10 Suburbs That Are Becoming More City-Like
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2024
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Suburbs are often seen as anti-urban, or at the very least sub-urban. But as many of our central cities become increasingly unaffordable, some suburbs are starting to behave more like cities. Which ones? Let's find out!
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TOp TEN CITIES moving away from Giant Squar buildings.. Everything looks like a Warehouse
Progressive gaming circles are what made me an urbanist, your love for the dreamcast is the only thing preventing me from being truly offended by your sunnyvale comments lol
Topic idea: Cities that created coherent mixed-use "second downtowns" such as The Domain in Austin TX, Las Colinas in Irving TX, or Legacy Town Center in Plano TX. My examples are Texas-centric because they're closest to me (geographically).
I am still trying to locate my Dreamcast. It's probably in storage at my parents' house due to the numerous moves in the 25 years since release.
Mister nerd, I suggest an Orange County California on location video. Specifically Irvine and Orange to highlight the vast differences between two cities that are basically neighbors to each other.
It's not an accident that so many of these cities are in California. New California legislation is literally forcing cities to build more housing or else they risk fines and other penalties. The law actually sets a number of new units each city is required to build by a particular year in order to remain compliant with the law.
This is forcing formerly suburban places like Irvine, Calabasas, and Rancho Cucamonga to add mixed-use developments to their housing stock. The results will be interesting to see.
I strongly recommend staying off of the local NextDoor app, though, because holy cannoli, the NIMBY screams can be deafening.
Two laws going into effect this year will also affect urban form in California. One directly by forbidding the enforcement of parking minimums within a half mile of major transit. This includes all of the Caltrain, BART and Metrolink stations in the Bay Area and the LA area. The other forbids parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk, even an implied crosswalk at an intersection with no markings. This will make street parking rarer and make walking and biking safer hopefully helping to encourage more use of non car modes.
That last one is likely to cause some economic fallout as many California cities have come to rely on paid street parking for part of their budget and this will remove multiple spaces on most blocks. Sacramento, for example, has been using its parking revenue to pay off its share of the loans to build the downtown arena. They are already having a post pandemic drop in those that’s been impacting their general fund. This will accelerate that decline.
@@NotaSeaBass I have mixed feelings because they're not totally misguided. In California, our 2 models for "urbanism" are San Francisco and Los Angeles. And if that's your only concept/experiecne of urbanism, I don't blame you for not wanting it in your safe, clean suburb. I think the best way to soothe the NIMBYs is to show them a working model of urbanism. Clean urban places that are also safe exist in Japan and Europe. But they don't exist in the US, which is a major PR problem if you're trying to spread urbanism into the suburbs.
@@kidtrunks2568 They don't exist in the US? Oh, no! You'd better not say that to The Domain, Legacy Town Center, Kentlands/Lakelands, Orenco Station, or any of the dozens of other fine examples of clean, safe, and thoroughly functional "suburban urbanism" right here in the USA -- they might just vanish in a tremendous puff of molecular dust when presented with your superior facts and logic! 🤣🤣🤣
@@dylanryall One way cities could mitigate some of the losses from parking income would be to take a few stroads and put them on a road diet by putting in diagonal parking instead of parallel parking. This would allow more cars in a smaller space and help reduce speeds and can all be achieved with paint initially. It also allows for the expansion of the sidewalk near crossings in the long term, reducing the length of the crosswalk and making them even safer.
Don't miss the main headline about Mountain View, CA -- we just opened up a pedestrain mall and re-discovered our downtown (Castro St!). I am happy to see California suburbs embracing some walkability. Hard to see from Street View though, since Google can't drive its cars down that road anymore.
Hopefully they're able to send someone with a car/bike/on foot: that seems to be their preferred streetview option for NY & other dense areas
Grew up in Mountain View and while I agree the downtown is getting far better. Its suburbs are still a transit desert and they haven’t allowed more housing downtown at all. It’s still surrounded by single family homes and a few 2-3 story apartment complexes. I’d argue Sunnyvale is much more ambitious with Citylines which spurred after the old mall was demolished.
Edit: forgot to mentioned San Antonio center which borders Palo Alto. While it’s great to have a lot more of your day to day needs within walking distance it has far too many vacant storefronts and is clearly car oriented still. give it 10-15 years to mature I suppose. Only real transit is Caltrain though. VTA buses can keep trying I guess but they need more effective transit. Nothing yet rivals the 5-10 min frequencies across muni in SF.
I was just there on Castro and it seemed dead and 1/3 of the stores closed permanently
redwood city and mountain view and sunnyvale all suck for the same reason: El Camino Real. It may be a road for the royals (cars) but it sure ain't a road for humans. And each little city wants to exert its control on that road so it's never safe for pedestrians.
Google Street View has cameras mounted on people and bikes for those car-free areas. Eventually the area will show an update.
I love the extra touch of placing Chicago's 6-pointed star in your graph at 2:00 for Chicago, whereas the other cities have the typical 5-pointed star.
It's the little things
Dear Jeffrey, have you ever looked at a Chicago flag? It’s not a five star it’s a six always has been four stars six points each star has a meaning.
There’s an active campaign to restore Santa Clara’s lost downtown that was obliterated by urban renewal. A citizen-led campaign has resulted in a plan being approved by city council in December 2023. They’re adopting a form-based code and zoning for mixed use. It’s a remarkable story. The campaign only began three years ago.
That’s so awesome to hear. I wish there were efforts like this when I was still in school there. I remember it being borderline impossible to go anywhere off-campus without a car back then. South Bay literally has so much wasted potential
Incredible! I'm moving to the area for work and was really saddened by how obliterated Santa Clara was by "urban renewal", but hadn't been made aware of any efforts to reverse it. This comment makes me much more hopeful for the area as a long term place to settle down in.
I've followed that group and given up, it's fractured into two competing factions and the low-intensity NIMBYs seem to be winning.
@@combusean suffering continues.
Is there any project name or key phrases I could use to google for more information?
