10 Affordable Zip Codes Where You Can Live Without A Car 

Don't threaten me with a good time

His manners, speech cadence and dry wit are captivating, endearing with time. (Added last two words just to poke fun).

I'm only in my early 20's but also agree.

@@jimmshorts I love him! 🇦🇺🏳️‍🌈

Speaking AS a middle aged white dude thats a little bit too into urbanism... lets GOOOOOOO

They use a very simple mechanism. I've seen it give a place a high transit score because there's a train station nearby... that you can't walk to without going way around a highway.

True! Must be why CoMo scored so high... They are fulling embracing the suburban ponzi scheme right now unfortunately. :(

Yes apparently the walk score asumes we all have jetpacks

Walk Score not very good. I live within 1 mile of 3 grocery stores and numerous shops, coffeehouses and restaurants (all with sidewalks) and walk ability score only average. What more do they want?

Agreed. I've actually sent them feedback about this in the past.

A real shame how much affordable housing for a variety of family sizes can be implemented if mixed-use was more liberally expanded.

💯 the lack of 3BRs in many urban areas leads to this cycle where the only affordable housing is for single adults, or childless couples at best, and then there's not very many other families downtown, which means there's no demand for good schools or other family amenities, which leads to a lack of demand for 3BRs, which means developers don't build them 😫

Oddly I feel like we need more studios and 1beds built, because it's yuppies and other wealthier people who end up living in the 3-4beds with roommates, when likely all of them would prefer solo units if they were affordable. Leaves the family units for families

Urban areas have a distinct lack of affordable housing for 1 or 2 person households, as well. We need more affordable urban housing units of all sizes, not just "family-friendly" units. The only people I know of who are living alone are very affluent people who can afford to carry the cost of an urban rental on their own. Most people I know are living with strangers, by necessity.

Same! My choices are either stay in a 2BR that's close to stuff, or move to a suburb and pay double for a SFR

It's a college town, they're all liberal and care about mass transit and walk ability. On the downside, many of the people there can be elitist jerks or snobs.

Columbia Missouri? It was half stroaads 💀

Columbia is a really nice city overall.

Just visited there since my gf is a Mizzou grad. Great little town that I would have loved to live in if I was a student. Great food, bars, and the whole downtown area along Broadway seemed very walkable and full of places I would love to visit.

I haaaaate Columbia. Painfully boring and an eyesore. If you ever wondered why the United States media is terrible, it’s partly because Mizzou is one of the top journalism schools in the US. The whole town breeds people to feed the system instead of being the food of life

Can't wait to see all the changes back home in a few weeks.

Wish I could say the same, but I adore STL and visit when I can. Great city.

What about the violent crime? I have heard St. Louis is pretty bad. Or, is the crime localized?

​@@bluephoenix8470it's localized to mostly the northern half, but there are pockets of crime on the Southside, too. I lived in 63118 for about 8 years and never had an issue. People thought I was crazy though for living there. It was worse 15 to 20 years ago.

Thanks! I guess it is the random crazy stuff that worries me the most. When the criminals venture in to the "good" part of town looking for prey. St. Louis is an enigma. Along with KC - excluding Chicago - the only real cosmopolitan cities in the Midwest. The "big city" and what it offers pulls you in but the crime makes you flinch. @@scottsinger7110

Very true, I lived without a car for 5 years in a very walkable place but I started to feel isolated from the larger metro area. The walkable neighborhood was enough for a couple years, but it started to feel very limited after that.

That's why I'm moving overseas soon.

Everyone here has some pretty darn good points. I love the town where I live now, and the downtown/surrounding area is pretty accessible by bike as well as on foot, but getting away from here means getting to the one regional bus center and taking that one shot into the big city nearby, in the next state. It's kind of ridiculous that there's no direct way to get to the other regional cities nearer to me than by car. Rentals are a good option for short trips though.

