'It's like being in Greece': The US neighbourhood where cars are banned
When Sheryl Murdock walks to her apartment in Culdesac – the US' first modern car-free neighbourhood built from scratch – she feels transported to a Mediterranean island. As she enters the central plaza, which serves as an al fresco communal living room, the blare of traffic fades, replaced by the clink of glasses, the hum of conversation and the thump of a cornhole game. She meanders down narrow pathways between low-slung white buildings crisscrossed with fairy lights, passing pops of colour from cheerful murals and magenta bougainvillea. Although she's in Arizona, Murdock says, "It's like being in Greece."
Architect Daniel Parolek did have the Mediterranean in mind when he designed Culdesac, though he was influenced more by his travels to the hill towns and coastal villages of Italy and France. Travellers and locals love these settings, Parolek says, because "these are places that were built prior to the automobile, so they were designed around accommodating people". Why then, he asks, do people have to vacation to places like these rather than living in them?
The answer is that societies made a Faustian deal with the automobile. As urban planners calibrated the built environment to the needs of cars rather than people, cities spread out into vast systems of traffic-clogged asphalt that disgorge solo commuters into soul-crushingly monotonous suburbs. Car-centric design has contributed to making metropolises more polluted, more socially isolating, less sustainable and hot as hell.
But the collective consciousness is shifting. Research is revealing that walkable cities make people happier, less lonely, more satisfied with life and physically healthier. Movements are afoot around the globe toward sustainable urbanism, slow travel and 15-minute (or less) cities – such as Nordhavn in Copenhagen and superblocks in Barcelona. For travellers, strolling around Culdesac's shops, restaurants and outdoor markets offers a glimpse into a future where cities are once again built for people, not traffic.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
America's most beautiful train station sits in nightmarish downtown plagued by vagrancy and drug abuse
Portland 's Union Station has just been hailed by National Geographic as one of the most beautiful train stations in America - but the landmark's grandeur is sharply at odds with the grim reality outside. The city's downtown has been consumed by homelessness, open-air drug use, and economic decline in recent years. The station, which opened in 1896, is the oldest major train hub on the West Coast. Designed in the Romanesque Revival style, it is instantly recognizable for its 150-foot clock tower crowned with the words 'Go By Train,' a neon sign that has become a local icon. Inside, the main hall boasts soaring coffered ceilings decorated with floral medallions, marble-lined walls and floors, and wood-paneled benches that recall the golden age of American rail travel. Union Station was conceived as the centerpiece of Portland's 19th-century push to transform itself from a waystation into a major destination. Railroad baron Henry Villard seized control of the city's rail interests in the 1870s, linking Portland to the national network and driving a transcontinental line through to the Pacific Northwest. When the station finally opened after years of delays, it was paired with the opulent Portland Hotel and quickly became a proud symbol of civic ambition. At its peak, Union Station was a bustling hub for four separate railways, funneling wealth and visitors into the city. Even today, the building remains an active transit hub, serving Amtrak passengers on long-haul routes such as the Coast Starlight and Empire Builder. It also houses Wilf's, a restaurant and jazz club that has operated since 1975, offering classic steakhouse fare and nightly music. The station's historic architecture and cultural cachet earned it a spot on National Geographic's list of eight 'historic design marvels,' alongside New York's Grand Central and Washington D.C.'s Union Station. But beyond its ornate halls lies a very different picture. Portland's downtown has suffered a dramatic decline in recent years, with tent encampments, rampant drug use and vacant skyscrapers overshadowing even its most beautiful landmarks. Office vacancy rates reached 35 percent earlier this year - the highest among America's 25 largest downtowns - while the city's tallest tower, the U.S. Bancorp 'Big Pink,' is more than half empty and recently listed for sale at a fraction of its former value. The downturn was accelerated by Oregon's 2020 experiment with drug decriminalization, which reduced possession of heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamine to the level of a parking ticket. What was meant as a progressive reform instead fueled an overdose crisis and entrenched open-air drug markets across the city. By 2023, Oregon counted more than 20,000 homeless people, nearly two-thirds of them unsheltered, as overdose deaths surged. The state has since reversed course, recriminalizing hard drug possession, but downtown Portland has struggled to recover. More than half of voters in Portland would still consider leaving the city if they could afford to, according to a poll commissioned by the Portland police union Portland also whipsawed on policing. In June 2020, amid Black Lives Matter protests and calls to 'defund the police,' officials slashed millions from the force's budget. A year later, faced with rising crime, homelessness and drug use, they increased the $230 million budget by $5.2 million. Even so, disillusionment runs deep. A poll commissioned by the city's police union found more than half of residents would leave if they could afford to. Nearly two-thirds said Portland is 'on the wrong track,' and 68 percent believe the city is 'losing what made it special.'
