Thanks for the 20k, ya rascals. I suppose I should probably get a Twitter account now, like the cool kids. Seriously though we need to stop placing everything we need to get to really far away from us, of our own accord. So Nonsensical. So Preposterous. So foolish.
Lol. You've put my home town of Mississauga on your video 😭😭. The map is great, but the walkscore is flawed because Dundas and Hurontario has a lot of Rental office space and stores. Many of these stores and offices and temporary and cannot be found on Google, thus a skewed score. Nonetheless Mississauga is trying its best to encourage mixed-use enviornments. Being built as an upper-middle class city, its suburban as hell compared to Toronto.
Dr. UrbanDoctor u have been promoted from the diagnostic department to the surgery dp. The concrete trucks and bulldozers outside call us if dynamite is needed
I live in Russia and have 3 grocery stores all accessible within a 2 minute walk from my 60 years old 5 storey building. Such an odd feeling hearing about problems that I never even imagined exist.
Soviet urban planning was actually pretty good. I've been in the Moscow metro and I think it's amazing. Other communists/socialist countries like pre-nazi Austria also did some good urban planning (Vienna being the best example). While I don't completely agree with the ideology, I respect the quality of their urban planning.
Not only grocery stores, but like, everything one would need - schools, kindergartens, clinics, gyms, hair salons, etc etc - all within 10-15 minutes of walk
Or, y'know, rural areas exist too. Or areas that hard for transportation, I.E. Alaska. I could walk to a gas station in probably about..10-15 minutes, crossing a divided highway with no place to legally cross(in the middle of a southern summer), or I could drive to Walmart in the same time or less, with A/C and playing music loudly. Or just, yknow, hit a grocery store on the drive home from work instead of going out of the way.
At least good news in many American cities and people starts to realized it's a good idea anymore and try to change it to be more pedestrian-friendly. It will be a long way to redo mistakes from half a century ago but a least it's a start. Hopefully, American people can finally enjoy a good old walkable city soon.
It's very weird and interesting viewing the world from a European perspective. Most of our urban centers were established centuries ago and have kept the same structure whilst the rest of the world opted for a very different way of planning cities. I could go into this deeper but it would be way too long for a youtube comment, yet I wanted to express this little curiosity of mine.
as a german american cities just look weird to me. I'm used to cities being built compact with everything available within walking distance, may it be busses, trains, shops , barbers etc.pp. If it's not in walking distance it's just a short bus or train ride away. The whole idea of not having anything within walkong distance to me just sounds absolutely horrible :P For example currently where I live I have within 10 minutes of walking 1 small supermarket, 2 bakerys, 2 barbers, 1 icecream store, 2 small foodplaces, a car mechanic , driving school , interior design shop , a dentist, a vet, 2 normal doctors, a feet-care thing, dry cleanersm post-station and the list goes on... and it isn't even a major citie or anything, it's actually more on the outskirts :P
This video makes me realize just how lucky I am to have basically everything within walking distance of my house. America really does have a habit of inventing problems that shouldn't even exist.
Yeah, I'm from a small town in the Netherlands, and I don't really need a car (sure it makes some things more convenient, but it isn't a necessity for daily life). A grocery store, my GP, and the pharmacy are within walking distance. Same with primary schools, several stores that aren't primary needs, and some sporting facilities. Everything else (including my university and another university) I might need can be found in the city which is like half an hour cycling. I LOVE it.
maaan this video is dope, I grew up outside of the states, so for me, driving to parks and shop plazas is weird and impractical as hell. I miss being a walking distance from everywhere i need to go
I cannot imagine the culture shock that people would having if entering into that kind of world of Euclidean zoning. I had like, reverse culture shock after leaving my relatively walkable university area.
@@theurbandoctor787 I had culture shock also from working outside North America for about 10 years and then coming back where I couldn’t walk anywhere. and no public transport. !!! I didn’t have the culture shock until I returned.