That even includes what are on paper some very walkable major cities with good transit. I still own a personal vehicle in Vancouver, BC. I almost never use it during the week, but often use it on the weekends to travel outside the metro area. BC sucks when it comes to intercity rail and bus service (and outside of Vancouver and Victoria, cities tend to be standard North American sprawl). All that said, being able to get around without a car most of the time is still better than being stuck in the sprawl and having to use a car and sit in traffic every day.

Unless you're in a major city in the northeast, being car-light is probably the best you can hope for.

By just flooding the top 2, you could insure conservatives never win the WH ever again!

Right? We need to buy up some land and turn it into a utopia, like they did with The Villages in Florida, but instead of a bunch of boomers in single family homes, it'll be all row houses with streetcars and corner stores.

@@rexx9496 Sounds amazing. Just need some soundproof walls cause I like playing music loud 😂😂

@@CASEMSTR well we can throw in a few detached houses for noisy people.

@@rexx9496 or free headphones. :)

For every city I think about, I always have to wonder what their pro sports experiences are like, especially if they have a soccer team. Louisville City seems like it has a pretty awesome vibe for a non-MLS team. What's the stadium like in terms of urbanism, transit access, etc?

Old town Louisville looks really nice.

I visited Louisville once a few years ago only because my father was originally from there and he returned at the end of his life. The urban fabric is impressive. I could easily live there.

​@@perrondenais684Kentucky is all about college basketball

​@@perrondenais684pretty terrible but the plans for the district around it that might get built within the next decade are pretty good

Hell yeah, I just moved to Pitt a few months ago from Tampa and I’m loving it! I can’t believe how underrated it is.

But the grey skies n’at…. That’s the rub.

@@michelletabares5336 I'm from Tampa, don't think all the money in the world could get me to move back, at least not til the Florida political climate does a 180.

Schools have a very low score there?

please don't tell them. I moved to PGH from Nashville two years ago after it got so crowded. Pittsburgh feels like an undiscovered gem. Hopefully the weather will keep the masses out. It's only for the strong.

For the uninitiated, like me, what is a VC? My aging and liminal grey cells see VC as being Commonwealth countries' most prestigious award for gallantry (the Victoria Cross), but I assume it must mean something different in this context. 🤔🤷‍♂️

​@@t.a.k.palfrey3882venture capital, and other large investment groups

Still needs somebody to sell them.

@@t.a.k.palfrey3882 Viet Cong is another possibility.

I meant venture capitalists, people who look for fun ways to spend money. They could have the Victoria cross. It'd be a weird tactic for the viet cong to become American landlords, but it's technically possible, in the laws of physics

Yeah, Walk Score is really very location sensitive. Even zip code isn't granular enough! I almost need like census block group.

Just did a rental search because it's such a pretty town, but not one seemed suitable for adults -- everything was student level. What am I missing?

@@leapintothewild it's a college town. i would recommend going north and checking out some of the little feeder towns around columbus, like westerville.

@@Pomeray8 Thx. Already lived in Columbus back in the 90s, was interested in Athens. But if there are no rentals for adults, looks like it shouldn’t have made this list!

@@leapintothewild you don’t have to be a student to rent there. I’m no longer a student, I work for the university now. There are some, although not many, jobs not connected to the university. It’s a really good place to raise kids IMO

This is something I wanted to make others aware of. Many years ago I lived in 40203 and it is really pretty. But. There is no grocery store nearby. They closed the Kroger in that area years ago.

⁠​⁠@@jackanapes1492 I’ve commented a few times because of how misleading this is, and I would ask the video creator to investigate how these scores are calculated. Both of your comments are correct. I moved out of 40203 (walk score 96) because of lack of access to groceries and pharmacy. I moved to 40217 which scores lower at 66, but has far more crucial amenities. There’s few sidewalks in most of Louisville, and often times crosswalks aren’t painted in urban areas, along with having a higher incidence of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in these zip codes. The rents here might seem cheap, but our taxes, utility costs, car insurance, goods and services are above the national average.

Is crime something you have worry about there ?

