A Case Study in Fixing a Cul-de-Sac

This article by Eric Brown at New Urbanism Blog explains how his firm was commissioned to 'fix' a cul-de-sac. To turn it into something a little bit more usable for those that aren't on four wheels. The technique, he explains, is thus:

1.  Make a place beautiful.  Places that are not visually appealing are not valued as highly as other places.  Here we add a squared up center green with a large oak tree planting (and other small details such as lighting etc.)
2. Define the place (space): A place must be defined or enclosed in some manner.  Here we focus moving the building form and mass around to create walls for our new space.  It’s the same number of houses, but they are moved around to create something of value.
3. Approach of the space:  This is the one that most designers overlook.  Every interesting space has some type of approach to it.  Here we use a row of palmetto trees to create a tighter street section and rhythm that then opens up to the main space.

And an alternative:


Read on here.