What to do with a cul-de-sac?

One of our biggest challenges is to deal with the sheer amount of suburban repair work needed. Fifty-plus years of suburban investment with the most world’s most prolific economic engine means that there is much work to undo.

After the real estate meltdown, many of our commissions have been focused on this type of repair work. In many cases, it is much like the power went off and simply left half-finished developments lying about. Our goal is to try to repair these areas as best we can and set them up to grow into a type of meaningful place. This begins by tackling the process of transformation of the ever common cul-de-sac.

Ironically, or perhaps not so much so, the word cul-de-sac means “bottom of the bag” in French. So the bottom of the bag in this case, gets you the residential equivalent of a fast food drive-through, easy for cars but bad for humans. See the first image at right.

Our case study example here looks much like a typical bottom of the bag below but with a slight “upgrade” of a green space in the middle as a feature. Also, as a more advanced version of the

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