As a life long NYer who used to have a car, not needing one is such a blessing tbh. I get mad when I hear my friends in the South and Midwest face really bad financial situations because their car broke down and they can't afford to get it fixed. Car dependency dooms so many to entrenched generational poverty and lower standards of living.
THIS. I live in East Tennessee and it’s a nightmare anytime my car breaks down. It’s a 2.5 mile walk just to get to the nearest grocery store from my apartment. And that’s one way
@@starventure Like 2/3 of people in Manhattan commute on the subway, and they are in fact paying for part of it, which is usually how a government service works. Now imagine Manhattan with ~2.5 times (some people will ride together, but your average car only has 1 person in it) the traffic. Even if you never ride it in your life, its probably still benefiting you. And the same can be said about roads, even living car free, a portion of your taxes still pays for the roads that you don't use, including the "free" parking on them. If people actually had to pay their fair share and only got what they paid for single family housing would all but disappear (infrastructure is expensive, you wouldn't be so wasteful and unnecessarily spread out with it if you actually had to pay for it) and bicycling/ walking everywhere would be common practice. But that's not how it works, for better or for worse, and it goes both ways. You're both helping fund each others' mode of transportation, you both pay extra (he buys tickets, you buy a car, plates, gas, insurance, maintenance, and possibly fines depending on how you choose to use your vehicle), but you pay more because yours wastes a lot more space (which costs money) than his does. Obviously both methods have their benefits, subway is cheap, don't have to worry about parking, and in the case of NYC at least is faster. A car you get your own private space, and assuming you're lucky and get a close parking spot, you don't have to walk as much. if you think the tradeoff is worth it, fine, if not, then take the subway.
@@starventure Who pays for the roads you drive on? Not you. Or at least no more than NY transit riders pay for their costs. And you don't pay for the pollution you inflict on everyone else either. Or a market rate for your parking.
I work in downtown Boston. As a result I almost always take the train. The other day, for reasons to boring to get into, I drove. A coworker said to me (in a perfectly polite and friendly manner) that I ‘must be thrilled to be off the trains and in my own set of wheels’ having sat in traffic the whole way to work, I said I, in fact, preferred the train, where I could sit and read a book and wasn’t subjected to traffic jams. He thought me crazy…in a car I was master of my own destiny. I was in control and could go where I want when I wanted. Taking the train meant I had to go on their schedule and then make my way from the train station. Trains he felt, were for losers, cars meant freedom. I am afraid his sentiment is probably felt by the vast majority of Americans.
I live in Allston, and a car is a very expensive metal albatross to hang around your neck. You are free to make your auto loan payments, and your insurance payments, and free to buy gas at record high prices, in addition to fighting traffic. Your coworker is a very confused person.
Sounds like your coworker has never been on the train before lol. Unfortunately I think this attitude is common among Americans because 1) they've just never experienced what public transport has to offer, and/or 2) decades of gutting and underfunding public transport in the US has made it a mess compared to other countries, so a lot of Americans don't know how much better it could be.
I worked in Nashville as the senior transportation planner for the state. This is no surprise. For perspective on what politicians value, the City was going to remove 30 mature cherry trees to make way for the NFL draft tent in 2019. They ended up chopping down ten and relocating the rest after a huge public outcry. While there are modest efforts to make the City bike and ped friendlier, I honestly don't think it can ever happen; especially when bicyclists get run off the protected bike lanes by random uber drivers
I wish it wasn't, but I think bike infrastructure is kind of a hard sell. You need pretty extensive network to be usable, and it's not intuitive to most people why dumping someone onto a high traffic street isn't fine for a bike. Better PT links might be an easier sell - at least people understand that a PT line that doesn't go anywhere isn't going to work.
Politicians value car-centric infrastructure because there's money in it, right? Like they can't *want* all these cars and highways and to cut down trees... or do they? Am I just that naive? Is it just total lack of imagination? Ugh... I hate it.
@@lizzyd You are maybe erroneously assuming politicians have vision. They're well off so they don't take PT most of the time and lack of imagination. They don't think it's a seat winner, and it won't land them a sweet gig with a corpo after their tenure - and there's lots of lobbyists who'll fight against PT. Part of it though is that PT is seen as for poor people, and there's a popular neo-liberal attitude with pollies that poor people deserve their poverty so there's no reason to help them. Also it keeps poor people desperate, which is good for suppressing wages.
I live in Chicago, I was born & raised here. I'm 63 and have never driven a car in my life. I enjoy public transit a lot. I love the idea of fewer cars in the city. Thank you for your videos, I've watched ALL of them.
There are two problems with Chicago. First, after the original Mayor Daley imposed the head tax, large employers left the Loop for the suburbs. A suburb-to-suburb commute requires a car. I used to work in Oak Brook. Two partners lived in Oak Brook, but there was no way to walk to work, let alone take a bus. Second is companies moving from the suburbs to Fulton Market. It's a long, long walk, over the Kennedy, from the train stations to Fulton Market. There is no way to walk from Fulton Market to State Street or Michigan Avenue.
@@kentfrederick8929 Agreed. The Kennedy needs to be covered up as far as I'm concerned. That walk is horrible. Also we need more neighborhood to neighborhood and suburb to suburb transportation options. Everything is still funneled to the Loop.
@@smitty7326 I wouldn't say you're a wuss, merely average. The great lakes' continental weather is all about cold winters and hot summers. So many places you only get one or the other.
As a former Nashville resident I have two stories of the culture. There is a pedestrian bridge between downtown and the stadium. The one game I went to I took the bus to downtown and then tried to walk to the stadium. There was an armed police officer on the bridge preventing people from walking to the stadium for the game. He said if we had to walk we had to walk another mile to a terrible car bridge with a tiny sidewalk. Second is there was a proposal for a brt between my neighbor and downtown that was killed by the fancy neighborhood between us. The only bus line they supported was the nanny line (a bus line between a poor neighborhood and the fancy one for all the house cleaners and nannies.) Nashville is such a great city, with such a dismal transportation network.
i used to use wego transit a lot and it seems that they are extending the reach of some line, the worst is the timetable for the blu lines that are for the most 1 hour frequency while the red lines are 10 15 minutes frequency
My theory on why the Inland Empire has so many cars per household is that alot of young adults live with their parents due to the unaffordable real estate in SoCal making it impossible for young people to afford to move out. So you end up with a car for each parent as well as a car for each adult child at many households.
Also you absolutely need a car to get around- having just one per household means if your car goes down you might find your way down the prosperity ladder very quickly in southern california.
I am a Riverside lifer. This, and the fact that many times when people are not living with their parents they are living in a group situation. Not just people in their 20s either, its extremely common to see people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s to live with room mates. The vast majority of employed people in the area could not afford the rent on a studio apartment. The median home value is 9 times the median household income. The jobs here pay midwest wages with a California cost of living, local employers are also notoriously low paying compared to elsewhere in the greater Los Angeles area.
My favorite car brain story. The rowing course we race at has very insufficient parking and schools have started using busses instead of having parents drive kids to a lot 10 minutes away and being shuttled to the river. Anyway, I had one parent complain that there was no parking at the river BECAUSE of the busses and we should stop letting schools do that to make more room for parking. I was awestruck.
In defense of Nashville, they do have a tight, walkable downtown with a lot going on there (lots of pedestrian traffic). When we visited there last year, we stayed a couple of miles from downtown, drove to the huge parking area adjoining the stadium and crossed over the pedestrian bridge to downtown. Do you have numbers for all metro areas? I’m from Minneapolis-St Paul and am curious about how they fared. I would guess middling - we do have a relatively high level of bike commuting, but transit is so-so, and the two downtowns are not exactly vibrant..
I think the worst car centric cities are small cities. They spend so much money they don’t have on car infrastructure. People think they are “too small” for public transit so they just don’t have any, but they still fill three lane stroads to max capacity at peak times.
Videos like this one really intensify this feeling I've had for years that everything around me is just so wrong, to such an extent that you probably couldn't make it any worse if you tried. I've lived in walkable places in Spain and visited many more in Europe so I've always had some understanding of what else is possible, but it's like the more I think about it the worse it gets. What really gets me is how everyone else seems totally complacent or unaware that anything is amiss. None of my friends or family here seem to give it much thought which drives me a little crazy, like how do these problems not jump out to you when you're outside? But then I have to remember none of my family and friends in Spain realize how good their development is either, by comparison. Most people seem to assume that whatever they've grown up with is normal and fine, no need to look any deeper. Not sure where I was headed with this comment but it really feels like I'm in the twilight zone sometimes and knowing that there's at least 90,000 other people in it with me helps me cope lol.
Do what you can to spread awareness, i only discovered this different approach to urban planning recently and before that never gave a thought or even thought it was possible to have anything other than car depended cities.
Politics here in the US is pretty much exclusively centered around which demographic we should be at war with next. Trans people, Mexican people, black people, gay people, Chinese people, homeless people, etc. Developing our own cities isn't something that crosses most Americans' minds, really.
You’ve put into words a feeling I have all the time. Living in a car-centric American non-place feels like the twilight zone and the majority of people really seem to be fine with it. It’s amazing how few people feel alienated by it, but then I remember that I didn’t even fully wake up to this alienation until I went off to school. It’s this difficult feedback loop where in order to make people aware of how terribly our communities are built, they need to have access to well-built spaces; but we don’t build those spaces bc people don’t even know they want them. My hope is that the internet will continue to open people’s eyes about all of these fundamental problems. Probably an overly optimistic sentiment tho, but I’m a very optimistic person. I’ve definitely found that talking about these problems often has opened the eyes of people in my own life, so don’t give up the fight! I really appreciated reading this comment man just know ur not alone in feeling how ur feeling.
@@guy-sl3kr lol I was talking my urbanist shit with my extremely conservative cousins in the rural south a few weeks ago. Urbanists are now the target of quite a bit of vitriol from some conservatives already (tho I don’t think any of them know the word “urbanist” lmao). Urbanists definitely aren’t squarely in the conservative crosshairs, but they’re edging closer. My pretty-online conservative uncle definitely had the most negative stuff to say about the ideas I was preaching, and he definitely had an immediate knee-jerk eye-roll to some of my urbanist buzzwords. All of that is to say, I think that just as online communities have helped many of us to expand our understanding of our spaces and infrastructure, there are also online spaces to combat these ideas.
4:52 10. Charlotte, NC 5:43 9. Inland Empire, CA 6:48 8. Grand Rapids, MI 7:22 7. Richmond, VA 7:49 6. Oklahoma City, OK 8:31 5. Raleigh, NC 9:20 4. Tulsa, OK 9:56 3. Kansas City, MO/KS 12:49 2. Birmingham, AL 13:19 1. Nashville, TN
Surprised none of them are Texas. The cities near Dallas in the dfw metroplex are racist and capitalist enough. There are cities here that opposed extending public transit and subsidized housing on classist/race lines so clearly they look bad on PBS
I’ve only visited half of those cities on the list. So far none of them are interesting cities that I would want to return to. Even Nashville is bland despite some cool things
I grew up in Raleigh, and it was an absolute nightmare getting around as a kid. The lack of sidewalks made me feel trapped because to get any distance I needed to bike on a road. Even as a 20 year old I don’t like biking on the road, so you can imagine how I felt as a 10 year kid just trying to get to the park. Not to mention the good local park was 3 miles away, which among my friends was actually pretty close.
As a current resident of Raleigh the good things I've found about the city are the lack of downtown freeways and the decent (and expanding) trail system, but yeah everything else is car-dependent sprawl. There's some new mixed-use developments and the city finally abolished parking minimums, and North Hills has become a decent semi-walkable area (although it's bisected by a stroad lol), but it's got a long way to go.
Same man. I couldn't fucking stand it, I spent literally all my time downtown as soon as i got my drivers license even though i lived 20 minutes out off of 540
That's interesting I mean I grew up in a subdivision without sidewalks but I never really felt unsafe. But we used to draw on the sidewalks with chalk. However, I did have one incident with a garbage truck person and they did get hit I haven't heard anything about it or who did it. This is the only incident that I'm aware of in a neighborhood of over 30 years. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised some people drive in the subdivision like it's a regular road it's not. Pedestrians and wildlife you always have to watch for. But it is a little bit more rural it's not a downtown area.
Ouch, I’m from NC and this list hurts. Quite ashamed for the state really. And while Charlotte is getting better the pace is far too slow for a city of its size, especially to be so heavily focused on light rail. I look at cities with similar population in a place like Germany and just can’t help but feeling like we should’ve started building our transit 50 years ago.
@@eyyy2271 downtown is not horrible (like it seems like a lot of the "old" street network is intact), however since no one really lives downtown you still need to drive in
I'd love this channel to talk about success stories of car-dependent places being transformed into more dense, walkable areas and maybe tackle related questions of gentrification and how specifically even the good kinds of development are playing out in a somewhat monotonous way. I'd like this to focus on the United States, because I think if you broaden the scope of this particular problem to North America, you would have to include some amazing Canadian cities that are several steps ahead of most of the US. I'm thinking places like Arlington, VA; parts of Los Angeles, even parts of car dependent cities in the sun belt that are actually seeing apartments going up - and I'm sure people can think of other examples (but don't just stick in the PNW!)
I wonder if we could leverage affordable housing requirements and densification to solve both problems at once. like, say, if you want to tear down a house in a "gentrification impact special district" you'd put in areas, you have to add more units, more units per acre, and more bedrooms per acre than existed before (to cover edge cases) and the number of units previously existing must be affordable housing (rent controlled, sold at-cost to the public housing authority, etc.) and the additional units you built in the place can be market rate. this increases the total number of units while making sure the total number of units that are affordable never goes down. maybe make development increase the affordable housing in the area by at least 1 unit per project than was there before, or do things like make accepting section 8 mandatory for all units in "gentrification impact special district"
To add onto this, it would be cool to possibly talk to people who facilitated the change - activists, organizers, city officials, politicians. It would be be cool spice up for the channel.
I visited Nashville at the beginning of the summer and getting around was almost surreal in how car-centric it was. Every trip we took involved getting the freeway. And my favorite thing to do when visiting a new city is walk around and explore downtown, which was wholly unenjoyable. Every street was way too wide, and pedestrian paths would just end randomly. Getting second was so disconnected and weird it was almost disorienting. You could find nice pedestrian-friendly pockets, but sometimes you'd wander into this cute alleyway with a bunch of shops, only to find half of them closed. It has its redeeming qualities, but the whole area struck me as wasted potential.
Seeing New Orleans on the top 10 was a pleasant surprise. My wife and I just moved from Texas and we've been able to get rid of a car and we walk to most places. As a long time follower, the urban fabric completely shocked me when we moved here in a good way. Thanks for the video 👍
@@CityNerd totally unexpected. We thought it was going to be just like any other southern city in the US. The Streetcar gets the job done for me but this city could be really incredible if it had actually rapid transit.
As a resident of Tampa, I'm always waiting for my city to show up on these Anti-Urbanist lists (bad sprawl, minimal public transport, and numerous highways going right next to and THROUGH downtown) and when it doesn't I realize that I'm a fool for thinking the competition wouldn't be fierce. And since you shouted out the Gators, props to Gainesville for pushing to be the first city in the state to eliminate single-family zoning
I feel the same way about Hartford CT, while i haven't done much in the city itself just driving by it makes you assume every resident has both of their cars on the interstate just to slow you down. (The reality is that a massive "interchange" exists on its riverfront and has a tone of left hand exists to the point that the through lanes are the 2 rightmost of 5-6, this causes a lot of slowdown for a city of its size)
A video about OKC and/or Tulsa's "urban renewal" initiatives absolutely annihilating their downtowns would be interesting. So many wonderful buildings, many Art Deco, destroyed and turned into parking lots. Probably enough cities that have done the same to make a list! Love the channel!
Wow, i assume those "urban renewals" took place in the 50s at the peak of highway insanity. Because today if you say Urban Renewal i assume its an attempt to convert a parkinglot into a usuable building. (The ground is already decently prepared for you, relative to demo-ing a building or clearing new land of its vegetation)
Hey look at the bright side: at least we got a lightrail (that literally nobody uses because you have to drive 20+ minutes to get to the part of town it's in anyway)
Little note on the IE (inland empire), historically the people like my dad would commute all the way to LA for work, for him it was from Riverside to San Pedro (about 70 miles), and many still do. This isn't helped by the extremely piss poor Metrolink service between the IE and the LA-OC areas, although they are finally improving all of SoCal's commuter rail with Metrolink upgrades and service frequency increases, Redlands Rail, and the realignment of Amtrak, so maybe in 10-15 years, things will be different. On top of that, it is significantly cheaper to live there than in the main portion of LA or Orange County (still pretty expensive), so maybe there's a correlation between less money spent on housing and more money spent on a car, or two, or three?
Kind of speaks to the need to create regional, multi-county mass transit authorities. The traffic is often not coming from within the city or the county that the city's in. Houston is really sprawled out, as in, bedroom communities outside of the county? So getting a transit system that really works would involve commuter trains or trams feeding into and out of the city, as well as a better system of buses and trolleybuses to carry people to their subsequent destinations.
@@grmpEqweer absolutely, I mean SCAG does exist but San Diego county isn’t a part of it for some reason, so all of Socal working to unify the region through rail, bike, and bus should be a greater priority than it currently is
I've lived my whole life in Nashville, and I am not surprised to see our city at the top of this list. Car-centric infrastructure is king here. There is no light rail and only one heavy rail commuter line, the Music City Star, with a top speed of... 40 mph. There are no dedicated bus lanes, so the buses get stuck in the ever-worsening car traffic, which makes them not dependable at all. There are hardly any walkable neighborhoods outside of the urban core - sidewalks that abruptly stop along a busy stroad are ubiquitous as soon as you leave Broadway/Downtown. That being said, we have some hopeful plans currently on the horizon. Our mayor and council has noted the situation around Nissan Stadium, just as you have, and they have proposed the "Imagine East Bank" visionary document. This would totally transform the area surrounding the Stadium with high density mixed-use residential neighborhoods, a new transit hub, Nashville's first dedicated bus lanes, and new bike lanes and parks galore. Let's see if they actually stay true to their plan... @CityNerd that might be a cool video idea - "Top 10 Best/Worst Metro Redevelopment Plans"
Nashville native here. Not terribly shocked by the average commute miles as I knew a lot of co-workers pre-pandemic who commuted from places like Spring Hill or Murfreesboro every day. We actually had a proposal for light rail down to Murfreesboro a few years back, but the Koch brothers came in and stomped all over it. Growing up here was difficult, especially as a teenager, because you had to get your parents or older siblings to drive you anywhere you wanted to go. Especially frustrating since my parents were able to take the trolley when they were kids back in the 50's, but that's all gone now.