When i was in Palo Alto we’d joke that Redwood City is the only place on the SF peninsula that understands it’s actually supposed to be a city (not just keep pretending to be a suburb). Their city staff is pretty great and forward thinking too
San Mateo has made some progress as well but not to the same extent... too many NIMBYs there.
Was a kid in Redwood City in the early nineties. Over the past 3 decades it has transformed more than almost anywhere in the Bay Area. Downtown was completely dead back then, except for a few businesses (shoutout to defunct pizza and pipes!) Now incredibly vibrant for a suburb and the density has expanded significantly beyond the few blocks of heritage downtown.
Sooooo true, I visited in 2022 and noticed that
I grew up nearby in Palo Alto and remember calling it “Deadwood City”. Definitely a huge improvement, even in the last decade. Sucks that the fun stuff like Malibu is gone though.
Redwood City is going to be the next big city in the Bay. I’d like marin, or Napa to grow but the wealthy homeowners there would fight tooth and nail to prevent that.
Density is the only way to make a downtown vibrant. You can't keep nagging the few residents to keep coming to your restaurants. Raise the number of residents 10-fold and those bars and restaurants will keep their doors open.
the new development of the shopping center that the safeway is in is gonna be really great!
CityNerd being a Sega kid explains so much.
0:00 Suburbs really are a sort of limbo for so many people. There are people who want to live in the city, but can’t afford it. Then there are the people who want to live in a rural area, but can’t find work.
Everybody can afford the cities, it's just they think they are better than class C efficiencies in rundown urban neighborhoods.
@@pavelow235 There are definitely trade-offs. People often live in places that may not have the highest quality of housing stock because they like neighborhood (you know the phrase). There are also many people that struggle to afford housing no matter where it is located.
@@pavelow235any proof to provide that the city is more affordable? That’s not dangerous!
I tend not to agree, from a Belgian-European perspective. We had tons of suburbanisation here in the 50's to 80's (no wonder some important places in Antwerp were named to American presidents..) and it still didn't really shift today. many people WANT to live in a place where they can have their consumerism-car driven lifestyle without getting into "the dirty immigrant downtown city". We have TONS of stroads, although mostly just two lanes, cutting through the countryside but giving that typical suburban feeling watching to both sides of it, "rope housing" they call it here. People just WANT to live there, having the illusion they live on the countryside looking to the fields behind their backyard, but at the same time the illusion they live almost in the city when they take their car from their driveway in the front. Believe me, it's soul crushing to drive in suburban Belgium on rush hour or on shopping saturday, but many people don't seem to care. Stroad shops make publicity with how easily accessible they are...
@@touwenwaterman1229 I don’t know which group is in the majority, but a lot of people like the way they live because that is the way they grew up. Why do some people put ketchup on certain foods while others use mayonnaise? 🍟
I feel like most of Richardson's reasons can be completely explained by the explosive growth of the student population of UT-Dallas located in Richardson, TX.
I lived there car-free between for 4 years between 2019 and 2023 while doing my undergrad and so did a lot of other students especially International ones who sometimes even lived off campus and commuted to school using the DART buses, which are free for UTD students and the 883 Bus (a.k.a The Comet Cruiser) is likely the highest ridership bus in the whole system.
Hey I also did my undergrad there! I came here to say basically the same thing. Richardson isn't a college town - the economy and population aren't dominated by UTD by any imagination - but the student body went from ~17,000 in 2010 to ~31,500 in 2022, compared to Richardson's 2021 total population of 116,382.
The university has a large international student body who walk or take the bus more than the average metroplex resident.
Richardson and UTD specifically are also getting stops on the new silver line that will bypass downtown and end at DFW. It will also be beneficial because it will connect Richardson to other urban areas like Addison and downtown Carrollton. The Addison Circle neighborhood is already pretty dense with some mixed use and many offices accessible to the Addison station.
I love your sarcasim "Fences ... usually white. Quote unquote good schools ... usually white" 🤣
I laughed out loud at that part 😂
SAME!@@valeriejoseph2836
Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, currently has a higher skyline than Vancouver and is outpacing it in terms of skyscraper construction by an extremely high degree. Now Surrey and Coquitlam want to do the same, and they're even farther out suburbs. Surrey is actually going to have a higher population than Vancouver within a few years, and there's something like over a hundred towers planned for what will be the GVRD's second CBD around the skytrain corridor from Gateway to King George. That's not to mention the utterly massive multi-billion dollar developments of Oakridge, Fleetwood, Fraser Mills, Lougheed, Burquitlam, Lansdowne, and Clayton. With the smallest of those developments being Oakridge at a mere 3300 units and the largest of those developments being Lougheed at 10,000 units, it's going to be fascinating to see our geographically small metro region basically Manhattanize within the next decade or so.
This sounds amazing and too good to be true. Would love to see it and live there as well if it includes bike and pedestrian infrastructure
And Capstan station in Richmond!
@@theblondebomber Some are better than others, but a lot are still in development, leaving many stroads and parking lots in the areas. Every large development in planning and development in Vancouver is pedestrian, cycling, and transit focused, including Oakridge, Jericho, Heather, and Senakw. As you move out, there are varying degrees of success. Brentwood has some pretty great high density mixed use areas, but they're broken up by stroads. Surrey City Center is coming along but it still looks like a bit of a wasteland just beyond the skytrain stations. Coquitlam Center and Lougheed are pretty promising, while Port Moody on a whole is really coming along nicely. There are already three major urban centers outside of downtown Vancouver that have built themselves up to a very similar degree. These would be Metrotown, Lonsdale, and New Westminster - all of which have great walking, cycling, and transit, while really being held back by annoying overcrowded stroads and parking lots.
@@amydothi I also forgot Jericho, the Heather Lands, Westbrook Village, Senaqw, The False Creek Flats, The Oak Lands, the skytrain enactment areas under the new provincial TOD plan, and the Broadway plan. I'm pretty sure there are well over 500k units of housing in the GVRD with those that I missed, and I'm probably forgetting even more. There are too many.
Vancouver's region is such an outlier in North America, IMO it also helps being in Canada particularly now.