In a way, you want every neighborhood to function like a semi-independent village. You don't need everything there, but having a small supermarket, bakery, butcher, greengrocer, pub, primary school, restaurant, gas station, small park and community center all within walking distance really helps a lot. It lowers the required number of car trips, meaning you need less car infrastructure, leaving more space for trees and walking areas, which really improves the "feeling" of the neighborhood.
@@rogerwilco2 Currently it is a bit necessary. Some people may use things like lawn mowers which could take gasoline. But in the near future I definitely think it would be best to not have any gas stations.
@@bobthebox2993 up until very recently, gasoline mowers were more effective than electric mowers because they both spun at a higher rpm and had more torque on the blade compared to electric mowers, because for an electric mower to be able to outperform a gasoline mower it used to take a much larger and heavier battery.
Yeah it's actually difficult to overstate the role of politics in urban planning. Which is sort of too bad, because a lot of the issues are, in my opinion, fairly non-partisan. Chuck Marohn does a great job of exploring the senselessness of political dichotomy in urban planning in his Strong Towns book.
There's really not a "car culture". Culture implies a willing assembly of people. What we have between people and cars in North America is a shotgun marriage. But the lack of choice has become so ingrained the collective psyche that it seems normal and people can't envision alternatives. It's almost like a version of Stockholm Syndrome.
To give you a sense of what it's like as an American: I was in my mid-20s when I stopped driving due to financial reasons and it literally made some places unlivable. Combined with bad public transit (one city I lived in didn't have buses run on Sunday or anytime after 7pm) I would find myself walking for upwards of an hour every day and would be the only person navigating concrete seas built for cars. I often found myself in an environment that wasn't just not built for human beings, but actively hostile to anything that wasn't a car. I live almost entirely indoors because it's too much of a hassle leave for anything outside I don't absolutely need to survive. My major dream for a living situation is just a place where I can walk to work and the grocery store. That's it. I have no aspirations for my living situation behind that
@@watsonwrote Is there anything that would stop you from building a tiny grocery store in a residential area? Here in Poland you often see people running a tiny store in the front, next to the street and their house behind it, deeper in their lawn. It is especially common to see in rural areas, but you can also see it in big cities' residential zone with mostly single family houses too.
Where we used to live in Seabrook NH, our house was in a nice neighborhood with sidewalks, granted we were miles away from the nearest shopping place, but it was pretty nice. In the later years we were there, they constructed a massive lobster processing plant behind our backyard which shook the house with its low-pitched noise. We were not consulted about it because by measuring the distance it takes to get from our house to their plant by road, it was long enough for them to consider it “not an issue”(???) so basically, this Euclidean zoning can even fail at the one thing it was meant to achieve, separating the people from the industry. Ugh.
Environmental issues should always consider "as the crow flies" distances, and prevailing wind patterns. But I find that in a lot of the USA, these laws are written by big industry lobbyists. I live in "Groningen, NL", look it up on the site he mentions. I live in a suburb on the outskirts, and I still have most shops within 5 minute walking distance, a reasonable garden (300 sq. m, 3200 sq. ft.), a garage for my car, several parks and a marina nearby, and great public transport and bicycle infrastructure.
College towns (speaking about Durham and Hanover, NH. Idk about others) are nice because they often have grocery shopping and food right near the campus, in walking distance
As a Berliner this is very fascinating to me. I often complain about the way germany rebuilt its cities after WW2 to be "car friendly" (aka sucky) but i never even realized how atrocious resedential areas become when taking that philosophy to the extreme. I couldve never imagined a restaurant or shop in the bottom floor of an apartment building to be anything special at all. Great video btw
I agree. I hate driving and wasting money on gas and car insurance an there a chance I could get in a car wreck and die. If I do survive the wreck I spend money to fix or buy a new car and then my insurance goes up.