I grew up in Clarksville, and commuted to Nashville for school for a while, and it was about 50 miles one way. Lots of people from there go to Nashville regularly, and I'm sure many are daily commuters. Was visiting home recently, had to drive back to Nash to the airport and couldn't stop thinking about how great it would be to have a rail line just parallel I24. But they're probably just gonna expand the interstate instead. 🙄
We are in trouble when even San Francisco, one of the US's most urban cities, is highly car dependent. Car dependency has come back with a roar after the pandemic shutdown. 😞
To be fair. Because of work from home a lot of people are living in car dependent areas but because they aren’t commuting they are less car dependent then before. The other side of that coin is lots of people moved to suburbs because of work from home and have since be recalled to the office and are now commuting by car because what little transit existed was be slashed because of the pandemic.
I lived in SF without a car for several years and I felt like not owning a car leaves you “stranded” on a few islands out of the whole metro area. Basically any BART station without a parking lot and most (but not even all) of the city of SF. Muni is aggravatingly slow and unreliable within the 7x7 which is why Uber and Lyft took off so quickly in SF. And most of the Bay Area is stroady sprawl.
@@rosskgilmour transit frequency in LA hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and I suspect that's also the case elsewhere too. I wish they'd run more late night service. I'd use that coming home from the club instead of having to sit in my car for hours sobering up so I can drive. I'd rather have not driven in the first place but if transit ends too early I can't
I lived in Oklahoma City up until last year, and it really is an extremely carbrained city. I worked at a place that had not one, but two parking garages for their employees.
I work in downtown okc. The number of parking garages AND lots is crazy. My window stares out at an empty parking garage 7th floor. Every day it never has any cars at all. So dumb. I resent my city for how ugly it is, and how many people here don’t see anything wrong with it.
Agreed. I feel like it's always on the cusp of being included, but misses. Perhaps more walkable areas like Midtown and various into neighborhoods like VA Highlands, Inman, etc help offset our travesty of a downtown.
I'm in Nashville now. I tried to walk on the outskirts of downtown and nearly got run over multiple times. They even have signs that say the pedestrian is responsible for making eye contact with a driver before crossing a street, crazy.
I was born in and grew up in Kansas City, MO and literally never took transit once, only finding out the year we moved away (to even worse Oklahoma City) that there was a bus stop that would take you directly to downtown right near my house - demonstrating just how bad the transit situation was and still is. My family lives in Oklahoma City, and it is just next-level sprawl and car-dependency to the point where Oklahoma City officially has the lowest percentage of people who travel to work via transit of the 50 largest cities in the US, and it was in part because of this that I went to Macalester College in St. Paul and then after 4 long years back in OKC, later moved back to Minneapolis-St. Paul, living in a walkable neighborhood without a car, right on the Green Line light rail and right across from my job (which I walk roughly 200 ft to get to). The transit here isn't amazing, but at least it will get you where you want to go most of the time as long as you're willing to endure an hour taking the bus. Despite the excessive highways here, nearly the entire urban core of Minneapolis and St. Paul is decently walkable and bikeable, and it's a luxury by US standards to be able to say that. I never want to live somewhere where I have to drive everywhere ever again.
Macalester!! Up the Scots! It can be rough to move away from family (depends on the individual) but everybody has to decide what they can live with. Glad you found a good spot in the Twin Cities -- really a region that's doing so much right.
@@CityNerd As a Twin Cities resident, could you enlighten me on what the area is doing right? I feel like I'm missing the boat here, and I want to understand. Because I'm seeing more "anti-car" sentiments online, but the bike paths and light rail in the Twin Cites don't seem to have been nearly worth the price--both in terms of dollars and a wise use of resources. For example, the new bike paths are largely empty and the light rail is way over budget. How can what appears to be waste considered improvement?
@@ThePeriphery If mostly empty is the metric, why notice the mostly empty buses and bike paths and not the mostly empty parking lots or the mostly empty cars?
CN did a video on worst performing rail and Phoenix got an honorable mention. My guess is Phoenix's public transit is just decent enough to pull itself out of the bottom
Phoenix is interesting. It’s my city. I commute almost everywhere via bicycle. In many ways, it’s excellent for cycling. I am a cyclist by hobby and commuting, and I sometimes ride 100+ miles in this town without touching a road. We have dedicated pedestrian paths everywhere. The issue with Phoenix (counting the entire valley), is that cycling is seen purely as recreation. So, let’s say I have to go somewhere 20 miles away. There might be 16 miles of dedicated pedestrian path, but you have to go through 2 terrible miles to get to that path and 2 terrible miles to get from that path to your destination. We add in miles and miles of great bike path, but we assume everyone who wants to use one of these paths is going to put their bike in their giant SUV and drive to it. So, while there are multiple great ways to get from Desert Ridge to Tempe (for instance), once you’re in Tempe, it’s hopeless.
@@danielsass4134 Oh interesting, I am actually also a bike commuter, but my trip to work is only 1.5 miles, so I didn't know too much about the pedestrian paths (I take the side walk along 7th Street) I'm going to start trying to explore more of them :] 7th will still be a horror show tho
@@notaword1136 Most canals have pedestrian paths. We then have major networks of parks (i.e. the Green Belt, which essentially connects Tempe to North Scottsdale through a series of parks and golf courses). Many golf courses have pedestrian paths (that are separate from the golf cart paths). My suggestion for learning these paths is to download Strava (which allows you to record your bike trips) and follow as many people as possible. When I got into cycling about a decade ago (in my quest to improve car dependency), I learned the safe routes by following people.
The Southeast fills a lot of these slots because its growth has largely happened post WW2 and its habitable land is plentiful with lots of access to water. In many of these cases, the vast majority of growth has actually been post 1970 and during a time when car inertia was at its peak.
Atlanta isn't on this list, but I remember being just completely appalled the first time I flew in and out of ATL and saw the development patterns, 20, 30, 40 miles from the city -- from the air.
@@thomasgrabkowski8283 Atlanta is mostly flat on a macro level (no major geographic features) but it is definitely not on a micro level. There are small hills, valleys, and creeks everywhere. This is one reason why the street grid is mostly limited to just downtown and midtown. It's basically the opposite of LA, where there is the ocean and big mountains, but the rest is a flat basin, and pretty much the entire populated region is a grid of streets.
@@CityNerd I am completely appalled by Houston Texas as well !!!! the highway is sprawled out forever and it takes a long time to even get through the city if you’re just trying to get to the other side ha ha.
@@wwsciffsww3748 It's also the timing of the development in ATL (and similar cities)---the Depression was approximately a cutoff point between grid subdivision and "better" design. Some large-scale development after that followed previously established grid patterns, but post-WW2 is where lots of curves started to be standard whether they were really needed. And a lot of it was for aesthetic reasons, and probably also with the idea of controlling vehicle speeds.
I knew the worst offender was going to be bad, but I didn’t expect “Someone please explain Nashville to me.” I laughed so hard, it hurt. I love this channel so much! I love his straight to the point urbanism and factual delivery. I’m a CityNerd. 🤓
I currently live and work in Riverside; we own a bike and one car. I work at UCR so I can *gasp* even walk to work. My random thoughts having lived here or several years, and having lived in the bay area previously: 1) Most people commute to a different city to work. Riverside is where people *live* but people seem to work elsewhere. The morning rush is away from the city, and the evening rush is back in. The only good alternative to the drive is to work from home. Good luck using the trains or buses to get anywhere you need to be on time. Suburban sprawl here is crazy, so your 16 year old kid working at a starbucks in your home city still needs a car to get there. The number of freeways are correspondingly very high, and often cut right through places you'd need to cross by bike. Finally, UC Riverside is considered a 'commuter campus' - a lot of students don't actually live here on campus. UCR just opened a new parking structure to try to accommodate the drivers. So even the university contributes to the traffic issue, when normally a large university is a haven for non-driving people. 2) Car culture is big here. Not sure how much of that is derived from the car-centricity, but lots of people have project cars, go to the race track (even professors in my department here at UCR), sideshows/takeovers and drag races on regular streets are pretty common in SoCal (especially LA). So even if we didn't *need* all the cars, there are people who just like driving and like showing off their cars. The number of luxury and supercars here is very high, especially around LA with all the big famous rich peoples, which I think might feed into the 'cars are cool to just have' mentality. 3) People here are averse to public transit, even when it can compete with cars. A great video by Donut Media (the car youtube channel which is based in LA) was a 'race' between a car, a bike, and a person taking transit. The guy taking the train went at about as leisurely a pace as humanly possible, and still beat the car. He gets to chill and do whatever he wants on the train. Everyone involved was shocked - they had never really considered the train a possible mode of transit. I think the poor service times has a lot to do with it. I wanted to take the train from Riverside (a station is less than a mile from my address) to San Diego and the travel time is like, 5-6 HOURS because the trains have to sit at stations for so long. On the bright side, UCR and Riverside have been investing in protected bike lanes, green painted bike lanes, etc., and there has been an explosion this academic year in the number of people using e-scooters and e-bikes on top of the regular cohort of people using longboards/skateboards and traditional bikes. This quarter is the first time I've ever seen empty parking on the street of a neighborhood filled with university students. So who knows, maybe Riverside won't be so car-centric forever.
True.....Metrolink would be so helpful if it have connected to San Diego directly without the IEOC line ending at Oceanside, which holds true for the LA to Oceanside line as well.......Riverside would perform slightly better in taking up transit than Orange and SB counties, provided RTA improves frequency and Metrolink is managed better..
Not surprised by Nashville at all. I was born there and still have a ton of family in Murfreesboro, about 30 minutes southeast on I-24. Nashville is *very* spread out. There is so much development in Middle Tennessee, but most of it seems to cater to people who want to live an almost rural lifestyle while still having the convenience of a large-ish city nearby.
i have a weird hope that those rural folks moving into a suburbia have like a door that could spill into urbanism; maybe that's just me. - 21:08:43 at 2023: 09.22 by: mico st⭐ar holo, a man.
Having been to Asheville many times. It's actually not surprising. There downtown core, River Arts, West Asheville, North Asheville, and Biltmore Village have basically no infastructure in place. West Asheville is basically 3 highways that become an arterial randomly. But to be fair, they just kind of said fuck it and built things were ever they wanted so if you are walking or biking, it's pretty hard physically to get around with so many steep grades.
@@schmitty8225 I agree on the steep grades thing, but I've heard many people who are much more into bike infrastructure argue that that's a distraction. Idk. Hopefully CityNerd can make a video about it! (Maybe a list of 10 tourist destinations with bad infrastructure or something like that)
It sure shocked me to see my town on this list. It is somewhat car-centric for sure, but surely not the worst in the country!! First thing I thought of was that Asheville (and surrounding area) is nowhere near 250,000 people, so how did it even make the list? Well, the MSA is - quite frankly - insane. It includes the four counties of Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, and Madison. "M" stands for "metropolitan", which those 4 counties (except for Asheville and to a small degree Hendersonville) are most assuredly not. So my guess it that the rural nature skewed the results substantially.
As I'm sure you already know, Ray, if you want to find where successful black businesses & neighborhoods have been in a city, look for freeways, interchanges & stadiums. All great places to use eminent domain on people who can't afford to fight back. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why Nashville's stadium is where it is. That area floods in heavy storms that make the river run over its banks, though, so that could be part of it as well.
They should look into what Frederick, MD did with Carroll Creek. After a particularly bad flood in the 70s, they implemented a plan and built an underground channel for flood control and turned the existing basin into a linear park. Beautiful area and great infrastructure to protect the city.
Weird because in my city, they ran them through where white people lived. The mostly black areas were left 100% intact......so I guess that myth is busted.
Congrats on getting a speaking gig! Like you said in your urban planning video, spreading understanding of urban planning is part of an urban planner's job, and you have done a great job so far with your channel. While I cant attend, I look forward to watching your presentation!
Yeah, I have to sign a release for them to edit and distribute however hey want, super fun! (I'm sure it'll be viewable at some point.) Thanks for your kind words!
I live in Nashville. Driving here really is insane. My job is only about 11 miles from my house, but due to congestion it can take 40 mins to 1.5 hours to get home in the afternoons. As a result, I take an alternative route that goes around Nashville instead of through downtown. It doubles the distance I drive, but it reduces the amount of time I'm on the road.
I grew up in charlotte and took public transportation my whole life. It isnt until I moved 5 years ago that the light rail went more than 2 miles and the only walkable neighborhoods are within a 2 mile radius of downtown. Looks like things are changing for the better tho hopefully more people use transit. It's always been relatively safe
It was built too slow. Light rail is like driving 25mph with stops. UNCC University Stop is 45 min to Stonewall stop downtown for game day. But when driving from the UNCC deck is 16min. It saves on parking but costs 30 min of time each way. People have to be willing to give up that 1hr per day to commute by light rail. It’s only worthwhile living a few stops from downtown. Even then it turns a 5min drive into 5min walk, 15min ride, 5min walk. Or 15 min e-bike on patchy rough sidewalks and many dangerous intersections to cross. I hope the next long distance line built is a fast metro line. Especially the one to the airport. Seems like they will go cheap and slow again.
@@Andrew-ig5sp I disagree. I have been using the rail for over four years and I've found it to be faster than you think. Uncc to Stonewall takes about 30 min, end-to-end the blue line is about 1 hr. This is fairly consistent regardless of traffic, unlike driving. It'll still be a tad slower than a car, but you can do other stuff while on the rail - read, study,etc. Can't do that in a car since driving takes effort, exhausting effort even, if the traffics bad enough.
@@hemingwaybromfield3722 Totally agree. UNCC to Stonewall currently takes less than 25. I know because I do the route at least 4 times as week. Plus the fact that there are good ingress and egress points in Uptown make it ideal for a lot of things.
Grand Rapids resident here, I love this city, it's very beautiful and has a fair amount of culture, great beaches and camping less than an hour away, however there is genuinely no way to get around outside of a car (or the boatload of electric scooters downtown)
@@godminnette2 There are near zero options to get around without a car. We have some bussing in some areas, but they're subject to the same traffic as the cars. Grand Rapids thinks it isn't big enough to justify passenger rail options that go anywhere within the greater metro area, or even the rest of the state for that matter. Trains are for cargo and sometimes for going to Chicago. That goes for every city in Michigan though, really. It's a train that makes a bee-line for Chicago, or the literal highway.
The shocking thing is, the walkability score for downtown Grand Rapids is 92/100, which is very high for the US. The heated walkways between buildings, the expanded pedestrian access on Monroe Center, and now they're talking about adding that to Bridge Street, too. These are great steps forward. The only problem? You need a car to get in and out.
What's crazy about OKC is that they moved the highway half a mile closer to the river from its original location through the middle of downtown in 2012. And it's like, you almost had a chance to do something good there. Then Tulsa.... Living downtown in Tulsa is awesome, until you wanna go somewhere and need to cross 10 parking lots or get groceries then you have to drive 4 miles.
And what's bonkers is the cost of living in places like downtown Tulsa is exploding. Basic 2bed/2bath is as high as 2800$ after all is said and done in those newer developments. My solution was to find something much cheaper down river and just use the RiverParks paths to travel up and across by bike. It still sucks though because if you live even just a handful of blocks inland to the river just trying to bike to the path itself is dangerous.
@@raphaelkinney There's some support for the removal of at least the northern portion of the IDL through Greenwood but I assume ODOT and the city won't do anything about it. It's a shame.
@@raphaelkinney Which is crazy because it was $700 in 2018 for a loft. But 2800 is more than I currently pay in NYC. As much as I love it, Tulsa ain't worth that price.
Hello! I live in Southern California. The inland empire was considered a rural community so most cities are linked by freeways. Most of the cities were unincorporated until a couple of decades again. New housing development favors single family homes so easily walkable urban environments are rare. Riverside looks more non car commuter centric because of the train stations that connect it to California’s costal cities. The inland empire is actually one of the cheapest places to live compared to La and Orange County
I lived car-free (sorta) in Nashville while in grad school for two years and this justifies my feelings about that city so heavily. I didn't own a car, but I did carpool with a dude for the whole second year while we worked in the same building and commuted from a nearby location. I had to do it in order to remain sane. The infrastructure for transit sucks. The hub-and-spoke bus routes made faster to walk 3 miles than bus to downtown and back out... while driving took less than 5 minutes. The sidewalks to nowhere are everywhere. The stroads are the default and you're lucky if you get a crosswalk light even when you press the button. I met and knew so many people who had multiple DUI's who just kept driving because that's the only way one could live. It *terrified* me as a pedestrian. I did bus to work a few times during that carpool era, took over 1.5 hours to travel a 15 minute car commute, and I lived in a part of town my friends called "downtown" (because it was within the I440 ring). Without looking at your numbers too deeply, it is worth mentioning: Nashville's numbers are inherently weird for one particular reason: the county (Davidson) and the city (Nashville) are the same. It makes Nashville's land area look much bigger than it truly is. That said, there were actually people that lived in the next county, AN HOUR PLUS DRIVE and commuted into East Nashville, the hip gentrified area, in order to work. It was mind-boggling. Some of them commuted more than 30 miles in rush hour traffic. Nashville has so many redeeming qualities, but it's such an absolutely unpleasant and dangerous place to live as a pedestrian, and ultimately that was a big reason why, after grad school, I made no effort to continue living there, despite the connections I made.
Oh man, I almost forgot about the stadium. The one way to get to work from my apartment (when my carpool wasn't available) required, obviously, to hit the downtown central bustation, as all routes in nashville lead. But then the 2nd bus took me past the stadium. I had to stare at the pedestrian only bridge over the Cumberland River that went from a beautiful downtown park to an empty parking lot crater. It was wild how much beautiful space that stadium took up when it literally was already in walking distance of the downtown bus terminal!
@@es-qf2gw Where you live can really affect how living car free feels. I lived in Portland and Seattle post-Nashville, and even have been a walk commuter for the past 1.5 years. Being free of the forced expense of cars and roadways has helped my personal well being tremendously.
VIDEO IDEA: I would love to see a video listing the best US cities to raise a family. Reasons why young couples leave cities for their less dense, worse planned, car-centric suburbs are schools, crime, cost of living, and space. I may be mistaken, but I don't think I have seen this kind of content on your channel. Explain why these cities are advantageous over their suburban counterparts.
The key- bottom line- is safety for children. Ideally (LOL) cities can be as safe as Japanese cities where children are not afraid to walk to neighborhood train stations, then take the train to another station convenient to their school, and at the end of the school day do the same- with little fear of violence being done to them. Of course, this cannot work in the US due to racial-ethnic-sexual preferences, languages spoken, and ever-present economic stratification. People don't work together well in the US. Consequently, people adhere to "niche" thinking in terms of transportation planning (as well as everything else except the validity of materialism) at all levels, i.e., they are motor vehicle fanatics, bicycle fanatics, public transit fanatics, walkability fanatics, and large backyard fanatics who seldom compromise. People of different "stripes" only work together when they have to, either due to economic difficulties or to the threat of state sanctioned violence- such a shame.