The bay area suburb urbanization is real. I’m sure a lot of it is being driven by work from home, but I went to school in between redwood city and Mountain View, and I’ve watched all of the suburbs along the Caltrain slowly develop. Unfortunately there’s a long long way to go on housing affordability, but hopefully the new state laws going into affect will accelerate this. I have so much hope for the Bay Area becoming an urbanist hotspot (not just SF)
Sounds like White Flight 2.0 urban San Francisco is tainted, so the developers just duplicate the buildings miles south. Why not leave the suburbs alone (or return to forests) and repair the San Francisco core. That is where the original infrastructure is. Plenty of available building sites that can support supertalls....
@@pavelow235SF Residents said the same thing just in the opposite direction. That SF is full and you should not move to the city. Go live in the suburbs. Now because all Suburb land in commuting distance is taken up, the only way to add more people is to build up. The solution is to build up everywhere in the bay. If you claim Not In My Backyard the place you propose to build instead will claim the same thing. Like it or not everywhere is densifying.
@@sasquatchanbearhunter I don't know what "full" means in your context, but San Francisco is nothing like Manhattan and is emptier than it was 5 years ago, yet it could support that if the local government would make the quality of life a more prominent issue. Instead you have Whites running away from homeless and drugs and duplicating San Francisco style density 15 miles south. Fix the city and concentrate growth there instead. Leave the suburbs alone, that means less humans live the suburban way and less Teslas driving back and forth between San Jose and San Francisco. Got to get "machines" off the road and get people walking and biking ONLY. Can only do that by concentrating on the core.
@@pavelow235 Don't know why it has to be either / or. San Francisco can certainly work on its undeniable quality of life issues by further densifying and constructing more mixed use / mixed income developments leading to more affordable housing and getting more homeless off the streets in sweeping new "housing first" initiatives. But the suburbs can densify as well, leading to more, yes, affordable housing which is always a plus in a democratic society. Densification will also lead to greater cultural amenities as denser environments can support more world class museums, galleries and unique shopping environments so quality of life can go up in the suburbs as well. Win-win.
@@guydreamr Because eventually suburbs of the suburbs will develop in 50 years, that is the easy answer. Urban Sprawl is what you're describing. Tell me how many buildings over in San Francisco over 50 stories??....would you believe there is only 5.....there should be 155....San Francisco is underbuilt and promoting growth in other regions just allows the richer folks to look away from the problems of the city and pretend they don't exist. This is the same logic Levitt used when he built tract housing in a potato field far away from Manhattan. Stop kicking the can down the road.
Downtown Richardson is definitely a fun spot that the town seems intent on revitalizing and invigorating. It looks like they're really trying to densify the area near 75, and not to mention that Richardson's Chinatown is an amazing spot (and to think how much better it could be if the giant parking lot was converted into a pedestrian square)
A few times a year it does get pedestrianized! The Chinese Community Center will host festivals and markets and it's delightful. We really really need a rethink of Greenville Ave, those bikes lanes don't cut it.
Just moved out of CityLine, agree with this, Richardson has a lot of things they are doing right, the densification and the multicultural aspects make it feel way more urban than North Dallas/Park Cities areas that are actually in Dallas Proper. Plus the DART stations in CityLine and downtown historic Plano make getting around easy. I definitely see that pocket of 75 v George Bush turning into a semi-urban environment.
I just wish DART had built a stop right at or next to the historic downtown Richardson. I’d take those over Arapaho or Spring Valley that are big parking lots.
I can't wait until the Silver Line is done too. I live a stone's throw from UTD and work walking distance from the DART station in Carrollton. The dream of a nondriving commute is so close. Yet so far.@@jasonmcbride4847
That is interesting. I am in DFW quite a bit and still have family in Plano, but I haven't been to Richardson in years. I will definitely have to check it out next time I'm there.
NYC immediate suburbs are more urban than urban neighborhoods in other cities. You can also argue some of NYC suburbs have their own suburbs
so true
Seeing Mount Vernon on the list gave me this same reaction. I’d never consider it a suburb
agreed, its a suburb by NYC Standards but just an urban neighborhood by other metro area standards. Same goes for yonkers, new rochelle, hempstead, jersey city , newark etc....@@chrishenriq NYC "suburbs" can easily dominate this list
This is true to some extent at least for the city of White Plains. White Plains is both a suburb of NYC and a city in its own right. Many residents commute to NYC, but at the same time the city population more than quadruples (250K vs city pop of 60K) every weekday from workers commuting in from other parts of the NYC region. IIRC surveys have even shown more people commute into Westchester County as a whole than commute to NYC from Westchester.
@@Mav12ableit’s true to the full extent. That’s what I was referring to, they are all Satellite cities. White plains , Newark Nj, Hempstead etc…. Are all “suburbs” of nyc but serve as urban cores for their own micro-metro areas . And many of these cities have much greater density and walkability than the suburbs he listed which is why i said NYC suburbs could very easily dominate this list if he was being completely objective
Richardson is being intentional about transit and active transportation. As an inner ring suburb it benefits from cheaper housing that is well located to jobs in in Dallas, Plano, and Frisco. While not always next to transit, more apartments usually mean opportunities for people to live close to work. Additionally, Richardson is more diverse than many Dallas suburbs.
Born and raised in Redwood City. So cool to see it change throughout the years. Both my grandmothers moved to downtown Redwood City from Southern California about five years ago and it has been great for them to be in a walkable place, they seem so much happier and healthier now. I also find it really easy to ride my bike downtown to go see them. I would love to see you make a more in depth video about my hometown! I think a lot could be learned from the progressive city planning going on.
Interesting to see which suburbs are becoming almost their own cities over in North America, here in Australia and more specifically Sydney we have multiple examples of this where small satellite cities are popping up around major shopping and transport routes, Parramatta and Liverpool being the biggest 2 examples of this
Not sure if this is the place to do it, but I would like to suggest that you do a video analyzing the effectiveness of laws that have been introduced in different jurisdictions to reduce the stranglehold of single-family zoning. I understand that California, Minnesota and Portland have all passed laws permitting higher density and mixed-use development around transit and elsewhere. British Columbia just did, but I guess it would be too early to measure the impact.
