Is North American Urbanism Actually Hopeless?
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- Опубліковано 4 бер 2024
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For some, North America might seem hopeless, with its auto oriented cities and cities of extremes. Let’s talk about the unfair ways we often compare North America to the rest of the world, and why cities around the world have lots of learning to do from one another.
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Appreciate an urbanism channel that isn’t all doomerism, it’s nice to pull back and get a little more context.
That's why I love this channel. Unlike other urbanist, he is not "I hate cars and have to exterminate them" but "better transit makes everyone happier, including car drivers". I love trains and also cars, they can co-exist.
@@joseph88190Yeah, any channel that starts with "cars suck" is just hopeless. Cars aren't going anywhere. But having cars around doesn't mean you can't add convenient rail networks too.
This is why I love this channel. It gives what I think to be a pragmatic view of the world and its transit
Agreed, but notice how every video that's positive or optimistic about North America gets flooded with angry comments from ignorant NJB fanboys who are triggered by someone disagreeing with their doomer propaganda. Just look at the hate this video is receiving from the "shut up and move to Europe!" crowd...🙄
@@joseph88190 There aren't really any urbanism channels that want to exterminate cars in general though.
Excellent video. I think ”North America” works OK as a generalization to start the conversation but any serious attempt at understanding what's going on needs to take into account the vast variation that exists here too. I’ve been running some numbers on traffic safety and Miami-Dade County has a full *nine times* more traffic fatalities per capita than Toronto. The U.S. in particular is an enormous country. When people talk about Canada being similar to the US, I almost have to respond: "the US isn’t even similar to the US!”.
Yep, the US is smaller than Canada but there are major cities all over it!
It's also worth noting the absurdity of including Canada and ignoring Mexico. Via immigration and Nafta mexico has entered the fold. Some of the most impressive metros are fast becoming found in mexico.
Agreed. I think the first real step in discussing 'North American Urbanism' is that there isn't one. _Everything_ is regional in North America, so it's more important and conductive to real discussion to think about things within regions rather than trying to create a continent-spanning template.
The same is still even more true for Europe, though. While Western Europe has been sick of the traffic for a while, now, Eastern Europe is still embracing car culture to a scary level.
@@dixonhill1108 Mexico did not experience the explosion of suburbs after ww2 that Canada and the states did.
My city, Salt Lake City, is announcing a lot of new housing and transit expansions and i caught myself saying "oh i wished i lived in the future". It's actually exciting to live in the present to bring in that future.
SLC is interestingly becoming one of the best transit cities in the country, unusual for a conservative state
And there are plans for a highly-centralized transit hub that could make that city even more transit friendly.
@@ikal8178 From my limited experience Mormon/LDS conservatives are typically more modern and progressive on a host of issues than Evangelical or even Agnostic conservatives. Agnostic and non-Mormon evangelicals tend to be more susceptible to conspiracy theories and do weird stuff like tie their identify to things like cars or guns. Then when these things seem to be even remotely threatened (ie a simple transit line expansion is proposed) these types tend to absolutely lose it since they think it threatens cars which are a fundamental part of their identity.
I definitely want to travel to SLC and take advantage of the Trax network. But where I am at in San Diego, they are making progress with development of new dense housing areas around the trolley lines like Mission Valley and University City. They recently opened a new Blue line extension and plan to increase to 7.5 min freq in the next year (already have it between downtown SD and the border). Also expanding bike paths and even opening new Rapid bus (BRT lite) routes.
@@ikal8178when 1/3rd of your state lives in one metropolitan area, public transit is more convenient and beneficial to the community, compared to bigger and sprawling states in terms of size and population like a Florida, Texas, and Arizona.
I think a big source of a lot of "doomerism" about north american urbanism is that there is a lot of demand for less car-dependant living, but there isn't nearly enough supply. This results in absurdly high costs in desirable, car-lite neighbourhoods which make them inaccessible to the often younger and less well off individuals who want that style of living. A lot of people just don't have the resources, be it time, money, or age to live somewhere good in north america or wait for the place they live in to improve.
There are plenty of these places in north America, just alot of them aren't appealing, don't have good Jobs, or require people to scale back their lifestyles in ways they may not want to. You can find tons of towns across upstate New York, and Central/Northern Pennsylvania with low costs of living, where you don't need a car. But you will be living in a colder rainier climate, with few good jobs, and not as good of a selection of shops.
@@linuxman7777 A low cost of living city with low wages is no more affordable than a high cost of living city with high wages, and if you can't find work, then you're not going to be able to afford it no matter how cheap it is.
@@notnullnotvoid but in most of these towns you can live without a car. Which I thought was the point. People want walkability don't they?
@@notnullnotvoidMost cheaper cities don’t have low wages, this isn’t 1970 anymore. Actually the Metro areas with the richest people adjusting for purchasing power is Salt lake city, Raleigh, Austin, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Omaha etc.
@@notnullnotvoidOmaha, Nebraska has one of the highest Purchasing power in the US and it’s a cheap cost of living city with average wages.
People also like to ignore the fact that on a per capita basis North America has more cargo tonnage transported by ship or rail then Europe while Europe is the one with more tonnage per capita with trucking and has more truckers per capita then North America but this isn't a daily part of our visible lives so it goes ignored.
Yes. As a European I can confirm that trucks are more often used than railways in my country for freight
Due to the shorter connections using a truck is more flexible.
Especially as the train providers are still stuck in the thinking of whole cargo trains going from A to B.
Every single German highway parking place is a whole freight train on the road instead of the rail.
Satellite images will show those parking places full to the brim, many are parking in the entrances already.
And what they are arguing about? Exactly, expanding the number of parking lots in order to put more on the already clogged highways.
🤔🫣😉
We in the US also use automatic couplers, greatly reducing labor required during marshalling/shunting, reduces accidents during that process and allows trains to be much, much longer.@@jantjarks7946
@@jantjarks7946 expanding parking lots, hmm, this sounds like the We need one more lane American narrative to me😂
@@jantjarks7946 trucks in the US are also used primarily for shorter distance connections. Trains are more economical for long distance shipping.
Chiming in here to mention that if someone like RMTransit would attend council meetings with his community and turn it into a youtube video, many more people would know its possible and would do the same.
IM THE ONLY ONE UNDER 80 YEARS OLD AT MY COUNCIL MEETINGS.
Totally agree. I've only been to a few parks board meetings but it is exactly like you say. Hardly a rational mind in the room and a bunch of retired people with too much time on their hands trying to block a farmer's market or bike lane or park improvements because they see the whole world as their own private oasis and feel like we owe them a free parking space and an empty park for them to look out the window at.
Another sobering thing you'll find if you attend these meetings (or even read the minutes online) is how many friendly local business owners who have a smile on their face when you're spending money are routinely working against us, speaking out against every possible change that our cities are trying to make.
I go to city council meetings and see plenty of people who know its possible! I just don't think its good UA-cam content for me!
I haven't been to city council meetings myself, but I'm attending more of my ward meetings. They find my "youthful" optimism refreshing. I'm pretty sure that my attendance was a factor in my neighborhood getting a large chunk of the new bike lane funding, when we're usually the poorer section of the city that doesn't get much good stuff. I can't wait to see the 5A lanes built it's going to blow some minds
Did you attend them while you were in college? I have a lot of thoughts about Sound Transit's plans here in Seattle but can't find the time as a student...@@RMTransit
Some yes, I find university very flexible since most classes do not take attendance!
I really wish urbanists started to look more into the urbanization of Latin America as many of their cities were also developed in the age of car and have been able to create great projects with sometimes fractions of the cost we have in the States and Canada. I mean a city like Bogota, that is car centric, is trying its best to implement cycling everywhere and has been called the Amsterdam of Latin America. I feel we should look more into places with similar history rather than cities developed in the Middle Ages or Classical times.
Bogotá for its cycling is absolutely underrated
And don't forget BRT. A lot of Latin American cities are very good at this. It's cheap but still fast and can handle passenger volumes similar to mid-sized metro systems if designed properly.
That’s an great comment.
I see this in Brazil. Cities are trying to adapt and become more transit based, but have trouble doing so because of money. Most cities can’t build subways or trains, but they’re trying to change course building BRT and bus lanes.
In Brazil, with the exception of São Paulo, it’s really tough to have funds to build a subway, but the biggest cities are doing what they can to improve.
@@jandy8678 Yes so true. BRT has helped so many cities like Mexico City and Bogota in creating an urban fabric with low costs. It has been a success, so much so that the first metro line is being built in Bogota with connections to the BRT alongside a tram to connect to the outer suburbs. I feel like BRT is a great way for cities that lack urban fabric and public transport to test the waters and go from there.