@@WizenedVariations1 Huh? WTF do you mean when you say "Of course, this cannot work in the US due to racial-ethnic-sexual preferences," I'm retired now but in a long professional career lived in Canada (Toronto & Vancouver), Wellington New Zealand, Zurich Switzerland and Brussels Belgium. All are safe, have excellent subsidised public transport systems were having a car for day to day life is not essential. All are multi-ethnic diverse cites with multiple languages spoken.
@@epincion Study US history, particularly the evolution of Euro-Americans vis-a-vis the Afro American descendants of slaves. Look at this from the standpoint of social violence and the responses of both groups to US deindustrialization. This type of history is not reflected in any example you provide. A closer national analogue might be Brazil, which outside of Sao Paulo has had great difficulty putting in effective steel rail transit.
HAHAHA, as a Nashvillian I can confirm that figure is true. I drive 70 miles round trip to get to work on what I honestly believe are some of the most poorly planned interstates in the U.S. The rapid transit service, if you can even call it that, is also dismal with little to no expansion plans. They are, however, making our interstates "smart" whatever that means...
I grew up in nashville and still live here, and the sprawl just keeps getting worse. There are two main types of new housing developments: Gentrified apartment complexes/houses and single family home neighborhoods that keep getting farther out of the city. Our traffic keeps getting worse, yet our city does nothing to expand our bus system or music city star (commuter train)
As a resident of the area, I am truly flabbergasted the DFW Metroplex didn't make this list. Was fully expecting it to be #1 until the last minute. Curious to know where it ended up.
As someone who lived in Heritage Hill in Grand Rapids, MI and walked to work and pretty much everywhere, you really should arrange a visit. Put it on your schedule for next spring when nearby Holland hosts their tulip festival. The core of the city is vibrant and walkable.
If the census numbers include the greater metro area, then it makes sense. The suburbs are stupidly car centric. Holland is also very car centric. The downtown area is walkable, but most of the essential stores are located on US-31 which is a perfect example of a stroad.
@Aidan Collins it is. Downtown Holland is a handful of blocks. There isn't an affordable or adequate grocery store. Most of Holland works outside of downtown. The tulip time trail route is marketed as a scenic drive. Those things factor in it being car centric. If only the downtown was able to grow with affordable housing and more blocks of commercial districts then it would be better reflecting its Dutch name.
I lived in Nashville during undergrad. It is a nightmare to navigate and to get around you pretty much have to have a car, but to run a few errands will essentially take your entire Saturday. None of the celebrities you would associate the town with even live in the city proper. They all live in Brentwood or nearby Franklin.
I lived in Chicago long ago when we had street cars with wicker seats Red Rockets was our name for them, they were great, one every ten minutes, low fare, orderly and clean. Now you only have to take one look at public transportation today to see why I will never give up my car. Law is no longer enforced, there is graffiti everywhere, vomit, needles, homeless sleeping everywhere and gang activity. I’ll drive, thanks.
I grew up in Raleigh. It truly is one of the worst most car dependent places ever. It's getting slightly better, the current city council has gotten rid of parking minimums across the board. There is new "HSR" between here and Richmond is coming. A giant new bus station including housing (some affordable too) right next to the train station is coming, a train station which will soon host regional rail between raleigh, durham and RTP, including suburbs further west/east (clayton and hillsborough). Downtown is also not terrible and has some charming places like city market. I would spend most of my time outside of the house downtown. I couldn't stand the way most people lived, never going to downtown just suburb to strip mall and back. No trees anywhere, so you couldn't walk considering 90+ heat 100% humidity literally every day in the summer and that's not an exaggeration Also, I lived in Asheville - you need a car, but it's more walkable than every other city on the list. It's strange - there's usually a few things within walking distance no matter where you are, but to get anywhere else you need a car. There's no sidewalks on the tight mountain roads. I went to college there and didn't have a car, I mostly made it work, you could do it if you lived downtown. It's one of the few places where the natural beauty and quirkiness of the town overshadow the car dependency to me, it's still a great place to live.
Two things that can be said for Raleigh - 1) It wasn't viscerally ugly to look at compared to some others on the list. The downtown is much lighter on highway infrastructure or stroads compared to all of the other cities on the list. The consequences is that the contiguous walkable urban area is pretty good and it feels pleasant to be in. 2) Improvements are being made. BRT is rolling out and massive infill is happening in Downtown, Midtown, and eventually Downtown South--which will improve the stadium situation. There is some hope.
@@mentalrectangle Absolutely agree with everything you say. Plus the Cardinal Bikeshare (which I am eagerly awaiting free rides after the shutdown) when it's running is great compared to citibikes and bluebikes - no upcharge for ebikes, and the passes are dirt cheap.
Nashville resident here - there are plans to redevelop the East Bank and redo the street grid in the next couple years, regardless of whether the stadium also gets moved. That strip of land is quite prone to flooding which is part of why it is under-utilized (see 2010), so there will have to be measures taken when this happens - getting rid of the sea of parking is one step but won't completely fix the issue. But yeah, most of the "city" is basically suburban sprawl, the inner residential neighborhoods generally lack sidewalks but at least have some walkable commercial activity; the outer ones are standard subdivisions boxed in by stroads. The light rail transit plan was voted down a few years ago (despite my pro-transit yard sign alas .. lots of Koch brothers money and the pro-transit mayor having an affair with her bodyguard on the city's dime didn't help) and probably won't reappear again until traffic eclipses pre-COVID levels. But it's unlikely to gain traction since the absurdly low oop. density of ~1400/sq mile (low even by Southern standards) is just not conducive to a transit system that the majority could use. I hope that the recent rapidly increasing density of downtown and midtown might at least support better car-free infrastructure and maybe even a rail line there, but that's about it. All that complaining aside, I have a
I'm shocked that Hampton Roads, a metropolitan area of about 1.5 mil is not on the list. It's an almost completely car dependent metro that sprawls and stretches over so much land and sea.
Transportation comes first. The streetcar and the interurban railroad built the first suburbs. We can reverse direction with transit and infill. Build a light rail line, encourage development along it, and soon you will really start to address the problem. Culdesac in Tempe is an excellent example of this.
Nashville here. And I have a co worker that commutes 2 times a week from Dickson TN. That's about a 90 mile round trip, extreme sprawl, terrible housing affordability, extremely poor transit (Not even sure how to begin fixing this), and a state and local government actively hostile to good planning gets you Nashville. But surely just 1 more lane will fix traffic!
Seattle is improving so rapidly it's insane. They're hacking away at downtown car access with a machete and replacing it with transit, bike lanes, and walkable spaces. I'm so glad my commute to the university is on ferries and light rail. It's so much lower stress than driving or a bad bus, for an hour each way i sit at a table by myself, drink my coffee and have a snack from the cafe and look out at the Puget sound while catching up on homework. I saw a pod of orcas last week. I don't know if a better commute exists, I drive so little that I keep my car and truck on battery tenders now.
I'm actually a bit surprised that Virginia beach/ Hampton roads didn't end up on this list. I suspect it's because the population isn't quite that high, but it is absolutely a nightmare to do anything but drive here. I was a bit surprised to see Richmond, but the outer suburbs are quite sprawly, and they just built a BRT, so it makes sense.
god yeah as a Hampton Roads resident it's appalling how much space is dedicated to roads and highways. the highways are completely clogged no matter what too, no city in the area can seem to work together to build any sort of public transit infrastructure
As a Richmonder, I'm pretty shocked. Downtown Expressway really drives car ownership up and allows folks who live in the suburbs and work downtown to have literally 0 contact with the city, but I bike often in the city and it appears common to me. I am stunned, was half expecting it to be one of the BEST cities!!
Almost everyone at my 300 person company lives and works in the suburbs and almost never goes into the city. Obviously every adult in their households has a car. And the city (where car ownership is still widespread) is only 1/5th of the metro area population.
As someone who lives in the city and bike commutes to work, I think Richmond is pretty underrated in terms of bikability and transit, but it takes determination to find what works. I’m constantly informing people that the bus is indeed free here, and how to use the bus. and that there are many great bike trails. That being said, the bike routes dont connect very well to each other, and different neighborhoods have wildly different levels of access (east end vs west end). And that’s if youre lucky enough to have a job downtown…try finding a doctor in the city. At the end of the day, i have to remind myself that while the city itself is improving, the city itself is only a small chunk of the population. Hopefully with the north-south BRT, things will change but thats at least 5 years out. (I also work at a 400ish company downtown, and I am one of two people who consistently bike to work. Not sure anyone takes the bus, there may be some walker…)
I was just wondering when Grand Rapids (my home) would come up in one of your videos! Unfortunately it is this one... Many in the area are working to start and continue conversations surrounding transit improvements in the area and I for one think there is so much potential here with our growing communities and fantastic neighborhoods. We would love for you to visit and keep up the good work, Ray!
If you widened the criteria to 250k, smaller Michigan cities did poorly on this too. I wonder if it's a "birthplace of the automobile"/MDOT culture effect.
@@CityNerd I’m wondering if perhaps Midland was one of those smaller cities; I’m from Saginaw, which is in the middle of the TriCities of Bay City, Midland, and Saginaw and I can’t stand visiting Midland and navigating. It’s an affluent community, it is where the headquarters of Dow Chemical is, so I would expect the car ownership values to be pretty wild. I’m curious of my city Saginaw now too, great video. The only walkable-ish area I know of if Frankenmuth, but it’s like 50/50 simulated urbanism and genuine walkability in my opinion, it’s worth a Google though if you have time and are interested in Michigan, but I’m sure there are much more people friendly places that I don’t know of in MI.
@@CityNerd I'm living in Madison, WI now & whenever I visit Michigan I'm amazed by the sheer size of the large US-made SUVs that are ubiquitous, also surprised by the lack of concern for pedestrians even in otherwise walkable tourist & college towns like Glen Arbor & Marquette. Even comparing Michigan to your average Wisconsin town (not walkable, bikeable Madison) it's still surprising.
@citynerd Yeah, Grand Rapids is actually one of the better run Rust Belt cities. The city’s population has never experienced a sharp decline & has lost probably only 10,000 residents at its lowest point. GR has always a had more diverse economy than the rest of Michigan. Although GM has somewhat of a presence in the area, the auto industry’s influence is rather minor. GR was built off the furniture industry, & now the economy is focused on medical, Craft beer, food production & processing, and various other industries. The tech scene is growing too. GR had more craft beer breweries per square mile than any other city.
I clicked on the video thinking GR had to be on it. Moved back to help family after 30 years away. It's better than it was, but it's still far and away the worst city I've lived in. Grand Rapids hasn't been cool since you could ride a trolley from Eastown to the riverfront, then hop on a ferry to Grand Haven.
Grand Rapids' downtown is actually very walkable, from my experience. Its the gosh darn southern suburbs that are an absolute nightmare. I've lived in the Wyoming suburb for 6 months for an internship and the amount of walkable streets is in the negatives. I can't remember the last street I saw with a sidewalk, and I get stuck in traffic at 6 AM sometimes. 28th, 36th, and 44th street can all stick it. Grand Rapids' southern suburbs are stroad-nation and agonizingly slow to traverse. That being said, the city is pretty good otherwise.
I agree. In the East Town area I can easily walk or bike to the farmers market, grocery store, hardware store, and restaurants. Downtown is a 20 min away by bike, scooter or bus. However, sometimes I have to head to 28th street or further south and it’s all heavily car centric.
Couldn't agree more. GR proper is pretty friendly for cycling, at least, even if transit leaves a lot to be desired. And the downtown is pleasant and walkable (shame about 131 cleaving the city in two, though.) But the suburbs are a car-sewer hellscape. Just moved last year to be north of 28th St. so I wouldn't be forced to take my life into my hands on 4 and 5 lane, 40+ MPH stroads in order to cycle literally anywhere. Kentwood can suck it.
At least Cascade Township used an initial grant from the FHWA to construct a several miles long, multi-use path along a major thoroughfare from Cascade Village westward through the township towards GR proper. The popularity of that project kick-started a major endeavor to build miles more of those paths, through the sprawling, semi-rural neighborhoods. Those paths are primarily used for recreational purposes or exercising, but they do link to commercial centers. Ada Township (yes, home of Amway and the DeVos family), not to be outdone, constructed its own system of paths. And recently, the Village of Ada has been completely transformed, including the rerouting of a road or two, to become a more "new-urbanist" community. Some parts of the "old town" have been preserved, but there have been mixed reactions to the changes.
Yes, definitely. I grew up in west Grand Rapids and always rode my bike into downtown and walked around. Then I moved to Walker and… sigh. Grand Rapids is walkable but its suburbs are absolute nightmares.
I'd love this as well... I live in an OK small city for bike and walkability, but I can see the potential for it to be great. I personally like the feel of small to mid size cities and would love to find one that really wants to do walkability well.
The Inland Empire is just a West Coast retirement zone that got developed into overflow housing for people working closer to LA who can't afford to live there so they commute 90 minutes each way. There is a decalcomanie of people commuting from the smaller cities into San Bernadino and Riverside because they can't afford to live there, as those two cities support the LA commuters.
Having lived and working there, I was waiting for Richmond to show up in this list. Sufficiently old parts of the city can be walked and biked well enough, but the rest of the city and metro area is highly car dependent with limited transit.
I live in Nashville and it not uncommon for people to drive 50+ miles a day to work. It’s actually double the square miles of Chicago! I’ve lived in Austin, Portland, Chicago and Europe without a car. I have two cars in Nashville. It’s not a compact city and has very limited public transportation. It’s definitely the least favorite city I’ve lived in but the $$$ from my job keeps me locked in for now…
Nashville area resident here. Our placement on this list is unfortunately, not surprising. The 52.7 figure is also not an anomaly. For several years, I commuted 30+ miles each way from Spring Hill to Nashville. I had an employee who commuted from just outside of Bowling Green, KY - her one way was about 80 or so miles. Also, Cookeville & Sparta are kinda the hip new places to commute in and out of - 83 & 99 miles east respectively. In another role, I was driving from my home in Spring Hill to our office in Waverly - 69 miles from home and 67 miles from the main office in downtown Nashville. Employers pay fairly well, however, for a few factors, it’s still not conducive for everybody to living in Nashville proper. Even then, suburban and rural affordability is eroding due to the sprawl. This only adds to the problem of lengthy commutes. As it pertains to vehicle availability, I’ve observed & lived out the multiple vehicle lifestyle. While a definite luxury, it’s not uncommon to have a car that you aren’t too attached to simply for commuting and a vehicle that fits your lifestyle outside of the workplace. Depending on the role you’re in, it’s not as rare as it once was to have either a company-provided vehicle or some form of allowance. Employers know that the sprawl is out of control and that PT infrastructure simply can’t keep up with the growth & where people want to live. Private sector is willing to incentivize talent they consider to be top-notch. Thankfully, Titan stadium (Nissan) is going to be relocated and the current location will be redeveloped into a more usable space. As it stands now, that’s where many downtown office workers park & walk/shuttle to work across the Cumberland. Local governments have a seemingly healthy relationship with Metro’s Transit Authority. Several of the surrounding cities can commute into town via express bus routes taking hundreds and maybe thousands of vehicles off the streets each day. Several of these communities are greater than 30 miles from downtown: Clarksville, Dickson, Murfreesboro, Spring Hill. Check out WeGo. Despite the 2018 referendum getting shut down, I think the resulting alternatives have plenty of room for improvement, but are working decently.
Oh hey, Tulsa finally made another list! Funny you should mention the downtown freeway loop and parking situation. If only someone would make a video focused entirely on those topics...
I grew up in Nashville and I'm not at all surprised at our appearance at the top of this list. The driving metric you showed is shocking but it's in line with other numbers I've seen, you see similar statistics put on signs while waiting to get your car emissions inspected. I think the DVMT is so high because tons of people commute from exurbs, places like Mt Juliet or Franklin or even Murfreesboro that are a fair distance away. It used to be doable without too much terrible traffic, but the city has grown so fast it'll be interesting to see how long that continues to be the case. We've had some rail proposals come up a few times and they always get shot down, either from the suburbanites or from businesses on the stroads. I first lived near Franklin where it's impossible to get anywhere without driving. My dad moved to midtown a few years later, and that area is actually very walkable, but not safely bikeable at all. Otherwise, it's all stroads and closed-off subdivisions with cul-de-sacs. Our awful urban planning is one reason I left It's interesting that you bring up the football stadium - the parking is horrendous, but there's lots of other awful land use decisions on that side of the river, especially I-24 - there's nothing interesting between the river and the downtown loop. However, there is a nice pedestrian bridge that goes from the stadium across the river, and while downtown is still car-brained it's not awful to walk around. A better example is the Bridgestone arena, which is right in the middle of downtown and offers only very expensive underground parking so there's not too much wasted space from parking lots
People literally commute from other cities to work in Nashville. Looking on leaving myself will probably end up in Chicago. Trading miserable summers for miserable winters
Yea I'd be surprised if they didn't wind up on the list. They have a non-existent bus service and a terrible commuter service to nowhere as their only transit options. It's worse knowing that as bad as they have it, literally every other part of Middle Tennessee has it worse.
@@Opals25 Lived in Nashville for 23 years, moved to Salt Lake City for grad school, and I too am now seeking a move to Chicago to finally get to a decent city. Good luck!
Explaining Nashville: Yes, people really drive that much. I know people who frequently drive across town several times a day. To get to anything is a few miles, so on average 57 (while high) makes sense. As for the stadium, it is easily accessible to downtown via the pedestrian bridge. It actually feels like a downtown stadium, because you can pregame hard on Broadway and then walk across the pedestrian bridge to the game.
Roundtrips between Thompson's Station, Spring Hill, Murfressboro, Gallatin, etc. and downtown are all over 60 miles. Gotta be over a hundred thousand commuters. Agreed it absolutely makes sense
Video idea: should we stay or should we go? Should we stay in our car dependent town and work to improve it ? And how? Or should we concentrate into SF Bay and NYC ?
We don't have the space for potentially millions more ppl here in NYC. In a country facing a housing crisis we're lucky our homeless population isn't even higher than it is. And we still have a lot of homeless ppl. Personally I think we all need to advocate for more walkable, people centric cities, even if they're not our own. For example I want more resources poured into cities in upstate NY because they'd have a lot of potential to reclaim past glory in new ways.