@@sammymarrco47 yep

@@sammymarrco47 In parts of the neighborhood, yes. It's a downside of the area though I think it tends to get overblown as a bigger problem than it is. The north side of Milwaukee as a whole has its issues with crime. Just gotta be smart and careful at times.

Riverwest is such a nice area, it's shame the city has let it be relegated to such poor care for so long. There's a lot of similarly wonderfully walkable areas around downtown Milwaukee, Mitchell Street, Lincoln Village, even West Allis has done a lot of work to National Avenue to make it more bike and pedestrian friendly, mainly by reducing it from four lanes to two... which has helped a LOT compared to other major Milwaukee thoroughfares from being dominated by reckless drivers. In fact, I hope Milwaukee sees it as a wake-up call about the plague of through streets and stroads in its limits to help curtail the AWFUL drivers that have popped out of the city as of late.

Yeah, this is an area I've been to and I can say for 100% sure it's undervalued. Great city, too.

@@jamesedwardelmore Anywhere close to DC will be ~40% more than Baltimore. I was specifically talking about Baltimore City.

@@jamesedwardelmoreBaltimore you get similar housing stock as DC and the suburbs for approx 50% for the relative same type of neighborhood with good access to DC with it being 50min-1hr away depending on your travel time. Rush hour could be 1 hour 20 min. But. I love being in Bmore !

Give me NO hood which the city is, no wire drama and a easy gun carry permit and we'll CONSIDER that fleabag city.

Depends on the person and the lifestyle. If you work from home and you have kids, their transportation is handled by the school bus and your walkability needs are just getting around the neighborhood.

I think that Boulevards tend to be more walkable and economically efficient than a typical street suburb. As someone who lives by a Boulevard, it is not safe to walk and bike out, but it has a lot of amenities. This depends on how the Boulevards is designed, to begin with. It is only reliable if the Boulevard has a bus stop, bike lanes, sidewalks, affordable housing, and jobs available within less than a mile from where you live. Southeast Florida is liveable in comparison to other parts of country, but not as liveable as a New Jersey, New York Metro area suburb, especially Jersey City.

You can just give up the big city too and move into a small walkable town where everything is reachable with a bike ride, like Athens Ohio. Most of these kind of cities are rural with lackluster transit. I live in a similar college town with a circulator bus but no intercity bus connections (outside of greyhound). An intercity bike trail makes this less painful though.

Just didn't want to overcomplicate it. But I will likely come back to this dataset with some new approaches!

My hometown (Kortrijk, Belgium) does this pretty well: each household gets one free parking permit in the residential zone they live in. Parking types are differentiated by colored parking spots: yellow for residential, green for free 30-minute parking and colorless for paid parking. If you have an extra car, you'll have to pay for another permit. Nonetheless, parking is free from 19:00 until 9:00, but if you have no permit and park in a yellow spot, you're going to get fined. Basically, if you have more than one car, you're going to be under constant pressure to either pay or not park until 19:00. And even in the latter case, you might struggle to find a spot you're allowed to park in. Right now, I live in a semi-dense neighborhood in the US. Some days I can't find parking at all because of neighbors inviting guests and whatnot. I feel like having purely residential parking spots would benefit the entire neighborhood. It would also make some people rethink having that second car. By the way, the streets in my neighborhood aren't that wide: parking on each side and only enough space on the road for one car to fit through at a time. Sucks if you're new to parallel parking, but it does make the street much more pleasant to live in :)

Yes, and i recently moved from Providence to St Louis. Providence is a horrible city to live in unless you make more than 80k or are a member of the BIPOCLGTBQIAA2S+ community in the service industry. It's tied with Boston for the 3rd most unaffordable city (income/rent) in the US. We have excellent food and art (shout-out to Nick a nees), but as a person who commuted by bike and foot for a year at a Rhode island factory, i couldn't do third shift at Rhode Island Hospital without a car (i often still commuted like this before i was fired over the vax mandate). The RIPTA 35 was basically outside my house and the RIPTA 78 was a 5 minute walk away. The last bus ran at 21:30.

