Superblocks Are Superblocked 

thank you because that is VERY much (eminent domain) would happen here in America for them to get their way. The boogeyman they make the freeway folks out to be from the past would be them in modern times.

Also a lot of people seem to forget most european cities look great now because they were bombed to shit and painstakingly rebuilt post WW2.

@@okaywhatevernevermind most people would argue they're fucking ugly now because they got painstakingly rebuilt post WW2. It's actually the reason why Paris is so beautiful compared to other European cities.

Also it cost so much money the city took more than a hundred years to payback its loans. People love the beauty of Paris but don't want anything with the cost associated with it.

This might come a bit late, but this is not the case at all. Pre-modern Paris was in the mind of 19th century planners a suffocatingly dense and cramped place. Lowering population density in the extremely dense core of Paris was thus one of the principal goals of the Haussman renovation, and it succeeded at that. The Ile de la Cite especially was gutted, dropping in population from about 15000 at its high point to less than a thousand today. If you want to see what Paris looked like before Haussman you can see that in parts of the Quartier Latin.

Yeah there’s gradual up zoning that goes in around transit corridors and on arterial roads, that’s the trickle. Also Le 250 on Saint Jospeh looks late 60s/early 70s to me, which was an era where that sort of thing got built, but people 100% would complain about a 12 story high rise going up beside a triplexes these days.

@@PaigeMTL I hope there will be some up zoning close to future REM stations. Because many stations are currently in the middle of nowhere with car-oriented design

​@@val4414 that's actually part of what the REM is banking on happening as the ARTM has a development tax within a certain distance of stations. I'm, a little skeptical of the structure because on the surface it seems like it would disincentivize development, but I assume there is some balancing mechanism to ensure the various municipalities pay their share. Not sure yet, it's a video that I've been researching in a kind of passive way.

Thanks for the data!

100%, although I mean a lot of that 1940s housing not densifying from the photos was because it didn't have to. There wasn't demand for it because people were heading to the burbs for their new supply.

@@PaigeMTL But right now, there's lots of demand for denser housing closer to the city center as people understand the limitations of suburbanization. If you live far away from work, the commute can be very long (and expensive), and infrastructure for sprawling developments is more expensive. I'm sure those neighborhoods would density if the zoning allowed it (just like how much of the downtown has densified over the past century).

@@PaigeMTL That's false right after world war 2 there was an extreme demand for housing that wasn't there due to lack of construction over the depression and war years. That housing shortage is what led to governments creating new agencies for building and maintaining social housing. At the same time though, zoning was becoming more restrictive and making it harder to build in areas that already existed.

I think if it was framed as that, but most people find a way to justify opposing supply. Blaming foreigners and investors was the last videos focus, this one is about it being “other people’s burden to bear”.

@@PaigeMTL One solution could be to market it as increasing their own house prices, because they can sell to a developer. Another could be a Referrendum where the Affordable Housing policy comes in 15 years after the Referrendum, meaning more people feel like they have time to adapt to it. Also, foreign investors, investors & immigrants do all exert an upward pressure on housing, most of all investors. Govt could build density housing & sell directly to owner-occupiers; or Community Land Trusts. And because they are selling it, it likely wouldn't cost them anything.

That’s right, and it’s probably a good sign that you’re bringing up case studies for future videos

@@PaigeMTL Oooo i look forward to it! Could maybe all the people who want higher density/decent transport/affordable cost all organize & pitch in to build that in the one area?? That would be awesome.

That’s good to know

Poeples comfort and right to own and operate motor vehicles is much more important than climate action. It is up to the legislators and car manufacturers to meet emission goals and invent zero carbon solutions like E fuels and electric cars.

Welcome to the tormented endless debate that goes on in my head

Funny, this is the video I’m editing now.

One is you can build one story above the minimum of the buildings directly next to it. So if there is a one story house a two story mix-use and a three-story mix-use you can build a two story building because the one story house limits you. I'm not sure this would be fast enough. And I know some still don't like it.

@@NAUM1 Yeah I'm open to that idea but I don't think it's enough of a compromise to survive the legislative process. It could be easily exploited by buying one small lot at a time and building up, repeating rapidly.

Absolutely perfect comment. Sure some people in medium density may not like high rises popping up, but the only reason high rises pop up is because there are single family zones squeezing the city center. It's such a shame that city councils have been shills for the home owners for so so long and it still continues.

Checkout Canadian Civil, he’s on pretty often

That’s where you come in Marcus

So what does that mean, i wonder? So you would want the entire city and suburbs to have high rises all over it? What would it look like? Extremely low to no single housing? I think of those futuristic movies where cars (haha. Cars are still there) are flying because the buildings are like 300 stories high.

I want these to be modular, and some are not feel good because the solutions require 30 minutes of explaining how we got in this mess

@@PaigeMTL honestly from a historical standpoint I don't seen urbanization or dense urban sprawls ever being a common thing in North America. The natural human trend is to disperse into smaller communities until the industrial revolution when urban populations began to have a larger population increase from immigration from the Rural neighborhoods. Combine this with the sheer expanse of American, Canadian, and to a lesser extent Mexican states and provinces I see no way that mega cities pop up in more than a few cities. Although I do se increased infrastructure increase as the demand for passenger railways have grown in the USA.

