WEBVTT - Why Are Suburbs So Unwalkable? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.200 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:10.119 I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And if you've ever driven through the 0:00:10.160 --> 0:00:12.960 sprawl of an American suburb, you know that the streets 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.760 twist and turn, even in the absence of hills. Rarely 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.120 are they set up like a grid. Take one wrong 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:20.880 turn and you could end up a looping around a 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.200 cul de sac forever it can feel like. But how 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:27.960 did these winding streets become so ubiquitous with the suburbs. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.200 The answer lies in the days following the Industrial Revolution 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.800 of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though the period led 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.479 to all of the modern technologies and food ways we 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.480 currently enjoy, at the time, it's seriously worsened living conditions 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:46.159 for many city dwellers. We spoke with Paul Knight, and 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.599 architectural and urban designer here in Atlanta and the executive 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.240 director of the Douglas C. Allen Institute for the Study 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:55.560 of Cities. He said, at any time before the early 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.120 twentieth century, you really did not want to live in 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:01.520 the cities, especially after the Industrial Revolution in places like 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.280 London and New York. They were filthy, they were truly dangerous. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:11.160 Along came British urban planner Ebenezer Howard. He published the 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.760 book Tomorrow, A Peaceful Path to Social Reform, which was 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.959 reissued in nineteen o two as Garden Cities of Tomorrow. 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.080 Night said of the book, one of the ideas that 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:23.840 came out of Ebenezer's work was this idea of living 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.080 in the country and then working in the city, so 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.160 that you could get the best of both worlds. Sound familiar. 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:32.920 Thus what we know today as the suburbs were born 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:35.920 around the turn of the twentieth century, but their early 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:38.840 success depended on street cars, which allowed many people to 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.880 travel to their jobs in the cities, and Henry Ford 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.720 automating the assembly line and introducing the Model T car 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.200 really helped the suburbs boom. But the biggest move to 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.600 suburbia came after World War Two ended in ninety five. 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.400 Millions of American g i's returned for war with housing benefits, 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.920 and the suburbs became the place to be for US families. 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:02.240 So what does all this have to do with the 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:06.160 curving streets we know today? While many big cities during 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.560 the Industrial Revolution had terrible living conditions for the working class, 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:13.480 they did have something desirable. The grid network. A look 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:16.200 at New York City planners laid out the streets in 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:19.760 a right angle rectangular formation, as opposed to the spoken 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:22.960 wheel layouts of cities like Paris, and that's no accident. 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:27.120 A grid network is efficient and it promotes walkability. The 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.240 typical suburban street network spurned this layout in favor of 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:33.560 wide roads with sweeping curves. One reason why was to 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.880 make the suburbs appear closer to nature and to Ebenezer 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:40.840 Howard's idea of living in the country. Knight said, the 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:43.320 reason that people are wanting to leave the city is 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.959 that idea of a return to nature and to provide 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:47.520 a yard for their children, and to get out of 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.880 the unsafe environment of the city. It's just this bucolic idea. 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:53.239 If you want to promote this idea of nature and 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.640 natural topography, then you can't have this rigid gridiron on 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:58.919 your landscape. You've got to curve the streets in order 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:02.560 to allow people to exp varience the curvilinear nature of nature. 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.639 Another reason for winding streets stems from that giver of 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:10.160 suburban life, the car. The grid network is built around 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:12.480 the idea of people walking from place to place, but 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.240 the suburbs rely on cars, and curved streets allow cars 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.079 to travel faster than the grid network, which has constant 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:23.480 stops at intersections, But curving streets have a cost. They 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.079 are less walkable, precisely because they make four longer rows 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:30.480 with fewer intersections. The road network also has fewer streets 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.239 than a grid pattern, which means less street frontage and 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:36.920 therefore less space for retail offices and other mixed use developments. 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.880 Having less walkable streets with less development forces people to 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:45.000 drive more often. That leads to another cost of curved streets, 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:49.080 more car accidents. Urban driving can feel chaotic because of 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.280 the increase in walkers and bikers, but it also creates 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.240 slower speeds and therefore fewer fatal accidents. Data from the 0:03:56.360 --> 0:04:00.120 U S Census Bureau backs this up. About night in 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.040 percent of the US population lived in rural areas, but 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:07.080 rural fatalities accounted for fort ent of all traffic fatalities. 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.640 The US continues to become more suburbanized, so it's unlikely 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.480 that these winding streets will go away anytime soon. Knight says. 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.520 In fill building, the development of spare land and otherwise 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.240 largely settled areas provides opportunities to change the face of 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.640 these neighborhoods. The challenge to achieving the grid network in 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.039 the suburbs is both political and legal. Though right now 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:32.400 most suburbs require developers to clear hurdles in order to 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:36.040 make a pedestrian friendly grid pattern, while those who create 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.800 car centric called sac subdivisions are on easy street. Knight 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:48.320 said the law is not in walkabilities favor. Today's episode 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:50.680 was written by Adina Solomon and produced by Tyler Clang 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.000 for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. For more on 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.680 this and lots of other winding topics, visit our home planet, 0:04:55.760 --> 0:05:08.320 how stuff Works dot com.