@@YujiUedaFan I’m somewhat paraphrasing another comment I saw here: Let’s say I wanted to lend a friend who lives on the other side of town my lawnmower. Without a car that is very difficult. Or let’s say I wanted to buy supplies from the hardware store to build my son a treehouse. How am I supposed to do that without a car or truck? I understand what you say about cars isolating, urban Florida for example is a very depressing sight. But to make people live so close that they can’t even keep a car on the driveway is making them even less free in my opinion. So I think urban environments should be spacious enough to be comfortable and enable the benefits that cars provide, while at the same time not being so vast and isolating that your kids can’t even walk to school. This pic is a good example I think: c8.alamy.com/comp/D3RAJD/pittsburgh-suburb-area-from-1980s-pittsburgh-pennsilvanya-area-archival-D3RAJD.jpg
@@baileyharrison1030 You've never been to the UK have you. It's getting increasingly rare to be able to park on the same road as your house here. Not all houses have the space for a driveway either, which means you sometimes need to drive a few roads away and even THEN you may not be able to park there due to parking permits being restricted to zones. Some zones also only allow parking up to 8AM and then you have to drive around for 2 hours if you don't have a job. Additionally, roads are made narrower here than the US, so the majority of roads that have parking on both sides have incredibly narrow areas you can drive on. This means if you want to go one way and another car is going the other, you or they have to back up to the end of the road or to the closest parking space. To remedy this, some roads were made wider by shortening front gardens (at least for houses that HAD front gardens). Suburban cities of Australia and US are completely different worlds to the cities of UK and Europe. What I learn to put up with here, some may not even be able to handle. Thankfully right now I live in a converted house that not only has a driveway, but also has parking on both sides of the road AND there's comfortable space for cars to go in either direction. The only downside is the constant flow of traffic because it's one of the only main roads to get in/out of the city.
@@baileyharrison1030 i don't think hauling things has to be an issue without a car and to think they are required to haul anything bigger than what you can hold in your hands is a bit uncreative imo, i think there are solutions (though I'm not aware of any cities that have them yet) to to move heavy or large items without a car Now of course there'd always be the option of owning a vehicle for the occasional time you need it or borrowing or renting a vehicle or asking someone who can move it for you even in post-car cities, i don't think anyone is advocating for the complete eradication of cars as a whole including utility vehicles, i think people only want to get rid of cars as a centerpiece of city design and the requirement and common use of them for personal transport But as an idea for what i said at first, in a city without cars i could imagine utility carts for moving around large heavy objects becoming common, and options on public transport services (either as it's own service or potentially as a part of the regular system) to be able to carry these carts across the city with the ease as pulling and strapping it on (i don't see why buses or rail systems couldn't have an area on the back big enough to carry some large items)
Correct. I spent a month in Graz, Austria and that's essentially what it looked like. Walk, bike, or take the tram for long trips. Cars were for out of town trips. It was glorious.
The way Soviet cities were built, with a lot of convenience stores and shops in the ground floor of multi-storey houses and with enough place for comparatively small malls to be built nowadays is pretty nice too.
Now I know why I hate my new house in the suburbs so much more than my childhood house that was built 150 years ago I miss you Fort Plain. You may have been filled with cracked roads, but you had charm.
"Charm" is definitely the word. We need more of that. Cheers. Hope you find a home that you love sime day, and I think learning about urbanism is a great way to start that journey :)
@@Chad.Commenter yeah lol that ain’t fun and it’s got problems but being able to walk to most places and within 5-10 minutes purchase things you need and seeing people every where and the wider side walks are nice. Way nicer than feeling dependent on a car and driving every where and not being able to walk home after a night with friends lmao did we watch the same video
@@nottsoserious yeah! I don’t think people understand we have the right to criticize the subway but that it’s way worse I’m other cities, and driving is just as annoying in other places lol both things can be true
Fun fact, Surveyed Australians want cities to be more walkable by an overwhelming majority, but when asked very few of them want to live next to pedestrian thoroughfares (footpaths between houses that cars can't go on).
I find that very strange, because in the UK whole sections of London are being essentially shut down because posh people don't want cars down their roads. It's caused havoc on the remaining roads and made rush hour even worse.
@@EvilParagon4 Which is strange since the population of Australia is smaller than even Tokyo. Though speaking of Tokyo, it also favours the old fashioned approach to city building (if a bit TOO much). This proves just how well it works and makes countries stronger.