I am living proof that it can be done. I grew up in Kansas City metro area. Suburbs on the Kansas side. I took one trip to Europe and was immediately transformed. I began my plan to escape. After I sold my house and all my belongings I moved to downtown Kansas City and experienced the loop right out my front window.. for one year. Since then I have lived in fully furnished apartments in Manhattan, toronto, and currently in Montreal. I avoided any place that scored below 95% on walk score. I sold my car when I left Kansas City and haven't owned one since. I have chosen to pay a little extra rent in order to be right in the center of things in each of those cities. So I can either walk or bus or Subway anywhere I want to go. If it wasn't for other circumstances I would move back to New York in a heartbeat. My second choice might surprise you but that would be Singapore. Yes I think you could devote a full episode to Singapore. To me it's what you would build if you wanted to design Manhattan from the ground up. They've got everything right. And they do everything they can to discourage car ownership. The main thing is having an incredible alternative.
@@coverversionoftheday9941 What a nice privilege it is to be able to get a job in expensive areas that pay for housing and to not be just disabled enough to navigate transit. I remember being 30, that was nice.
@@MilwaukeeWoman Yes I admit that I'm very lucky. I started my own business and was able to work remotely. So I didn't have to look for a job I just had to have a laptop. That said I also stopped owning a car which save me about $1,000 a month. There goes a long way to making downtown living affordable. It's funny that you mentioned disability because I happen to have multiple sclerosis. So I use a mobility scooter. That is part of my incentive to live in walkable neighborhoods.
Shoutout to Vancouver for the upcoming removal of the Granville Street bridge loops downtown. Such a waste of valuable space. 6 towers, a park, retail, preschool going in just that footprint. Bike lanes that connect onto the bridge. Will be awesome once completed.
There is clear correlation between how car-centric an American city is and how developed the city already was by the 1950s. This is completely consistent with your observation that it is a "vicious cycle", because the best way to escape the cycle was to be a city that was already densely developed before the cycle could start.
@Zaydan Naufal What does "if you spread the density" mean? Any city whose structural choices are dominated by a small ruling class is not a valid example. Also, my definition of car dependency is that it is impractical to live without a car, not that cars and roads simply dare to exist.
@Zaydan Naufal If not just authoritarian countries, then pick examples that are not artificial show pieces. LA, Phoenix, Atlanta, and SF to just name a few in the US have multiple "downtowns" with residential areas in between, sometimes due to metros enveloping preexisting small cities and sometimes a natural response to people valuing commutes that go opposite to prevailing traffic. I am sure this phenomena occurs in other parts of the free world. Zoning might allow it to happen but is not sufficient to make it happen without the need (see the empty planned cities in China for an extreme example).
I visited Nashville for the first time this year, and what surprised me the most was their lack of public transport options. Very infrequent bus service, and a lack of any light rail infrastructure for such a huge city. I looked into it, and apparently the city had a vote for whether to improve their public transport and there was an overwhelming vote for no improvement (why this would be put up for a vote is beyond me). This is quite sad considering the great charm and promise the city has.
@@zedalvea841 No, it was because white wealthy neighborhoods were scared into thinking they would be over run by Black and Poor people. That and tons of money spent by the "reason-tv" types to put out tons of misinformation was why it went down. So, I guess you can blame the voters, but there is plenty to go around.
Its kind of lame. If you look at the Asian cities and infrastructure. Many Chinese cities are insanely developed now and futuristic looking. The public transportation is mind blowing
I'm visiting the US for work (from Australia) and the car centricity is wild. I'm in Dallas which isn't on the list but I've never been to a city so overtly hostile to pedestrians ( I have travelled a fair bit across Asia).
Ah, I once lived in Nashville Metro. We're #1! I would guess that one reason so many Southern cities are on this list is that, while they are old cities, their major growth has been more recent than the northeast. Looking at Nashville Metro demographics, it took all of history to get to 1 million people in 1990, and now it's at 2 million people in 2022. It doubled in size right in prime "expand the highways" time. Or 75% of its total population comes after the federal highway program. The result is old neighborhoods like Hillsboro Village and Franklin as walkable, and every single other thing is driveable. There's also a cultural thing, where many people have convinced themselves that freedom=fossil fuels and cars. And so they've paved over what was absolutely beautiful countryside and farmland. (TN is a beautiful state.)
I started college in Vanderbilt Nashville right around the time it's citizens voted not to build a metro line in the city because it would attract the wrong sort of "vibe" and destroy the character of it's neighborhoods. I like to think that sometimes, places are simply the ridiculous amalgamations of their constituents desires.
I've lived in Nashville most of my life and can about agree -- even 15 years ago the average commute time was >30 minutes. It's also true that you really can't get anywhere without a car. Anywhere, period.
Years ago, my organization sent a group of us to a convention in Tulsa. We stayed right downtown in a huge, very 1970's hotel, and could walk to the convention center from there. The final day of the convention was on a Saturday, and, after we'd closed up our booth, my colleague and I planned to stop and get a late lunch on our walk back to the hotel. Not a single restaurant on the 6-8 block walk back to the hotel - nothing, not a pub, not a sandwich shop, not even a McDonalds. And this was walking right through the middle of downtown Tulsa. We ended up having to use our car to drive to get lunch. From downtown Tulsa. It was so depressing. I don't think I ever need to go back to Tulsa again.
Not surprised to see Nashville either. I worked on a project in downtown Nashville for several months and the growth seemed completely out of control. Just getting from the airport to downtown was often a challenge. Maybe I just do not know how to get around there, but Nashville seems like a nice mid sized town that suddenly had millions of people show up for a bachelorette party so the ladies can finally wear the cowboy boots and skirts they always wanted to wear. I remember needing to schedule meetings for the mornings because the “Woo Girls” (bachelorette gals on slow rides screaming WOO!) would start promptly at 2PM and the far end of a conference call could not hear us anymore. We were on the 22nd floor of a high rise office building by the way. Just not sure why any business would want an office downtown. On the bright side, the musicians in even the worst dive bar were absolutely amazing.
That's an odd list. I was sure Texas cities would be featured. Texans famously love their cars, or more likely trucks, and hate transit. All the big cities have downtown freeways, lots of surface parking, ample of sprawl and little if any way of getting around without a car. it seems very surprising not one made the top 10.
I was surprised Hartford CT didn't make the list either (atleast as an honorable mention). I know its a small city but its entire urban corridor is very car dependent and the city proper has a highway interchange inplace of a riverside district. (I know the CT isn't an attractive river near Hartford but plenty of other cities have worse bodies of water with riverfront districts for something other than dirty industry)
As someone that lived in Austin, and visited all the other large Texas cities, the downtowns/central cities are surprisingly robust, and the large cities have a decent number of neighborhoods that allow residents who actively choose to be car-lite/car-free. While far from perfect, there has been a lot of urban revitalization and historical neighborhoods that have reduced car dependency in the core. Houston and Austin are rapidly building over the downtown parking lots with redevelopment. Still lots of sprawl and car dependency, but not a standout for the US would be my guess. Most large Texas cities also have workable and improving transit, even if they are terrible by the standards of large coastal cities.
The issue is that CityNerd uses the official city limits, but a lot of the Texas cities are not really defined by those. Dallas officially is not that big, but the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is massive. I think DFW would be on there but it doesn't have strict limits.
@@ErrorNameNotFound123 I'm surprised no YX cities were listed either, but for this video, the metro areas were used. From a quick glance, they were all better than Charlotte, NC, plus a previous comment mentioned downtown and older neighborhoods too
The Nashville situation reminded me of a topic...Cities that were made bigger by states to make them less progressive. Nashville being merged with Davidson Co. as well as Toronto being forcibly merged with it's suburbs are 2 that come to mind.
Scott P, I’m surprised to see the suggestion that Nashville’s Metropolitan government was imposed by the state or was intended to dilute the voice a progressive demographic. The change occurred after a June 1962 vote. I’ve lived in nashville since 1977. It’s my understanding that metropolitan government (merging of city and county governments and service districts) in Nashville was adopted by county referendum. Incorporated towns within the county including Nashville had to opt into the proposal. Voters in nearly all towns in Davidson County, including Nashville, opted in. The vote failed in middle-brow Berry Hill (now nearly exclusively a commercial district) and Belle Meade and Oak Hill - two towns of multi-millionaires. Concurrently, the proposal eliminated the Nashville city council with its at-large only election system (meaning minority persons were seldom voted to council) and made most council members dependent on districts, greatly increasing minority representation. In these ways, the plan was local and intended to be progressive, to share infrastructure cost broadly, to reduce white flight out of the city (though the change occurred before _Brown_ was implemented locally), and to provide meaningful black representation on council.
As someone who grew up and lived in the IE for 20 years, I think the reason it’s so car dependent is because of the nature of the area’s growth being spurred mainly by suburban development and not necessarily local economic development. My parents bought a house in the area in the late 90s as it was much cheaper than buying a home in where they had been working and continued to work, Orange County. I think the same can be said for hundreds of thousands in the IE, many commute to LA or OC for work, and if not, often into the center of the IE, the industrial zones centered around Ontario, Fontana, and Rancho Cucamonga. Yes, there is transit in the IE, and it’s actually not half bad, when counting Metrolink at least, but it lacks direct connections and frequency. The urban fabric in the IE, that of old citrus orchards was built upon too quickly to integrate anything proper beyond typical suburban sidewalks and commercial hubs, proving to be insufficient for walking or cycling. Love the channel, hope you keep with it!
Born and raised in and around Nashville, here. The traffic in the area has gotten exponentially worse since I started driving in the mid-90s, it's quite maddening.
I was waiting for Phoenix to be on the list, but I’m surprised you left it off the hook this time. I’ve heard that some journalists have referred to it as “the most car-centric city in America.” At least ADOT had the decency to conserve space on the major interchanges as much as they could, though I think it’s just because they forgot about them in the design documents for the suburban freeways they started building in the 1980s. Basically every 4-way interchange is some variation of a 4-level stack (one of them, the I-17/I-10 interchange west of downtown Phoenix is even known as “The Stack”). There are some cloverleaf loops in service interchanges, though the only ones I can think of are I-10/40th St and I-10/SR-143, where the 143 turns into 48th St, and it’s only the south-to-east ramps, and the ramps are tiny.
Great video, your content quality is always consistent! Since you brought up politicians, it would be interesting to see a video of the top ten Mayors of major cities in the U.S.. Or even the top ten worst Mayors in the U.S. under certain criteria, policies, etc.
Nashville native now living in Vegas. It is truly a broken city. I went 5 years without a car and it was unbelievably infuriating. Whether you’re biking or taking the bus, it’s truly a nightmare. Also the least walkable city I’ve ever encountered. Until recently as well, TN had a policy that your license could be suspended for non-traffic related offenses, and they make reinstatement impossible without DRIVING A CAR. It creates a vicious circle of being poor, having little access to work, and the penal system keeping it that way. And driving in the city is a whole other ordeal. Glad to be in a more functional and baseline humanist place. Great video as usual!
Was just up in NYC. Might go at the end of the month for an event I don't even care that much to go to. I just like the feeling of being there amongst all of the car-free people and city life. I live in NJ. UGH. Wish it wasn't so expensive and I could get a job there.
Nashville has bad transit. Bad transit will make people want a car. I lived in East Nashville and my commute to South Nashville took an hour each way. I was about 15 miles away. I'm okay with that. I moved 5 miles away from work and my commute time went up to 2 hours. They use a hub and spoke system. I lived at the end of one line and my work was at the end of another. I had to go all the way into downtown and back out. Thank God I was able to move closer. Now I walk to work.
planning on writing a research paper focused on public transportation and transit policy! your videos have been the biggest inspiration! thank you for being so transparent with the datasets you use and making the data so easy to look at.
Don't forget to include the modestly disabled. People that have to avoid heat and cold extremes, but otherwise seem healthy. There's more of us than you think. Our cars become mobility devices. Look at the number of people with something called POTS and explain how they are supposed to stand at a hot train station and then a standing room only train.
Yeah -- thanks for involving the American Community Survey in this! I do the ACS for a living, and I am delighted to see its importance be so clearly explained. This makes the sometimes tedious work I do on that and other Census Bureau surveys well worth it. Your citing its findings is a morale booster, and I'll tell others at work about this vid!
My understanding of Nashville, is that it's the prime target for people from extremely wealthy zip codes to move to a place that's "cheaper." Wealthy city-folk from New York and California, who built their riches on public infrastructure, real estate development, and worker exploitation, then get tired of the problems they helped create and flee to "small town" Nashville.
A lot of the cities on this list are why we ended up in Durham, NC to still be able to live near family and bike to work. Worked in Tampa and every bike commuter had at least 1 story of being hit, it was like a badge of honor haha
@@katemariemc Google Maps is an amazing resource for this. Pop on Satellite View and scroll around. Most of Europe's big cities are covered by the 3D view, rendering the cities in amazing detail. Japan and Singapore are also well covered, as are the big cities in Australia, Brazil, and South Africa. For the rest of the world, the 2D satellite view is usually detailed enough to give a decent picture of how cities are developed. In general, you will find cities developed more around rail stations, with few urban highways - the space is too valuable to waste on that. Fewer people tend to live in single-family homes, while apartment buildings make up most of the downtowns. Shops or other businesses are placed on street level, while apartments or offices take up the floors above. Parking is usually underground or street-side, as surface parking is a colossal waste of prime urban space. Owning a car is possible, but expensive, because cities aren't laid out to facilitate it. And public transit gets you wherever you want anyway.
@@katemariemc And if people in the US suggest making places more pedestrian/ bike/ transit friendly, you invariably get pushback from people who believe these things cause further inconvenience for cars
@@katemariemc A big turning point in the development of the built environment seems to be WWII. If you look at places that were buit out prior to WWII you see a lot more compact development patterns, even in neighborhoods with detached single family homes. Following WWII you see more auto-oriented development with larger suburban lots, and shopping centers set away from streets with lots of parking in front.
@Zaydan Naufal It's usually a question of laws, not affordability. For instance, Google Maps has quite poor resolution in Seoul because they aren't too keen on the North Koreans using it to plan artillery strikes or sabotage missions.
I live nearish to Tulsa and it's downtown is actually surprisingly walkable and bikeable. Although, yes there is a lot of wasted land in parking lots. The big thing about Tulsa is that outside of downtown, trying to bike ride anywhere is super sketchy. It's definitely a very car centric thinking here. The bike lanes/paths that do exist are pretty useless as they don't really connect anyone to anywhere that they'd need to go. Heck, I live a mile and a half from my work and I'd love to bike there but I just don't feel safe doing it because of the drivers and total lack of shoulders on my route.
I used to bike in Tulsa to the university from 1.5 miles away. Wasn’t too bad except for crossing the mile streets. Going back to Tulsa after moving away was eye opening though, unbelievable how much asphalt there is. Food is really good though!
As a life long NYer who used to have a car, not needing one is such a blessing tbh. I get mad when I hear my friends in the South and Midwest face really bad financial situations because their car broke down and they can't afford to get it fixed. Car dependency dooms so many to entrenched generational poverty and lower standards of living.
Yeah I grew up in NYC. I can't imagine growing up poor in a car dependent place
THIS. I live in East Tennessee and it’s a nightmare anytime my car breaks down. It’s a 2.5 mile walk just to get to the nearest grocery store from my apartment. And that’s one way
Who pays for the subway operating costs? Hint: not you!
@@starventure Like 2/3 of people in Manhattan commute on the subway, and they are in fact paying for part of it, which is usually how a government service works. Now imagine Manhattan with ~2.5 times (some people will ride together, but your average car only has 1 person in it) the traffic. Even if you never ride it in your life, its probably still benefiting you. And the same can be said about roads, even living car free, a portion of your taxes still pays for the roads that you don't use, including the "free" parking on them. If people actually had to pay their fair share and only got what they paid for single family housing would all but disappear (infrastructure is expensive, you wouldn't be so wasteful and unnecessarily spread out with it if you actually had to pay for it) and bicycling/ walking everywhere would be common practice. But that's not how it works, for better or for worse, and it goes both ways. You're both helping fund each others' mode of transportation, you both pay extra (he buys tickets, you buy a car, plates, gas, insurance, maintenance, and possibly fines depending on how you choose to use your vehicle), but you pay more because yours wastes a lot more space (which costs money) than his does. Obviously both methods have their benefits, subway is cheap, don't have to worry about parking, and in the case of NYC at least is faster. A car you get your own private space, and assuming you're lucky and get a close parking spot, you don't have to walk as much. if you think the tradeoff is worth it, fine, if not, then take the subway.
@@starventure Who pays for the roads you drive on? Not you. Or at least no more than NY transit riders pay for their costs. And you don't pay for the pollution you inflict on everyone else either. Or a market rate for your parking.
I work in downtown Boston. As a result I almost always take the train. The other day, for reasons to boring to get into, I drove. A coworker said to me (in a perfectly polite and friendly manner) that I ‘must be thrilled to be off the trains and in my own set of wheels’ having sat in traffic the whole way to work, I said I, in fact, preferred the train, where I could sit and read a book and wasn’t subjected to traffic jams. He thought me crazy…in a car I was master of my own destiny. I was in control and could go where I want when I wanted. Taking the train meant I had to go on their schedule and then make my way from the train station. Trains he felt, were for losers, cars meant freedom. I am afraid his sentiment is probably felt by the vast majority of Americans.
I take the bus in Baltimore and feel the same way.
I live in Allston, and a car is a very expensive metal albatross to hang around your neck. You are free to make your auto loan payments, and your insurance payments, and free to buy gas at record high prices, in addition to fighting traffic. Your coworker is a very confused person.
True
Sounds like your coworker has never been on the train before lol. Unfortunately I think this attitude is common among Americans because 1) they've just never experienced what public transport has to offer, and/or 2) decades of gutting and underfunding public transport in the US has made it a mess compared to other countries, so a lot of Americans don't know how much better it could be.
@@Shibouu59 I think you’re correct. I also think that we Americans are spoon fed this pro-car/anti transit propaganda
I worked in Nashville as the senior transportation planner for the state. This is no surprise. For perspective on what politicians value, the City was going to remove 30 mature cherry trees to make way for the NFL draft tent in 2019. They ended up chopping down ten and relocating the rest after a huge public outcry. While there are modest efforts to make the City bike and ped friendlier, I honestly don't think it can ever happen; especially when bicyclists get run off the protected bike lanes by random uber drivers
Hi Nancy! I worked as an intern for LRP 3 years ago. Good to see familiar names on this channel and agreed - this is no surprise.
Crazy, crazy stuff Nancy.
I wish it wasn't, but I think bike infrastructure is kind of a hard sell. You need pretty extensive network to be usable, and it's not intuitive to most people why dumping someone onto a high traffic street isn't fine for a bike. Better PT links might be an easier sell - at least people understand that a PT line that doesn't go anywhere isn't going to work.
Politicians value car-centric infrastructure because there's money in it, right? Like they can't *want* all these cars and highways and to cut down trees... or do they? Am I just that naive? Is it just total lack of imagination? Ugh... I hate it.
