This Development Wants Residents to Ditch Their Cars. In Phoenix.
Culdesac Tempe in the Arizona suburbs is creating desert-friendly housing for more than 1,000 people, none of whom will park on site.
In a sprawling metropolis known for its scorching hot summers and endless strip malls, Culdesac aims to be an oasis for 1,000 people ready to live without a car.
Photographer: Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg
Three years ago Robert Chaffeur, a retiree living in the suburbs of Tacoma, Washington, was looking for a new place to live when he saw an online ad for Culdesac Tempe. Billed as “the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US,” the development in Arizona checked all the boxes on his wishlist: Chaffeur wanted to move somewhere warm, walkable and that wasn’t a retirement community.
The advertisement had found its target audience. Culdesac’s founders were planning to build about 700 apartments on a 17-acre lot in Tempe — a suburb of nearly 200,000 on the southeast edge of Phoenix — along with a restaurant, grocery store, coffee shop and other retail. There would be shady courtyards, ample bike parking and a stop on the Valley Metro light rail, a 30-mile tram system connecting Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa. There would not, however, be a single parking spot for residents. In a sprawling metropolis known for its strip malls and scorching hot summers, Culdesac aimed to be an oasis for 1,000 people ready to live car-free.