Wow just eliminate zoning, now what political philosophy has been saying that for decades now?
There's been a lot of new high-rise development in Mt. Vernon in recent years, much of it with lots of affordable housing units for low-income residents. I would imagine that probably has a noticeable effect on the amount of folks using public transit in the area, and owning fewer cars per household, which is great.
Another aspect: Yonkers's 1960s-70s issues with decent affordable housing (ahem, RACISM) tended to push strivers toward Mount Vernon. Yonkers has fewer issues with racism now, but in that period of ferment Mount Vernon built up its own center of gravity both socially and culturally. No other suburb on this list has a golden age rap anthem like Money Earnin' Mount Vernon.
Yup
@@dxtxzbunchanumbers all I know about this I learned from _Show Me A Hero_
12:45 CA passed a law abolishing parking minimums within a certain proximity to transit. No way that would already have accounted for this spike though, since it only came into effect last year.
A few cities here in Oregon did that same abolishing (or at least easing) pretty recently, and a surprising amount of housing has already went up in all those places that weren't big enough for a lot of apartments with a high parking requirement.
Greetings from Mountain View. We are truly not used to being mentioned. I do wish you had focused a bit on our very small but vibrant downtown on pedestrianized Castro Street with its emphasis on independent restaurants. Also, I carried mail in Redwood City decades ago and it has gotten much better.
I think Haddonfield, NJ deserves an HM. It is right on the PATCO high speed line to Philadelphia, and is a quiet, walkable community with lots of great restaurants and other things to do.
Biking in silicon valley means you have nothing left to live for
Richardson, Texas resident here happy to be contributing to the city’s decreased car usage. I live with my brother, and we only have one car that we share between us. He works from home, and I take the DART to get to my college classes most days. We still have to drive to get to the DART station and a few other places, but we’ve worked it out in our schedules such that we don’t have much of a need for a second car.
1:11 ok the picket fence and schools joke actually got me good
The suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth
In the Boston area, there are numerous suburban cities that can be accessed from Boston itself by the subway system. Demographically they are very like the central city. Other urban suburbs are on the Commuter Rail or bus lines. Some are old New England towns with fairly dense cores, walkable suburbs. The population of metro Boston is over 3 million, of which the city itself contributes around 800,000.
I think Boston has the best Subway system and commuter rail in terms of connection to the surrounding suburbs. Of course hoping for the MBTA to improve to better handle the load it has.
what are some of the nicest ones in your opinion?
@@herschelgreimenheimer1739 all of them connected by subway are pretty nice.
"The Villages" , Florida is an anomaly as nobody that lives there have a workplace to travel to.
They are also wealthy old people who vote republican.
It's always nice to see someone appreciate the Dreamcast.
Finally someone that understands the travesty of discontinuing the Dreamcast!!! I will follow this man to ends of the Earth!!!
some of the NYC suburbs in Nassau and Westchester are allowing a lot of apartment construction close to commuter rail
Cool to see my hometown of Redwood City 1st on this list! Redwood City has grown so much in the last couple of years, and I hope the downtown would expand onto the lot of Sequoia Station and to completely redo that area.
a city i’m shocked didn’t make it is tempe, AZ! it has completely transformed since 2010 and i assume the data was skewed by house sprawl surrounding the dense area around ASU
Agreed! It's much better than Scottsdale by a long mile.
At first I thought he was just doing the cities in California.
Tempe may not have made the cut for even being in the running. Tempe Town Lake has been a serious development though beyond just the college town stuff
I think most of the blame for the increases in biking and transit ridership can be put on rising gas prices, which isn't exactly a bad thing. The more expensive gas is, the more people will have to spend. And the less they'll want to drive. The bad thing about this is, people who live in cities with no transit or bikes will be stuck either at home or riding in their friend's car like the guy in "Scrub".
I expect to see much more biking with the explosion of e-bikes, as the price of them continues to fall and the technology continues to improve.
Additionally electric cars are expensive as fk
Yeah but for the people who are stuck in the suburbs that don’t have public transit rising gas prices isn’t exactly a plus
It doesn't matter how high the gas prices get if there is no bus to catch in the first place.
I would like to see a test of the hypothesis and of the alternative that insurance, taxes and purchase price are significant fixed costs for people that don't drive many miles.
So, I suspect that the costs to operate a privately owned vehicle drive down miles driven, but the fixed costs can only be reduced by having fewer vehicles per household.
The first city that I thought of when starting this video was the #1 city on your list! The downtown has built A LOT of 5-8 story residential buildings and even more are on the way. It’s been the most pro-nimby city in the bay, but many cities are poised to follow suit in the next decade as you commented about because they have upzoned their urban areas around their transit stations: Emeryville, Berkeley, Millbrae, South San Francisco.
Suburbs, and more specifically the Single Family home planning style, is like a Swiss army knife of housing. They can do things that rural and urban environments can do, but they're terrible at all of them
If you expanded this list to include Canada, I think Surrey, BC would rank high. Officially a suburb of Vancouver, but which in the last 30 years has seen huge increases in density and urban areas due to the Expo Line of Skytrain running through it. In fact, its population has increased to the point where it's expected to surpass Vancouver by 2030. Impressive.
Honestly Burnaby is the biggest improvement in the lower mainland. I remember the last time I was in Vancouver, before I moved here last year, was in 2014, and there was basically no significant skyline to Burnaby. Now it rivals Vancouver's downtown. Surrey is still impressive though. Even Richmond is building substantial density now, which just feels insane.
Mississauga as well.
Thank you for my daily dose of urbanity sanity.