My town tried parking meters, and businesses were affected. They took out the meters again, it got worse. Public transport and housing is necessary.

Providence is almost all single-family construction, with rear or side parking... so that is how it works for them. Obviously that isn't the only way... I wouldn't attempt to have a car in Manhattan. But I also would be making a conscious choice to commit to "urbanism" in place of any other mode of existence, if I lived in Manhattan. I've always needed a car for work and to see the friends I wanted to see (a difficult thing to avoid in a large world). In most places to have no street parking would be sharply limiting appeal, in many cases to those who could afford onsite parking. And want it... I bought a house on a 20 foot wide one-way street with parking on both sides... the little yard was fenced and at the time the neighborhood was less popular, so I had neither the ability nor the need to park onsite. I thought the use of yards for parking was gauche. And so did the birds.

I've seen parking minimums defended since otherwise cars will overwhelm the available street spots. The idea that those free street spots don't have to be there never seems to be considered.

I read somewhere that Wyoming has the highest car to person ratio in the country. I'm guessing that comes from very rural areas though.

We don’t necessarily need to flip the senate seat in Wyoming. Just need to get Liz Cheney back

@@jstnrgrs wouldn’t be surprised at that. we’re also notorious for using retired vehicles as free on-site secure storage… lots of our rural neighbors, especially, have front yards that look like overgrown scrapyards. not unique to Wyoming, sure, but I’d argue we do it best! we also have the highest firearms-to-people ownership ratio… I wonder if those two figures could be related somehow.

You're right that there are some very walkable pockets here and there. Downtown Casper is also pretty good that way, but affordability is definitely linked to the state of mineral markets. We do have a lot of progress we need to make, but it would be awesome.

@@sipes23 resoundingly so... such is the nature of a state economy overwhelmingly rooted in extraction and tourism. alas...

Would that be considered gerrymandering?? 😅

@@maumor2 You can’t gerrymander an at-large congressional district. The senate races are also at large. The most you could gerrymander is the state house and senate.

Sorry to tell you but there are many states with Democrat Senators and crappy transit.

@@maumor2No, it is not.

@danielbittinat8915 there are currently 216,266 registered voters in Wyoming. You may not want to call it gerrymandering but we will flip two senate seats 😉

MIZ 🐯

I lived in 4 places in 65201 and 1 place on the west side of town. When I was in 65201, I had a car, but only ever drove to the grocery store. When I was on the west side, I took the bus to Mizzou. I worked at Nebula on Cherokee street off and on for the last 10 years.

@@chadsdadbrad ZOU!!

The truth is that nobody has all the solutions. Establishing your own procedures, managing risk wisely, and sticking to your plan are imperatives no matter what the situation. To do this, you must be willing to learn from your errors and continually refine your strategy.

Andrew Glenn Adams exhibits a thorough knowledge of his profession. I was actually impressed after finding his website page and carefully going through his qualifications, education, and background. Knowing that he functions as a fiduciary, ensuring that he acts in my best interest, is comforting. You will find him on the internet.

@@micheal_hughes Thank you for this!!

All the jobs are at McMenamins

MAX extension to Cornelius and Forest Grove is in the long terms plans but I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime! Good points.

Yeah I kept thinking, a lot of these are cheap for a reason.

@@CityNerd Someone has to make those tots! And yes, I agree that a MAX rail expansion would be good, however the blue rail line is already quite long and takes an age to get anywhere. From Hatfield to the Moda center is approaching 2 hours, not including the drive time from Hatfield. I would love to see an extension of the rail line regardless, but they recently paved over the train tracks over by McMenamins so I doubt it's gonna happen.

@@CityNerd Yeah - the Blue line from Hillsboro is already impossibly long to downtown Portland. From Forest Grove would be eternity.

I lived in 73106 for a year and it was great. Where I lived (NW 12th & Classen) was walkable to downtown, the library, and civic center in 20 minutes but also a 10-15 minute walk for groceries at Homeland or restaurants along 10th St. If you haven't tried Hall's Pizza, I highly recommend it. A bit expensive, but they make great pies. Make sure to get their secret sauce for dipping the crust.

