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I have lived on a cul-de-sac for many years that was connected by pedestrian paths to two neighbouring streets (one of which as a also a cul-de-sac) and in a neighbourhood connected by various community pathways that meant that the straightest line between two points did not mean following the road network. As a result, many neighbours created their own walking routes through the neighbourhood which in turn encouraged neighbours to get to know each other.
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Safe to say local culture and motivated residents are the actual ingredients of there being community or not, aside the road network. Cul-de-sacs can still be reasonably well interconnected or not, though that is more on the developer to plan for it.
Regardless, they are not a particularly efficient way to build and maintain in a vacuum (i.e. - makes more sense where the topography is suited to a stub of a road) and there are so many other ways to get walkable, community oriented streets that don't involve making the road a dead end. We should probably encourage other tools and neighbourhood road designs that aren't car transport and storage centric.
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Yeah, it's easier to build connected arrangements like a grid, and if necessary you can later restrict movements using bollards or other street furniture. Building a cul-de-sac to begin with restricts the urban form from the start and is very hard to change later.