ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors describe how this exaggerated belief in cul-de-sac safety came about. Perhaps, like the corset in its time, the cul-de-sac eventually will be a passing feature of the auto age. The shapers of, and believers in, myths think they are true in some sense. Myths simplify reality and are believed to embody its essence. Suburban development patterns are widely blamed for traffic congestion, waste of infrastructure resources, costly housing, and a mismatch between employment and residential locations. The low down payments for purchasing owner-occupied housing and the mortgages that it insured against nonpayment were intended to revive housing markets during the Great Depression. Later Thomas Jefferson thought that the grid was the best method of laying out a city, and it was he who enshrined it in the national settlement pattern by the Land Ordinance of 1785.