Did you watch last weeks video?

Japan has really liberal zoning laws that make market rate development cheaper. If you slow development to a trickle, that new development is scarce, which makes it a relatively expensive luxury. But even that luxury development is better than if there were no development. The people living in those towers would be forced to displace poorer people, who would then displace even poorer people, and so on.

There are 8 videos in the series

Alright, I look forward to those other videos then

Absolutely. By the way, are you sure you're a "neoliberal"? Because neoliberals are in favor of privatization (healthcare, education, housing). I love the "CarFree", "Georgist", "YIMBY" parts, but neoliberal seems contradictory to all of those.

@@mariusfacktor3597 they aren't opposed to each other. Cities are bastions of free market capitalism and trade and they generally do best when there is less regulation and government intervention in the economy. High "dead weight loss" taxes (tariffs, income taxes, business/corporate taxes, sales taxes, property taxes etc) and red tape overregulation (Québec's loi 101 is a good example of this) hurt cities because they discourage new investment into neighbourhoods while increasing the cost of doing business. Montréal in particular has suffered from the overregulated, high cost anti business environment that the Québec government has created because no one wants to invest there anymore.

@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 I agree that there should be a small (if any) barrier to entry for small businesses. But neoliberals are opposed to unions, minimum wage, welfare, and this leads to income inequality and poverty. How about this for contradiction: Georgism says resources should not be monopolized but instead the revenue should be split amongst the people. While neoliberalism has no issue with monopoly and hoarding resources.

In established democracies with local representatives people vote politicians out of office for things as minor as removing parking spots.

@@PaigeMTL you're lucky man. In my neighborhood the construction of a subway line got delayed because, as it turns out, instead of using the money to build the subway line the contractor just but the money on a bank deposit...

I also talked about lot coverage (burnt down building) and have spent a lot of time looking at population density data

@@PaigeMTL I personally find lot coverage less interesting than questioning the very boundaries of the lot itself. You mostly talked about building upward and briefly mentioned building inward but no mention of building outward, ignoring one of the biggest factors of all: the share of developable land per sq km. Many cities like Rochester NY, Helsinki, and Zoetermeer are creating density by downgrading stroads and urban highways on the edge of downtown to densely populated city streets that are much narrower.

So basically keep demanding the suburbs densify? OK well, have fun!

That’s true, but the average is definitely quite a lot denser than the plateau

Lol, it’s very much not. Housing is actually quite a lot cheaper here than in many other developed countries and redevelopment is a lot easier on a 60s ranch style house than a 300 year old townhouse or cottage.

@@PaigeMTL , I’m being partly facetious and serious. it is hopeless in terms of walkability. It you add the cost of a car for each adult, then North American living is quite expensive. I have saved enough money that I am moving to Asia next year. You guys can have American style housing and the isolation and mental illness that goes with it. btw, I own property in Southern California and Las Vegas so I am personally set. However, I see how people struggle with work and housing. If we believe that our society is the best and always produces superior outcomes, then we deserve what we get.

It’s not, I’ve never owned a car, I don’t even have a license, and easily the most I ever spent in cars was when living in Asia. You just have to live in a walkable city. Where did you get the idea to write off an entire continent based on transportation choices and then bail?

I somewhat agree to be honest, but I think its more of a mixed bag where some cities are completely redeemable while others should just be allowed to be as car centric as they want as the hope is truly lost. Cities like DC could easily densify and create an even better urban environment because the city was expertly designed, is pretty dense already, and resisted car culture. Cities like LA and Phoenix should be allowed to rot and continue to widen their freeways if they want because no amount of redevelopment will ever make them real cities again, and I think these priorities are important to outline because the US government is pouring billions of transit dollars into light rails to no where in cities like Dallas when they could be putting that money towards cities that still have a shot (and are largely intact) like Boston, NYC, DC, San Francisco, etc.

@@benw3864 You sound very stupid.

Ancient Rome had a million residents and competent engineers, but time compresses, it was already hundreds of years older than LA or Toronto by that point right?

@@PaigeMTL yeah you're right, i just wanted to mention that cause you brought up Rome.

Ever heard of drive to your quality? There are plenty of areas of detached single family that are already low income.

@@PaigeMTL good answer. Personally I hope we can get more broad-based up zoning where I live (Kelowna has the 4th worst housing market in Canada yayyy) but mitigating community pushback will be crucial

Well that’s one solution which I covered last week. The first major province or state that does that will have a huge economic and population windfall.