You won’t be able to live car free in Irvine, CA. It’s a false paradise where every neighborhood is surrounded by 12 foot walls besides the one spot they allow you to enter. I can tell you for fact they did not consider walkers or bikers when building Irvine
50s/60s urban planning was wild. They had every opportunity to not make Irvine a convoluted transportation hellscape considering it was a planned city and they knew from the very start that it would feature a major university at its heart (well, eventually they ended up making it not so central), but they still chose to make it the One Suburb to Rule Them All mess it is now. It's not surprising they're seeing waning car use, but it'll take a while for the city to crawl out of the hole it made for itself. The lack of options was a deliberate choice and it's not easy to fix something ingrained in every aspect of the design.
I'd describe Irvine as very walkable but very car dependent. It's has a great network of connected trails and parks and each neighborhood tends to have a retail center with pretty much all the amenities you need. But the main streets are very wide, nearly mini highways, and the public transit is mehh. You need a car but you have great walking, biking, and hiking trails.
The problem with Irvine is, more people have 3+ cars in their garage than people going car free (not counting uci students). And to say Irvine’s public transit is meh would be an understatement, it’s basically nonexistent. There’s a reason it’s “downtown” is right off the 405 and most places worth going aren’t too far from a freeway exit. You’re not supposed to get around any other way but driving. If they wanted to you walk or bike they wouldn’t have designed their streets to look like mini highways like you said. It’s funny too because metrolink runs right through Irvine but the city tries to keep that hidden, they could promote ridership and try to dissuade people from driving but it’s been the opposite (405 fastrak). I have very little hope that Irvine turns it around but there’s some good people trying to make it happen, both in city council and in the community.
I am from Orange County, CA and live in a neighboring city to Irvine. I have been always been curious to see when an Orange County city would show up in one of these lists. Irvine is comprised mostly of stroads and communities of homes that don’t allow for much walkability (as shown in your video).
Something I have noticed living in Orange County is that in suburban communities, areas with schools tend to have more bike infrastructure for the kids attending them. I just found it interesting, maybe the way we get more walkable and bikeable communities is to spin it as being good for the kids lol.
When I went back home to OC and visited, I spent some time in South County. I was amazed to see just how many kids had ebikes. It completely makes sense lol. Getting around the suburban hill-scape of south county was a nightmare as a kid. Especially when OCTA kept cutting routes...
Reminds me of the ebike kids in huntington beach lol
@@outerspacelocation they're everywhere in Irvine
Stroads are really the killer. I grew up in Laguna Niguel and Crown Valley Parkway had 8 lanes
Also UC Irvine is doing some of the heavy lifting specifically for this time frame, as most of the towers have gone up since 2010 and the last few were just finished in 2021
If anyone needs further proof that the Caltrain corridor needs passing tracks, DTX, and a new transbay tube i recommend this video. Just imagine how much better the cities of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Redwood City would be if they could get express trains every 15 minutes to the economic centers in downtown SF and the east bay and the rest of Northern California.
Never thought I'd see my (kinda) hometown of Parma show up on this channel. One thing to consider re: the decreasing household size and cars per household is that Parma is an aging suburb. A lot of the residents are post war white flighters and their kids, who are now in their retirement age. I have not looked at any data to confirm this anecdotal experience, but I suspect it might have a strong influence on the observed trends. Many young people (myself included) have left the area, for other, often more progressive, areas of Cleveland. I can't say that I have noticed many positive trends in transit coverage or otherwise and it definitely doesn't feel like it's becoming more 'city' like on the ground. That said, the south side communities of Cleveland proper (just north of Parma), have been attracting a lot of young people with denser housing and better transit access, so there's definitely good things happening in the region!
I'll echo your impressions as a fellow Cleveland area resident. I've seen no intentional changes to cause this other than aging and the all-up remote work trends.
In ‘95 I lived in Richardson for 7 months during a Texas mistake. All I remember was an endless sea of suburbia but on a grid and my horrible commute to Dallas for work.
Since you're headed to SLO next month, some great things to do/see: Thursday night farmers market downtown, Poly Canyon architectural village (Cal Poly architect student projects you can walk through), take a trip to Los Osos and hit up Sylvester's for burgers and fried mushrooms, Hearst Castle tour if you have time, Avila Beach, and finally Firestones for a tri-tip sandwich and seasoned fries, expensive but totally worth it.
I used to work at LinkedIn and I visited the Mountain View campuses about 2 years ago. I can attest they are indeed bike-friendly. In fact, there are rideshare bikes available to all employees to ride in between campuses. There are even free food trucks along the way if you want a snack!
This is a little bit of a weird point, but I'm skeptical that a place like Scottsdale can ever become significantly less car-dependent without a drastic cultural change from the rest of the country - specifically in the way people dress. Scottsdale, and Phoenix for that matter, is in the middle of the desert. During the summer, if you wanna walk any nontrivial distance without getting heatstroke, my guess is that you'd pretty much have to cover your whole body in light-colored breathable fabric. Not too dissimilar from an Arabic thawb. Car dependency in suburbs like Scottsdale, and even in their core cities, is not just a product of poor city planning, but also the product of a culture living in an environment it's not adapted to.
I'm currently visiting Germany, and the cities I've visited so far have same suburbs with walkable areas and public transport access. There's no reason as to why the USA can't build similar suburbs.
Youngstown finally gets a mention! We sure aren’t coming back but we’re holding it down! Come visit.
re: biking in MTV. Google was threatened with extra taxes from Mountain View due to excessive car traffic. Google has a lot of programs to subsidize employees biking to work, including free e-bike rentals and a free basic commuter bike if the employee agrees to commute by bicycle a certain number of days per month. google also offers free bicycle repair for simple issues and built out secured employees-only bicycle parking, lockers, and showers.
I would have thought of Evanston Illinois or Arlington Virginia being mentioned. If Canada were mentioned, Mississauga, Ontario would have blown it out of the ballpark (which would be worthy of a separate video, if it has not been done already).
Yeah lmao more people live in Mississauga than live in most US core cities
From what I've seen Scottsdale is only walkable for 6 months out of the year.
“Usually white” had me rolling
As someone who used to bike commute through Santa Clara on those stroads, it is not a particularly safe (or enjoyable) ride.