I'm from Illinois. It would be really hard for me to move to a red state. At least cannabis has gone legal for full rec use in Missouri. And Missouri has a lot of natural beauty, but the politics definitely suck..

Remember Missouri used to be a bellweather state. Bush carried Missouri by 3% in 2000, and Trump won by 15% in 2020. The population growth is mostly in the red areas around St Louis and Kansas City. There are lots of reasons people have been fleeing St Louis, including incompetent political leadership

I agree with what you say. But I am not sure that livable housing in 38118 is as affordable as CN"s statistics imply. My brother lives in the zip code and has found housing far more expensive than the statistics imply. Parts of 38118 have a lot of substandard housing, and there are a number of streets that are overwhelmed by crime. CN's rental sample looks nice enough (like my brother's place, in fact), but it may have problems inside or be on a high-crime street.

CWE and Midtown are cool and walkable.

Well if more urbanist minded people move to Missouri we can change the state government. Thanks for the compliments though! ;]

St. Louis would be one of the best cities in the nation if they got their gun violence under control.

St. Louis has a per capita murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of 66.07 per 100,000 people; the highest among the 100 most populous cities in the US! It has the fourth-highest robbery rate and the third-highest rate of aggravated assault! There's a reason that it's affordable! The murder rate is worse than even the most violent countries on Earth!

@@elheffe2597 It's admittedly not great, but it's also not as bad as the statistics make it look. There are unique-ish historical reasons for this, primarily that the city and county formally separated in, what, the 1870s, I think? At any rate, a long time ago, and so the city limits have stayed put for a century and a half instead of expanding into the metro area like nearly every other city in the country has. Take that weird fact, plus the fact that the nearby "suburbs" (that would be part of the city proper in any other situation) have been growing significantly while the city has been shrinking, plus historical reasons for certain neighborhoods in the city proper being particularly crime-ridden (thank you ever so much for screwing over whole demographics, red-lining...), and you get a pretty skewed perspective. If you look at metro-level data, St. Louis is still not great, but in violent crime it's comparable to Nashville or Little Rock. crimegrade.org/violent-crime-st-louis-mo-metro/

How is the music scene in STL? Do they regularly get tours from large as well as indie artists?

@@rexx9496 yes. both.

Go back 50 years, and it was considered a slum, "Hell's Kitchen".

@@andrewmasin5787 Also there were a lot of SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels by the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Irrelevant, I suppose, but there were also SRO hotels in the Far Rockaways. Live cheap on the beach.

Athens is awesome! It’s about 3 hours from me in Cleveland, but it’s a great place for good food and brews for sure! It’s also right next to the Hocking Hills…best hiking in the state, some places make you feel like you’re in Tolkien’s Rivendell.

I agree 100% - I lived in Athens as an OU student + then stuck around for a while post-graduation. Had no trouble living relatively well on a part-time barista/punk bandmember salary. Worked on the corner of Court + Union (arguably the "center" of Athens). The job + all needs/amenities were within walking distance from my house on Grosvenor. I couldn't complete my everyday "commute" without encountering at least two acquaintances + saying a quick "hello" along the way. I found that to have a profoundly positive impact on the ol' mental health/wellbeing, especially compared to what happens during one's commute when one moves to a place like Los Angeles (where I currently live). Overall, I found Athens to basically be the best small town one could ever imagine + can honestly say that living there was the happiest I've ever been

@@kaymart8703 it sure seemed like a great town any of the times we’ve visited. I’d love to run across friendly neighbors…it’s not something that happens much in the outer burbs where I live. I would move to urban neighborhood in a heartbeat were it not better where we are for my wife’s work. We are still walking distance to a lot here still though. It’s just not as nice as a more urban-style area like even Wellington was…which is the nice little town I grew up in about 30 miles away in Southern Lorain County. It’s just south of another great small college town, Oberlin, up here in Northeast Ohio.