Ah BRT is something I have more mixed opinions on (and many in Bogota are very negative on Transmilenio, even if it clearly is a net positive)
The problem that I have with people in North America (United States in particular). Is people's wilful blindness to the problems that plague our cities. Until recently i was one of those people you would see driving into a congested city in my overpriced, overrated 5,000 lbs pick up truck while complaining about the same traffic that i was contributing to.
Since i started watching channels like this one, city beautiful, not just bikes, and city nerd. Im starting to change the way i look at urban planning. Now, I'm trying to change the way i get around in the city of Richmond, VA by doing things like taking public transit and using the current bike and pedestrian infrastructure so I can see what the problems are and maybe help find a solution to them. But at least now I have enough sense to know that the solutions start with me.
A lot of people in LA that say public transportation is terrible, frankly, never use it. I wanted to take my friend to DTLA to have a couple drinks without having to pay for Uber or having a designated driver. We took the bus, Metro, Angel flight, and ended up at the US Bank tower. Then we took the public transit back to West Hollywood to eat at Norms. It was honestly pretty good.
Same with Amtrak... I'm sure there are problems but my experience is very positive.
My hometown of LA will always be in my heart. From the great weather and phenomenal Mexican food (TexMex isn't real Mexican) I can't see myself living anywhere else
Yet to visit but I will be. Chicago loyal immigrant here. my city is no Amsterdam, Stockholm or whatever else the euro fetishists get off to, yet I don't own a car at all and get everywhere I need to on the L or metra. And as he said in this video there's more to life than transit this city has a totally different incredible lifestyle compared to my native rural england
I'm glad there are still people like you, Alan Fisher, Strong Towns, Classy Whale, CityNerd, Alex Davis, Miles in Transit, and Oh The Urbanity who very much have hope and show and appreciate the things North America already has done for transit and how they can improve to be even better places! Engaged activism like attending public meetings is great, but it’s a mistake to treat that as the minimum for caring. A lot of creators' urbanist videos are made with the hope of getting people to vote and to talk to friends or family about said policy! Not everyone is gonna attend meetings, but you CAN get a majority to VOTE for people that listen and support urbanist causes! Voting matters A TON for getting things you want done!
I've lived in Tarrytown, NY as well as Jersey City, NJ. I lived in Tarrytown when I was a kid, and when I lived there, everything was walkable (as Tarrytown's colonial!) and there's convenient MNR service, so we didn't need a car for our everyday needs. Even if we wanted to go to the massive Palisades Center mall across the Hudson, there's a bus (formerly called the Tappan Zee Express) that goes between Tarrytown and the mall! In Jersey City, both it and neighboring Hoboken have implemented Vision Zero, with Hoboken having a streak of no zero car-crash fatalities on city-owned streets since 2017, with Jersey City being the first city of its size to achieve this in 2022. Besides Vision Zero, that's not talking about how much development has popped up downtown because of the HBLR and how pedestrianized downtown JC is. And not just downtown, they've also been densifying around the Journal Square transit hub too and affordable housing TOD around the Bayfront HBLR development!
Miles in Transit is the best walking urbanism shitpost
also Diners
This was by far the most rational thing I've seen on any of these channels. Thank you for making it. Because some people have been saying some wild things on other videos I've seen
Never thought I’d hear an urbanist say “NA is too big and spread out” when urbanism focuses on travel within our cities. Nobody commutes from Toronto to Calgary
Exactly. Urbanization is at well over 80% now, and projected to increase to over 90% within 20 years. There may be vast swathes of empty space, but people don't/won't live there. Meanwhile there are many relatively dense metro areas inhabiting tens of Millions of people and woefully bad transit.
I don't think there's any bad intentions here, but it sure is a weird point to make.
I didn't say *too* but its obviously relevant that there *is* so much land to spread into. People *don't* commute from Toronto to Calgary, but they might if they were much closer together (or visit much more regularly!)
Agreed. The option to live in the middle of nowhere, cheaply, exists and yet 80% of people choose to live in the biggest city they have access to. When people have access to what they need close at hand they choose that option most of the time. When someone wants to travel from a medium density part of the city to downtown a lot of them will choose a train over driving if it exists. I wonder if we focus too much on the core of the biggest cities instead of looking into how adjacent suburban towns are dropping the ball and are only bedroom communities putting more pressure on the main city to provide roads, parking, transportation, services and entertainment for all of those people as well.
It's already gotten so bad we have news reports of Calgarians commuting by plane 3 times a week to attend classes at UBC (yes, Vancouver!) rather than to stay in the city, because it's cheaper with the travel option than to rent a room there. We definitely need cities that work for us instead of this madness that is clearly unsustainable.
@@jts1702asounds like Vancouver needs to build more housing
2:52 As a Canadian, love the Mercator Projection as it greatly exaggerates the size of Canada realitive to the lower 48 USA.
The difference between a whole lot of nothing and a much bigger amount of nothing, is nothing.
When Greenland is portrayed as larger than Africa...
Alaska and Greenland as well.
@@annoyed707 The world powers of ice and snow.
I feel like north american urbanism is way too focused on a half-empty correcting the suburbs approach rather than a building on what's there half full approach, of course turning the burbs into Amsterdam is impossible, but making east coast cities into urban utopias really wouldn't take that much relatively.
It'll take another generation for NIMBYism to literally die out and then urban renewal can start again.
There has been some success with creating mini-downtowns within certain suburbs though. We need more of that.
1:57 Calgary mentioned!! 🎊❤🎉🙌
I think people tend to overrate how the age of cities outside of America reflect on their building. I say that because a big city 300 years ago would be a small to medium city these days. And while the historic center of most European and Asian cities can easily be millenia old, those historic centers are a small fraction of the area of the total city and most of the area of the city was built at the same time American cities were being built. I always get impressed when I look at maps of modern big cities like London or Paris 300 years ago, and see how the countryside was just arround the corner in all maps
What also is usually forgotten in this aspect - while most european cities are older than most american cities, the amount of destruction through modernized wars, especially WWI & WWII was also much greater in europe, basically resetting huge parts of cities during the 20th century.
I live in a mid-sized german city (~100k inhabitants), and it was basically completely rebuilt after being targeted in WWII. Only a small amount of buildings in the city center survived 1945, and these were spaced out far enough that everything in between could have been rebuilt in any imaginable way. So while yes, the city is 800 years old, the current „city layout“ is as old as most american cities, or even younger.
@@niklas6882 That is true, but in the absence of the original buildings, the boundaries of the land were still fixed. Europe entered the 20th century with relatively a lot fewer large, subdividable parcels than the US did.
In the UK at least, the entire city pre-railway is basically the city centre now
In many parts of Europe, those cities were largely rebuilt in the 1950s.
They were still much bigger but yeah
I take exception to stores closing on Sunday. There's a ton of societal and environmental benefits to it. The general mood on Sunday is much slower and calmer. People need to be reminded to slow down and spend time with family and friends - or just spend time with oneself without the urge to go shopping. People adapt and get things down somehow throughout the week or on Saturday.
For me it has the opposite effect
The same goes for 24/7. It’s fun for some customers, not so much for workers.
I like doing stuff on Sunday sometimes, having the option is great!
@@RMTransit And your "option" means that a lot of other people (the ones working in stores) don't have the option to meet on their free day(s) with friends who work in other occupations, since they are working when their friends aren't - and vice-versa. Which is why Europe got this one right, sorry (saying that as a German-Canadian with dual citizenship, living in Nova Scotia).
Edit: And yes, there are of course some other occupations who need to work on weekends, too - but the important words here are "need to".
I used to work weekends, and I still found time to see my friends. People all have different schedules anyways in 2024 (some people are students, or do shift work!)
You are one of the few channels that give me hope for change. The regular updates about new transit projects and redevelopment is like positynews even if imperfect in a sea of despair
take: there would be a lot less negative urbanism from americans and canadians if it was more affordable to move to the nearest city for those who live in the suburbs but really don't want to. the complaint is born from that dissatisfaction and incongruity in life circumstance and not so much the objective level of urbanism in wherever they happen to live
(spoken like a true york reigon resident)
I really do wonder what the over-under is for how many people would want to live in a denser city to live close to work vs people who don't want to live in a denser city even if it means a further drive. I'm sure a good amount of people don't really care but it's been so instilled for generations that it'd take a couple of generations to re-wire American culture from the ground up.