As someone from Irvine, don't trust the Google maps routes for pedestrians and bikes. The map is unaware of various shortcuts and cutouts not accessible to cars. It is actually possible to live car light in Irvine in the right neighborhood and I actually live car free.
I am British, so I cannot make any detailed comments on the US. But I am not surprised that the already pitiful percentage of transit users in 2010, 4.9%, has dropped to 3.1%. (Chart at 3m 10s)
Here in the UK, I am quite sure that a contributory factor to the growth of home working is the high cost of our public transport fares. An annual season ticket from Woking (Surrey) to London (about 25 miles) now costs £4,070.
In a letter published in the London 'Times' for 28 December 2023. I contrasted that price 'with Switzerland, where an annual season ticket to use the entire public transport system costs the equivalent of £3,700.'
Switzerland measures about 250 miles from east to west, and about 100 miles from North to South. (Zurich to Berne is about 75 miles.) It is widely regarded as having one of the best public transport systems in the world. And it has a reputation for being a very expensive country to live in.
It certainly is much less expensive in the US. Different situations, obviously... one gets less in the US.
Well, that’s extremely expensive for a yearly pass for greater London.
I feel like some Canadian suburbs are practically citirs due to transit connections like Peel Region’s Brampton and Mississauga that connects to Toronto and will have their own LRT system soon or Surrey and Burnaby, with the Skytrain and Rapidbus connection. Though practically they are cities with the population and growing high density development around urban areas and transit stations.
I'm curious what the data looks like for Canadian "suburbs". Metrotown and Brentwood in Burnaby, BC are essentially two separate downtowns in a "surburb" that rival a lot of American city downtowns in terms of density and walkability.
New legislation from the BC government regarding increased density around rapid transit stops will only increase this phenomenon.
I'm from Mississauga and very surprised by the transformations of the various neighborhoods in the city. My old stomping grounds of Cooksville, Port Credit, Lakeview, and the City Centre look much more lively and urbanized.
Mississauga used to be a suburb, but now its officially a city and almost 1.5 million residents. (like how the City of Toronto and City of Hamilton are cities)
@@amouryf Mississauga is not 1.5 million, I think you’re talking about Peel Region. Cause Brampton is like almost 700k that means Mississauga is at least 700k the.
@@TheRandCrews Mississauga is about to reach 1.5 million
Very surprised to not see any DC suburbs in the list. But maybe that's next decade. Bethesda has dozens of dense housing projects in the pipeline as does silver spring, alexandria, and tysons.
MUCH AGREE WITH YOU!!!! MOST OF THE SUBURBS IN THE BALTIMORE AND WASHINGTON DC AREA ARE HAVE LOST MUCH THEIR SUBURBAN VIBES AND TASTE.
Yes! Was just in Silver Spring which has a walk score of 91 and a diversity index to rival Queens
Have you ever looked into Carmel, Indiana? I think it demonstrates that even smaller suburbs can be walkable
Though our same-name brother in California fell off a bit, I expect my home suburb, Lynnwood, Washington to get a boost within the next few years. Our cycling still sucks like most suburbs, but we're getting an east-west quasi-BRT Swift Line (Orange) in March, we're going to become the northern terminus of the Link Light Rail this fall with the Lynnwood Link Extension, and Community Transit is aiming for a local bus service redesign in the few years during and after the extension to emphasize better frequency and connections. In addition to a decent amount of upzoning and TOD planned around the station, I wouldn't be surprised to see Lynnwood become more "urban" over the years.
I certainly hope so, I once tried to walk from the transit station to taqueria El renconsito for free tacos after a Sounders game. That was a mistake and almost died twice from traffic. Planned to go to h mart but had to call a rain check lmao
@@cheef825 Unfortunately, though there's a lot of positive change around transit, Lynnwood and its big commerical area, Alderwood Mall, is still a big surface parking lot town. There's some infill and apartments, but Lynnwood is still very car-centric like most suburbs. Just gotta be optimistic though.
When I saw the title, I thought of Bellevue, WA. Full of skyscrapers, it looks like an extension of Seattle, only with fewer panhandlers.
One reason there are so many SF peninsula cities on this list is that they are all rail suburbs originating around Caltrain stations. Unlike most suburban cities that removed the rail systems that initiated their development, the peninsula has kept its rail service and is now growing the service. The peninsula rail line (Caltrain) is 160 years old this week, I believe the oldest rail service in the west. Most of the peninsula cities listed have very nice walkable (15 minute city) downtowns build around these rail stations rather than the massive parking lots surrounding most BART stations. The peninsula is an example of the potential former trolley suburbs in LA could be if the trolleys were never removed.
Everyone knows there are still massive housing issues in the Bay Area. Caltrain is almost complete with its electrification. Combined with the new schedules with increased, faster service, the beautiful new electric Stadler trains will bring frequent rail service. This high quality transit combined with state housing requirements will further urbanize and densify cites around these train station centered downtowns to help alleviate the housing shortage and allow growth without car dependency.
So happy to see Mount Vernon on this list! I grew up in another fairly walkable suburb right on its border. We used to walk to their Target for Starbucks after school, among much else.
Re: Mount Vernon: all busses are free of charge in the summers and two weeks around Christmas and New Years which has "dramatically increased ridership". Also the new mayor of Mount Vernon has restored the faith of many people in the city, more trust in public systems generally.
"The real challenge for cities: What happens when Millennials have babies and the suburbs beckon."
They aren't beckoning Jon, there's no where else affordable to raise kids. Many of us would rather live in cities with more amenities.
Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Santa Clara are are physically connected. It's almost one city. And RWC is just further up the peninsula from them, with a couple cities between. MTV's Castro St. has gotten to be a very pleasant area after cars were banned, and it was very nice to begin with.
Do you think it would be worth having the municipalities merge into a larger city?
@@dashamm98 I doubt it. The entire Bay Area is like a mega-city. There are county government (9 counties), plus regional organizations. Combining or splitting cities doesn't make much sense, plus it's expensive to reconstruct a government.
@@dashamm98 Keep in mind that governments over smaller populations can be more responsive to the people living there because each vote counts more than with large populations.