@@YujiUedaFan I've not been to Tokyo myself but I've heard about the way it's setup and how it favors the mixed zoning style so things like neighborhood stores are quite common to find, and generally it sounds like a nice place to live despite the sheer size of that city due in part to that (as well as having extensive public transport) quite frankly i wish i could live in a place like Tokyo, as i'd rather not have to drive if i really don't have to, but instead i live dead in the middle of rural america, a place that is quite frankly one of the worst in terms of car dominance and lack of public transit it doesn't look like I'm escaping this crappy carscape any time soon either, and no public transit so sooner or later I'm going to be left with no choice but to learn to drive if i want to be able to get anywhere at all (i only get away with not being able to drive because i never leave the house and rely on the family members i live with)
Nope. It's really sad and horrible. It is not even allowed because of the zoning codes. And often the shops that do exist are horrible. Go look up the concept of a "Food Desert" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
Really? Im in Nyc and theres a elementary school and two groceries stores in walking distnece to me! (Albeit, one is not in the neighborhood and mine is very closed off cause robert mosses or somthing)
My moms house is walking distance from 4 other houses. The next street will take you a half hour. And the corner store will take over an hour to walk to. But there’s also nothing urban about that area. Property is measured in dozens of acres.
I took a class on this subject, when the professor told us on day 1 that we would be discussing zoning laws and use of private/public space I thought I was going to hate it, by the end of the semester I had been thoroughly indoctrinated and now passionately believe in human friendly city design
I agree totally but there was 1 big industry that messed up things and still can. Guess who diverted funds from public transit to more roads? Guess who pushed the idea of such harsh divisions in land use? If you guessed the automotive industry, you'd be spot on. Sad that an industry had so much say in development as opposed to the people that actually lived there..
Also megacorps. They dont make as much profit if people can buy stuff from local, independant stores. Usa is corporate hell and their society suffer from it
@@evoluxman9935 Albert heijn, something like walmart but in the Netherlands, has smaller shops all over the place. Sometimes they even have independent stores. Pretty sure that with mixed zoning said megacorps could do something similar.
@@JoJoVD I live in Belgium, right next door neighbour! And indeed, we do have smaller supermarkets all over the place. But they have to compete with more specialised local retailers, like your baker that may make more expensive bread but much better, etc... Which I believe is a much more healthy economy where you have generalist supermarkets but smaller businesses are still able to be relevant. Suburban zoning in America simply kills anything that cannot build mega-stores.
I live in a small european city and the way american suburbs are built seems weird to me , i live 5 min away from a general store by foot and There are countless pubs and places to eat There, the suburbs here have great public transit coverage and those suburbs also have some sort of cluster with bakeries, snacks and stuff like that and There is large stores wich are accessible by foot and in the middle of résidential areas , i just cant understand why you would build something people need far away from people
I know American history, essentially the main reason is to isolate away from black people (and to a lesser extent poorer Irish and Italians at the time) who usually occupy the downtown centers. The goal was never sensible development. Suburbs are synonymous with white flight during the 1960s civil rights movement.
@@Rudenbehr hmm quite different from here where black people, among others, came as immigrants wich where welcomed as a workforce and despite some tensions integrated well with the place.
@@Rudenbehr to be fair, i think its just a poor excuse to justify a poor system called "zoning regulation". Europe had their own "black" ppl. for almost 8 and a half centuries. Their are called Jews and Muslims. Up until the end of the 19th century many of them didnt even allowed to ENTER most cities (let alone live there). And European cities/towns standing where their are for almsot 3 times longer than the oldest US town/city (and we didnt talked about the oldest European cities yet then). In my opinion (based on the many video i seen in this topic) the real reason is more economical behind this butchery: promoting (or more like forcing) a car-centric life for everyone. If you think about it its make sense, the car industry become theworkhorse of the US between 1900-1970, and in wartime these factories could be converted into tank/airplane/whatever factories (which alligned with the "Arsenal of Democracy" doctrine too). So making as big of a market as possible for the automobile industry was a big priority.The "racial" segregation was just a convenient side-effect of this entire project. And today the only thing mainaining this Zoning bs.is confortism, nothing more - it cost lot of money and lot of work to redo the entire mess the US government made - work which nobody willing to do and moeny which nobody willing to spend.