@@lizzyd You are maybe erroneously assuming politicians have vision. They're well off so they don't take PT most of the time and lack of imagination. They don't think it's a seat winner, and it won't land them a sweet gig with a corpo after their tenure - and there's lots of lobbyists who'll fight against PT. Part of it though is that PT is seen as for poor people, and there's a popular neo-liberal attitude with pollies that poor people deserve their poverty so there's no reason to help them. Also it keeps poor people desperate, which is good for suppressing wages.
I live in Chicago, I was born & raised here. I'm 63 and have never driven a car in my life.
I enjoy public transit a lot.
I love the idea of fewer cars in the city.
Thank you for your videos, I've watched ALL of them.
There are two problems with Chicago. First, after the original Mayor Daley imposed the head tax, large employers left the Loop for the suburbs. A suburb-to-suburb commute requires a car. I used to work in Oak Brook. Two partners lived in Oak Brook, but there was no way to walk to work, let alone take a bus.
Second is companies moving from the suburbs to Fulton Market. It's a long, long walk, over the Kennedy, from the train stations to Fulton Market. There is no way to walk from Fulton Market to State Street or Michigan Avenue.
@@kentfrederick8929 Agreed. The Kennedy needs to be covered up as far as I'm concerned. That walk is horrible. Also we need more neighborhood to neighborhood and suburb to suburb transportation options. Everything is still funneled to the Loop.
I lived in the city on the far Northside off the red line for ten years and I never had a car. It was glorious.
@@kentfrederick8929 Third is the weather. I'd love Chicago, but unfortunately I'm such a wuss
@@smitty7326 I wouldn't say you're a wuss, merely average. The great lakes' continental weather is all about cold winters and hot summers. So many places you only get one or the other.
As a former Nashville resident I have two stories of the culture. There is a pedestrian bridge between downtown and the stadium. The one game I went to I took the bus to downtown and then tried to walk to the stadium. There was an armed police officer on the bridge preventing people from walking to the stadium for the game. He said if we had to walk we had to walk another mile to a terrible car bridge with a tiny sidewalk.
Second is there was a proposal for a brt between my neighbor and downtown that was killed by the fancy neighborhood between us. The only bus line they supported was the nanny line (a bus line between a poor neighborhood and the fancy one for all the house cleaners and nannies.)
Nashville is such a great city, with such a dismal transportation network.
Classic police officer just working to maintain the status quo
i used to use wego transit a lot and it seems that they are extending the reach of some line, the worst is the timetable for the blu lines that are for the most 1 hour frequency while the red lines are 10 15 minutes frequency
What was the pig's reason for blocking the bridge?
Really strange why would they not want the walker to go across a bridge just for walkers and instead cross a car bridge with a tiny sidewalk?
Sounds like Metro Manila! Hahahahahah it’s not just the States that’s like this
My theory on why the Inland Empire has so many cars per household is that alot of young adults live with their parents due to the unaffordable real estate in SoCal making it impossible for young people to afford to move out. So you end up with a car for each parent as well as a car for each adult child at many households.
I was going to make the exact same comment. It makes sense.
Yeah I suspect larger average household size -- would be easy to check if I wasn't lazy
I suspect that recreational vehicle ownership of all kinds is also high, which might be captured in that data.
Also you absolutely need a car to get around- having just one per household means if your car goes down you might find your way down the prosperity ladder very quickly in southern california.
I am a Riverside lifer. This, and the fact that many times when people are not living with their parents they are living in a group situation. Not just people in their 20s either, its extremely common to see people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s to live with room mates. The vast majority of employed people in the area could not afford the rent on a studio apartment. The median home value is 9 times the median household income. The jobs here pay midwest wages with a California cost of living, local employers are also notoriously low paying compared to elsewhere in the greater Los Angeles area.
My favorite car brain story. The rowing course we race at has very insufficient parking and schools have started using busses instead of having parents drive kids to a lot 10 minutes away and being shuttled to the river. Anyway, I had one parent complain that there was no parking at the river BECAUSE of the busses and we should stop letting schools do that to make more room for parking. I was awestruck.
The busses take up significantly less space than cars
In defense of Nashville, they do have a tight, walkable downtown with a lot going on there (lots of pedestrian traffic). When we visited there last year, we stayed a couple of miles from downtown, drove to the huge parking area adjoining the stadium and crossed over the pedestrian bridge to downtown. Do you have numbers for all metro areas? I’m from Minneapolis-St Paul and am curious about how they fared. I would guess middling - we do have a relatively high level of bike commuting, but transit is so-so, and the two downtowns are not exactly vibrant..
Sounds like that parent should also attend school along with their kids
You're far too easily "awestruck".
btw - Not the word you want for what you're getting at.
Then complain back harder about how their cars take away YOUR freedom to use busses and public trains
I think the worst car centric cities are small cities. They spend so much money they don’t have on car infrastructure. People think they are “too small” for public transit so they just don’t have any, but they still fill three lane stroads to max capacity at peak times.
You just described Baton Rouge….
They could have a bus or 2. Even small cities can support buses.
Videos like this one really intensify this feeling I've had for years that everything around me is just so wrong, to such an extent that you probably couldn't make it any worse if you tried. I've lived in walkable places in Spain and visited many more in Europe so I've always had some understanding of what else is possible, but it's like the more I think about it the worse it gets.
What really gets me is how everyone else seems totally complacent or unaware that anything is amiss. None of my friends or family here seem to give it much thought which drives me a little crazy, like how do these problems not jump out to you when you're outside? But then I have to remember none of my family and friends in Spain realize how good their development is either, by comparison. Most people seem to assume that whatever they've grown up with is normal and fine, no need to look any deeper.
Not sure where I was headed with this comment but it really feels like I'm in the twilight zone sometimes and knowing that there's at least 90,000 other people in it with me helps me cope lol.
Do what you can to spread awareness, i only discovered this different approach to urban planning recently and before that never gave a thought or even thought it was possible to have anything other than car depended cities.
Politics here in the US is pretty much exclusively centered around which demographic we should be at war with next. Trans people, Mexican people, black people, gay people, Chinese people, homeless people, etc. Developing our own cities isn't something that crosses most Americans' minds, really.
You’ve put into words a feeling I have all the time. Living in a car-centric American non-place feels like the twilight zone and the majority of people really seem to be fine with it. It’s amazing how few people feel alienated by it, but then I remember that I didn’t even fully wake up to this alienation until I went off to school. It’s this difficult feedback loop where in order to make people aware of how terribly our communities are built, they need to have access to well-built spaces; but we don’t build those spaces bc people don’t even know they want them.
My hope is that the internet will continue to open people’s eyes about all of these fundamental problems. Probably an overly optimistic sentiment tho, but I’m a very optimistic person. I’ve definitely found that talking about these problems often has opened the eyes of people in my own life, so don’t give up the fight! I really appreciated reading this comment man just know ur not alone in feeling how ur feeling.
@@guy-sl3kr lol I was talking my urbanist shit with my extremely conservative cousins in the rural south a few weeks ago. Urbanists are now the target of quite a bit of vitriol from some conservatives already (tho I don’t think any of them know the word “urbanist” lmao). Urbanists definitely aren’t squarely in the conservative crosshairs, but they’re edging closer. My pretty-online conservative uncle definitely had the most negative stuff to say about the ideas I was preaching, and he definitely had an immediate knee-jerk eye-roll to some of my urbanist buzzwords. All of that is to say, I think that just as online communities have helped many of us to expand our understanding of our spaces and infrastructure, there are also online spaces to combat these ideas.
@@pjkerrigan20 what did they have to say exactly?
4:52 10. Charlotte, NC
5:43 9. Inland Empire, CA
6:48 8. Grand Rapids, MI
7:22 7. Richmond, VA
7:49 6. Oklahoma City, OK
8:31 5. Raleigh, NC
9:20 4. Tulsa, OK
9:56 3. Kansas City, MO/KS
12:49 2. Birmingham, AL
13:19 1. Nashville, TN
Note the pattern. 7 in the South, 2 in the Midwest, 1 in the West.
those are all the cities i will never considering living in. Never.
Thank you for this
Surprised none of them are Texas. The cities near Dallas in the dfw metroplex are racist and capitalist enough. There are cities here that opposed extending public transit and subsidized housing on classist/race lines so clearly they look bad on PBS
I’ve only visited half of those cities on the list. So far none of them are interesting cities that I would want to return to. Even Nashville is bland despite some cool things
I grew up in Raleigh, and it was an absolute nightmare getting around as a kid. The lack of sidewalks made me feel trapped because to get any distance I needed to bike on a road. Even as a 20 year old I don’t like biking on the road, so you can imagine how I felt as a 10 year kid just trying to get to the park. Not to mention the good local park was 3 miles away, which among my friends was actually pretty close.
As a current resident of Raleigh the good things I've found about the city are the lack of downtown freeways and the decent (and expanding) trail system, but yeah everything else is car-dependent sprawl. There's some new mixed-use developments and the city finally abolished parking minimums, and North Hills has become a decent semi-walkable area (although it's bisected by a stroad lol), but it's got a long way to go.
Same man. I couldn't fucking stand it, I spent literally all my time downtown as soon as i got my drivers license even though i lived 20 minutes out off of 540
@@supersnivy48 Hillsborough St, the warehouse district and now east raleigh as well have become decent places to live
That's interesting I mean I grew up in a subdivision without sidewalks but I never really felt unsafe. But we used to draw on the sidewalks with chalk. However, I did have one incident with a garbage truck person and they did get hit I haven't heard anything about it or who did it. This is the only incident that I'm aware of in a neighborhood of over 30 years. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised some people drive in the subdivision like it's a regular road it's not. Pedestrians and wildlife you always have to watch for. But it is a little bit more rural it's not a downtown area.
Went to law school not too far from there and grew up around Morrisville, remember having only one place to bike to. Pretty bad out there
Ouch, I’m from NC and this list hurts. Quite ashamed for the state really. And while Charlotte is getting better the pace is far too slow for a city of its size, especially to be so heavily focused on light rail. I look at cities with similar population in a place like Germany and just can’t help but feeling like we should’ve started building our transit 50 years ago.
Raleigh is coming up too, and the city councils pretty based, but the pace is unbearably slow
I'd say that probably a little over 50 years ago, Charlotte likely had a streetcar network that the city decided to get rid of.
@@eyyy2271 downtown is not horrible (like it seems like a lot of the "old" street network is intact), however since no one really lives downtown you still need to drive in
It amazed me that North Carolina got three mentions in this video and Texas and Florida...not one!
How did I know NC would be huge on this list lol
I'd love this channel to talk about success stories of car-dependent places being transformed into more dense, walkable areas and maybe tackle related questions of gentrification and how specifically even the good kinds of development are playing out in a somewhat monotonous way. I'd like this to focus on the United States, because I think if you broaden the scope of this particular problem to North America, you would have to include some amazing Canadian cities that are several steps ahead of most of the US. I'm thinking places like Arlington, VA; parts of Los Angeles, even parts of car dependent cities in the sun belt that are actually seeing apartments going up - and I'm sure people can think of other examples (but don't just stick in the PNW!)
Or most improved, I don't think there are too many significant transformations.
I wonder if we could leverage affordable housing requirements and densification to solve both problems at once. like, say, if you want to tear down a house in a "gentrification impact special district" you'd put in areas, you have to add more units, more units per acre, and more bedrooms per acre than existed before (to cover edge cases) and the number of units previously existing must be affordable housing (rent controlled, sold at-cost to the public housing authority, etc.) and the additional units you built in the place can be market rate. this increases the total number of units while making sure the total number of units that are affordable never goes down.
maybe make development increase the affordable housing in the area by at least 1 unit per project than was there before, or do things like make accepting section 8 mandatory for all units in "gentrification impact special district"
To add onto this, it would be cool to possibly talk to people who facilitated the change - activists, organizers, city officials, politicians. It would be be cool spice up for the channel.
Would be good to see!
If it is just the US, there will be no "transformation", maybe marginal improvement is the word you are looking for.
I visited Nashville at the beginning of the summer and getting around was almost surreal in how car-centric it was. Every trip we took involved getting the freeway.
And my favorite thing to do when visiting a new city is walk around and explore downtown, which was wholly unenjoyable. Every street was way too wide, and pedestrian paths would just end randomly. Getting second was so disconnected and weird it was almost disorienting.
You could find nice pedestrian-friendly pockets, but sometimes you'd wander into this cute alleyway with a bunch of shops, only to find half of them closed.
It has its redeeming qualities, but the whole area struck me as wasted potential.
Seeing New Orleans on the top 10 was a pleasant surprise. My wife and I just moved from Texas and we've been able to get rid of a car and we walk to most places. As a long time follower, the urban fabric completely shocked me when we moved here in a good way. Thanks for the video 👍
Yeah, given the way the South performed generally on this list, New Orleans was a very cool inclusion. The numbers back it up, though!
@@CityNerd totally unexpected. We thought it was going to be just like any other southern city in the US. The Streetcar gets the job done for me but this city could be really incredible if it had actually rapid transit.
@@CityNerd Maybe because it’s an old city built before cars
You must not need to work far away.
@@MilwaukeeWoman yeah I'm lucky that i live and work on the Street Car line. Apart from all the tourists crowding it's not that bad
As a resident of Tampa, I'm always waiting for my city to show up on these Anti-Urbanist lists (bad sprawl, minimal public transport, and numerous highways going right next to and THROUGH downtown) and when it doesn't I realize that I'm a fool for thinking the competition wouldn't be fierce.
And since you shouted out the Gators, props to Gainesville for pushing to be the first city in the state to eliminate single-family zoning
I feel the same way about Hartford CT, while i haven't done much in the city itself just driving by it makes you assume every resident has both of their cars on the interstate just to slow you down. (The reality is that a massive "interchange" exists on its riverfront and has a tone of left hand exists to the point that the through lanes are the 2 rightmost of 5-6, this causes a lot of slowdown for a city of its size)
Absolutely the same for me, sitting in SoFlo 😂
Can't help but scratch my head every time how we're NOT in the bottom 10
Phoenix here, checking in with the same sentiment. Absolutely shocked we don't make the top 10.
Literally left the Tampa area cause to go anywhere you had to get on a highway. Not my idea of a good time
I'm from Tampa and I immediately wanted to see if this was on the list lol.
A video about OKC and/or Tulsa's "urban renewal" initiatives absolutely annihilating their downtowns would be interesting. So many wonderful buildings, many Art Deco, destroyed and turned into parking lots. Probably enough cities that have done the same to make a list! Love the channel!
Then make a super short canal go through there.
Wow, i assume those "urban renewals" took place in the 50s at the peak of highway insanity.
Because today if you say Urban Renewal i assume its an attempt to convert a parkinglot into a usuable building. (The ground is already decently prepared for you, relative to demo-ing a building or clearing new land of its vegetation)
The video you speak of is already on my to-do list
@@eryngo.urbanism great videos man, keep it up. I used to live in OKC and visited Tulsa often
Hey look at the bright side: at least we got a lightrail (that literally nobody uses because you have to drive 20+ minutes to get to the part of town it's in anyway)
Little note on the IE (inland empire), historically the people like my dad would commute all the way to LA for work, for him it was from Riverside to San Pedro (about 70 miles), and many still do. This isn't helped by the extremely piss poor Metrolink service between the IE and the LA-OC areas, although they are finally improving all of SoCal's commuter rail with Metrolink upgrades and service frequency increases, Redlands Rail, and the realignment of Amtrak, so maybe in 10-15 years, things will be different. On top of that, it is significantly cheaper to live there than in the main portion of LA or Orange County (still pretty expensive), so maybe there's a correlation between less money spent on housing and more money spent on a car, or two, or three?
Kind of speaks to the need to create regional, multi-county mass transit authorities. The traffic is often not coming from within the city or the county that the city's in.
Houston is really sprawled out, as in, bedroom communities outside of the county? So getting a transit system that really works would involve commuter trains or trams feeding into and out of the city, as well as a better system of buses and trolleybuses to carry people to their subsequent destinations.
@@grmpEqweer absolutely, I mean SCAG does exist but San Diego county isn’t a part of it for some reason, so all of Socal working to unify the region through rail, bike, and bus should be a greater priority than it currently is
@@expiredmilk....8917
Yup. I'm going to hope the long term trend in petroleum prices will encourage more mass transit. (They're going to go up)
It's sort of a metro area that's made up of all suburbs, in a way. So maybe the numbers aren't that surprising.
My thoughts exactly, just posted my comment with almost the same narrative before I read this.
I've lived my whole life in Nashville, and I am not surprised to see our city at the top of this list. Car-centric infrastructure is king here. There is no light rail and only one heavy rail commuter line, the Music City Star, with a top speed of... 40 mph. There are no dedicated bus lanes, so the buses get stuck in the ever-worsening car traffic, which makes them not dependable at all. There are hardly any walkable neighborhoods outside of the urban core - sidewalks that abruptly stop along a busy stroad are ubiquitous as soon as you leave Broadway/Downtown.
That being said, we have some hopeful plans currently on the horizon. Our mayor and council has noted the situation around Nissan Stadium, just as you have, and they have proposed the "Imagine East Bank" visionary document. This would totally transform the area surrounding the Stadium with high density mixed-use residential neighborhoods, a new transit hub, Nashville's first dedicated bus lanes, and new bike lanes and parks galore. Let's see if they actually stay true to their plan...
@CityNerd that might be a cool video idea - "Top 10 Best/Worst Metro Redevelopment Plans"
Nashville native here. Not terribly shocked by the average commute miles as I knew a lot of co-workers pre-pandemic who commuted from places like Spring Hill or Murfreesboro every day. We actually had a proposal for light rail down to Murfreesboro a few years back, but the Koch brothers came in and stomped all over it. Growing up here was difficult, especially as a teenager, because you had to get your parents or older siblings to drive you anywhere you wanted to go. Especially frustrating since my parents were able to take the trolley when they were kids back in the 50's, but that's all gone now.
I grew up in Clarksville, and commuted to Nashville for school for a while, and it was about 50 miles one way. Lots of people from there go to Nashville regularly, and I'm sure many are daily commuters.
Was visiting home recently, had to drive back to Nash to the airport and couldn't stop thinking about how great it would be to have a rail line just parallel I24. But they're probably just gonna expand the interstate instead. 🙄
We are in trouble when even San Francisco, one of the US's most urban cities, is highly car dependent. Car dependency has come back with a roar after the pandemic shutdown. 😞
Note that CityNerd used MSA data (mentioned at 04:12).
To be fair. Because of work from home a lot of people are living in car dependent areas but because they aren’t commuting they are less car dependent then before.
The other side of that coin is lots of people moved to suburbs because of work from home and have since be recalled to the office and are now commuting by car because what little transit existed was be slashed because of the pandemic.
