This model community intends to: 1. Respond to the growing demand for car-free living;
2. Demonstrate how a car-free and mobility-rich design can foster a healthy, sustainable, resilient, and thriving community; and, 3. Elevate the quality of the built environment and human comfort by integrating desert-responsive design at all scales, creating an internal micro-climate.

Without cars, this community is entirely human scale. A porous, fine-grain urban pattern creates a network of delightful pedestrian-only paseos, intimate courtyards and plazas, and a dynamic central plaza that fosters social interaction, a strong contributor toward resiliency. The central plaza is activated by 35,000sf of mixed uses, including a restaurant, small grocer, bike shop, and multiple 550sf small business incubator spaces.

Culdesac Tempe introduces a unique, desert-responsive courtyard housing type system—a catalog of two-and three-story buildings with eight or fewer units. Designed purposefully to be simple fabric buildings, they play an important role: shaping and activating a vibrant public realm. This catalogue of buildings is thoughtfully selected and assembled to create pods/blocks with a network of primary, secondary, and tertiary courtyards.

The resiliency approach also includes passive design strategies, native landscaping, and permeable ground surfaces: the residential buildings are only 18’ wide to allow cross ventilation and passive cooling in the desert evenings; smaller openings and shading elements are strategically placed on west and south-facing facades to reduce heat gain; the white building color reflects the desert sun; and the landscaping is drought tolerant and thoughtfully placed to provide comfort and reduce heat gain.