@@blores95 cant speak for the general population but id say wanting to live in a city correlates with a lot of the same factors that lead you to advocate for urbanism. i can't drive for mental health reasons, and those same mental health reasons mean i'm not the sort of person who benefits from ecconomic innequalities, which leads to lefter-leaning opinions and views on the sources of those innequalities.
I'll copy the second half of my comment elsewhere here, fellow York Region neighbour!
If anything we should also appreciate our low density environments and capitalize on it, much like how HM King Charles III is promoting with the Poundbury project in creating nice, human communities that are affordable, walkable, and workable locally - mass transit should definitely have its place when we talk about the linkup of such 'villages' to the greater city and suburb at large. I think that with just a few changes, North America's postwar suburb sprawl can be made into so much more of a livable, walkable, and productive space - all while softening the blow of the car-centrism that has been long-ingrained with it. Once that's being solved, I think the implications would be far reaching - first and foremost would be that people would start thinking of better things and creating more value outside of big corporations, and perhaps this livelihood would make people think twice from rejecting to have kids!
@@jts1702a agreed with a lot of this, and hopefully alongside the improvements to the richmond hill and barrie lines we see more zoning laws being changed to densify the cores and encourage midrises. but it is also a question of culture. there's not a lot of space for the punk and the anarchist here, the loudly dressed and bombastic. for those who want to live loud but can't afford the city it can feel very isolating and stifling to live in sleepy suburban towns
@@jts1702a Poundbury has some pretty architecture, but it's horribly car-infested. Just go look at it on Street View. It also doesn't have any rail connection and only two buses per hour to the nearest town. It's also really expensive.
On point opening. I'm from the SF bay area and have lived in SD and LA. If you speak to my mom or any other 60+ year old, they will tell you that California was farmland when they were kids.
It's remarkable how much California, the place I can speak to best, has changed in one lifetime. To have perspective, the west coast development is among fastest rise to prominence historcally.
North America will absolutely improve, it's just a question of how soon. With that said.... Not fast enough for me! So keep it up RM Transit!
Watching a Chinese travel youtuber, the walkable urbanism in many Chinese cities seems nicer than I’d realised. More than just subways to study.
i swear China is capping with them urbanism for people
China has by design done this in the last decade. They've put train stations in the middle of empty fields and built cities around them. There are UA-cam videos exploring the empty stations and coming back to the same station, vibrant and bustling a few years later.
A lot of those places remain empty, though (not necessarily the ones with real infrastructure like Public Transportation, but many of them). The real estate bubble really screwed up an awful lot of things in China, unfortunately. Some of those videos should be viewed with extreme caution because they might be Chinese Government Propaganda, or at least filmed in the Chinese equivalent of Potemkin Villages.
Edit: typo correction (cuation instead of caution).@@jeffconn
@@unconventionalideas5683 might sound weird for an urbanist but I like watch driving videos around China and am impressed with the urban centres / NEW TOWN areas and how ALIVE they are with people doing "people" stuff
they have quite a lot of 8 lane stroads, and hence traffic deaths, ive seen social media posts where they were ranting about all the high speed traffic making essentially none of the residential spaces quiet enough for sleep
How i see from a European perspective, North American urban transformation into cycling and walking and more places for social interaction is not without growing pains and opposition, that is perhaps something that holds America and Canada back.
But its not impossible to solve the car infested problems, it just takes work and compromises and yes even some redesign of the cities are in order to make things work.
Urban redesign is also part of social engineering to make people accept other options.
Great video! Here's an idea for a video on transit in Africa: the daladala/matatu mini-bus networks of East Africa
I do agree with a lot of things in your video but 7:23 most people live in cities/urban environments and not equally spaced across the entire continent. Most car trips in the US are less than 6 miles (~60%, and 95% of car trips are less than 30 miles and those numbers are incredibly similar to countries like Germany where 60% of trips made by cars are less than 10km (~6 miles), and 93% are less than 50km (~30 miles). Germany is by area ~28x smaller than the US.
I agree, its a failed arguement that has been debunked
I think the point here is that sprawl is a lot more tempting when there’s so much land available in a country. It’s a lot harder for urban sprawl to take hold in Frankfurt when there’s already such limited amount of farmland to build on compared to the US.
It was a lot easier for North American cities to build low density suburbs because there was so much land available to develop compared to somewhere like Germany
@@liemnguyen7037 But the lower density doesn't seem to matter, because people don't travel further in their cars in countries with substantially higher population densities like Germany. The size of a country does not matter nearly as much as people believe. As a EU citizen I could travel thousands of km without ever encountering a border which would stop me, but it doesn't matter because most of our life simply does not consist of travelling across continents.
The issue in the US is that they mainly build car infrastructure and barely anything else, and make it incredibly difficult for people to cycle, walk, or just use any other mode of transport which is not a car. 6 miles is a distance that most people can easily do on a bicycle especially with an ebike yet a lot of those trips are done by car - just like in Germany.
The difference is obviously in the modal split. In the US 83% of all trips are done by car vs. 57% in Germany because in Germany you have a choice between walking, cycling, public transportation, etc. Far too many people in Germany still drive because it is heavily incentivized. In the US far more people could travel intra-city/urban-area by other modes of transportation if they had (safe-to-use) bicycle lanes, bus, and light rail services, and the lack of this kind of infrastructure is almost 100% political and has nothing to do with the size of the USA.
Yes this is true but also, the US having an extremely large supply of undeveloped land is what made land so cheap, so that also contributed to sprawl since it was cheaper for developers to go farther out away from the city to build instead. Now this could also be attributed to local laws but the massive land supply is an aspect.
i think you're totally missing the point of liem's comment@@_yonas
nice video, there's definitely a lot of space for optimism! i think the available land area in europe is an important factor, also that american cities grew very fast. but i don't think the "europe cities are old, us cities are too young" argument is sound. the rise of us suburbia was in the 1950s -not that long ago. europe has had loads of new development since, with most big urban areas more than doubling in size. the historical city centre is just a tiny part of the whole city. and in particular the amsterdam calgary comparison is not very accurate since amsterdam has grown past its city limits and is integrated in a megalopolis with rotterdam
I think I needed this video. Thanks
Really fantastic approach, thanks for the boost!
Thank you for this. Those who reduce all of North America into one singular entity is actively harmful and misleading, as well as the fact that urbanism always seems to be US/CA vs. western Europe while the rest of the world is being left out of the equation (like Latin America as you said). While of course, North American transit systems are by no means perfect, they're still doing something and addressing the needs of its citizens and that's the point! East Side Access/Grand Central Madison in NYC for example, as long as it took and as overbudget as it was, the project helps so many people who live and work on the east side of Manhattan, and it's about time that this crucial connection exists. Things are getting better, and it's very obvious that there are many people focused on making NA's built environment get better too. It's not happening overnight, we have to remember the classic phrase that Rome wasn't built in a day!
On top of the fact European cities aren't perfect either, Europeans tend to ignore Asian urbanism as you mentioned. Asian cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Seoul, and even Pyongyang have phenomenal urbanism. Pyongyang has bike infrastructure to complement the Pyongyang Metro, trolleybuses, and trams. Bikes were banned in Pyongyang for decades until the ban was lifted in 1992. In 2017, a bike share program was introduced called Ryomyong/려명 or Dawn. If a city like Pyongyang can have a bikeshare program, a trolleybus system with over 35 miles in length, a tram system with 33 miles in length, AND two subway lines, then other cities have zero excuses not to take these steps for the greater good!
Pyongyang has to take steps to improve public transport because everyone there is poor. They can't afford to get around in cars. Similarly, the USSR had good public transport because only a few people could afford cars. And you have to get workers to the factories somehow.
If you take a look at how post-Soviet countries are developing public transport now (especially Russia and Kazakhstan), they are not developing it, they are destroying it, because they are promoting the culture of car ownership now. In Moscow, they completely destroyed ALL trolleybuses a few years ago (it was the largest trolleybus system in the world thanks to USSR).
So you should not confuse the awareness of poor countries about the harm of car-centrism with trivial lack of money people have for owning cars.
Well democratically its definitely hopeless. The number of people who think 15 minute cities are tyranny is insane. Its not gonna happen cuz people hate good things here.
It's the approach that throws people in North America off. The 15min city zealots only look at it from the European city point of view, and want to basically tear down the entirety of most North American cities. Making 15min cities work in North America would require a different approach, especially if you want to preserve the existing history and culture of the city.