Oh, I've done this kind of tour as part of a planning project I worked on, where we really wanted to understand the urban experience of the visually impaired as part of developing the project goals and objectives. Really a different perspective, quite literally!

how is the mentally ill drug addicted homeless situation in St Louis?

​@@andrejka_talking_out_loudbad like every other city in the country

@@andrejka_talking_out_loudSt. Louis is basically a ghost town. For middle of America Midwest standard it might be normal….. But in comparison to East Coast city standard it’s a very empty city and very lame. However it does have a subjectively unique charm to it in some ways.

This is the first thing that came to mind during the Memphis segment. That neighborhood used to be a lot of fun, but when the Memphis College of Art was closed the crime rate started riding to the usual Memphis levels...

Has Wilmington changed much? I grew up there and haven’t been back for a proper visit in about 15 years (went to city school there as a youth which was kinda rough)

I live in Louisville, what was your favorite part of the city?

@@Joshisepic2222 I'm an architecture fan. I love love love old homes and buildings. Y'all have more cool old neighborhoods (both modest and way up scale) than I ever imagined. If I win lotto I'm buying as many of those cool old buildings I can afford and fixing them up.. if you had mountains I'd live there.. be proud of that city. Everywhere has problems but you have a lot to be proud of..

I lived in Bridgeport from about 2008-2015, and it was one of the best times of my life. Walked to Sox games, restaurants, bars, stores, and had a VERY awesome 3BR, 2BA apartment with roommates and paid between $350-550 each, depending whether we had 2 or 3 of us living there at the time. Those were the days! Then I moved to Oak Park for 4 years and paid $650 for a very big studio that felt more like a 1BR, and loved it there as well. I was kina surprised no Chicago neighborhoods made this list. I might have bumped my walkability criteria up to and index of 80 or more and only included states where cannabis is legal. Ha.

Bridgeport has gotten trendy, I don't know if that's attainable anymore. It's a great area though.

Stay tuned!

the globalists watching will then take this on what inspiriting historic architecture to destroy and build industrial brutalist structures in its' place

Old Louisville definitely would score well there

I’m surprised to hear someone say that somewhere else is more walkable than OK and TX lol. Currently living in OKC and been to DFW and Austin multiple times I’ve felt OK sidewalk infrastructure has a long ways to go still but progress is progress I guess

@@BigFemto1 Compared to Michigan, it's way better. But I'm obviously not, repeat, NOT saying it's the world standard. They didn't make it difficult to walk places. Michigan's auto industry makes walking and mass transit very hostile to pedestrians. Just to compare, go to Detroit, then go across the border to Windsor. It's more walkable, there is more mass transit and the people are even happier.

@@dickriggles942 "Happier" than Detroit doesn't sound like a high bar! To me Windsor seems "normal." But much like for the Detroit side, it was a planning-intensive bus ride to get to/from the train station.

@@dickriggles942Agreed. I find Midtown Detroit and the Campus Martius area walkable; but even getting around in Detroit is a hassle.

"They absolutely make it impossible to walk anywhere in Michigan and it's disgusting." That's really not true. Ann Arbor is walkable (downtown gets a 99) but too expensive for this list. So is Traverse City (but probably too small a metro and also too pricey). I'm half surprised no Grand Rapids zip code made the cut. Holland (around downtown and Hope College) is walkable. There's a retirement community in downtown Holland that might be about my top choice if, god forbid, I ever found myself relegated to one of those places. If you're willing to put up with a bit more 'grit', you might consider downtown Lansing and Kalamazoo, too (along with some neighborhoods in Detroit with walks scores above 70).

It's a college town

Thing is, small town living is more like urban living than suburban living if you’re in the right part of town. The same things make it great, though in a major metro you have all the things that come with that. I grew up in a small town in NE Ohio that really has good urban bones in the center. I wish rather than plopping car-oriented retail on the outskirts that they’d expanded downtown or created another one…but at least the center is quite walkable.

