I can only speak to our miniature cul-de-sac, bordered by just four homes, where we have lived for the past 13 years. Kids can make this tiny turn-around their playground with reasonable assurance of safety. They ride their bikes on it; play ball on it; dress it up with their chalk drawings.

It's a plus.

The flip side of our Land of Cul-de-Sacs, obviously, is that more traffic is funneled onto the relatively few "through" streets. If you live along one of those, look out; you are likely to find a lot of traffic.

(Mark A. Weber is publisher of the Eden Prairie News. He can be reached at mweber@swpub.com.)

Cul-de-sacs might make small areas of a neighborhood feel more like a community but ultimately isolate residents from even nearby neighbors. In a community full of cul-de-sacs they seem to serve as ways to divide areas rather than towns with actual through-streets which serve to unite neighborhoods.