@@mrvwbug4423if you consider parking lots and highways "culture" then it should be torn down
@rhael42 hey that sounds like a carefully thought out and not at all generalised opinion! I've actually heard of someone with beliefs like that that he even followed through with. What was his name again oh yeah Hitler
This is a good video, thanks for the realistic optimism
I really appreciate all your videos because I've learned so much about transit design & implementation. Do you think you could do a few videos on how to be a good transit advocate in your area? I'd love your take on how we can use the knowledge you and other transit oriented channels put out to make change in our communities.
Atlanta voters approved a sales tax increase in 2016 and only now in 2024 are we seeing the first capital project delivered.
The Elizabeth Line first appeared in the County of London Plan in 1943, and only opened about 2 years ago.
The Northern City Line was approved in 1892, and was finally completed in 1976.
8 years isn't that long for major infrastructure projects
I'm actually surprised it only took that long. You should probably feel good about that compared to how long projects like this very often take.
@cqholt which capital project are you referring to?
Sales tax is cringe and horribly regressive. They couldn't use a better tax?
If we are a continent of parking lots then we are a continent of limitless infill potential!
Montreal’s West Island is starting to head in this direction . Parking lot/strip mall stroads are getting bought up and built up thanks to the REM
I’m often shocked by how much things have changed in my hometown when I return. It’s helps to change your seen and think more deeply about why things are the way they in the first place. Also don’t forget to enjoy life! Slow trains are good opportunity to pop open a book :) even traffic can be a good time to listen to an audiobook or podcast. Go to the local library and see the effort people have made to make a park or school close by and maybe even duplex. It really is a breath of fresh air to realize that change is happening all around you all the time!
👏Bravo! Outstanding video!
As someone who got stuck in terrible traffic in Adelaide today and had to hop out to catch the tram, please let us have way better public transit.
Adelaide definitely has the worst public transport out of any of Australia's 5 capital metropolises unfortunately. Your system is still clinging to a lot of old, outdated ideas, and a lot of major structural problems that the other four metropolises fixed in the past are still sticking around. (The biggest example is that Adelaide Central is a terminus station, not a through station, which has massive knock-on effects on the entire system -- it's especially bad when all of the rail tracks go westwards out of the station, towards the ocean, meaning the trains have to loop around to serve the areas to the east that are actually potential future development hubs).
Australian urbanism is in a similar state to North American urbanism, where there is too much doom and gloom floating around and too many people worried about how much any improvement would cost. The difference is which areas we have problems in, and where improvements are needed. All of the big 5 metropolises (even Adelaide) have pretty good urban public transport systems, better than what you'd be likely to find in a North American city of equivalent size. Darwin and Canberra also have pretty good public transport for their population (both might run into problems with future growth because of terrible city planning, but there are ways they can keep it moving) -- Hobart is the only capital which has actually bad public transport for its size.
The actual problems in Australia are (a) terrible, terrible intercity rail (for both passengers and freight) and (b) absolutely no public transport spending outside of the capitals. The Gold Coast is the only non-capital city in the entire country with good public transport and concrete plans to expand it -- every other non-capital city has, at most, a ragged and slow privatised bus network (no, the Newcastle Mile does not count as "good light rail", or even "promising light rail", not until they actually publish the expansion plans). Where regional rail transport exists, it's inevitably focused on getting people to and from the capital, usually with one train per day if you're lucky. A couple of cities have okay rail transport because they're semi-linear and can piggyback off the capital link, most notably Wollongong, but any city that can't benefit from that kind of transport link just doesn't get to have any fixed link transport.
The way I see it, the areas that we should be looking to improve is much better intercity public transport (high-speed intercapital rail would be nice, but there are a lot of improvements that can be made to the existing lines as well), and to establish a proper fund so that cities outside of the capitals get actual reliable public transport. In my opinion any city with a population of 100K-1M should start planning for some kind of fixed link system, light or heavy rail (that's 12 cities, excluding the Gold Coast and Canberra, which already have them), while any city with a population of 10K-100K should have a reasonably frequent bus service (that's about 80 cities). That's not cheap, but I also don't think it's unreasonable.
@@lachlanmcgowan5712 I've been having fun scenario crafting where the O-bahn is converted to a rail line and using the part where it enters its tunnel to bore a new one under North Terrace and thus convert it to a through running station, combine it with the proposed underground city rail loop it will start to be a decent system. Plus restore country trains starting with Mt Barker (then on to Murray Bridge). Oh and a North-South express train that bypasses the city.
@@bernadmanny Yes, Adelaide is perfectly suited for a city rail loop, your government should have started building one decades ago. In my opinion the one proposal I can see doesn't put the loop far enough east, it's putting a station underneath Victoria Square even though that's perfectly well served by the tram. My first inclination would be that the loop should run along the eastern and southern edges of the city, definitely put a stop near St Andrew's Hospital for example.
And yes, the O-Bahn should logically be converted to a fixed rail link of some kind. Having a train tunnel that heads north-east from Adelaide Central, with a stop somewhere near Bundeys Rd before emerging in the O-Bahn reserve, is an extremely good choice. The O-Bahn's bus fleet is getting on in years, and I think it's also pushing its passenger capacity limits.
You knocked this vid out of the park good job!
Thank you for sharing a positive view.
Thank you for such a positive video and your content in general.
Thanks :)
Honestly, another part of the North American Urbanism and better city design that is often overlook or ignored is that of smaller, more rural towns. The way that these small towns (especially in the south, midwest, and west) have often been completely destroyed by cars and dont even have transit in their region, period. Id love to hear more in depth analysis of rural transit and some sort of plan on how to help rural communities rebuild their towns and networks for a functional society. Its a lot more difficult to climb out of poverty when you MUST own a car to keep even a shitty job at Dollar General with no alternatives, period.
Those rural towns have no tax base.
@@starventureNo, but an entire state or province does. Saskatchewan used to have a reasonably useful intercity bus service one could take between major towns. I visited family that way in the past.
@@annoyed707 How many towns in Saskatchewan?
A lot of that has to do with the spacing of these small towns. Driving distances in the US are huge compared to Europe. In my own state of Colorado, the eastern half of the state is flat plains with endless farms and very tiny towns, transit there makes no sense and the locals wouldn't want it anyway as they absolutely hate the state government (CO state government is quite liberal, eastern CO is about as conservative as you can get). On the other hand the small towns in the mountains are based around ski resorts and see lots of tourists, so the state of CO actually runs an inter-city bus service all over the western half of the state. The front range where 90% of the state population lives has local transit systems in each city, but not much linking them up except between Denver and Boulder. However that is expected to change as construction just began on a front range regional rail system that should be in operation by 2027
Biggest and most easily implemtable change we can make is changing zoning laws. It costs nothing (besides political will) and will result in people becoming more used to being in walkable communities.
This video has an awesome message! Thank you!
Very interesting perspective and commentary! I love the global approach and reminder to go beyond euro-american-centrism and learn from each other all around the world!
Tokyo has a huge metro network - but it certainly isn't the best in the world, owing to being ran by multiple subway operators, bad ticket machines, and a lack of being able to tap on using credit cards/android. It's probably top 10, but #1? Not a chance.
Great points.Ticketing is definitely a bad aspect of Japanese rail.
I was in Japan recently for a month and found the subway really easy to use. Literally just tap your phone and ride
@@gumerzambrano is it true it’s not 24 hours
@@f.g.9466UK rail has a similar problem. Each TOC has its own ticketing system and you may have to take several TOCs on an inter city trip. For example when I visited the UK about a month ago, just to get from London to Shrewsbury I had to take 4 different train companies. Heathrow express from Heathrow to Paddington station, the London tube over to Euston station, Avanti West Coast from London to Crewe then Transport for Wales from Crewe to Shrewsbury. Each with their own ticketing system, only the tube supported direct tap to pay.
I mostly agree, but why is stores being closed on Sundays supposed to be a bad thing? Do you want to work on Sundays?
There are people that are quite happy to. And they get days off during the week to compensate; some just work on Sundays People always seem to assume that wicked capitalists always force people to work against their will
Less advance scheduling of my shopping trips is convenient
Gotta say going trhu a rough patch in my life rn and some of the things you said hit hard i appreciate it even if not intended i mean i wouldn't have thought that i would get all inspirational from an urbanism video 🙂 but here i am thank you 🙏
Really solid video Reece! I definitely agree with you! Gotta get down to mexico city to see some great urbanism!
Hi Reece,
I'm very thankful that you made this specific video. It's depressing to go on spaces like Reddit or Twitter where it's all gloom and doom.
I live in Toronto, so I've seen the transit discourse a lot. I want to stay because it gives me a peaceful life, and I want to see the improvements that's happening.
Thanks for being positive, while being critical. You bring nuance, and it's very much needed.
