If You Want to Live in This Arizona Neighborhood, You Will Have To Give Up Your Car

America is rumbling with glass-chipped skyscrapers that glitter like mirrors in sunshine. Roads, in most cities, are slathered with ashy-looking asphalt that is constantly bulldozed by rolling wheels of the vehicles that humans these days are addicted to: cars. Ryan Johnson (@ryanjohnsonaz), a 40-something man who now wears a stylish haircut and fashionable glasses, owned a SUV once upon a time. But today, he has no car. The reason is not some bankruptcy. The reason is a first-of-its-kind US town that has materialized out of his dream of creating a car-free environment.

Away from the honking cacophonies of car traffic and swirls of nauseating petrol smoke, the 17-acre town, dubbed “Culdesac,” invites Americans for a fleeting experience into a state-of-the-art walkable neighbourhood where handshakes and talks are cherished more than flaunting cars, according to a report by The Guardian.

Being devoid of cars doesn’t imply that this Arizona town is, in any way, less advanced than the others. There’s a car body shop. There are derelict buildings in Mediterranean white and ochre, clustered together like cubes of sugar. Apartments are equipped with grocery stores, restaurants, yoga studios, bicycle shops, candle-making studios, bakeries, and two-storey gyms. There’s everything but no parking lots for cars.

Johnson, the CEO of Culdesac, co-founded the company with Jeff Berens, a former McKinsey consultant. This Mykonos-inspired desert environment, as it describes it, was inspired by his trips to countries like Hungary, Japan, and South Africa.“We can’t tell people that they can’t own a car. But if people want to have a car, there are other great neighborhoods for them,” Johnson told Outside Magazine.

Vanessa Fox, a 32-year-old woman who moved into Culdesac with her dog in May 2023, shared with The Guardian that while a car-free American town might sound boring to many people, for her, it’s a retreat. “For some, cars equal freedom, but for me, it’s a restriction. Freedom is being able to simply walk out and access places,” she said.

As Fox described, a walkable neighbourhood bustles with tons of wonders that residents of car-inclusive cities sometimes end up missing. In America today, for instance, single-family homes are lonely and have a painful commute, as Johnson said. Plus, all those mid-rise projects that involve double-loaded corridors have people just walking to their cars and knowing only a few of their neighbors. He added that people are happier and healthier when they are living in a walkable neighbourhood.

Another advantage is “social cohesion,” something with Culdesac’s residents call a “shared thing of living without a car.” In a conversation with the BBC, architect Daniel Parolek described this to be “car-free, but mobility rich.” And as he said, the community today is thriving with eateries, showrooms, a Korean convenience store, a doctor’s office, a dog park, a pool, a gym, and a co-working space. All this is just to say that the end of cars doesn’t mark the end of life. You've still got your shoes.