For the Roman Polanski film, see Cul-de-Sac. For the musical group, see Cul de Sac (band).

A cul-de-sac is a dead-end street with only one inlet/outlet and a turnaround area at its closed end.

Cul-de-sac literally means "ass of a bag" (nowdays, cul in french is considered a vulgar slang meaning "ass" when used alone in a sentence) or "bottom of a sack" and has its roots in Catalan and French.

Despite seeming to be a borrowed french phrase, the expression cul-de-sac originated in England during the period when French was spoken by the English aristocracy.

Culs-de-sac in modern urban planning

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In modern urban planning culs-de-sac are created to limit through-traffic in residential areas. While some culs-de-sac provide no possible passage, others allow cyclists, pedestrians or other non-automotive traffic to pass.

Suburban culs-de-sac

Since the end of World War IIhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5455743, new subdivisions in America have made heavy use of the cul-de-sac. Typically, there is one or several central roads in the subdivision, with many culs-de-sac of varying length branching out from the main roads, to fill all of the land in the subdivision. There are only a few roads (relative to the number of culs-de-sac) leading out of the subdivision, usually into other subdivisions or onto major roads. These changes can be attributed to real-estate developers' desire to meet FHA guidelines and make federal home loans available to their consumershttp://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/01workshop/sub_landsc.htm.

This is in contrast to early 20th century American urban planning which emphasized a grid layout, partially out of wide reliance on streetcars, and alleys.

The use of culs-de-sac reduces the amount of car traffic on residential streets within the subdivision, thus reducing noise and, some think, the potential for accidents. It also essentially eliminates non-motorized traffic and most through-traffic. This, in turn, is thought to decrease crime and increase desirability, because in most cases the people who traverse the cul-de-sac are there because they live there or are guests of those who do. Real estate developers like culs-de-sac because they allow builders to fit more houses into oddly shaped tracts of land, and facilitate building to the edges of rivers and property lines. Culs-de-sac also facilitate gated communities, because of the small number of entrances.

Houses on culs-de-sac may be popular with some buyers, who, according to one study, might pay a 20% premium for such a home.

Criticisms

More recent evidence with culs-de-sac suggests that the lack of traffic may allow misbehavior in the street that a through route would tame by the risk of being spotted by passing motorists.

More generally, the New Urbanism movement has offered criticism of the cul-de-sac and other streets not intended to network with each other. It has been suggested that such street layouts can cause increased traffic on the non-cul-de-sac streets, make navigation (especially on foot) inconvenient and non-intuitive, and reduce the size of any given neighborhood to a single street.

This applies especially to back-to-front housing where the front of the house fronts onto the cul-de-sac lane while the rear fronts onto the main roads.

U.S. cities including Austin, Texas, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Portland, Oregon have all but banned construction of new cul-de-sac-based suburbs.

Other uses of the term

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"Cul-de-sac" is also used metaphorically to mean a line of thought or action which leads nowhere. In military parlance, a "cul-de-sac" refers to a large encirclement of troops.

References

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French phrases | Types of streets

Blind vej | Sackgasse | クルドサック | Angiportum | Sakgaass | Impasse | Blindgate

cul-de-sac: the highly sensitive area behind the cervix: Two areas inside the vagina that can be orgasm-triggers are the G-spot (a highly sensitive area on the upper front wall of the vagina) and the cul-de-sac (the highly sensitive area behind the cervix). ^*