Youngstown shout out!
The people in Youngstown moved to its various suburbs over the last 50 years so the region hasn't declined as bad as the municipality has. While people are still moving out, some of us that grew up here work remote and it's hard to pass up the savings living in the area after spending 10 years in LA
The Youngstown MSA didn't shrink as much as it was chopped. For the 2020 census Mercer Co Pennsylvania was removed (Sharon & Hermitage) which is adjacent and formerly had streetcar service to Youngstown. Lawrence Co PA (New Castle) and Columbiana County OH. Are also not included. These areas are locally considered part of the Mahoning & Shenango Valleys and I would argue, from a proximity and practical perspective they should be added. This would increase the population of the MSA fairly substantially (relatively).
As someone who has spent some time in Orange County, CA, and Irvine specifically, I find it incomprehensible that someone could live car-free there. The buses aren't great and everything is a 15 minute drive from everything else. You could probably bike, but it'd be a lot of biking.
Not sure why but these bar graphs you made are very visually pleasing to me
Funny how the UA-cam algorithm doesn't understand sarcasm even if you add "(sarcasm)" in the comment
Sunnyvale has a lot of Apple campuses and is close enough to their HQ in Cupertino that people could be commuting. What’s curious to me is why that would only start to be an urbanizing influence now, when Apple has been there the whole time. It’s pretty surprising seeing the world famous apple park donut spaceship then zoom out and see endless grids of 1960s bungalows surrounding it. If you started from scratch there would probably be way more density around those offices, but that can only happen at the pace of convincing enough individual homeowners to sell their lots in order to combine them. Sunnyvale on the other hand has a lot of aging, vacant commercial properties that can be demolished and turned into 200+ homes pretty quickly. It’s still a very car-centric area though.
I think you're getting at the reason: vacant aging stuff around downtown made it an attractive place to develop stuff. The train station also makes it a safer bet. People are definitely commuting and aren't all working in Sunnyvale (we could probably guesstimate this from average commute time)
as a resident from Irvine, it has definitely become more city like in the past 5 years, but there is the takeover of teslas going on
The Bay Area has a ton of room to grow. Media focuses on the decline of SF as the central node, but that doesn’t reflect the region as a whole. In reality, the rest of the region is building out commercial and residential capacity to level out high costs and demand for space in SF, facilitated by aggressive, pro housing state policy. This means many if not most of our smaller cities are experiencing boom cycles and building up their urban density in the city centers. I believe that by the end of the next low interest rate business cycle, we will have a much more diverse and dynamic network of dense cities, leading to a healthier regional distribution. For example, healthcare and utilities in Oakland, biotech in Berkeley and South San Francisco and massive housing increases in uptown Oakland, downtown Berkeley, Emeryville, El Camino Real and peninsula downtowns, downtown Walnut Creek, and of course bart and Caltrain stations.
The main issue is the politics
This is all good, however it isn't sufficient to solve the housing crisis. We don't just need better zoning and increased supply, we need to flat out ban investors from owning residential real estate. It's called "residential" for a reason, because people are supposed to LIVE in them, not use it as an investment vehicle. As more and more houses are gobbled up by more and more rich people & corporations prices will continue to skyrocket.
@@dmike3507 I agree with you. Are investors in the bay substantially buying homes right now? My impression is that prices are too inflated for a return.
The population density in these upzoning South Bay suburbs is still only about one-fifth of the density in the low rise, sleepy parts of western SF, in spite of all the growth.
@@rocknrao it’ll take a while
I grew up near Parma and that really surprises me! I only saw 1 regular bike commuter in my area when I was growing up.
I used to live not so far from Lynwood CA. And yes it is dense and everyone drives and everyone takes public transportation. It is just that dense. Along with its other surrounding cities South Gate, Huntington park, Bell and so forth.
Fun Fact: Weird Al Yankovich was born and raised in Lynwood. lol
In Canada: Mississauga, Vaughan, Surrey, Burnaby… and so many more…
Jersey City resident here; due to geography Union City comingles much more with Jersey City than Hoboken. We barely know where The Heights (neighborhood in Jersey City) ends and Union City begins; whereas from Hoboken Union City is only accessible via 3 or 4 pedestrian hostile roads, and 2 elevators that go up the cliff. Bike Lanes end there because only Hoboken and Jersey City have invested in them and recently standardized them between the cities. In addition Union City is much more similar demographically to Jersey City than Hoboken. Lastly, on satellite view you'll find the entirety of Hudson County looks similar, not just Union City. This even extends all the way up to Fort Lee/Palisades Park. It's basically one large continuous built up area, with Jersey City being the anchor. Hope this clarifies your question.
Fun fact about Parma: it is the center of the Ukrainian expat community. The car-count could be down due to a recent spike in Ukrainian migration/immigration, and a lag time between someone moving here, and them getting a car? (This is pure speculation, at its finest.)
Based take on the Sega Dreamcast. It just came out a year too early. If it had DVD capabilities it wouldn't have been beat out by the PS2. The game library was phenomenal with several games that punched way above the weight class of that generation of consoles. It pushed the envelope in every way it could. The VMU with mini games, keyboard and mouse support, a web browser, online gaming, broadband capabilities in the time of dialup being the most common internet connection, etc. I still have mine. The OG controllers still have no drift issues current gen controllers get because it had hall effect sticks back in '99.
Sega Dreamcast! I agree, that was such an amazing console... Miss that one a lot.
In general, walkability is good among NJ Cities along the Hudson river on the other side of Manhattan
I suspect Hoboken and Jersey City only didn't make this list because they were already very urbanist, and therefore had less room for improvement.
Alpharetta, GA is becoming the true definition of an urban suburb as it grows.
re: Lynwood, CA. I'm guessing the increase in car ownership is due to demographics of the area. It's a working class, heavily immigrant and Latino area. This particular demographic has seen large growth in car ownership rates over the past decade or so as incomes have risen and more people are able to afford a car.
