Can we imagine life without cars?

Do we need cars to live?

It seems almost heretical to utter those words in America, the land of the free and the home of the $725 car payment. We love our cars; it seems impossible to survive without them.

But there's an urban experiment in progress which aims to put that to the test.

Designing life around the car

American life is designed around the car. From highways that carved up once-thriving neighborhoods; to suburbs that have no sidewalks and are miles from amenities, so residents can't go anywhere without driving; to big-box stores and malls surrounded by acres of asphalt—we've collectively chosen to prioritize driving at the expense of every other means of getting around.

This outcome can't just be blamed on market forces. Many towns and cities have parking minimums that require developers to create a set number of parking spaces for every square foot they build. The result, as one article points out, is a self-fulfilling prophecy of car dependence:

More parking spaces mean bigger parking lots. Bigger parking lots mean more buildings isolated from roads and sidewalks, separated from arterial infrastructure by vast oceans of asphalt. Faced with so much mandatory automotive-centric infrastructure, many people abandon walking and choose to drive.

When we make driving easier and more convenient, and everything else harder and less convenient, obviously more people choose to drive. But this isn't natural or inevitable. It's the predictable result of policy decisions.

The hidden costs of car culture

Beyond the obvious costs of gas, tolls and insurance, our national car addiction exacts a price in many other ways.

It means high upkeep costs, because sprawling, spread-out suburbs and exurbs need more infrastructure to serve fewer people.

It means isolation and loneliness, because a person walking around might stop to chat with a neighbor, but a person driving a car almost never will. Car-centered living eliminates these spontaneous social encounters.

It means higher prices for housing, because so much space where people could be living is reserved for parking cars. Obviously, this means the space left over for human beings is scarcer and therefore more expensive.

And, of course, more cars on the road means more crashes, more injuries, more deaths, more air pollution, more noise pollution, and more traffic.

It adds up to a dismal picture. However, when you look at places where people want to live, they look very different.

We want walkable communities

These desirable places aren't sprawling suburbs fed by rivers of highway traffic, or impersonal strip malls and chain stores, or wastelands of concrete with buildings set far apart from each other.

They're towns and neighborhoods that are built on a human scale. They're charming, character-rich, and most important, walkable.

They have public green spaces, like parks and gardens, with shade trees and fountains. They have pedestrian-friendly boulevards where people can stroll, and public squares and plazas where they can sit. The boulevards and the plazas are lined with buildings that have small businesses like cafes, restaurants or bookshops on the ground floor and living space above.

READ: The car-free, kid-friendly cities of the future

Cars aren't banned from these neighborhoods, but they're not the default way of getting around. Because of their scale, people live close to all the amenities they need, so the assumption is that they'll walk or bike for most errands. If they need to go farther, there's usually public transit, like buses or light rail.

Most places that were built before the invention of the car look like this. The old cities and countryside villages of Europe have lots of them. So do the older areas of the U.S., especially the urban cores of East Coast cities.

We haven't built places like this in a long time. But in Arizona, the builders of Culdesac are trying to start doing it again.

Welcome to Culdesac

Culdesac is an explicitly car-free neighborhood, built on 17 acres in a suburb of the city of Tempe. It has no parking spaces, no garages, and in fact, residents have to agree not to keep a car on the property. (The builders got permission to waive the usual parking requirements.)

Most of the area is taken up by apartment buildings, which surround shared courtyards and are linked together by walking paths. There's a main street with space reserved for businesses. To get around, the residents have access to light rail, bikes, scooters, and discount deals with rideshare companies that link them to the larger metro area. The pathways are also wide enough for emergency vehicles to get through if they're needed.

At this point, there's a big question you might be asking. In the brutal heat of Arizona summers, how can anyone go anywhere without an air-conditioned car?

That's especially important in a world altered by climate change, where hot places are only going to get hotter.

The founders of Culdesac have thought of this too, and they have some answers.

For one thing, a town without cars is cooler—not metaphorically, but literally. That's because car infrastructure is a major contributor to the urban heat island effect. Those vast expanses of blacktop and pavement soak up the sun and re-radiate it.

Culdesac, by contrast, uses paving stones that absorb less heat, and paints walls white to reflect the sun's rays. Its buildings cluster closely together, creating shade for the narrow pathways that wind between them. It has plazas shaded by awnings and trellises, and landscape beds with native plants. In one study, ground temperatures in the daytime were almost 40 degrees cooler than sidewalks elsewhere in Arizona.

To be sure, Culdesac is still an experiment in progress. But so far, it's a successful one. As of February 2025, it's built 288 apartments and has about 300 tenants and more than a dozen small retail businesses. Within a few years, its builders plan to expand to 700 units.

Even if it achieves the full scope of its ambition, Culdesac may house a thousand people or so. You could say that's not large enough to make a difference. It won't even make a dent in American car culture. That much is true—but what matters is the example it sets.

We don't have to live a life that's dependent on cars. That's not the natural order of things. It's a choice we've made, and we can make a different one if we so desire.