, which are set to bring in hundreds of additional residents when they open in 2025 and 2026 — not to mention several under-construction apartment developments nearby on Apache Boulevard — right now, it's tough.

The coworking hub located above the gym is rarely used. Operators say they plan to close it and convert it into more retail space, owing to underutilization and more residents working from their homes. The owner of the tea shop, Complete Comforts, tells me that the shop was especially empty the first few months of operation last fall, especially during the rainy season. The existing food market is a week from closing when I visit — though a Culdesac rep says a new one will be taking its place shortly. The largest crowd comes from Cocina Chiwas, the James Beard-nominated restaurant located in the corner of the development, which also plans to open a coffee shop and wine bar later this year. The restaurant remains constantly crowded — a walk-in table isn't available on the Tuesday night I'm there — but it's also an existing business with a draw of its own.

It's a reminder that Culdesac remains a bold experiment that isn't finished. Parolek believes it will take a few more years of renting units and steady operations to make a business case for rapid expansion of similar projects and to show that even in one of the most car-dependent parts of the county, car-free living is possible.

But replicating that kind of development without the planning prescience of Tempe won't be easy. There have been other U.S. developers, in cities like Houston and Charlotte with TOD ordinances similar to Tempe's, that have experimented with car-lite apartment complexes. Even Culdesac can't necessarily repeat the same level of car-free living without similar investments in transportation infrastructure and planning policy; in Mesa, the firm has plans to build a 1,000-unit project downtown that'll have 800 parking spaces, owing to the lack of transit options.

One project can't instantly change an entire region's development and travel patterns. But Culdesac, by using the foresight and flexibility of planners in Tempe, is making a case that noteworthy change is possible.

"They're selling it like they're going to create this situation where you're actually going to have a better life without a car than you've ever had," says Salon. "I think it remains to be seen whether they're successful in doing that. But I love that approach, because it's not the approach most people have been bold enough to take."

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