A recent study suggests that short streets in cities, especially cul-de-sac streets, can influence behavior.

Peter Shaw studied a part of London where curbside recycling is available to nearly all households and practiced to some extent by most.

Shaw first collected data on the distribution of households that participated in recycling. Then he used a computer model to generate a random distribution of recycling households. Nonrandom clusters of houses occurred where neighbors influenced each other’s recycling habits.

According to Shaw, the typical long street with 15 or more houses has no effect on peer pressure. Pronounced effects occured with cul-de-sac streets and shorter streets of fewer than 15 houses. The shorter the street, the more people appeared to behave similarly in their recycling habits. The effect was most pronounced in cul-de-sacs.

There seems to be an influence of street architecture on the community.

— Researcher Peter Shaw, quoted in “Dead-end streets encourage recycling” by Catherine Brahic (New Scientist 4 April 2008)