Notice how every video that's positive or optimistic about North America gets flooded with angry comments from ignorant NJB fanboys who are triggered by someone disagreeing with their doomer propaganda. Just look at the hate this video is receiving from the "shut up and move to Europe!" crowd...🙄
Great video. The negativity was the reason I unsubscribed from notjustbikes. I realized he wasn’t trying to show us how to improve our North American cities, he was just trying to brag.
Yeah, unfortunately the Montreal video was a turning point. It’s when the channel turned the corner to from insightful and negative to boring and negative
Great video
Such an amazing way to view thing positively. I like many ideas from the video and the one that perfect city is probably closer that you think reasonates well. World is diverse and we can find many good places across the globe, just need some time to find it sometimes.
Because those who give up easily WISELY / SMARTLY do not want to be accused of committing the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
P.S. I hate doomerism and defeatism, especially when it comes to political campaigns to get somebody elected.
ANYBODY can be elected to ANYTHING. That is a FACT.
OhTheUrbanity is such an under appreciated channel. The two of them consistently put out my favorite videos on urbanism. Appreciate the proudly NA talk about our towns and cities Recce.
Nice video! Waiting for Moscow metro explained!
Here in Australia I’ve been thinking about a lot of these same things (despite not getting a mention in the video)! I was lamenting that we built so many freeways here in Melbourne, literally designed for us by a couple Americans in 60s. I thought we couldn’t improve because of population density and things like that, but then I realised that Victoria is the most densely populated state as it only takes up 3% of Australia. We also have decent urban transport and okay regional trains.
Shops not always being open is a good thing, actually. Having a collective break from constant consumerism, even if it's just at night or for Sundays, is not a downside
Yes!
I also love that there's no such thing as two day shipping in France. It will get there when it gets there, if it gets there.
I'm glad shops not always being open is a pace you enjoy having life, and I hope you enjoy the pace you are able to set yourself, and feel your community setting.
But it's definitely not for everyone. Having transit that goes at night for me makes life so much easier, actually able to navigate the world and see people without needing a car. And I don't drink alcohol much, so I appreciate having businesses open that aren't just bars once the sun sets. I like being able to get my groceries, pick up some food and drop in with a friend after my late shift. You do not need to tell me that working nights is not always a fun time mind you, but it's sometimes nice to have the day out of work.
Do I think my way of life is better? No, but it's not something that's bad for the world that I get to have my nights (and Sundays, though that's not something I really feel like I gotta defend here. I'm just not Christian, so it really makes no sense to me when things close early or aren't open on that day)
if that were to be true, then shut down online sales on Sundays and don't let restaurants, museums, etc open then, either. Arbitrary forced closing times negatively impact those who do not work typical times (transit workers, hospitality, freelancers, etc) and also forces retail workers to work harder on Saturdays when the masses have their free day to shop.
This sounds nice but doesn't really makes sense. I mean if that's not your thing, then a shop being open at 3am doesn't matter since you would be at home/sleep. For those who care the option it's there. It's a win/win situation for everyone. Wanting other people beyond yourself to get a break from "consumerism" is a bit odd, also, yes an Apple store could be 24/7, but it's mostly just food and convenience stores. People go there in strange times because they're hungry or really need something, they (most) not go there just to buy an iPhone 15 at 3 am. It's hard to call that consumerism. It the city and it's culture allows it, it's definitely something good.
Love this Reece! I say this all the time to people who complain that Toronto doesn't have the subways that London has -- seriously? How can you directly compare? Insert NA vs Europe cities here, rinse lather repeat.
Totally agree with the positive vibe, keep it up.
I'm not from anywhere from North America but I've been really interested on this subject since my boyfriend lives in a suburb in the US. For me it was astonishing to learn (as an Argentinian) that most places in the US requires you to drive in one way or another to fulfil basic needs such as going to the supermarket, and I can't help to think how limiting it is if you have any disability that doesn't let you drive a car or how much of your money has to be spent just on maintaining your vehicle, not everybody has the luxury to be well off financially. As someone from Ciudad de Buenos Aires, which is also a young city, I can just walk or live independently without using a car and so is the case (to a lesser extent) in many other Argentinian cities, plus we are the 8th largest country in the world! And yes, we also have unfortunately committed a rail suicide back in the 90's, although now there are efforts to restore them.
I hope the US someday changes its zoning laws to allow mixed usage of houses and stores everywhere, not only would benefit the people, but also would make stores more appealing to go, enriching the economy of the area. I feel like there's so much potential there.
I'm clueless about Canadian zoning, but here in the USA things are definitely getting better. State governments have taken initiative to standardize and liberalize the laws, making development cheaper. This is happening in republican states (like Montana) and democratic states (like Minnesota).
For much of US and Canada, yeah, it's pretty much hopeless. Lots of different places but overall it's the same auto-focused pattern being replicated from city to city. Also, the sprawl model is all well and good until the bills come due for all that stretched out infrastructure.
I disagree that it’s hopeless. Unless you’re striving for perfection or a replica of the worlds best examples of urbanism. America is America and will adapt and change it its own unique ways. But what does “hopeless” mean?
@@jaykay1899 A few gentrified blocks 'adapt' sure but for the most part, nah. The only uniqueness is the incredible dedication to big giant trucks and SUVs. As for perfection, no one is looking for, speaking of, nor asking for perfection. "Hope" would be seeing a shift towards actual transportation policy that prioritises all forms of mobility and not just "moving more cars through an area as fast as possible". Unfortunately, in this climate, anything that could be misconstrued as "anti-car" or anti-'Murican don't stand a chance.
@@jackolantern7342 I still disagree wholeheartedly. Especially when you think that the "only" uniqueness of US cities is big trucks and SUVs lol. You're missing out on a lot of amazing things in American cities if you truly believe that. I'm tired of this negative doom and gloom "everything is horrible" attitude from urbanists these days. Have you been watching too much NotJustBikes?
The comparison between Amsterdam and Calgary is a bit wrong though. The city of Amsterdam didn't grow much because the city limits are much smaller than Calgary's. What would be a suburb in Calgary would be another town or city in the Netherlands. The population in the greater area did grow immensely since the 50s.
I think that's the point he's trying to make, Amsterdam can't grow too much, therefore they will consider more on how to fit more people into the city and how to make people's commute easier and sustainable, But for calgary, they have alot of land, and they will focus more on how to expand the city rather than sticking to the same size, making people think more on how to build more roads and stuff to expand the city.
I can appreciate the positivity. I'm hoping to eventually see urban improvements in American cities within the next few decades. It'd be a lot of work but not impossible.
There is a certain urbanist UA-camr who only ever appraises Amsterdam like his life depends on it. I get that the city has fantastic urban planning and all that jazz. Credit where its due, and I can only wish that eventually the states will follow their example. But like with anything, you keep shoving something in other people's faces and telling them how great it is, it will just cause the opposite effect.
Just subscribed. You mentioned small town urbanism. Do you have content on small towns? I live in a small town suburb, and would love to learn more about what works in these places, as opposed to the larger cities.
One reason for the doomerism is that our political leaders are still overwhelmingly resistant or outright hostile to urbanism and non-car infrastructure. Here in Houston, our new mayor just reversed a raised median at twice the cost of the original improvements, and then had a bike lane removed in the dead of night. Neither of these were at the request of the communities they're located in, but instead at the whim of individuals with wealth and influence.
I think, these reversals show a much darker problem: The car dependency isn't a "mistake of the past, that's being fixed far to slow". But instead it is intentionally done by currently active lobbyists and politicians and probably even with support from a relevant part of the population.
Thank you for mentioning Texas. It's depressing to live here. Many urbanist UA-cam channels fail to mention that the fastest growing region of the US is the Sun Belt, and because of the Sun Belt's massive growth post-automobile, it's led to our cities being horrendously car-centric and sprawled, and full of conservative individuals staunchly opposed to developing anything differently because that's just how it's always been in their lifetime.
My suburb of less than 30,000 people has multiple children getting hit by cars EACH YEAR with many dying, yet we do so little about this issue, we end up going backwards still! We tear down sidewalks to add more lanes to stroads, we get rid of crosswalks when they were already few and far between, and we STILL develop new neighborhoods without any safe pedestrian infrastructure, while neighborhood roads remain wide enough for 5 cars to fit across comfortably. It's a joke here, we're actively going backwards, and when anyone brings this up to our local city politicians how unsustainable in every aspect car-centric development is, they just balk and deny the reality of these problems because their low-IQ, brainwashed conservative brains paid off by their car-centric lobbyists think that this is FREEDOM!