I know one of the most dividing factors in my community when it comes to density is gentrification. I live a Ottawa Community Housing village. It was part of a line of projects stated by the Ontario Community Housing corporation (the name might be wrong it hard to find the routes of this project) where large plots of land were allocated for subsidized housing. This allowed many low income families and immigrants (like my parents) to get a house to live in. The rent depends on your income. The prices for rent are affordable for a majority of the residents. Unfortunately my community has a bad stigma of being a crime ridden area. It has the more shootings and gang related crimes than any other part of Ottawa combined (Lowertown East) and that stigma has affected any new OCH project. Now the reason why residents reported worried about gentrification is that if new condos were to be built than the price of rent would go up and already that seems to be the case. Many new condos have been built, replacing a community centre, a homeless shelter and many medium/low rent apartments. The condos are too expensive for low income families and with a large need for low income housing their is concern that if we lose our house here than their wouldn’t be a new low rent option for us.

Still we have the douplex and triplex option too.

This video isn’t about Montreal, if you want to help translate email me

That’s what’s been happening, and it’s not bringing in enough supply. Also what happens is those occasional spots end up having to be very dense because it’s the only place in the whole area. Then people complain about condos.

@@PaigeMTL That sounds terrible, what do we do then? Just building whole new neighbourhoods entirely? Social housing?

@@justsamoo3480 well this series is going to wrap up with a few videos that are very solution focused, these earlier videos are focused on the "Admitting we have a problem" stage. I'm stoked you're asking this question, because that's the open mind necessary to solve this and you have raised one solution. What would it take for a new neighbourhood to get your approval?

Also more density doesn't have to mean taller buildings. Watch Ecogecko's latest video for examples on how to build higher density suburbs.

They are bad for walking because the population exploded during the age of the automobile and the continent provided seemingly endless cheap space that citizens could drive to. Europeans just had different inputs, unless of course you’re saying there’s something superior about Europeans?

@@PaigeMTL That's only really adjacent to my point. You can find old photos of pretty much any American city pre WWII which show something that urbanists today dream of, but if you look at the same shots now you'll probably just see a car park. The cities existed before the car, and were good before the car, and they were demolished for the car (and sometimes racism). Much of Europe was demolished during the war (often by other Europeans), which gave a great opportunity to rebuild for the car, and many cities embraced that. The difference is that much of Europe (but not all) realised this was a mistake decades ago while much of North America (but not all) has continued to embrace car dependence. I don't think there's anything inherently superior about Europeans, I just prefer the (generally) European approach to this issue.

You want me to form my opinions by looking at a photo of say Montrose when the metro had a population of 500k and then look at the place today and go, man these people are so dumb! They should be like a European city that had to deal with 0.3% population growth during the age of the automobile? I can't believe that this (now) 6.5 million person sunbelt oil processing metropolis is finding it way harder than some European museum exhibit of a city to course correct for urban planning mistakes. I like European urbanism too, that's why I live in Montreal, but I don't go dumping on Toronto and thinking they're dumb for just being a product of trends and forces. It's been hard enough correcting the mistakes made during the auto-centric doubling of Montreal's population, Toronto grew 6 times over in the same time period. So I just give them a thumbs up when they go the right direction, and believe that with time they'll get it right, they're smart people and lots of people are working on it there. They just have way more work to do and I'm lucky to inherit the upside of a fairly flat population in a historic city.

@@PaigeMTL North American cities were built for the car is a myth (or I'll concede as far as it being an oversimplification to the point of being misleading). Those cities existed before the car andthey could've kept going without car dependence, but instead they built racially motivated car dependent suburbs around the existing cities while demolishing the existing (at that point mostly minority occupied) urban neighbourhoods to make way for highways and car parks. You don't really need to bring Europe into the argument at all, it would've been great if North America kept what it had and built upon it, as happened in New York and Montreal for example. There are more examples of this in Europe which is why you might look there for that style but it's not exclusively European. Japan's population also exploded post WWII and they also didn't fall into the trap of car dependance. My second comment referred to Ecogecko's video which does have a heavy focus on Europe, because that's where the style of development he talks about has mostly happened, and I think that sort of thing would work well (among a wider range of "missing middle" housing) in North America. I am not aware of anything in that style that currently exists there, but I believe there is one being planned or built in Arizona at the moment. I don't know why you're getting so stuck up about Europeans supposedly telling you what's right for NA. That's not the point I'm trying to make (although I might've said a bit in that direction since the first comment). I'm not even trying to argue (with my original comment) that the path NA has gone down is a bad one (although I do think that), it's purely that saying American cities were built post car is wrong, and its something that those weird pro car dependence people like to say as an excuse for why car dependence is inevitable in NA.

A bit more density benefits everyone, even suburbanites will have shorter commutes because the suburbs will be smaller and thus more people can be closer to downtown without being there

I somewhat agree as long as people are willing to let cities be cities and suburbs be suburbs. The issue that we run into though is suburban commuters who get cities plowed over with highways and only treat those cities as a place to commute to rather than peoples homes. Car can be king in the suburbs if that's what people desire, but the resistance to taking transit into the city rather than driving and not respecting the lives of urbanites is a serious problem in American cities. We build these giant urban freeway projects to accommodate commuters in cities and its gross. I feel like we should take the Paris approach that commuters shouldn't be considered in decision making and that anyone who enters Paris needs to respect the city and abandon their cars at the doorstep.