I lived in SF without a car for several years and I felt like not owning a car leaves you “stranded” on a few islands out of the whole metro area. Basically any BART station without a parking lot and most (but not even all) of the city of SF. Muni is aggravatingly slow and unreliable within the 7x7 which is why Uber and Lyft took off so quickly in SF. And most of the Bay Area is stroady sprawl.
SF's urbanism is highly overrated. It's more of an indictment on the USA than anything else
@@rosskgilmour transit frequency in LA hasn't recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and I suspect that's also the case elsewhere too. I wish they'd run more late night service. I'd use that coming home from the club instead of having to sit in my car for hours sobering up so I can drive. I'd rather have not driven in the first place but if transit ends too early I can't
I lived in Oklahoma City up until last year, and it really is an extremely carbrained city. I worked at a place that had not one, but two parking garages for their employees.
I work there now. And it’s crazy because that company is barely in the city
I work in downtown okc. The number of parking garages AND lots is crazy. My window stares out at an empty parking garage 7th floor. Every day it never has any cars at all. So dumb. I resent my city for how ugly it is, and how many people here don’t see anything wrong with it.
Screams freedom
Weird how Atlanta never makes these lists. We half-ass both urbanism and car dependency.
It's unfortunate how much that statement arguably applies to many cities across the country...albeit to different degress
Accurate
Agreed. I feel like it's always on the cusp of being included, but misses. Perhaps more walkable areas like Midtown and various into neighborhoods like VA Highlands, Inman, etc help offset our travesty of a downtown.
I'm in Nashville now. I tried to walk on the outskirts of downtown and nearly got run over multiple times. They even have signs that say the pedestrian is responsible for making eye contact with a driver before crossing a street, crazy.
I was born in and grew up in Kansas City, MO and literally never took transit once, only finding out the year we moved away (to even worse Oklahoma City) that there was a bus stop that would take you directly to downtown right near my house - demonstrating just how bad the transit situation was and still is. My family lives in Oklahoma City, and it is just next-level sprawl and car-dependency to the point where Oklahoma City officially has the lowest percentage of people who travel to work via transit of the 50 largest cities in the US, and it was in part because of this that I went to Macalester College in St. Paul and then after 4 long years back in OKC, later moved back to Minneapolis-St. Paul, living in a walkable neighborhood without a car, right on the Green Line light rail and right across from my job (which I walk roughly 200 ft to get to). The transit here isn't amazing, but at least it will get you where you want to go most of the time as long as you're willing to endure an hour taking the bus. Despite the excessive highways here, nearly the entire urban core of Minneapolis and St. Paul is decently walkable and bikeable, and it's a luxury by US standards to be able to say that. I never want to live somewhere where I have to drive everywhere ever again.
Macalester!! Up the Scots! It can be rough to move away from family (depends on the individual) but everybody has to decide what they can live with. Glad you found a good spot in the Twin Cities -- really a region that's doing so much right.
Kansas City will have a bus route that goes direct to downtown, but it only operates twice a day at 6 AM and 9 PM 😂
@@CityNerd As a Twin Cities resident, could you enlighten me on what the area is doing right? I feel like I'm missing the boat here, and I want to understand. Because I'm seeing more "anti-car" sentiments online, but the bike paths and light rail in the Twin Cites don't seem to have been nearly worth the price--both in terms of dollars and a wise use of resources. For example, the new bike paths are largely empty and the light rail is way over budget.
How can what appears to be waste considered improvement?
@@ThePeriphery If mostly empty is the metric, why notice the mostly empty buses and bike paths and not the mostly empty parking lots or the mostly empty cars?
Glad to see you're surviving the winters. Good that you don't have a car; no need to worry about getting car jacked.
Damnit, this is the second time I assumed Phoenix AZ was top a list only to not even make the list, I wanna complain about my awful city more
CN did a video on worst performing rail and Phoenix got an honorable mention. My guess is Phoenix's public transit is just decent enough to pull itself out of the bottom
@@HallsofAsgard96 We have like 1 light rail and the airport has some for itself, I guess it just goes to show how low the bar is
Phoenix is interesting. It’s my city. I commute almost everywhere via bicycle. In many ways, it’s excellent for cycling. I am a cyclist by hobby and commuting, and I sometimes ride 100+ miles in this town without touching a road. We have dedicated pedestrian paths everywhere. The issue with Phoenix (counting the entire valley), is that cycling is seen purely as recreation. So, let’s say I have to go somewhere 20 miles away. There might be 16 miles of dedicated pedestrian path, but you have to go through 2 terrible miles to get to that path and 2 terrible miles to get from that path to your destination. We add in miles and miles of great bike path, but we assume everyone who wants to use one of these paths is going to put their bike in their giant SUV and drive to it. So, while there are multiple great ways to get from Desert Ridge to Tempe (for instance), once you’re in Tempe, it’s hopeless.
@@danielsass4134 Oh interesting, I am actually also a bike commuter, but my trip to work is only 1.5 miles, so I didn't know too much about the pedestrian paths (I take the side walk along 7th Street) I'm going to start trying to explore more of them :]
7th will still be a horror show tho
@@notaword1136 Most canals have pedestrian paths. We then have major networks of parks (i.e. the Green Belt, which essentially connects Tempe to North Scottsdale through a series of parks and golf courses). Many golf courses have pedestrian paths (that are separate from the golf cart paths). My suggestion for learning these paths is to download Strava (which allows you to record your bike trips) and follow as many people as possible. When I got into cycling about a decade ago (in my quest to improve car dependency), I learned the safe routes by following people.
The Southeast fills a lot of these slots because its growth has largely happened post WW2 and its habitable land is plentiful with lots of access to water. In many of these cases, the vast majority of growth has actually been post 1970 and during a time when car inertia was at its peak.
Atlanta isn't on this list, but I remember being just completely appalled the first time I flew in and out of ATL and saw the development patterns, 20, 30, 40 miles from the city -- from the air.
Plus the flat topography means that sprawl is pretty much unrestricted by its geography
@@thomasgrabkowski8283 Atlanta is mostly flat on a macro level (no major geographic features) but it is definitely not on a micro level. There are small hills, valleys, and creeks everywhere. This is one reason why the street grid is mostly limited to just downtown and midtown. It's basically the opposite of LA, where there is the ocean and big mountains, but the rest is a flat basin, and pretty much the entire populated region is a grid of streets.
@@CityNerd I am completely appalled by Houston Texas as well !!!! the highway is sprawled out forever and it takes a long time to even get through the city if you’re just trying to get to the other side ha ha.
@@wwsciffsww3748 It's also the timing of the development in ATL (and similar cities)---the Depression was approximately a cutoff point between grid subdivision and "better" design. Some large-scale development after that followed previously established grid patterns, but post-WW2 is where lots of curves started to be standard whether they were really needed. And a lot of it was for aesthetic reasons, and probably also with the idea of controlling vehicle speeds.
I knew the worst offender was going to be bad, but I didn’t expect “Someone please explain Nashville to me.”
I laughed so hard, it hurt. I love this channel so much! I love his straight to the point urbanism and factual delivery. I’m a CityNerd. 🤓
Came to say the same thing: that comment! :)
Hi from Arlington, VA (across from DC). Glad to see we made #3. I’m part of that 5.7% who are happily living completely car-free :)
I am in DC and also car free.
I currently live and work in Riverside; we own a bike and one car. I work at UCR so I can *gasp* even walk to work.
My random thoughts having lived here or several years, and having lived in the bay area previously:
1) Most people commute to a different city to work. Riverside is where people *live* but people seem to work elsewhere. The morning rush is away from the city, and the evening rush is back in. The only good alternative to the drive is to work from home. Good luck using the trains or buses to get anywhere you need to be on time. Suburban sprawl here is crazy, so your 16 year old kid working at a starbucks in your home city still needs a car to get there. The number of freeways are correspondingly very high, and often cut right through places you'd need to cross by bike. Finally, UC Riverside is considered a 'commuter campus' - a lot of students don't actually live here on campus. UCR just opened a new parking structure to try to accommodate the drivers. So even the university contributes to the traffic issue, when normally a large university is a haven for non-driving people.
2) Car culture is big here. Not sure how much of that is derived from the car-centricity, but lots of people have project cars, go to the race track (even professors in my department here at UCR), sideshows/takeovers and drag races on regular streets are pretty common in SoCal (especially LA). So even if we didn't *need* all the cars, there are people who just like driving and like showing off their cars. The number of luxury and supercars here is very high, especially around LA with all the big famous rich peoples, which I think might feed into the 'cars are cool to just have' mentality.
3) People here are averse to public transit, even when it can compete with cars. A great video by Donut Media (the car youtube channel which is based in LA) was a 'race' between a car, a bike, and a person taking transit. The guy taking the train went at about as leisurely a pace as humanly possible, and still beat the car. He gets to chill and do whatever he wants on the train. Everyone involved was shocked - they had never really considered the train a possible mode of transit. I think the poor service times has a lot to do with it. I wanted to take the train from Riverside (a station is less than a mile from my address) to San Diego and the travel time is like, 5-6 HOURS because the trains have to sit at stations for so long.
On the bright side, UCR and Riverside have been investing in protected bike lanes, green painted bike lanes, etc., and there has been an explosion this academic year in the number of people using e-scooters and e-bikes on top of the regular cohort of people using longboards/skateboards and traditional bikes. This quarter is the first time I've ever seen empty parking on the street of a neighborhood filled with university students. So who knows, maybe Riverside won't be so car-centric forever.
True.....Metrolink would be so helpful if it have connected to San Diego directly without the IEOC line ending at Oceanside, which holds true for the LA to Oceanside line as well.......Riverside would perform slightly better in taking up transit than Orange and SB counties, provided RTA improves frequency and Metrolink is managed better..
Not surprised by Nashville at all. I was born there and still have a ton of family in Murfreesboro, about 30 minutes southeast on I-24. Nashville is *very* spread out. There is so much development in Middle Tennessee, but most of it seems to cater to people who want to live an almost rural lifestyle while still having the convenience of a large-ish city nearby.
I think that scenario plays out a lot in the Southeast.
i have a weird hope that those rural folks moving into a suburbia have like a door that could spill into urbanism; maybe that's just me.
- 21:08:43 at 2023: 09.22 by: mico st⭐ar holo, a man.
Would love for you to speak more on Asheville, NC! It's the kind of town where your video could actually end up being watched by council members.
I love Asheville!
Having been to Asheville many times. It's actually not surprising. There downtown core, River Arts, West Asheville, North Asheville, and Biltmore Village have basically no infastructure in place. West Asheville is basically 3 highways that become an arterial randomly. But to be fair, they just kind of said fuck it and built things were ever they wanted so if you are walking or biking, it's pretty hard physically to get around with so many steep grades.
@@schmitty8225 I agree on the steep grades thing, but I've heard many people who are much more into bike infrastructure argue that that's a distraction. Idk. Hopefully CityNerd can make a video about it! (Maybe a list of 10 tourist destinations with bad infrastructure or something like that)
It sure shocked me to see my town on this list. It is somewhat car-centric for sure, but surely not the worst in the country!! First thing I thought of was that Asheville (and surrounding area) is nowhere near 250,000 people, so how did it even make the list? Well, the MSA is - quite frankly - insane. It includes the four counties of Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, and Madison.
"M" stands for "metropolitan", which those 4 counties (except for Asheville and to a small degree Hendersonville) are most assuredly not. So my guess it that the rural nature skewed the results substantially.
yes, please. There's so much real estate money in the city.
As I'm sure you already know, Ray, if you want to find where successful black businesses & neighborhoods have been in a city, look for freeways, interchanges & stadiums. All great places to use eminent domain on people who can't afford to fight back. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why Nashville's stadium is where it is.
That area floods in heavy storms that make the river run over its banks, though, so that could be part of it as well.
They should look into what Frederick, MD did with Carroll Creek. After a particularly bad flood in the 70s, they implemented a plan and built an underground channel for flood control and turned the existing basin into a linear park. Beautiful area and great infrastructure to protect the city.
Weird because in my city, they ran them through where white people lived. The mostly black areas were left 100% intact......so I guess that myth is busted.
Congrats on getting a speaking gig! Like you said in your urban planning video, spreading understanding of urban planning is part of an urban planner's job, and you have done a great job so far with your channel. While I cant attend, I look forward to watching your presentation!
Yeah, I have to sign a release for them to edit and distribute however hey want, super fun! (I'm sure it'll be viewable at some point.) Thanks for your kind words!
I live in Nashville. Driving here really is insane. My job is only about 11 miles from my house, but due to congestion it can take 40 mins to 1.5 hours to get home in the afternoons. As a result, I take an alternative route that goes around Nashville instead of through downtown. It doubles the distance I drive, but it reduces the amount of time I'm on the road.
I've lived in California, Arizona, Ohio, Utah and Nevada and what you are describing is pretty common in those states.
11 miles and 40 minutes is probably the national norm. That was my old commute, which improved significantly once I started biking it.
I grew up in charlotte and took public transportation my whole life. It isnt until I moved 5 years ago that the light rail went more than 2 miles and the only walkable neighborhoods are within a 2 mile radius of downtown. Looks like things are changing for the better tho hopefully more people use transit. It's always been relatively safe
It was built too slow. Light rail is like driving 25mph with stops.
UNCC University Stop is 45 min to Stonewall stop downtown for game day. But when driving from the UNCC deck is 16min. It saves on parking but costs 30 min of time each way.
People have to be willing to give up that 1hr per day to commute by light rail. It’s only worthwhile living a few stops from downtown. Even then it turns a 5min drive into 5min walk, 15min ride, 5min walk. Or 15 min e-bike on patchy rough sidewalks and many dangerous intersections to cross.
I hope the next long distance line built is a fast metro line. Especially the one to the airport. Seems like they will go cheap and slow again.
@@Andrew-ig5sp I disagree. I have been using the rail for over four years and I've found it to be faster than you think.
Uncc to Stonewall takes about 30 min, end-to-end the blue line is about 1 hr. This is fairly consistent regardless of traffic, unlike driving.
It'll still be a tad slower than a car, but you can do other stuff while on the rail - read, study,etc. Can't do that in a car since driving takes effort, exhausting effort even, if the traffics bad enough.
@@hemingwaybromfield3722 Totally agree. UNCC to Stonewall currently takes less than 25. I know because I do the route at least 4 times as week. Plus the fact that there are good ingress and egress points in Uptown make it ideal for a lot of things.
The fact that Jacksonville, Florida is not on this list is positively shocking. The city is one big highway with some stroads in between
Jacksonville is pretty bad especially compared to the rest of the cities in Florida. You can actually live in Miami without a car.
as a phoenician who used to live in vegas, i am actually astounded that neither of these cities made the list
"Those data" - this is why I love this channel. Anyone who uses data properly as a plural instantly gets my respect!
Grand Rapids resident here, I love this city, it's very beautiful and has a fair amount of culture, great beaches and camping less than an hour away, however there is genuinely no way to get around outside of a car (or the boatload of electric scooters downtown)
I've only visited Grand Rapids, and I enjoyed walking around downtown a lot. It had a wonderful feel to it. Surprised that overall it's so bad.
@@godminnette2 There are near zero options to get around without a car. We have some bussing in some areas, but they're subject to the same traffic as the cars. Grand Rapids thinks it isn't big enough to justify passenger rail options that go anywhere within the greater metro area, or even the rest of the state for that matter. Trains are for cargo and sometimes for going to Chicago. That goes for every city in Michigan though, really. It's a train that makes a bee-line for Chicago, or the literal highway.
The shocking thing is, the walkability score for downtown Grand Rapids is 92/100, which is very high for the US. The heated walkways between buildings, the expanded pedestrian access on Monroe Center, and now they're talking about adding that to Bridge Street, too. These are great steps forward. The only problem? You need a car to get in and out.
What's crazy about OKC is that they moved the highway half a mile closer to the river from its original location through the middle of downtown in 2012. And it's like, you almost had a chance to do something good there.
Then Tulsa.... Living downtown in Tulsa is awesome, until you wanna go somewhere and need to cross 10 parking lots or get groceries then you have to drive 4 miles.
The OKC Boulevard is basically another highway, but worse. Cuts off the city still.
And what's bonkers is the cost of living in places like downtown Tulsa is exploding. Basic 2bed/2bath is as high as 2800$ after all is said and done in those newer developments. My solution was to find something much cheaper down river and just use the RiverParks paths to travel up and across by bike. It still sucks though because if you live even just a handful of blocks inland to the river just trying to bike to the path itself is dangerous.
@@raphaelkinney There's some support for the removal of at least the northern portion of the IDL through Greenwood but I assume ODOT and the city won't do anything about it. It's a shame.
@@raphaelkinney Which is crazy because it was $700 in 2018 for a loft. But 2800 is more than I currently pay in NYC. As much as I love it, Tulsa ain't worth that price.
Hello! I live in Southern California. The inland empire was considered a rural community so most cities are linked by freeways. Most of the cities were unincorporated until a couple of decades again. New housing development favors single family homes so easily walkable urban environments are rare. Riverside looks more non car commuter centric because of the train stations that connect it to California’s costal cities. The inland empire is actually one of the cheapest places to live compared to La and Orange County
I lived car-free (sorta) in Nashville while in grad school for two years and this justifies my feelings about that city so heavily.
I didn't own a car, but I did carpool with a dude for the whole second year while we worked in the same building and commuted from a nearby location. I had to do it in order to remain sane.
The infrastructure for transit sucks. The hub-and-spoke bus routes made faster to walk 3 miles than bus to downtown and back out... while driving took less than 5 minutes. The sidewalks to nowhere are everywhere. The stroads are the default and you're lucky if you get a crosswalk light even when you press the button.
I met and knew so many people who had multiple DUI's who just kept driving because that's the only way one could live. It *terrified* me as a pedestrian.
I did bus to work a few times during that carpool era, took over 1.5 hours to travel a 15 minute car commute, and I lived in a part of town my friends called "downtown" (because it was within the I440 ring).
Without looking at your numbers too deeply, it is worth mentioning: Nashville's numbers are inherently weird for one particular reason: the county (Davidson) and the city (Nashville) are the same. It makes Nashville's land area look much bigger than it truly is. That said, there were actually people that lived in the next county, AN HOUR PLUS DRIVE and commuted into East Nashville, the hip gentrified area, in order to work. It was mind-boggling. Some of them commuted more than 30 miles in rush hour traffic.
Nashville has so many redeeming qualities, but it's such an absolutely unpleasant and dangerous place to live as a pedestrian, and ultimately that was a big reason why, after grad school, I made no effort to continue living there, despite the connections I made.
Oh man, I almost forgot about the stadium. The one way to get to work from my apartment (when my carpool wasn't available) required, obviously, to hit the downtown central bustation, as all routes in nashville lead. But then the 2nd bus took me past the stadium. I had to stare at the pedestrian only bridge over the Cumberland River that went from a beautiful downtown park to an empty parking lot crater. It was wild how much beautiful space that stadium took up when it literally was already in walking distance of the downtown bus terminal!