I should do something with small towns at some point. It's probably not for me personally, as far as a long-term place to live, but I enjoy visiting them and can understand why they're a viable choice for some people. And small town urbanism can be very cool!

@@LeeHawkinsPhoto urbanism isn't always the answer. The reason why people move to small towns is to get away from the city and have a greater sense of community among your neighbors. Not to mention less crime and liberal brain rot. Ohioan love their cars and bikes.

@@burntnougat5341 Ohioans are mostly _forced_ to use cars, and they would love to be able to use bikes more safely. The little town I grew up near had zero bicycle infrastructure, and honestly since it was a waypoint on a couple of major state highways, it was rather hostile to bicyclists. There is plenty of room in the right of way to change that…hopefully one day ODOT will see the sense in protected bike lanes and the village will see the sense in making downtown more friendly to bikes so they can enjoy it more safely. As for urbanism…little towns in Ohio are often fantastic examples of GREAT urbanism! It’s a huge fallacy that urbanism only happens/needs to happen in big cities and major metros. Truth be told, wherever you have some good dense walkable development, you’ve got good urbanism. Lots of people are familiar with Put-In-Bay…that’s honestly good urbanism…it’s mostly bike friendly, cars in the dense parts have no room to drive fast, and it’s also pedestrian-friendly with plenty within walking distance. The centers of small towns and cities like Wooster, Norwalk, Medina, Chardon, Oberlin, Wellington, Ashland, Mt. Vernon, Delaware, Garrettsville, and a whole bunch of others are all great examples of urbanism…the only major problem in most of them is that supermarkets that used to be located in or near the center of town moved to the outskirts…otherwise these communities would be excellent places to live car-free or even mostly car-free so long as employment can be found, which is a lot easier with WFH. The entire town doesn’t have to be anti-car, I don’t think that’s a realistic thing anyway…but we can take space from cars to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety, and to reduce road noise…especially in communities that already have a decent bypass. There really is no reason why urbanism can’t work in small towns-because it already does. We just need to make or keep it viable, because you’re absolutely right…not everyone wants to live in a major metro. There are plenty of people across the political spectrum who benefit and want good urbanism. Seniors especially benefit, since they don’t need to leave their community or even move as they age in order to stay independent. Kids gain the same independence without having to wait until their 16 and can afford the expenses of being a young driver. Even working age adults benefit because if they live in a walkable small town, they don’t need to worry about drinking and driving from the bar…another win for everyone.

I'm gonna continue this novel in the replies and explain why I think St. Louis tends to punch above its weight in urbanist measures: Part of it could simply be because for decades StL was one of the five biggest cities in the country and was building and developing like it was. But it could also be because StL is an independent city. StL City separated from StL County in 1876 which permanently restricted the physical size of the city. Despite that, the population continued to grow to over 800k and StL had a pop. density close to present-day Chicago before finally starting to decline in the post-war decades. There was a very extensive streetcar network and everything. For over 70 years, the city had to build and develop for a very dense population, but even though the pop. has declined to 300k since then, all the walkable, transit-oriented "bones" are still there. So I think that's why the city of StL seems show up on a lot of your top-10 lists. And because of all that, I also think that StL has more potential than many other sprawling US cities to shed its car-dependency.

I think we know what we must do. We will build the City Nerd Republic of Wyoming.

“Only 125,000 votes.” Wyoming has a population just under 600,000 so that’s about 1/4th of the population, likely closer to 1/3-1/2 of the voting population. Kind of doubtful unless he becomes a major influence over Wyoming. Many more populous states’ elections are decided by a much smaller margin

@@moosesandmeese969 oh yes absolutely the state’s population is far greater, my hypothetical assumed Wyoming voters don’t increase their rate and that CityNerd people vote at a vastly above national average rate. Also yes I recognize that many state elections are tighter than 125,000, but in many other states 125,000 is far from a landslide like it is in Wyoming

I vote Peoples Party/Socialist and reject lesser of 2 evilsism and hate thy neighbors politics of recent years, So me moving to Wyoming wont change anything.