I live in a suburb in Canada and I consider myself EXTREMELY lucky to have a grocery store and shopping plaza within a 15-20 minute walk. But we are the only people who seem to walk to do these errands in our neighbourhood, and there are no sidewalks leading to the businesses so we need to be wary of cars.
Wow, as someone living in the UK I never even realised that this could be a thing 😧 We don’t even really have zoning in any formal way at all. Even in the poshest residential parts of my city, there are businesses dotted about, and the new shopping mall is built with residential areas above it.
Right! Most of the new expensive flats near me (central London) all have public shops on the ground floor like Tesco, co-op etc. or cafés. Even the ones in Canary Wharf are like this!
@@MattGDesign We have planning permission and consents to change of use etc for individual building, but zoning itself mostly isn’t a thing here (outside of some specific business or industrial parks). It’s expected, and mostly positively encouraged, that most areas will be mixed use to a greater or lesser degree, and it’s down to individual builders and owners to plan the details.
Yeah I think it's important to show that smaller cities can be just was walkable, if not more so, than larger ones. I've had many conversations with people who aren't as "into" urbanism, where someone will claim "Of course ______ is walkable / bikeable / has good transit, there are like x,000,000 people living there!". Yeah sure, population will help, especially for making top tier public transit, but design and layout are much more important for basic walkability/bikeability.
I wonder if having thousands of students living in the older part of town encourages more walkable zoning and services. I lived there for 5 years, and never needed a car. Everything was a 15-minute walk / bike ride / bus ride.
I love how he says "This is a pub in the middle of a local neighbourhood!" As if this is some strange revelation. Is it really so rare in the US? In the UK there's usually more than one "local" for any given house
@@arg31ify i am underage! although i think we either have a designated driver or we just go to the liquor store snd get drunk at home...neither of which really replicate the experience
I attest to this. I used to live in the US and now I live in a medium density*(I'm not sure of the actual zoning policy) area in Tokyo. There are often businesses under the 4~5 story housing and it makes life wonderful. I can get to ~6 restaurants/bars, 2 grocery stores, 2 convenience stores, a hair salon, a post office, a train station, in under a minute walking. Just about anything I didn't list here like a hospital, school (elementary/middle/high/college), city ward office, and all sorts of entertainment and service business are all within about 10~20 minutes walk. I almost never hear any bothersome noises from outside. The area is pleasantly active in the mornings and during the day but never crowded. I pay about 800USD a month for about 250 square feet (24 square meters). It's safe to say that allowing businesses to be intertwined with residential areas makes quality of life go way up.
"ideally this distance equates to a 10-15 minutes walk for 90% of the people in the city" well, duh, that's how cities work... in any sensible country.
@@DueySR I grew up in a village of about 60 people. It doesn't have any shopping. We have to drive to one of the nearest towns. They are 5-10k people, so they have plenty of shops and stores. I remember the first time I came to America, me and my friend were walking around hungry in downtown San Francisco thinking: "Where the hell do Americans buy food?"
Yeah honestly it's been slow for me the past few days. I tried googling that to see if others were having similar problems with it, but didn't come up with anything. I suppose this video won't help matters lol.
Last time I checked it 8 was discouraged to see that all cities in my area are “car dependant cities”. Except for like some areas in Montreal, but there the smaller and crapiest houses are the same price as huge houses in other cities…
@@unemilifleur the city I liked most in North America was Quebec City. And some of the older towns are quite nice, Niagara-on-the-lake is lovely. But in my country of the Netherlands, that is standard. I think *most of our country* scores a 80+ on that Walkscore site. My city of "Groningen, NL" scores a 97, even the suburb where I live scores 89.
@@rogerwilco2 Thanks for your comment! I'm currently living in Sherbrooke because I just finished university and I love it here. It's a lot more walkable and bikeable than other cities and public transport is actually nice, but it's still considered a ''car dependent city'' so I can't really imagine how the Netherlands are. I've never been that much in Quebec city (I'm from Centre-du-Québec and my family is there), but I'll check it out!