Actually, it's a great segue into a topic I'd really be interested in seeing a video on: there's some research that shows that car ownership for poor and working class people dramatically improves livelihoods (give it a Google and you can probably dig your way into the primary sources). This is probably more due to lackluster public transit alternatives, but I'd love to hear your take on what seems to be a fundamental tension in the urbanist community: making cars plentiful for more people makes a big improvement in individuals' lives, especially where public transit isn't getting enough support; but further incentivizing car use among the primary users of public transit could accelerate a demise of public transit.
As a carless young adult who's lived in Santa Clara my whole life, I'm stunned to see my city in the top 3 since I've never considered it a leader in good urbanism. I think that about says it all re: the state of America's suburbs.
Arlington Va is technically a suburb of DC. It has some great urbanization in my view, with lots of walkability and several urban villages. Between metro bus n biking, u really can get away without a car if wanted. The cryst city area is going through major building phase.
Only thing is it can be pricey if u want to purchase a place instead of renting.
A lot (most?) of the close-in DC suburbs are urbanizing and car free livable.
The good news is a place like Rockville has high rise apartment / conods, nice shopping, walkable zones, and very good train links. I'd add that it has a decent mix of luxe and janky that isn't a bug but rather a feature of truly urban areas.
The bad news is that it took 50 years of having metro for Rockville to finally densify.
I suspect the world will end before Tyson's adds any real urban density.
Vancouver WA is an interesting case: their downtown is rapidly densifying and just improving in general while the rest of the city is incredibly sprawled and strip mall dominated.
I wish the state would pass laws to encourage (or force) density. I live in Bremerton and all we’re getting is still just car oriented development, and the occasional bike lane.
Can we do another video just like this, but "10 CITIES that are becoming more Suburb-like?"
Focusing on neighborhoods within cities, you can start with Petworth, Washington, D.C. for instance...or other places where streetcar services used to exist.
You think DC is becoming more suburb like??? Then you randomly name a neighborhood that is denser than ever and fail to recoginze that the DC metro system Petworth station is vastly more useful to Petworth residents than the rinky-dink streetcar on Georgia Avenue 80 years ago....greater DC area invented the urban suburb...
Petworth isn’t Suburban?😑
@@officialalonzo263 maybe re-read my comment.
@@pavelow235 you speak with such confidence for a person who doesn’t live in Petworth. If I stepped outside and RAN to the metro, how long do you think it would take me to get there? Honest question.
@@falsificationism I read it properly the first time
"Picket fences, usually white. Quote unquote 'good' schools, usually white."
You had me dying with that line.
These metrics, especially "low car household" and "work from home" can be explained by young single people getting pushed out of their traditional urban/city environs into the burbs, which are stereotypically the domain of families.
I grew up in Mount Vernon NY and interesting to see on this list. Mount Vernon has had a long troubled history of crime and systemic oppression. It has slowly been getting better the past decade. Much of the souhthern Westchester area is becoming less and less suburb and more their own urban centers, Mt Vernon, New Rochelle and Yonkers. Although Mount Vernon has always been an extension of the Bronx in many traits. Most people from Mount Vernon work jobs in The Bronx and Manhattan if not in MV itself. Most are lower middle class citizens working typical jobs to that wealth range but there is still.high unemployment concentrated in the more impovershed south end.
I wish my city would urbanize suburbs boring af
3:41 this is Pasadena, which was never a suburb to begin with. It was once the third-largest city in Southern California, 7th in California overall, and just happened to be very close to Los Angeles. Failure to grow in population after the 1980s was mostly due to mountains and unincorporated areas resisting annexation.
6:06 being hyper pedantic, but the routing on this map is wrong. The pienza cul de sac has an opening which reduces the estimated distance from .6 to .38 miles. Still incredibly inefficient because the other two are closed, but much less than the one shown.
stopped in st cloud on a road trip just for the hotel. i went into the city to grab some food and was completely shocked by what i saw...pretty cool place i had never heard of
Car prices, including for used cars, are way up post COVID. Some folks are getting priced out of cars as well, much is likely showing up in some of the numbers.
SO important to talk about this. So much of online urbanist discourse boils down to "move somewhere else that's already well designed" and "build entirely new places making sure not to repeat the same mistakes". Retrofitting old suburbs to become urban is insanely important. Keeping suburbs as they are and simply building new denser ones doesn't fight global car dependency, it marginally increases it, because it doesn't take any cars in the suburbs off the roads. Retrofitting suburbs is the most difficult way to build urban communities, but since it has to be done, it requires more of our focus, not less.
We already know how to build better cities. We need to learn how to fix bad ones.
its only city-like if there is public transit
Everey heard of Fairfax County,, VA? It's been getting urbanized for the past 40 years, ever since the DC Metro arrived. Arlington County (next door), the smallest county in the US, has been completely urbanized for even longer.
that fence to school pun is crazy 😂😂😂
As a resident of the "two blocks near the redwood city caltrain station", I will say that the downtown itself is pretty nice and extremely walkable. My partner and I will always walk through downtown to get some fresh air, people watch, or go to one of the myriad of restaurants, which have been surprisingly more "affordable" than Palo Alto (near the university where I work) or SF (where most of our friends are). It's extremely walkable and bike friendly, especially since they closed a large section of Broadway St. to car traffic, and you could definitely live here w/o a car (I commute every day via Caltrain, but still have a car for weekend trips). That being said, I think what's frustrating to me is still the car traffic of the downtown (i.e. there's so many people who drive to the downtown), largely due to the fact that there's not enough housing near the downtown and most people drive in from the suburban housing areas in the hills. It also suffers from Nimby-ism that pretty much all of the Peninsula/SF deal with, just not to the extent of Palo Alto. Although it's nice, long-term we'd very likely move to SF/Oakland if we end up staying in the bay, but I think if you like the suburban peacefulness mixed with some of the benefits of urban living, it's a solid place to be. Also, would love for CityNerd come out to the Bay and see some of these suburbs that are on the list to determine for himself whether or not they actually are becoming more city-like, personally I think working from home really inflated a lot of these towns on the list.