It's an utter joke and absolutely despicable we keep regressing further and further, with pedestrian and traffic related fatalities steadily increasing each year despite there being LESS pedestrians out each year! I'm sorry to be a doomsayer, but try to live car-free in a Texas suburb for a day, and you'll see why many urbanists are so negative about our current state of affairs. I'm thankfully moving soon, but there truly is no near-term future in some parts of America. There will be war in the streets before a "liberal" or heaven forbid, a *progressive*, comes and changes their streets to be safer, even to their own benefits with less traffic, because that is just how far mentally gone the majority of people are in some of these areas. And when the moment the money starts running dry from there being none left to maintain this disgusting amount of concrete roads and parking lots, just remember how every empire in history fell before us. Hyper. Inflation.
@@kailahmann1823 I believe there are a LOT of people seeking out places like TEXAS BECASUE of car-sprawl and more accurately a LARGE home on a LARGE lot that still has "city access" and if there are enough people self selecting to MOVE to a car-dominated area the policies are going to pivot more and more towards car-domination
will say check out Edmonton Alberta Canada - it is a prairie town with NO land shortage that is also in "oil country" and a "conservative" lead province and they have removed R1 zoning and allow small businesses everywhere plus dropped HUGE money on a biking infrastructure and are PUBLIC ABOUT IT ALL
@christophercjc2 I also live in Texas. The northern suburbs of Dallas to be exact, and it's not all gloom here. We've added bike lanes, we're building transit oriented development, we're adding a ring line, we increased frequencies of busses, though for the 200 routes and the 100 routes at midday we coud do with a lot more and the 10s need a little bit more, and we now have a better all day frequency for the light rail. Now, we just need even better bus frequencies with more routes and to build D2 and up the frequency of the light rail and we might actually be close. It can be done here they even briefly closed the North Central Expressway, the car centric part of the city's beating heart, so they could put in a bridge that links several multi-use paths together. Now, do those paths need more connections directly to businesses, yes, but they already crisscross the city. When the silver line opens I can see living in one of the Transit Oriented Developments and being able to get to everywhere I need to go pretty quickly. With the improvements that could be done that I listed here I think it might even be faster than the car outside of rush hour. We can do this, even in Texas.
If you watch Bianca Graulau's video on Puerto Rican car culture, its easy to tell that more density isn't always a good excuse for bad urbanism. Puerto Rico is extremely densely populated and its, like, the most car-centric place ever
Similar deal with parts of India. Pretty dense, but lots of cars.
That sounds like Miami Beach and the other barrier beach island towns north of it, all the way up the South Florida coast. Plenty of development dense enough to justify a 4-track elevated subway with express and local trains, but the towns are all wholly auto-oriented and auto-dependent.
Yeah, sounds like the opposite of Cleveland, O H, where it's not the most dense city (though many cities like Columbus and much of the Sun Belt are worse), but yet they have still managed to be well served by transit and biking covering much of it. It's the whole sum of a city's parts after all, so well put, people.
I spent my young adulthood in Vancouver Canada literally under the skytrain and my friend was a number of stops up the skytrain line
But Metro Vancouver is FAR from a "good" urbanist city once you leave the "hot spots" of TOD goodness and there are a LOT of transit DEAD ZONES making even SHORT trips multi hour adventures which feeds into car ownership that makes everything worse
add in the "affordable" areas are the badly transit covered areas
so even places that LOOK great from an urbanist POV "force" you into a car because of how the area developed and how transit was laid over it
I was recently in Miami and my Uber driver showed me the gridlock traffic from Miami beach to the mainland. I asked why they don't build other transport methods and he said it's because of corruption and the car lobby. I said, surely if enough people demand it they will, and he sighed and said the government doesn't care what people want. To him, the situation seemed pretty hopeless. I also waited an hour for a bus in Miami, next to a man who was in despair because he said that every day his bus doesn't show up on time.
Shout out to Berlin, covered in graffiti with stores that aren't open on Sundays. I'm really glad I live here.
Nice to see a nuanced perspective on car culture and sprawl in US and Canada, unlike that Not Just Bikes dope who claimed that transit in post-war suburban Toronto consists of nothing more than commuter rail and park-and-ride lots.
I think the San Francisco-Oakland area comes closest to Canada in terms of high density suburban development and suburban bus ridership, although it's still a large gap. Las Vegas also has relatively high suburban bus ridership. Overall, Canada is most similar to the US West. The Midwest and the Southern US is like a whole different continent.
Comparing stroads to graffiti and no service on Sundays is... really fucking wild.
Yeah that really stuck out to me as strange. Especially the graffiti one. That gives a city identity and street character, I'd rather see that than something sanitized and sterile.
I don't think so, these are all things which exist to varying levels across both continents and which have a negative impact on peoples quality of life!
@@RudeMyDudeGraffiti is horrible. It makes any place look terrible and rundown.
@@RMTransit I don't know man, I see graffiti and most of the time I think "Oh, that looks cool, nice pops of color on this now" and my life feels better
@@Meh66693 Or, if the art is interesting, it can make something rundown have new life and meaning again.
I'd think that what NA lacks in particular is the dense environment combined with remotely affordable housing, I'm a bit perplexed in seeing migrants come to the US, how are they supposed to pay for either a low-end $3000 apartment or alternatively a house and a car in any of the southern less urban cities, no wonder you end up with homelessness, drug use and crime
I mean this varies across the continent!
wtf? I had a 2 bedroom in Missouri for $525/month. A used car should have a total cost of ownership of a few hundred dollars/month. Not everything is San Francisco and BMWs (thank god). Also, actual long-term unsheltered homeless people (
On the issues on public transit we in Japan, there are significant differences between the several dense metropolitan areas and the less dense medium and small size cities that littered outside the major population centres due to declining population.
I remember when I took the bus in my college town in Southern Virginia and thought, "this is pretty decent, but it's lacking signal priority, bus lanes, etc. etc. I know things are better overseas." Then, I took a trip to Japan and China, and riding the bus there was an absolute nightmare, even in a major city! Now, to be fair nobody goes to Japan to ride busses, but it really made me realize there are actually some things we do pretty well, and now whenever I see a new bus lane installed here, I remember that we are doing something better than Japan.
Your point is definitely super valid, folks completely give up on N. America for transit, but you act like all is fine and dandy in terms of progress for cities. The problem is that we are progressing in terrible ways: picking and doubling down on light rail where heavy rail can meet demand, contemplating and selecting novel/gadgetbahn technologies, the engineering and service being privy to locals regardless of common sense, the always astronomical costs accounting for any other factors, the sluggish/uninspiring timelines, a strong individualistic, car culture. These are the rules, not the exception in America. Also, why bring out New York as "see urban fabric good here" when literally no one would dispute that, even the most-YUROP pilled armchair urbanist.
Yeah I believe anti-doomer people think they’re on the right path, bringing in hope and everything, but it could have dangerous consequences. If someone’s question is “what do I do, right now, to improve my life regarding mobility” then yes the “doomer” take is objectively correct, accurate, and considerate.
If someone is fine waiting 20+ years, or maybe even never getting the chance, to access “real urbanism” then sure it’s fine to say don’t give up on North America.
General age of city I think is completely unrelated to its urbanism- this is a very poor point. A city being thousands of years old really has very little to do with its modern fabric- what we think of as Paris was basically completely rebuilt in the nineteenth century, at a time when most big modern American cities already existed and had existed for hundreds of years. While the growth rate of some cities is good points, I think this point should be completely avoided, or at least approached with a bit more nuance lest you give the audience an idea that we can only achieve great cities once we "marinate" them for a few thousand years. (Not to mention places like Singapore, also considered to have good urbanism, which are actually newer than most major American cities. Also think of various Latin American cities such as Mexico City, Santiago, or Buenos Aires considered to have good urbanism- these are all about as new as Boston or Montreal or NYC and saw the same spurt of growth in the twentieth century).
The same could be said for London. The vast majority of it was built in the 19th century during the Victorian era, then the outer boroughs were built in the postwar era in the 1950s and 60s. London still has the issue where central London has god tier transit (the tube is a marvel of transit efficiency), while the outer boroughs may not even be within TfL's operating area and have to make do with whatever commuter lines managed to get built during the 60s and 70s when the UK government was strongly anti-rail as the current UK government is. Add in the fact that the ULEZ fines were expanded to all of the outer boroughs without any transit expansion to the outer parts of London it's far from perfect.
