21 April 2009

We're on a road to nowhere

In 2007 the Commonweatlh of Virginia passed the Secondary Street Acceptance Requirements which will soon make it much harder for communities to build dead-end streets. This should be greeted with plenty of punny headlines, like the Winchester Star's Dead End for Cul-de-Sacs? The Richmond BizSense reports that Home builders call cul-de-sac rules a dead end. The Virginian-Pilot has a column saying that Effort to sack cul-de-sacs should come to a dead end. And while other communities and states are considering copying this model, The Architects Newspaper, with the headline Cul-de-Sacked! points out that this isn't a done deal, just because the law was passed and signed:

Meanwhile, the Virginia Home Builders Association has vowed to continue to challenge the new rules. “We only have one-term governors in Virginia,” Tolson said. “We’ll push to have it revisited.”

The sad part is that in these already tough time for newspapers, the best that the Washington Post could come up with was, In Va., Vision of Suburbia at a Crossroads: Targeting Cul-de-Sacs, Rules Now Require Through Streets in New Subdivisions. Really? And do we wonder why print is dying?

BTW - the Random House dictionary is clear that the plural is culs-de-sac.

3 comments:

Puk said...

This evening's Frontline partially attributes the poisoning of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed to the mega-impervious suburbs of Virginia. So, good for them!

Puk said...

... which, by the way, should be mandatory viewing.

Joe said...

Thanks for posting this. I'm actually giving a presentation about this same law tomorrow in class.