@@es-qf2gw Where you live can really affect how living car free feels. I lived in Portland and Seattle post-Nashville, and even have been a walk commuter for the past 1.5 years. Being free of the forced expense of cars and roadways has helped my personal well being tremendously.
VIDEO IDEA: I would love to see a video listing the best US cities to raise a family. Reasons why young couples leave cities for their less dense, worse planned, car-centric suburbs are schools, crime, cost of living, and space. I may be mistaken, but I don't think I have seen this kind of content on your channel. Explain why these cities are advantageous over their suburban counterparts.
The key- bottom line- is safety for children. Ideally (LOL) cities can be as safe as Japanese cities where children are not afraid to walk to neighborhood train stations, then take the train to another station convenient to their school, and at the end of the school day do the same- with little fear of violence being done to them.
Of course, this cannot work in the US due to racial-ethnic-sexual preferences, languages spoken, and ever-present economic stratification. People don't work together well in the US. Consequently, people adhere to "niche" thinking in terms of transportation planning (as well as everything else except the validity of materialism) at all levels, i.e., they are motor vehicle fanatics, bicycle fanatics, public transit fanatics, walkability fanatics, and large backyard fanatics who seldom compromise. People of different "stripes" only work together when they have to, either due to economic difficulties or to the threat of state sanctioned violence- such a shame.
@@WizenedVariations1 Huh? WTF do you mean when you say "Of course, this cannot work in the US due to racial-ethnic-sexual preferences,"
I'm retired now but in a long professional career lived in Canada (Toronto & Vancouver), Wellington New Zealand, Zurich Switzerland and Brussels Belgium. All are safe, have excellent subsidised public transport systems were having a car for day to day life is not essential. All are multi-ethnic diverse cites with multiple languages spoken.
@@epincion Study US history, particularly the evolution of Euro-Americans vis-a-vis the Afro American descendants of slaves. Look at this from the standpoint of social violence and the responses of both groups to US deindustrialization. This type of history is not reflected in any example you provide. A closer national analogue might be Brazil, which outside of Sao Paulo has had great difficulty putting in effective steel rail transit.
HAHAHA, as a Nashvillian I can confirm that figure is true. I drive 70 miles round trip to get to work on what I honestly believe are some of the most poorly planned interstates in the U.S. The rapid transit service, if you can even call it that, is also dismal with little to no expansion plans. They are, however, making our interstates "smart" whatever that means...
I grew up in nashville and still live here, and the sprawl just keeps getting worse. There are two main types of new housing developments: Gentrified apartment complexes/houses and single family home neighborhoods that keep getting farther out of the city. Our traffic keeps getting worse, yet our city does nothing to expand our bus system or music city star (commuter train)
As a resident of the area, I am truly flabbergasted the DFW Metroplex didn't make this list. Was fully expecting it to be #1 until the last minute. Curious to know where it ended up.
I was *certain* that Houston and DFW would be #1 and #2, the fact that neither made the list blew my mind.
I was waiting for Houston too lol
As someone who lived in Heritage Hill in Grand Rapids, MI and walked to work and pretty much everywhere, you really should arrange a visit. Put it on your schedule for next spring when nearby Holland hosts their tulip festival. The core of the city is vibrant and walkable.
I vote for the Herkermer Hotel.
If the census numbers include the greater metro area, then it makes sense. The suburbs are stupidly car centric. Holland is also very car centric. The downtown area is walkable, but most of the essential stores are located on US-31 which is a perfect example of a stroad.
@Aidan Collins it is. Downtown Holland is a handful of blocks. There isn't an affordable or adequate grocery store. Most of Holland works outside of downtown. The tulip time trail route is marketed as a scenic drive. Those things factor in it being car centric. If only the downtown was able to grow with affordable housing and more blocks of commercial districts then it would be better reflecting its Dutch name.
And East Fulton, and East Hills, and Eastown, and much of East Grand Rapids are very walkable. Get the drift??
I lived in Nashville during undergrad. It is a nightmare to navigate and to get around you pretty much have to have a car, but to run a few errands will essentially take your entire Saturday. None of the celebrities you would associate the town with even live in the city proper. They all live in Brentwood or nearby Franklin.
I lived in Chicago long ago when we had street cars with wicker seats Red Rockets was our name for them, they were great, one every ten minutes, low fare, orderly and clean. Now you only have to take one look at public transportation today to see why I will never give up my car.
Law is no longer enforced, there is graffiti everywhere, vomit, needles, homeless sleeping everywhere and gang activity. I’ll drive, thanks.
I'm so sad to see my city of Richmond on this list. Don't worry, Ray, I'm trying to advocate for better. Thanks for the video!
@Phillip Banes Better city design. Less car-dependency.
I grew up in Raleigh. It truly is one of the worst most car dependent places ever. It's getting slightly better, the current city council has gotten rid of parking minimums across the board. There is new "HSR" between here and Richmond is coming. A giant new bus station including housing (some affordable too) right next to the train station is coming, a train station which will soon host regional rail between raleigh, durham and RTP, including suburbs further west/east (clayton and hillsborough).
Downtown is also not terrible and has some charming places like city market. I would spend most of my time outside of the house downtown. I couldn't stand the way most people lived, never going to downtown just suburb to strip mall and back. No trees anywhere, so you couldn't walk considering 90+ heat 100% humidity literally every day in the summer and that's not an exaggeration
Also, I lived in Asheville - you need a car, but it's more walkable than every other city on the list. It's strange - there's usually a few things within walking distance no matter where you are, but to get anywhere else you need a car. There's no sidewalks on the tight mountain roads. I went to college there and didn't have a car, I mostly made it work, you could do it if you lived downtown. It's one of the few places where the natural beauty and quirkiness of the town overshadow the car dependency to me, it's still a great place to live.
Two things that can be said for Raleigh -
1) It wasn't viscerally ugly to look at compared to some others on the list. The downtown is much lighter on highway infrastructure or stroads compared to all of the other cities on the list. The consequences is that the contiguous walkable urban area is pretty good and it feels pleasant to be in.
2) Improvements are being made. BRT is rolling out and massive infill is happening in Downtown, Midtown, and eventually Downtown South--which will improve the stadium situation. There is some hope.
@@mentalrectangle Absolutely agree with everything you say. Plus the Cardinal Bikeshare (which I am eagerly awaiting free rides after the shutdown) when it's running is great compared to citibikes and bluebikes - no upcharge for ebikes, and the passes are dirt cheap.
Nashville resident here - there are plans to redevelop the East Bank and redo the street grid in the next couple years, regardless of whether the stadium also gets moved. That strip of land is quite prone to flooding which is part of why it is under-utilized (see 2010), so there will have to be measures taken when this happens - getting rid of the sea of parking is one step but won't completely fix the issue. But yeah, most of the "city" is basically suburban sprawl, the inner residential neighborhoods generally lack sidewalks but at least have some walkable commercial activity; the outer ones are standard subdivisions boxed in by stroads. The light rail transit plan was voted down a few years ago (despite my pro-transit yard sign alas .. lots of Koch brothers money and the pro-transit mayor having an affair with her bodyguard on the city's dime didn't help) and probably won't reappear again until traffic eclipses pre-COVID levels. But it's unlikely to gain traction since the absurdly low oop. density of ~1400/sq mile (low even by Southern standards) is just not conducive to a transit system that the majority could use. I hope that the recent rapidly increasing density of downtown and midtown might at least support better car-free infrastructure and maybe even a rail line there, but that's about it. All that complaining aside, I have a
I'm shocked that Hampton Roads, a metropolitan area of about 1.5 mil is not on the list. It's an almost completely car dependent metro that sprawls and stretches over so much land and sea.
Transportation comes first. The streetcar and the interurban railroad built the first suburbs. We can reverse direction with transit and infill. Build a light rail line, encourage development along it, and soon you will really start to address the problem. Culdesac in Tempe is an excellent example of this.
Nashville here. And I have a co worker that commutes 2 times a week from Dickson TN. That's about a 90 mile round trip, extreme sprawl, terrible housing affordability, extremely poor transit (Not even sure how to begin fixing this), and a state and local government actively hostile to good planning gets you Nashville. But surely just 1 more lane will fix traffic!
I wonder if your coworker knows about the weekday WeGo Park and Ride service at the Dickson Walmart?
Seattle is improving so rapidly it's insane. They're hacking away at downtown car access with a machete and replacing it with transit, bike lanes, and walkable spaces.
I'm so glad my commute to the university is on ferries and light rail. It's so much lower stress than driving or a bad bus, for an hour each way i sit at a table by myself, drink my coffee and have a snack from the cafe and look out at the Puget sound while catching up on homework. I saw a pod of orcas last week. I don't know if a better commute exists, I drive so little that I keep my car and truck on battery tenders now.
I'm actually a bit surprised that Virginia beach/ Hampton roads didn't end up on this list. I suspect it's because the population isn't quite that high, but it is absolutely a nightmare to do anything but drive here.
I was a bit surprised to see Richmond, but the outer suburbs are quite sprawly, and they just built a BRT, so it makes sense.
god yeah as a Hampton Roads resident it's appalling how much space is dedicated to roads and highways. the highways are completely clogged no matter what too, no city in the area can seem to work together to build any sort of public transit infrastructure
As a Richmonder, I'm pretty shocked. Downtown Expressway really drives car ownership up and allows folks who live in the suburbs and work downtown to have literally 0 contact with the city, but I bike often in the city and it appears common to me. I am stunned, was half expecting it to be one of the BEST cities!!
Almost everyone at my 300 person company lives and works in the suburbs and almost never goes into the city. Obviously every adult in their households has a car. And the city (where car ownership is still widespread) is only 1/5th of the metro area population.
As someone who lives in the city and bike commutes to work, I think Richmond is pretty underrated in terms of bikability and transit, but it takes determination to find what works. I’m constantly informing people that the bus is indeed free here, and how to use the bus. and that there are many great bike trails. That being said, the bike routes dont connect very well to each other, and different neighborhoods have wildly different levels of access (east end vs west end). And that’s if youre lucky enough to have a job downtown…try finding a doctor in the city. At the end of the day, i have to remind myself that while the city itself is improving, the city itself is only a small chunk of the population. Hopefully with the north-south BRT, things will change but thats at least 5 years out. (I also work at a 400ish company downtown, and I am one of two people who consistently bike to work. Not sure anyone takes the bus, there may be some walker…)
I was just wondering when Grand Rapids (my home) would come up in one of your videos! Unfortunately it is this one... Many in the area are working to start and continue conversations surrounding transit improvements in the area and I for one think there is so much potential here with our growing communities and fantastic neighborhoods. We would love for you to visit and keep up the good work, Ray!
If you widened the criteria to 250k, smaller Michigan cities did poorly on this too. I wonder if it's a "birthplace of the automobile"/MDOT culture effect.
@@CityNerd I’m wondering if perhaps Midland was one of those smaller cities; I’m from Saginaw, which is in the middle of the TriCities of Bay City, Midland, and Saginaw and I can’t stand visiting Midland and navigating. It’s an affluent community, it is where the headquarters of Dow Chemical is, so I would expect the car ownership values to be pretty wild. I’m curious of my city Saginaw now too, great video. The only walkable-ish area I know of if Frankenmuth, but it’s like 50/50 simulated urbanism and genuine walkability in my opinion, it’s worth a Google though if you have time and are interested in Michigan, but I’m sure there are much more people friendly places that I don’t know of in MI.
@@CityNerd I'm living in Madison, WI now & whenever I visit Michigan I'm amazed by the sheer size of the large US-made SUVs that are ubiquitous, also surprised by the lack of concern for pedestrians even in otherwise walkable tourist & college towns like Glen Arbor & Marquette. Even comparing Michigan to your average Wisconsin town (not walkable, bikeable Madison) it's still surprising.
@citynerd Yeah, Grand Rapids is actually one of the better run Rust Belt cities. The city’s population has never experienced a sharp decline & has lost probably only 10,000 residents at its lowest point. GR has always a had more diverse economy than the rest of Michigan.
Although GM has somewhat of a presence in the area, the auto industry’s influence is rather minor. GR was built off the furniture industry, & now the economy is focused on medical, Craft beer, food production & processing, and various other industries. The tech scene is growing too. GR had more craft beer breweries per square mile than any other city.
I clicked on the video thinking GR had to be on it. Moved back to help family after 30 years away. It's better than it was, but it's still far and away the worst city I've lived in. Grand Rapids hasn't been cool since you could ride a trolley from Eastown to the riverfront, then hop on a ferry to Grand Haven.
Grand Rapids' downtown is actually very walkable, from my experience. Its the gosh darn southern suburbs that are an absolute nightmare. I've lived in the Wyoming suburb for 6 months for an internship and the amount of walkable streets is in the negatives. I can't remember the last street I saw with a sidewalk, and I get stuck in traffic at 6 AM sometimes.
28th, 36th, and 44th street can all stick it. Grand Rapids' southern suburbs are stroad-nation and agonizingly slow to traverse. That being said, the city is pretty good otherwise.
I agree. In the East Town area I can easily walk or bike to the farmers market, grocery store, hardware store, and restaurants. Downtown is a 20 min away by bike, scooter or bus. However, sometimes I have to head to 28th street or further south and it’s all heavily car centric.
Couldn't agree more. GR proper is pretty friendly for cycling, at least, even if transit leaves a lot to be desired. And the downtown is pleasant and walkable (shame about 131 cleaving the city in two, though.) But the suburbs are a car-sewer hellscape. Just moved last year to be north of 28th St. so I wouldn't be forced to take my life into my hands on 4 and 5 lane, 40+ MPH stroads in order to cycle literally anywhere. Kentwood can suck it.
At least Cascade Township used an initial grant from the FHWA to construct a several miles long, multi-use path along a major thoroughfare from Cascade Village westward through the township towards GR proper. The popularity of that project kick-started a major endeavor to build miles more of those paths, through the sprawling, semi-rural neighborhoods. Those paths are primarily used for recreational purposes or exercising, but they do link to commercial centers. Ada Township (yes, home of Amway and the DeVos family), not to be outdone, constructed its own system of paths. And recently, the Village of Ada has been completely transformed, including the rerouting of a road or two, to become a more "new-urbanist" community. Some parts of the "old town" have been preserved, but there have been mixed reactions to the changes.
Yes, definitely. I grew up in west Grand Rapids and always rode my bike into downtown and walked around. Then I moved to Walker and… sigh. Grand Rapids is walkable but its suburbs are absolute nightmares.
Agree whole heartedly. I live in Wyoming near Division. Close to a bus top on one of the better routes. But they are few and far between.
And here I was thinking Houston would make the list. Having to step into my car everyday just makes me sigh... I miss walking to places
Would be cool to see a video on walkable small to mid size cities
I second this!
I'd love this as well... I live in an OK small city for bike and walkability, but I can see the potential for it to be great. I personally like the feel of small to mid size cities and would love to find one that really wants to do walkability well.
The Inland Empire is just a West Coast retirement zone that got developed into overflow housing for people working closer to LA who can't afford to live there so they commute 90 minutes each way. There is a decalcomanie of people commuting from the smaller cities into San Bernadino and Riverside because they can't afford to live there, as those two cities support the LA commuters.
I moved down to Raleigh after 8 years in Philly and it made the impossible happen. It made me miss SEPTA.
🤣 I'm in Philly...
Having lived and working there, I was waiting for Richmond to show up in this list. Sufficiently old parts of the city can be walked and biked well enough, but the rest of the city and metro area is highly car dependent with limited transit.
Did they ever build that BRT line?
@@justinwarthen They did!
I live in Nashville and it not uncommon for people to drive 50+ miles a day to work. It’s actually double the square miles of Chicago!
I’ve lived in Austin, Portland, Chicago and Europe without a car. I have two cars in Nashville. It’s not a compact city and has very limited public transportation.
It’s definitely the least favorite city I’ve lived in but the $$$ from my job keeps me locked in for now…
Nashville area resident here. Our placement on this list is unfortunately, not surprising. The 52.7 figure is also not an anomaly. For several years, I commuted 30+ miles each way from Spring Hill to Nashville. I had an employee who commuted from just outside of Bowling Green, KY - her one way was about 80 or so miles. Also, Cookeville & Sparta are kinda the hip new places to commute in and out of - 83 & 99 miles east respectively.
In another role, I was driving from my home in Spring Hill to our office in Waverly - 69 miles from home and 67 miles from the main office in downtown Nashville.
Employers pay fairly well, however, for a few factors, it’s still not conducive for everybody to living in Nashville proper. Even then, suburban and rural affordability is eroding due to the sprawl. This only adds to the problem of lengthy commutes.
As it pertains to vehicle availability, I’ve observed & lived out the multiple vehicle lifestyle. While a definite luxury, it’s not uncommon to have a car that you aren’t too attached to simply for commuting and a vehicle that fits your lifestyle outside of the workplace. Depending on the role you’re in, it’s not as rare as it once was to have either a company-provided vehicle or some form of allowance. Employers know that the sprawl is out of control and that PT infrastructure simply can’t keep up with the growth & where people want to live. Private sector is willing to incentivize talent they consider to be top-notch.
Thankfully, Titan stadium (Nissan) is going to be relocated and the current location will be redeveloped into a more usable space. As it stands now, that’s where many downtown office workers park & walk/shuttle to work across the Cumberland.
Local governments have a seemingly healthy relationship with Metro’s Transit Authority. Several of the surrounding cities can commute into town via express bus routes taking hundreds and maybe thousands of vehicles off the streets each day. Several of these communities are greater than 30 miles from downtown: Clarksville, Dickson, Murfreesboro, Spring Hill. Check out WeGo. Despite the 2018 referendum getting shut down, I think the resulting alternatives have plenty of room for improvement, but are working decently.
I've been waiting for a list that has Richmond VA! So Proud to make this list! Can't deny that I have five cars in the driveway and take 195 to work!
Oh hey, Tulsa finally made another list! Funny you should mention the downtown freeway loop and parking situation. If only someone would make a video focused entirely on those topics...
That’s you.
I grew up in Nashville and I'm not at all surprised at our appearance at the top of this list. The driving metric you showed is shocking but it's in line with other numbers I've seen, you see similar statistics put on signs while waiting to get your car emissions inspected. I think the DVMT is so high because tons of people commute from exurbs, places like Mt Juliet or Franklin or even Murfreesboro that are a fair distance away. It used to be doable without too much terrible traffic, but the city has grown so fast it'll be interesting to see how long that continues to be the case.
