This month's issue of Monocle magazine is a special edition focused on property. And that's because this month was also the annual MIPIM festival in Cannes, which is apparently the largest real estate boondoggle, I mean conference, in the world.

One of the development projects that is featured in the special is Culdesac Tempe (which is located just east of Phoenix). This is a development that has received a lot of press over the years, including here on this blog, as it was developed as a car-free neighborhood in a city region known for the opposite.

But to be fair, it does have some parking.

There are 150 parking spaces (all surface) for 760 homes. So a parking ratio of just under 0.20 spaces per suite. This is still a remarkably low figure compared to what I would expect in Phoenix, which would be something closer to 1 to 1. I'd be curious to know how it's leasing/performing.

The entire development was also designed to be responsive to Arizona's climate. The buildings are close together so they shadow the circulation spaces, and no asphalt was used anywhere in the project in order to minimize heat retention. The architect for the project, Dan Parolek, refers to this as "desert responsive urbanism."

I'd love to visit one day, but until then, there's YouTube. Here's a full walkthrough by Kirsten Dirksen.

Cover photo by Joe Cook on Unsplash

We have spoken before about how walkable urban communities punch above their weight. In the US, only about 1.2% of land is, on average, designed and built for walkability. And yet, walkable neighborhoods in the top 35 metro areas account for about 19.1% of total US real GDP.

At the same time, because walkable communities are a rarified commodity, they usually come at a premium. According to some sources, it's to the tune of 30-40% when you look at home prices and rental rates. This again suggests that humans actually like and want this type of urbanism.

Which is probably why there's a growing interest in building more of it. Here's a recent article from Bloomberg CityLab and here's a photo of Culdesac's new completely car-free community under construction in Tempe, Arizona (this doesn't look like the Arizona I know):

But in addition to just giving people more of what they want, there are also real economic benefits to stripping out parking and to overall more compact development. Charlotte-based Space Craft is another developer focused on car-light and transit-oriented apartments, and they have seemingly managed to make their projects more affordable as a result:

“Our product offered lower rents to residents, $100 to $200 below our competitors, and was the best product in the market because we were able to reinvest some of the savings from parking,” said [Harrison] Tucker, who sees walkable urban neighborhoods becoming their own real estate investment class. “The economic case was just very strong.”

This also flies in the face of the common argument that developers will always profit maximize and charge whatever the market will bear for their spaces. So why even bother trying to make it easier and cheaper to build? But this is not true! Lower development costs, as we see here, can and will translate into lower rents and higher quality buildings.

I also agree with Tucker that we will see walkable urban neighborhoods, and their associated building typologies, become an important real estate asset class. For all of the reasons that we talk about on this blog, this is where our cities are headed.

However, it's going to take some time. I like the metaphor (mentioned in the above article) that, right now, we are creating "walkable archipelagos" or walkable islands in seas of cars. With the right connectivity (transit, micromobility, and so on), these islands can do just fine. But over time, I suspect we'll see a lot more land reclamation. Good.

The New York Times recently published this interesting piece about Culdesac and the completely car-free community that they are building just east of Phoenix in Tempe, Arizona (a place that is not generally known for its walkability). Culdesac calls itself the first "post-car real estate developer in the United States." And so their Culdesac Tempe project has been designed to house 1,000 residents and exactly 0 cars.

When the first phase is completed next year, residents will be restricted from having a car within the community and they'll also be restricted from parking on any nearby streets. (This second stipulation was done to assuage concerns that a zero parking community would create a spillover effect in the surrounding area.) Instead, residents of Culdesac Tempe will rely on their local amenities, as well as on transit (it's on a light rail line), biking, ride-sharing, and other forms of urban mobility.

While this may seem kind of crazy for sprawling Arizona, the company's thesis is both clear and clever. The future of American cities needs to be the kind of walkable urbanism that you find in places like the northeast. But at the same time, the fastest growing cities in the United States are generally in the Sun Belt. What they are doing is building walkable urbanism in the places where people clearly want to live.