This is a very nice, upbeat video on urbanism. Urban spaces, however, do tend to cater more to the young than the old. If you are above 50, there's not going to be a 3 a.m. stroll to pick up some wonton soup. So, that’s a selling point for young males, most likely. Not too clear on how older people will fare in an environment where things seem to be moving pretty fast. Look forward to your forthcoming vids on Caribbean urbanism.
People need to say something positive about New York City. That's one of my biggest travel destinations
Don't go. Really... you will regret it. The Subway system is very hostile and unsafe. From petty crime, robberies and violence to rape, groping, shootings, and stabbings, every thing happens. New York is also extremely expensive and has become dangerous in general. Looting and violent crimes have risen like crazy and it's now and drug addiction is getting worse.
@@SteamCheese1How about you go to NYC
In a similar way to the general "north america", the general "europe" is also very misleading at times. Europe, or even just the EU, is not spain, france, benelux, germany, and italy. It's also 20 other countries. Heck, here in finland it took a comedy show including a circus of professional clowns to get a tram in the city of Tampere. You can watch this comedy in a video titled "olipa kerran raitiovaunu".
We share a similar problem with rail lines in that getting anything done is a huge pain full of whining, even if the EU funded the whole thing. You get decent public transit in the major cities, then you go to the next municipality, and bam, awful to no transit options.
Glad someone understands this too. Back in the UK the population shares a culture of quite aggressive stubborn opinionation similar to US, and the government is infamous for overcomplicated bureaucracy and sky high labor costs slamming the brakes on any kind of transit development. Another thing most Americans miss is that the urban successes over in Europe aren't really planned and came to be by circumstance. Source ex-resident
At the same time though, even very small municipalities are doing quite well when it comes to walkability and cycling. At least all the one's I've been to.
The only constant thing in this universe is change. If we manage to get in the first place, then it's not impossible to get out of it.
Yes, thanks for watching!
I wasn’t familiar with the term urbanism when I clicked on this video. I clicked on it because I find living, or to some degree, even being in a city a distinct strain on my sense of hope. I would much rather be somewhere where the next house is out of sight.
Great video. I remember Not Just Bikes tweeted last year that fixing North American transit infrastructure is hopeless and that people should just move to Europe instead, which I found to be tone deaf and not helpful at all.
They're so condescending in their videos. It's like hate watching.
NJB is too angry and hateful, and his fanbase is even worse!
His insistence that his channel was not meant for people who couldn't afford to leave the USA was indeed tone-deaf. He clearly didn't take a good look at who a majority of his subscribers were. It would be a positive reflection of his character to outline his views in a video, and draw a line in the sand. However, imagine what that would do to those channel stats! Perhaps he finds it best to keep things vague on UA-cam.
Ikr. Like most of us in NA can’t just pack up and leave. The process of moving to another country on another continent takes a long time. At least tell us how we can solve some of the minor problems and address them at public meetings. Who knows where the suggestions can lead to.
I still like Not Just Bikes. There is utility in showing just how different (and better) things can be. Wouldn’t want to rely on it as my only source of information, though. But that’s why there are multiple UA-cam channels. Before post-WWII car culture took off, North American urbanism really wasn’t that bad. In many aspects, it was awesome. It took decades to reduce our cities to their current state, and it will probably take decades to undo the damage. The result will differ from Europe, but that won’t necessarily be a bad thing.
North America is the least doomed, the wide roads and parking lots, and cheap buildings mean you have a lot of play with the structure of your cities, get involved with your city, if you town halls have awful hours, make the city change them or add more, they work for you!
Great video @rmtransit. Can you please do a video on the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on both hiring and retaining public transit drivers. We keep hearing on traffic reports that many bus, tram, and train lines are experiencing delays due to shortages of operators.
Great vid Reece. I an aussie and our cities are pretty much copies of northbamerican ones byband large. Enormous sprawl, huge growth in last few decades and also quite young. We are a huge country with a sparse spread out population. Tropical north, dry interior and temperate south. Things are getting better in our cities but improvements take time and money.
Paradigms shift rapidly. People forget how recent most of suburbia actually is. Unless you count the streetcar suburbs (which are pretty urban by today's standards) then nearly all of suburbia was built after the 1950s. There are still people alive today who grew up in a presuburban world, it's really only normality for a couple of generations. It was excess industrial capacity, cheap oil, and a need to house a huge number of returning veterans after WW2 that spawned the suburbs. In the future... I have no idea, nobody does! But I can imagine many situations that would effectively doom suburbia rather more rapidly than most people would like. I mean, maybe if there's a WW3 (I live 5km from Ukraine, so maybe I'm more doomy that most on that front) there will inevitably be oil shortages, automobile factories etc. will be retooled for military reasons.
Streetcar suburbs are how sprawl should be built now. I mean, in our area, you can’t put a hydro pole in the ground without a zoning hearing, so why not have housing going in when the infrastructure is there to support it?
In our area, the biggest problem area is north of town. There was an inter urban streetcar line that went through the entire thing. Now there isn’t, and the area is a nightmare. Outside of the city limits, there are only two bus lines, that run twice a day, only in one direction, and have very few stops. Gross majority of travelers would take rail, if we still had it.
The municipalities have caused the issues that we now have, and are far less eager to fix them, even though it had been proven that the old method worked brilliantly.
70 years might be recent in terms of history but for a single person it’s a lifetime. So it feels hopeless when you have just a few decades left on this planet. There is no way we can undo all that in the next ~30 years even if the political will was there. And it’s not there in most cases.
@@nicktankard1244 that brings upon the myopic tendencies of government. They permit sprawl to get kickbacks from cut rate contractors, but couldn’t care less what happens to the town even ten years down the line, over two terms later. If planning departments and zoning boards got their back ends into gear, many cities sprawl problems could be mitigated through permit restrictions, and remediated through infrastructure in under a decade. But of course that requires two office holders to agree given conventional term limits.
That interurban line, could be replaced in four.
Sprawl, if written off as a side effect of rubbish planning and short sightedness of modern construction and education, wouldn’t be as bad if it were at least managed. Farmers and forests are being bulldozed for useless Pointies at Shoppy Crossings and Estates at Manor Acres. (Not only have I never heard of Shoppy Crossings or Manor Acres, there are neither Pointies or Estates there).
"Paradigms shift rapidly. People forget how recent most of suburbia actually is. Unless you count the streetcar suburbs (which are pretty urban by today's standards) then nearly all of suburbia was built after the 1950s. There are still people alive today who grew up in a presuburban world, it's really only normality for a couple of generations."
EXCELLENT POINT!
"70 years might be recent in terms of history but for a single person it’s a lifetime. So it feels hopeless when you have just a few decades left on this planet." EXACTLY!@@nicktankard1244
I like that your example of N. American stroads at 4:41 in Salt Lake City is basically as urbanist as we get here.
Fixing our cities requires taking the long view, and knowing that those fighting today probably won't live to see a city they're really happy with. Our best result will probably be finding a niche within our cities that's decent.
But every new light rail or subway line gets built. Everytime we win a rezoning that allows mixed uses and more density. Every time we beat back one more freeway lane. We're making things better and it all adds up to a better future.
North America is definitely not "doomed", in fact if anything I'd say the way things currently stand we're winning, or at least making progress. Consider the number of municipalities, both urban and even some suburban ones, that have taken street space away from cars and given them to cycle lanes. Progress here has been sporadic yes but a lot of these would have been unthinkable even as recent as 20 years ago.
However, one thing I am very concerned of is the potential for an organized, political pushback to these ideas. We saw a shadow of this with the 15 minute conspiracies that popped up last year, but I feel like if a full-fledged anti-urbanist movement sprouts up in response to urbanist ideas that could halt progress dead in its tracks and even undo some of what we've accomplished. I feel like a lot of the rhetoric around "crime" in major cities, combined with the increasing sense a lot of drivers have that "motorist" is not simply a thing they do but a part of who they are, and thus any attempt to impede cars is a direct attack on them as people, is what could give rise to this movement. Unfortunately I'm not really sure how to safeguard against these points or what lines of reasoning we could use to counteract it. I guess I'll keep workshopping that.
Agreed. I'm optimistic, but also concerned about the Glenn Beck and John Phillips types undoing our progress.
There has been a quite significant uptick in crime in many US cities since the pandemic, that bit is not just rhetoric. You’d have to convince them you can lower urban crime rates while making urban areas bigger (and less poor), or combine with other policies to address it.