@@linuxman7777 look, I am a socialist myself but you need to be practical about voting. Its fine to throw away your vote in general elections in hard blue or hard red states but depending on where else you live, you might have cause Bobo the clown to get back int office considering how thin her margin was

As a Mizzou Grad, it is very walkable. And the city bus is actually very useful to get around as well. And alot of the Apt. Complexes on the outskirts have shuttles to campus as well.

I guess if you didn't mind the hubub of Mizzou all around you, Columbia could be a nice place to kick back and live in a small, walkable area. I would have thought that student pricing might make rental housing expensive or prone to being rundown. And I wonder how welcome a Black person who isn't associated with the university (or even one that is) would be if they just decided they wanted to live in Columbia because it was inexpensive and walkable? Is it possible for lower-income Black people to move from expensive, big city areas to these inexpensive smaller cities or inexpensive parts of larger cities?

Exactly I went to school there and most of the student complexes are far from the university. They did have shuttles. East campus and downtown are walkable but the other housing stock is not

@@michaelvickers4437 Missouri is about 12% Black and Columbia itself is about 11%. You will always have the racist types in places, but I'd say most people would get along just fine - especially if moving to the more diverse neighborhoods.

@@michaelvickers4437 Black guy and former Mizzou student here; Colombia was a great place to attend university, and ironically the only place where I was openly called the N word by a jeep full of hillbillies probably from the Ozarks or something-- right on Stadium and Rollins coming back from Brady Hall (yes the experience is frozen into my mind). BUT-- before I could even piece together what was happening, other students I was walking with at the time started beating on their car and breaking stuff-- most of 'em were white and didn't even know me except my floormate (and we're still BFF 30 years later). So in my mind, Colombia was where I learned MOST people are good and don't take that BS. I think deep down, it may have changed my outlook on people.

Certainly a sentiment consistent with most small Texas towns!

Do you, perchance, know what the history is behind it being called Nederland? Its kinda strange seeing the dutch spelling of the netherlands randomly in a small Texas town.

@@daanvandoesum3679Hi. Just now seeing this comment. The only thing I know is that it was first settled by some Dutch families. The area is quite swampy, so maybe it reminded the settlers of their home and the name just stuck. The connection to the Netherlands isn’t really prominent anymore these days, aside from a replica windmill in the downtown area.

I’m a Louisville resident and I was surprised to see two cities in Kentucky listed here. Most areas are without side walks, and there’s very few crosswalks painted even in downtown. Our public transit is very limited and it’s rare to not own a car due to food deserts. We do have stunning architecture and parks, but sadly cars are required to experience most of it.

I like this. Something where you have to have like, ~1500 sq feet and 2 bedrooms minimum. Maybe a local park or a yard too. Decent schooling. That could get really complex

I feel like a lot of urbanism content I see is either for single people or childless couples so I feel like this is a glaring omission in the movement. I don't need to live in an area with 8 bars and restaurants to choose from, I'd like an area with parks and schools and common areas that families could hang out at. (I also don't drink so the obsession with bars gets really old when I hear about how awesome an area is).

@@blores95 I feel a lot of urbanists think selling urbanism to families is too much of an uphill battle. In the US it's considered pretty much impossible to raise kids in anything but a detached home with a yard.

That is an interesting follow-up. Can you live in an affordable area where you can get your kids to a decent school without a car. 15,000 bonus points if it's not a private school costing $15,000+ per year . . .

@@danielkelly2210 don't forgot a lot of families think they need a full bedroom for each kid, plus a dedicated playroom, office, etc etc.

That fantasy transit barrel is already pretty full here on YT. Everyone seems to overlook the fact that highlighters are cheap, but a few millimeters of ink on a map represents hundreds of millions of dollars in the REAL world.

We call it "setbacks" as land surveyors in Chicago, but every now and then we come across a block with deep setbacks, and it always feels so foreign, like not Chicago.

🙌🏿🇨🇦🙌🏿 Nice to see a Canadian reference here. I can see Longueuil from my house 😉