THE cul-de-sac, a feature of almost every housing development built since the Second World War, has reached the end of the road.

Estate agents emphasise the benefits of living in a dead end with no passing traffic. But it is precisely the lack of passers-by that has prompted the Government to condemn cul-de-sacs in its guidance on street design.

It recommends instead a series of blocks arranged in a grid, a building pattern pioneered 2,000 years ago in Roman towns. The draft guidance, Manual for Streets, says that blocks are more conducive to walking and cycling, and make more efficient use of space.

It says that cul-de-sacs often cause people to make long detours to reach shops and schools, encouraging them to travel by car.

The guidance says: “A dead-end road system of loops and lollipops has been the dominant layout of suburban housing developments for the last 30 years. It could be argued that most housing developments of this type lack any sense of coherent urban structure.

“Many suffer from layouts that make orientation difficult, create leftover and ill-defined spaces, have too many blank walls and facades and are inconvenient for pedestrians, cyclists and buses.”

Andrew Cameron, technical director of WSP Group, the consultancy which helped to produce the manual, said that research in the US had found that people living in cul-de-sacs weighed, on average, 6lb more than those living in grid-type developments.

“The environment within which we live affects not just how we move about but our health as well. The Victorians were good at creating connected networks of streets, like in Clapham or Balham in South London. You get more street activity on these than on cul-de-sacs,” he said.

The Space Syntax Laboratory at University College London found in the 1990s that householders were 30 per cent more likely to be burgled if they lived in a cul-de-sac. Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a street design consultant, said: “People may like the apparent exclusivity of cul-de-sacs, but, like gated communities, they often lead to a sense of isolation.”

Richard Hebditch, policy co-ordinator at Living Streets, formerly the Pedestrians’ Association, said: “If you don’t happen to get on with the people who live on your cul-de-sac, it can be a nightmare. A grid pattern is better at linking homes to a wider community.”

Barratt Homes, one of Britain’s biggest residential developers, defended the cul-de-sac and said that it planned to continue building them.

A spokesman said: “A great many homebuyers like cul-de-sacs — and so do many planning authorities. As well as allowing houses to be arranged so that other houses in the close are visible, thereby improving security, they are not subject to through traffic and are, therefore, rightly perceived to be safer for pedestrians, especially little ones. Our experience is that cul-de-sacs also often help build a sense of neighbourliness and community.”

The guidance manual establishes what it describes as a “hierarchy of modes”, with pedestrians at the top, followed by cyclists then public transport users. Car users are at the bottom of the list.

It concludes: “This hierarchy should be adhered to in the design process — this may at times result in reduced vehicle capacity and increased vehicle delay so that other modes can be accommodated.”

BLOCKED OFF

• The term cul-de-sac, a French phrase meaning “bottom of the sack”, was first used to refer to a dead end in 1828
• Cul-de-sac was first used in The Times in 1891 in a report on Great Titchfield St market in London, which was facing closure
• Ramsay Street, on which the soap opera Neighbours is set, is a cul-de-sac, as is the street in Brookside

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