Times
7 hours ago
- Times
WH Smith could pay a heavy price for counting on America
When the high street stalwart WH Smith turned its back on Britain's benighted shopping precincts, the spin was that focusing on trains, planes and to a lesser extent automobiles would deliver a highly profitable future for the retailer. That notion suffered a serious knock on Thursday when it abruptly slashed annual profit guidance after an accounting blunder in its North American business. The shares fell by more than 40 per cent during the day as auditors from Deloitte were called in to review an estimated 'overstatement' of about £30 million on the company's headline profit figure. Year-end profit for its US arm is now expected to be about £25 million, slashing the prior forecasts of £55 million by more than half. • WH Smith shares drop 40% after US accounting error It was only last year that Carl Cowling, the chief executive, described WH Smith's North American business as its 'most exciting opportunity for growth' as he unveiled a target of opening 500 shops by 2028 and taking 20 per cent of the US travel retail market. The FTSE 250 group has banked a great deal on the United States, which is a central pillar of its transition into a pure-play travel retailer given its position as the world's largest travel market. That transition was set in stone earlier this year after WH Smith sold its UK high street business to the private equity firm Modella Capital. Its greeting cards platform, was sold shortly after for £24 million. Cowling will have a much tougher time fulfilling WH Smith's market share goals in the US now, with almost £600 million wiped off its value over the day and analysts describing forecasting for its North American business as a 'pin-sticking exercise.' It is still unclear what the material impact of the accounting issues will be, given that management only uncovered the problems a few days ago. Fintan Ryan, food and beverage analyst at the investment bank Goodbody, described the scale of the overstatement as 'quite shocking', and said he expected markets to 'assume the worst, for now at least'. The warning could lead to a reduction in pre-tax earnings of about 75 per cent and damage investor confidence in WH Smith's ability to hit future profit targets. Peel Hunt analysts said forecasts would be 'very difficult to make' without involving guesswork, and noted that the practice that led to the accounting hitch had 'been in place for some time'. WH Smith said the overstatement had arisen after it booked some of its supplier income in the current financial year instead of the next one. Comparisons are already being drawn with events at other retailers. Tesco warned in 2014 it had overstated half-year profits by about £250 million, before also calling in Deloitte, in what evolved into a major accounting scandal that took years to fix. Even without the accounting hitch, there were questions about WH Smith's foray across the Atlantic. It first entered the US market in 2018 via the acquisition of the airport-based retailer InMotion, before buying Marshall Retail Group for about $400 million the following year. InMotion, which sells electronics such as headphones, power banks and other mobile accessories, has been 'quite a poor performer', Conroy Gaynor, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said. 'I struggle to see the proposition of it now, because I don't know if people are really buying these types of goods at airports. You'd have to be at a real loose end to buy your airpods at a mark-up … Unless you lost them on the way to the airport.' This year has also brought concern about demand for transatlantic travel. A stricter US border under President Trump coupled with US tariffs led the European Travel Commission to warn of 'heightened uncertainty' in the market, while Heathrow reported a dip in journeys from Britain to the US before the summer. Shares in WH Smith have already fallen by 45 per cent this year to date in a signal of investors' scepticism over its strategy. Some optimism can be gleaned from recent half-year results, which came before the sale of its high street stores and showed sales rising 3 per cent to £951 million. That growth was driven primarily by the international business, with high street profit declining by nearly a third to £15 million in what analysts said was a vindication of the Modella deal. Goodbody analysts said there was 'significant upside potential if the market regains confidence in the margin and returns profile of North America'. If Thursday's accounting issues play out anything like Tesco's, though, it'll be a long road to recovery.
Reuters
7 hours ago
- Reuters
US continues visa vetting even after admission, official says
Aug 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department's continuous vetting applies to "all of the more than 55 million foreigners who currently hold valid U.S. visas," a department official said on Thursday, including those who have already been admitted to enter the country. "The State Department revokes visas any time there are indications of a potential ineligibility, which includes things like any indicators of overstays, criminal activity, threats to public safety, engaging in any form of terrorist activity, or providing support to a terrorist organization," the official said.