@@terdragontra8900 so firstly, while there was a notable spike in violent crime during 2020 and 2021, crime levels in most US jurisdictions have dropped considerably since then, to rates comparable to or marginally higher than pre-pandemic levels. but more importantly, regardless of what the statistics say, the way we talk about crime, or even the fact that we're talking about it at all, is still rhetoric. Rhetoric is not necessarily fallacious or misleading, it just means talking about things in a certain way designed to point people towards a general set of conclusions. In this case I do think the rhetoric is harmful because it is very often racist and classist, and comes from a weird and deleterious paranoia about cities and urban living.
(This is more of a mind dump than a counterargument:) Its interesting you think its "weird and deleterious" but isn't false. It's quite a big ask to ask people to want to move into more urban areas that are actually more dangerous, because it would be beneficial in the long term. The way I think of it, there is a structural and emergent problem here, a bad result that stems from people acting reasonably, who just have different priorities than you, and like you, are just a weird type of animal. And while racism and the like exists of course, I think this is a case of the understandable but often incorrect human urge to try to frame every single bad outcome as the consequence or plot of a Big Bad Thing. Sometimes, bad results happen just because the universe is chaos. But I have a very defeatist personality so, perhaps no one should listen to me!@@HipsterShiningArmor
how exactly is density on a country wide scale relevant for city density? It simply isnt. Cities in the US are often still more dense than (or similar to) cities like Berlin.
Not really, Just NYC. And City borders in the US are weird, they only include downtowns and don’t include the suburbs which millions of people surround.
@@aimxdy8680 Berlin is extremely lacking in density. Compare big cities in the US' urban areas with Berlins urban area (which is served wholly by high quality transit) and you'll realise that irrespective of city borders, the urban areas dont really differ in density. Houstons urban area of 6 million people is very slightly more dense than Berlins of 5 million. Berlin is notoriously suburban as a european city and yet they still manage good transit within it. Berlin even wastes valuable housing space on little "summer gardens" for each high rise housing unit. Yet they still manage to run an effective system. Low density is a myth. What Berlin does have is more points of interest in the city center.
@@cooltwittertag Once again, Urban areas are also inaccurate for the US as they don’t fully include suburbs. Metro area is the most accurate. Houston’s metro population is 7 million, with an area of 10,000 miles. that’s a population density of 696 people per square mile, that’s 269 people per square kilometer.
@@cooltwittertag Not to mention, houston’s Exploding in growth. It’s metro population has had over a 50% growth since 2000. In the 1960s, houston was a pretty small metro under 1.2 million people with its downtown being one giant parking lot. Berlin isn’t experiencing a huge population gain like Houston is.
@@aimxdy8680 And Berlins metro area (which is still fully connected eith at least hourly trains) is bigger and less dense. We can keep going with this. Whats your argument for houstons urban area not having a transportation network? And by the way, Berlins metro area has 66 regular heavy rail lines, 9 subway lines, 16 sbahn lines, 939 bus lines and 50 tram lines. Its a metro with a density of 200 people/km²
Er we do have the trans-Canada highway which runs through each province and was the only highway built jointly by the federal government with the provinces. We don’t have federal authority over highways as the US does but all provinces agreed after WW2 to create a cross country autoroute as was done a hundred years earlier with the transcontinental railway.
As a resident of Miami,
its impossible to walk here. Half an hour to walk somewhere that is 5 minutes driving. Not to mention drivers here are insane
Edit: but there seems to be big strides in making other options for transit. There is a bus way that goes all the way south from the train station, some bike parks. I hope to see more options!
Florida was never supposed to become heavily urbanized, it was always envisioned as an endless mass of suburbia where everyone drove everywhere. That model only survived until about 1980 when retirees began flooding the state, increasing exponentially to now. I hope the success of Brightline gets Florida more willing to build transit.
Americans have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the automobile industry. A man, who carried an Automobile Magazine around, told me that he, "Loved Cars". Further conversation demonstrated that he did not know a cam shaft from a crank shaft. How many tens of billions of dollars have American men wasted on useless variations in crapmobiles?
Now we have this Repo Crisis.
You can love cars without being a mechanic 😉
@@walawala-fo7ds
You don't have to be a mechanic to understand how they work. But that would also mean that one understands how WWII fighter planes worked.
Which means one must understand that "Loving Cars" is stoopid.
Do you know a cam shaft from a crank shaft?
@@psikeyhackr6914 again you don't have to know that to love cars. You're ridiculous. You may simply enjoy how they look or the speed. Your permission or approval for why somebody can love something is not required. I love photography. I have no idea how a photo sensor works and nobody has ever needed to know that to love photography. Same with cars.
@@walawala-fo7ds
I never said my approval was required, if people are idiotic about technology they don't understand that is their problem. And I used to sell cameras in a camera department. Of course I switched to hi-fi and computers.
The psycho-acoustics of phase distortion is quite interesting. The introduction of cheap computers in the 1980s made the analysis of sound waves affordable for many speaker manufacturers.
But look at the Repo Crisis in automobiles right now. The auto manufacturers know that the "Car Lovers" don't know squat. American consumers have poured tens of billions of dollars down a rat hole. Ask an economist for annual data on the depreciation of automobiles since Sputnik. I have never owned a new car. Buy used pay cash. They are all junk. BYE!
We must defeat the car lobby
As well as not accepting Idiots as Politicians
I think urbanism is too USA, Canada, Netherlands and Denmark focussed. I mean everything is compared between these two extremes. Most people in europe live in a mediocre city, but that's never discussed how to make those better
Im from London. They screwed up by ripping out the tram system. No the underground does not replace trams. Going up and down adds 10 minutes to every journey depending which line we talk about.
USA & Canadea can go through amazingly fast change, if you decide to!
Witness how fast you destroyed your cities in the nineteen fifties for the benefit of the car.
If you chose to, if your willing to sink the costs, then in 10 years you could do a boston and sink your freeways and then build back better with Europe style buildings, walking, dedicated two way car ways & dedicated bus & bike lanes.
You could tax car parking based on the ground space they take up. Pushing to create vertical parking spaces structures. And use the extra space to build neibourhoods of homes!
Cars weren't just a 1950s thing!
Why make european buildings? Does everywhere have to be monculturally europe? I thought you guys weren’t supposed to be colonialist anymore.
"use the extra space to build neibourhoods of homes" no, because NIMBYs
You’re absolutely right. I get bummed all the time looking at Seattle’s rinky dink train system when I’m constantly comparing it to Tokyo. The Density just isn’t here….YET… SOMEday perhaps all these huge empty Park and Rides will get converted into transit adjacent shopping areas and coffee shops that will eventually create the urban ambience that we are truly missing. 😉. Great content as always !
As a Calgarian that has visited Seattle your train system may be smaller than ours but they were smart in choosing the destinations. I stayed at a hotel near SeaTac and was able to easily meet a friend in downtown Seattle and visit many destinations by train, or by connecting with your bus network. It may be small but boy did it start off with a Bang. Though Calgary's light rail is extensive and getting expanded, we still don't have a train to the airport and we are one of the busiest airports in Canada. We also don't have intercity commuter rail, another thing Seattle is one up on us
Also you think Seattle is missing urban ambiance? Come on Seattle is loaded with it! with Pike place market and surrounding businesses, the seafront, the underground tours and so much more.
@@LoneHowler Is Pike Place market the one they still allow cars to drive through?
@@kjh23gk yeah, I don't know why they still allow cars. I wouldn't drive anywhere near it unless it's early morning. There's just too many people walking around
Seattle is a double edged sword though. The city is long and narrow with a very long north to south distance, making many transit trips quite long and it takes forever to drive though the metro area on I-5, it also creates most of Seattle's traffic nightmare as there is no alternative to I-5 when crossing Seattle and no route around Seattle if you're just trying to drive through to elsewhere. When visiting Seattle, you're 100% screwed if you didn't fly into Seattle, parking even at the hotels is difficult to come by, and air travel is the only viable non-car alternative to get to seattle, Amtrak Cascades is an absolute joke of a service.
Yes. Any one sane with the means I know is basically leaving their NA city to go to Barcelona. We fight for years and years to get a train or even god forbid a bike lane and it's basically impossible here. So with that said, may as well leave and actually enjoy the life. Most of us people fighting for sane cities just eventually get priced out anyway, as if you want to live somewhere walkable in the US you need to basically be a millionaire otherwise you are forced to live in a Mc Suburb near a dollar general and a 6 lane highway.
I honestly love what Papeete, in French Polynesia, does. They don't have much transit, but in the "city" core which is very walkable you have to pay to park a car, but they have free moped and motorcycle lots that a car couldn't even fit in. Cars are really the major problem even if we could get people on more mopeds, motorcycles, and ebikes cities would be far nicer and require far less space for parking.