In 2007 the Virginia Assembly unanimously adopted a regulation on the types of secondary streets it would "accept" in future construction projects, meaning for which the state would provide maintenance, snow plowing, and the like. The provisions will go into effect July 1 this year.
There are a number of changes, including narrower streets (enhancing groundwater retention) and the provision of sidewalks, but the main focus has been on the requirement that street networks in new subdivisions must connect to those in other adjacent subdivisions and commercial developments. This is broadly being interpreted as a ban on cul-de-sac streets, though it is anticipated that irregular parcels of land and other factors would still necessitate some non-through-streets.
It's nice to see this new regulation was passed unanimously (it's rare that our mix of Republicans and Democrats, urban and rural, in the Assembly produces a majority, let alone unanimity). I think the unanimity reflects a consensus that the cul-de-sac has gotten out of hand. It was one thing when a cul-de-sac was usually a lollipop-looking street of less than a block, with only a half-dozen houses on it; it's another now, when so many new subdivisions are vast tracts with possibly hundreds of homes, and only one road leading out.
These new larger subdivisions are virtually gated communities without the gates. They dump all the traffic onto the main arteries, even if it's just Mom running to the grocery store for a loaf of bread and a bottle of gin. From the state's viewpoint, besides the clogging of traffic and higher street maintenance costs, I imagine these giant cubicles are also harder for emergency vehicles, snow plows, and maintenance crews to reach and service. Real estate developers like to claim culs-de-sac are safer because they reduce traffic and crime, but there is little evidence to support that; in fact, most urban planners, following the lead of Jane Jacobs's seminal 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, as well as statistics comparing "connected" residential areas to "unconnected" ones, come to the opposite conclusion -- the presence of more people and traffic, even if the passers-by do not live in the immediate area, tends to reduce crime.
A Personal Note: I remember reading Jacobs's book while the Army had sentenced me to eight weeks of bad air. Ft. Knox, Kentucky was heated with coal, and the diesel fumes wafting out of those tank engines were no picnic either. Is it possible the book was required reading for Tank Platoon Leader training? Probably not... But I digress. The book was memorable because it seemed so rational and well thought-out. I've never forgotten its basic conclusions: that neighborhoods with traffic, especially pedestrian traffic, are both safer and livelier than closed-off communities where nothing is happening on the streets.
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