This month's issue of Monocle magazine is a special edition focused on property. And that's because this month was also the annual MIPIM festival in Cannes, which is apparently the largest real estate boondoggle, I mean conference, in the world.

One of the development projects that is featured in the special is Culdesac Tempe (which is located just east of Phoenix). This is a development that has received a lot of press over the years, including here on this blog, as it was developed as a car-free neighborhood in a city region known for the opposite.

But to be fair, it does have some parking.

There are 150 parking spaces (all surface) for 760 homes. So a parking ratio of just under 0.20 spaces per suite. This is still a remarkably low figure compared to what I would expect in Phoenix, which would be something closer to 1 to 1. I'd be curious to know how it's leasing/performing.

The entire development was also designed to be responsive to Arizona's climate. The buildings are close together so they shadow the circulation spaces, and no asphalt was used anywhere in the project in order to minimize heat retention. The architect for the project, Dan Parolek, refers to this as "desert responsive urbanism."

I'd love to visit one day, but until then, there's YouTube. Here's a full walkthrough by Kirsten Dirksen.

Cover photo by Joe Cook on Unsplash

We have spoken before about how walkable urban communities punch above their weight. In the US, only about 1.2% of land is, on average, designed and built for walkability. And yet, walkable neighborhoods in the top 35 metro areas account for about 19.1% of total US real GDP.

At the same time, because walkable communities are a rarified commodity, they usually come at a premium. According to some sources, it's to the tune of 30-40% when you look at home prices and rental rates. This again suggests that humans actually like and want this type of urbanism.

Which is probably why there's a growing interest in building more of it. Here's a recent article from Bloomberg CityLab and here's a photo of Culdesac's new completely car-free community under construction in Tempe, Arizona (this doesn't look like the Arizona I know):

But in addition to just giving people more of what they want, there are also real economic benefits to stripping out parking and to overall more compact development. Charlotte-based Space Craft is another developer focused on car-light and transit-oriented apartments, and they have seemingly managed to make their projects more affordable as a result:

“Our product offered lower rents to residents, $100 to $200 below our competitors, and was the best product in the market because we were able to reinvest some of the savings from parking,” said [Harrison] Tucker, who sees walkable urban neighborhoods becoming their own real estate investment class. “The economic case was just very strong.”

This also flies in the face of the common argument that developers will always profit maximize and charge whatever the market will bear for their spaces. So why even bother trying to make it easier and cheaper to build? But this is not true! Lower development costs, as we see here, can and will translate into lower rents and higher quality buildings.

I also agree with Tucker that we will see walkable urban neighborhoods, and their associated building typologies, become an important real estate asset class. For all of the reasons that we talk about on this blog, this is where our cities are headed.

However, it's going to take some time. I like the metaphor (mentioned in the above article) that, right now, we are creating "walkable archipelagos" or walkable islands in seas of cars. With the right connectivity (transit, micromobility, and so on), these islands can do just fine. But over time, I suspect we'll see a lot more land reclamation. Good.

The New York Times recently published this interesting piece about Culdesac and the completely car-free community that they are building just east of Phoenix in Tempe, Arizona (a place that is not generally known for its walkability). Culdesac calls itself the first "post-car real estate developer in the United States." And so their Culdesac Tempe project has been designed to house 1,000 residents and exactly 0 cars.

When the first phase is completed next year, residents will be restricted from having a car within the community and they'll also be restricted from parking on any nearby streets. (This second stipulation was done to assuage concerns that a zero parking community would create a spillover effect in the surrounding area.) Instead, residents of Culdesac Tempe will rely on their local amenities, as well as on transit (it's on a light rail line), biking, ride-sharing, and other forms of urban mobility.

While this may seem kind of crazy for sprawling Arizona, the company's thesis is both clear and clever. The future of American cities needs to be the kind of walkable urbanism that you find in places like the northeast. But at the same time, the fastest growing cities in the United States are generally in the Sun Belt. What they are doing is building walkable urbanism in the places where people clearly want to live.