We've had some rail proposals come up a few times and they always get shot down, either from the suburbanites or from businesses on the stroads. I first lived near Franklin where it's impossible to get anywhere without driving. My dad moved to midtown a few years later, and that area is actually very walkable, but not safely bikeable at all. Otherwise, it's all stroads and closed-off subdivisions with cul-de-sacs. Our awful urban planning is one reason I left
It's interesting that you bring up the football stadium - the parking is horrendous, but there's lots of other awful land use decisions on that side of the river, especially I-24 - there's nothing interesting between the river and the downtown loop. However, there is a nice pedestrian bridge that goes from the stadium across the river, and while downtown is still car-brained it's not awful to walk around. A better example is the Bridgestone arena, which is right in the middle of downtown and offers only very expensive underground parking so there's not too much wasted space from parking lots
People literally commute from other cities to work in Nashville. Looking on leaving myself will probably end up in Chicago. Trading miserable summers for miserable winters
Yea I'd be surprised if they didn't wind up on the list. They have a non-existent bus service and a terrible commuter service to nowhere as their only transit options. It's worse knowing that as bad as they have it, literally every other part of Middle Tennessee has it worse.
@@travisbeagle5691 man I completely forgot about the Music City Star until I saw this comment. Speaks to its practicality haha
@@POP7QWIZ I finally pulled the trigger and am leaving Nashville for Chicago the end of this year. Going from a walk score of 64 to 98. Can't wait.
@@Opals25 Lived in Nashville for 23 years, moved to Salt Lake City for grad school, and I too am now seeking a move to Chicago to finally get to a decent city. Good luck!
Explaining Nashville: Yes, people really drive that much. I know people who frequently drive across town several times a day. To get to anything is a few miles, so on average 57 (while high) makes sense. As for the stadium, it is easily accessible to downtown via the pedestrian bridge. It actually feels like a downtown stadium, because you can pregame hard on Broadway and then walk across the pedestrian bridge to the game.
Roundtrips between Thompson's Station, Spring Hill, Murfressboro, Gallatin, etc. and downtown are all over 60 miles. Gotta be over a hundred thousand commuters. Agreed it absolutely makes sense
Video idea: should we stay or should we go? Should we stay in our car dependent town and work to improve it ? And how? Or should we concentrate into SF Bay and NYC ?
We don't have the space for potentially millions more ppl here in NYC. In a country facing a housing crisis we're lucky our homeless population isn't even higher than it is. And we still have a lot of homeless ppl.
Personally I think we all need to advocate for more walkable, people centric cities, even if they're not our own. For example I want more resources poured into cities in upstate NY because they'd have a lot of potential to reclaim past glory in new ways.
This is really a million dollar question. I think about it all the time.
I am living proof that it can be done. I grew up in Kansas City metro area. Suburbs on the Kansas side. I took one trip to Europe and was immediately transformed. I began my plan to escape. After I sold my house and all my belongings I moved to downtown Kansas City and experienced the loop right out my front window.. for one year.
Since then I have lived in fully furnished apartments in Manhattan, toronto, and currently in Montreal. I avoided any place that scored below 95% on walk score. I sold my car when I left Kansas City and haven't owned one since. I have chosen to pay a little extra rent in order to be right in the center of things in each of those cities. So I can either walk or bus or Subway anywhere I want to go.
If it wasn't for other circumstances I would move back to New York in a heartbeat. My second choice might surprise you but that would be Singapore. Yes I think you could devote a full episode to Singapore. To me it's what you would build if you wanted to design Manhattan from the ground up. They've got everything right. And they do everything they can to discourage car ownership. The main thing is having an incredible alternative.
@@coverversionoftheday9941 What a nice privilege it is to be able to get a job in expensive areas that pay for housing and to not be just disabled enough to navigate transit. I remember being 30, that was nice.
@@MilwaukeeWoman
Yes I admit that I'm very lucky. I started my own business and was able to work remotely. So I didn't have to look for a job I just had to have a laptop. That said I also stopped owning a car which save me about $1,000 a month. There goes a long way to making downtown living affordable. It's funny that you mentioned disability because I happen to have multiple sclerosis. So I use a mobility scooter. That is part of my incentive to live in walkable neighborhoods.
Shoutout to Vancouver for the upcoming removal of the Granville Street bridge loops downtown. Such a waste of valuable space. 6 towers, a park, retail, preschool going in just that footprint. Bike lanes that connect onto the bridge. Will be awesome once completed.
There is clear correlation between how car-centric an American city is and how developed the city already was by the 1950s. This is completely consistent with your observation that it is a "vicious cycle", because the best way to escape the cycle was to be a city that was already densely developed before the cycle could start.
Excellent points.
@Zaydan Naufal What does "if you spread the density" mean? Any city whose structural choices are dominated by a small ruling class is not a valid example.
Also, my definition of car dependency is that it is impractical to live without a car, not that cars and roads simply dare to exist.
@Zaydan Naufal If not just authoritarian countries, then pick examples that are not artificial show pieces.
LA, Phoenix, Atlanta, and SF to just name a few in the US have multiple "downtowns" with residential areas in between, sometimes due to metros enveloping preexisting small cities and sometimes a natural response to people valuing commutes that go opposite to prevailing traffic. I am sure this phenomena occurs in other parts of the free world. Zoning might allow it to happen but is not sufficient to make it happen without the need (see the empty planned cities in China for an extreme example).
I visited Nashville for the first time this year, and what surprised me the most was their lack of public transport options. Very infrequent bus service, and a lack of any light rail infrastructure for such a huge city. I looked into it, and apparently the city had a vote for whether to improve their public transport and there was an overwhelming vote for no improvement (why this would be put up for a vote is beyond me). This is quite sad considering the great charm and promise the city has.
It is put up for a vote bc tax payers pay for it. And if they don't use it, why pay for it. That and other factors killed the funding bill
@@zedalvea841 No, it was because white wealthy neighborhoods were scared into thinking they would be over run by Black and Poor people. That and tons of money spent by the "reason-tv" types to put out tons of misinformation was why it went down. So, I guess you can blame the voters, but there is plenty to go around.
Its kind of lame. If you look at the Asian cities and infrastructure. Many Chinese cities are insanely developed now and futuristic looking. The public transportation is mind blowing
I'm visiting the US for work (from Australia) and the car centricity is wild. I'm in Dallas which isn't on the list but I've never been to a city so overtly hostile to pedestrians ( I have travelled a fair bit across Asia).
Ah, I once lived in Nashville Metro. We're #1! I would guess that one reason so many Southern cities are on this list is that, while they are old cities, their major growth has been more recent than the northeast. Looking at Nashville Metro demographics, it took all of history to get to 1 million people in 1990, and now it's at 2 million people in 2022. It doubled in size right in prime "expand the highways" time. Or 75% of its total population comes after the federal highway program. The result is old neighborhoods like Hillsboro Village and Franklin as walkable, and every single other thing is driveable. There's also a cultural thing, where many people have convinced themselves that freedom=fossil fuels and cars. And so they've paved over what was absolutely beautiful countryside and farmland. (TN is a beautiful state.)
I gave a much less gracious answer above.
I started college in Vanderbilt Nashville right around the time it's citizens voted not to build a metro line in the city because it would attract the wrong sort of "vibe" and destroy the character of it's neighborhoods. I like to think that sometimes, places are simply the ridiculous amalgamations of their constituents desires.
I've lived in Nashville most of my life and can about agree -- even 15 years ago the average commute time was >30 minutes. It's also true that you really can't get anywhere without a car. Anywhere, period.
Years ago, my organization sent a group of us to a convention in Tulsa. We stayed right downtown in a huge, very 1970's hotel, and could walk to the convention center from there. The final day of the convention was on a Saturday, and, after we'd closed up our booth, my colleague and I planned to stop and get a late lunch on our walk back to the hotel. Not a single restaurant on the 6-8 block walk back to the hotel - nothing, not a pub, not a sandwich shop, not even a McDonalds. And this was walking right through the middle of downtown Tulsa. We ended up having to use our car to drive to get lunch. From downtown Tulsa. It was so depressing. I don't think I ever need to go back to Tulsa again.
Not surprised to see Nashville either. I worked on a project in downtown Nashville for several months and the growth seemed completely out of control. Just getting from the airport to downtown was often a challenge. Maybe I just do not know how to get around there, but Nashville seems like a nice mid sized town that suddenly had millions of people show up for a bachelorette party so the ladies can finally wear the cowboy boots and skirts they always wanted to wear. I remember needing to schedule meetings for the mornings because the “Woo Girls” (bachelorette gals on slow rides screaming WOO!) would start promptly at 2PM and the far end of a conference call could not hear us anymore. We were on the 22nd floor of a high rise office building by the way. Just not sure why any business would want an office downtown. On the bright side, the musicians in even the worst dive bar were absolutely amazing.
theres a video on how nashville is the party/alcohol bus capitol of the world
That's an odd list. I was sure Texas cities would be featured. Texans famously love their cars, or more likely trucks, and hate transit. All the big cities have downtown freeways, lots of surface parking, ample of sprawl and little if any way of getting around without a car. it seems very surprising not one made the top 10.
I was surprised Hartford CT didn't make the list either (atleast as an honorable mention). I know its a small city but its entire urban corridor is very car dependent and the city proper has a highway interchange inplace of a riverside district. (I know the CT isn't an attractive river near Hartford but plenty of other cities have worse bodies of water with riverfront districts for something other than dirty industry)
As someone that lived in Austin, and visited all the other large Texas cities, the downtowns/central cities are surprisingly robust, and the large cities have a decent number of neighborhoods that allow residents who actively choose to be car-lite/car-free. While far from perfect, there has been a lot of urban revitalization and historical neighborhoods that have reduced car dependency in the core. Houston and Austin are rapidly building over the downtown parking lots with redevelopment. Still lots of sprawl and car dependency, but not a standout for the US would be my guess. Most large Texas cities also have workable and improving transit, even if they are terrible by the standards of large coastal cities.
The issue is that CityNerd uses the official city limits, but a lot of the Texas cities are not really defined by those. Dallas officially is not that big, but the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is massive. I think DFW would be on there but it doesn't have strict limits.
@@ErrorNameNotFound123 I'm surprised no YX cities were listed either, but for this video, the metro areas were used. From a quick glance, they were all better than Charlotte, NC, plus a previous comment mentioned downtown and older neighborhoods too
@@ErrorNameNotFound123 Not true he said he used the MSA (metropolitan statistical area) for this calculation
The Nashville situation reminded me of a topic...Cities that were made bigger by states to make them less progressive. Nashville being merged with Davidson Co. as well as Toronto being forcibly merged with it's suburbs are 2 that come to mind.
Yes indeedy!
toronto ON had this happen to it too
@@PlaystationMasterPS3 That's the Toronto I was speaking of...is there another?
Scott P, I’m surprised to see the suggestion that Nashville’s Metropolitan government was imposed by the state or was intended to dilute the voice a progressive demographic. The change occurred after a June 1962 vote. I’ve lived in nashville since 1977. It’s my understanding that metropolitan government (merging of city and county governments and service districts) in Nashville was adopted by county referendum. Incorporated towns within the county including Nashville had to opt into the proposal. Voters in nearly all towns in Davidson County, including Nashville, opted in. The vote failed in middle-brow Berry Hill (now nearly exclusively a commercial district) and Belle Meade and Oak Hill - two towns of multi-millionaires. Concurrently, the proposal eliminated the Nashville city council with its at-large only election system (meaning minority persons were seldom voted to council) and made most council members dependent on districts, greatly increasing minority representation. In these ways, the plan was local and intended to be progressive, to share infrastructure cost broadly, to reduce white flight out of the city (though the change occurred before _Brown_ was implemented locally), and to provide meaningful black representation on council.
As someone who grew up and lived in the IE for 20 years, I think the reason it’s so car dependent is because of the nature of the area’s growth being spurred mainly by suburban development and not necessarily local economic development. My parents bought a house in the area in the late 90s as it was much cheaper than buying a home in where they had been working and continued to work, Orange County. I think the same can be said for hundreds of thousands in the IE, many commute to LA or OC for work, and if not, often into the center of the IE, the industrial zones centered around Ontario, Fontana, and Rancho Cucamonga. Yes, there is transit in the IE, and it’s actually not half bad, when counting Metrolink at least, but it lacks direct connections and frequency. The urban fabric in the IE, that of old citrus orchards was built upon too quickly to integrate anything proper beyond typical suburban sidewalks and commercial hubs, proving to be insufficient for walking or cycling.
Love the channel, hope you keep with it!
these videos are simultaneously my favorite things and they also provoke serious existential crises for me
Born and raised in and around Nashville, here. The traffic in the area has gotten exponentially worse since I started driving in the mid-90s, it's quite maddening.
I was waiting for Phoenix to be on the list, but I’m surprised you left it off the hook this time. I’ve heard that some journalists have referred to it as “the most car-centric city in America.” At least ADOT had the decency to conserve space on the major interchanges as much as they could, though I think it’s just because they forgot about them in the design documents for the suburban freeways they started building in the 1980s. Basically every 4-way interchange is some variation of a 4-level stack (one of them, the I-17/I-10 interchange west of downtown Phoenix is even known as “The Stack”). There are some cloverleaf loops in service interchanges, though the only ones I can think of are I-10/40th St and I-10/SR-143, where the 143 turns into 48th St, and it’s only the south-to-east ramps, and the ramps are tiny.
There used to also be cloverleaf intersections on I-17 at Thunderbird, Bell, and Deer Valley, but ADOT removed them.
@@danieldaniels7571 how long ago was that?
@@grahamturner2640 removed in the mid 1990s to mid 2000s.
Great video, your content quality is always consistent! Since you brought up politicians, it would be interesting to see a video of the top ten Mayors of major cities in the U.S.. Or even the top ten worst Mayors in the U.S. under certain criteria, policies, etc.
Wow, hadn't though about this at all. Interesting!
Nashville native now living in Vegas. It is truly a broken city. I went 5 years without a car and it was unbelievably infuriating. Whether you’re biking or taking the bus, it’s truly a nightmare. Also the least walkable city I’ve ever encountered. Until recently as well, TN had a policy that your license could be suspended for non-traffic related offenses, and they make reinstatement impossible without DRIVING A CAR. It creates a vicious circle of being poor, having little access to work, and the penal system keeping it that way. And driving in the city is a whole other ordeal. Glad to be in a more functional and baseline humanist place. Great video as usual!
I live in Denver and I'm pleasantly surprised we're not in this list. Though I'm surprised San Antonio or Dallas wasn't on here.
Denver has it's problems, but from a transit/auto-dependency standpoint I'd much rather be here than a plethora of other cities.
Was just up in NYC. Might go at the end of the month for an event I don't even care that much to go to. I just like the feeling of being there amongst all of the car-free people and city life. I live in NJ. UGH. Wish it wasn't so expensive and I could get a job there.
Nashville has bad transit. Bad transit will make people want a car. I lived in East Nashville and my commute to South Nashville took an hour each way. I was about 15 miles away. I'm okay with that. I moved 5 miles away from work and my commute time went up to 2 hours. They use a hub and spoke system. I lived at the end of one line and my work was at the end of another. I had to go all the way into downtown and back out. Thank God I was able to move closer. Now I walk to work.
planning on writing a research paper focused on public transportation and transit policy! your videos have been the biggest inspiration! thank you for being so transparent with the datasets you use and making the data so easy to look at.
Glad to hear! Yeah I always try to link data sources.
Don't forget to include the modestly disabled. People that have to avoid heat and cold extremes, but otherwise seem healthy. There's more of us than you think. Our cars become mobility devices. Look at the number of people with something called POTS and explain how they are supposed to stand at a hot train station and then a standing room only train.
Yeah -- thanks for involving the American Community Survey in this! I do the ACS for a living, and I am delighted to see its importance be so clearly explained. This makes the sometimes tedious work I do on that and other Census Bureau surveys well worth it. Your citing its findings is a morale booster, and I'll tell others at work about this vid!
My understanding of Nashville, is that it's the prime target for people from extremely wealthy zip codes to move to a place that's "cheaper." Wealthy city-folk from New York and California, who built their riches on public infrastructure, real estate development, and worker exploitation, then get tired of the problems they helped create and flee to "small town" Nashville.
A lot of the cities on this list are why we ended up in Durham, NC to still be able to live near family and bike to work. Worked in Tampa and every bike commuter had at least 1 story of being hit, it was like a badge of honor haha
As a Brit, I’d love to see how these ten compare to the rest of the world. Although getting the data might be tricky
Yes honestly because as someone from the USA I have trouble conceptualizing wtf a less car centric society would look like
@@katemariemc Google Maps is an amazing resource for this. Pop on Satellite View and scroll around. Most of Europe's big cities are covered by the 3D view, rendering the cities in amazing detail. Japan and Singapore are also well covered, as are the big cities in Australia, Brazil, and South Africa. For the rest of the world, the 2D satellite view is usually detailed enough to give a decent picture of how cities are developed.
In general, you will find cities developed more around rail stations, with few urban highways - the space is too valuable to waste on that. Fewer people tend to live in single-family homes, while apartment buildings make up most of the downtowns. Shops or other businesses are placed on street level, while apartments or offices take up the floors above. Parking is usually underground or street-side, as surface parking is a colossal waste of prime urban space. Owning a car is possible, but expensive, because cities aren't laid out to facilitate it. And public transit gets you wherever you want anyway.
@@katemariemc And if people in the US suggest making places more pedestrian/ bike/ transit friendly, you invariably get pushback from people who believe these things cause further inconvenience for cars
@@katemariemc A big turning point in the development of the built environment seems to be WWII. If you look at places that were buit out prior to WWII you see a lot more compact development patterns, even in neighborhoods with detached single family homes. Following WWII you see more auto-oriented development with larger suburban lots, and shopping centers set away from streets with lots of parking in front.
@Zaydan Naufal It's usually a question of laws, not affordability. For instance, Google Maps has quite poor resolution in Seoul because they aren't too keen on the North Koreans using it to plan artillery strikes or sabotage missions.
I live nearish to Tulsa and it's downtown is actually surprisingly walkable and bikeable. Although, yes there is a lot of wasted land in parking lots. The big thing about Tulsa is that outside of downtown, trying to bike ride anywhere is super sketchy. It's definitely a very car centric thinking here. The bike lanes/paths that do exist are pretty useless as they don't really connect anyone to anywhere that they'd need to go. Heck, I live a mile and a half from my work and I'd love to bike there but I just don't feel safe doing it because of the drivers and total lack of shoulders on my route.
I used to bike in Tulsa to the university from 1.5 miles away. Wasn’t too bad except for crossing the mile streets. Going back to Tulsa after moving away was eye opening though, unbelievable how much asphalt there is. Food is really good though!
Oddly at the same time there’s more dedicated bike trails away from roads than one would expect.
Found this channel because I saw the title while living in OKC and thought "boy I bet we're on this list, I wonder where!"
I used to work for a university and part of my role was helping the Census Bureau administer the ACS...glad to see it was helpful for someone!