A few years ago I lived in a very mixed zoning neighborhood, I loved it so much, in walking distance I had groceries, restaurants, and services and barely needed my car. I got to know my neighbors and neighborhood because of all the walking I did, and honestly I didn't even know how nice it was until I left.
Nice video! I hope the court of public opinion shifts to liking this mixed zoning structure. I know I know I would love to walk to the store instead of having to drive 10 minutes
It doesn't need much of a push. The fact that the few areas that are walkable are in such demand that only rich people can afford to live in them means there is pent-up demand.
@@gildone84 AFAIK the majority demand as measured by percent increase for real estate are Idaho (especially Boise), Montana (especially Bozeman now called Bozangeles), and Florida. None of those places are particularly walkable.
In pretty much any city in Germany, you can walk to a store to get just about anything you need in a few minutes. When I was in a small city in the US, it took us an hour or more to walk to that commercial area and we had to cross a four laned highway without any pedestrian walkway. Seemed crazy to me.
Niemand läuft in Amerika. Man fährt mit dem Auto. Und die meisten kaufen für 1 oder 2 Wochen ein auf einmal. Was mich immer an Deutschland gestört hat war das alle die Lebensmittelladen die fast identische Sortimente hatten. Ich finde gut dass die US laden gross sind and viel Auswahl haben.
Hi, I don't know if you'll be reading this, but if you do, I just want to tell you that I greatly appreciate your channel. You, along with other similar channels like City Beautiful and Not Just Bikes, have introduced me to something that I as an American have never been taught before. It has become so ingrained in North American lifestyle that most people think it's just normal. But now, after visiting 8 other countries(Mexico and 7 European countries), and after watching your channel, I now realize that is not the case. I was already planning on going to law school, but now, after your inspiration, I plan on double majoring, also studying for a masters degree in urban planning. So I want to thank you for all your hard work and inspiration. I hope your channel continues to grow and reach more people and help make a difference.
Doing some charity work, I’ve learned about the concept of the “food desert.” Basically, people live in an area where they cannot readily access things like grocery stores. I’ve even experienced what it’s like to live in one in my freshman year of college. 45+ minute bicycle rides to a Walmart or Target, through areas with zero sidewalks and wide, high speed roads. I was lucky I had a meal plan and only needed to bike like that when I couldn’t bum a ride in someone else’s car.
I found your channel here, and now I have subscribed and watched every other video you have. Very good, I am looking forward for more videos from you. Your idea about making videos address the many problems we have with current urban places, is a brilliant idea, and I don't know why no one else has done this, again very good, thank you.
My town is an old British New Town from after WW2, and the neighbourhoods are very nice and walkable, you can go anywhere on foot in my town and there’s quite a few places you can’t even go to in a car, there’s lots of footpaths between the different closes and streets, with available public transit and convenient placement of zoning, every group of closes has a small local parade so within 5-10 minutes there’s a shopping area with a school, a pub, and a church alongside; originally these parades were original specifically laid out to have exactly one of each shop type you need, e.g. a greengrocer, a butcher, a fish and chips shop, and a tool shop, and so on, including mixed use apartments above the shops. I didn’t realise how bad it was in a lot of places until recently as I’ve always taken it for granted that within 20-30 minutes of me there’s 3 train stations (the closest is 10 minutes away), several parks, several bus stops, numerous primary schools, a few secondary schools, many playschools, a technical college, tons of shops, a mall, the downtown area, a theatre, and basically every service a town would need.
Oh my gosh this man has completely explained this odd feeling I have in the States! I visited Europe and I came back totally discontent with the way my neighborhood was and I couldn’t explain why
I discovered your channel with your last video, and this one confirmed that you're running a wonderful channel! Keep up this quality work and analysis, I love it!
When we lived in Mexico we noticed that every other corner has a convenience store or restaurant. So the only time you ever needed a car was to go to a different city. Many of them houses that also worked as shops. Then we went back to the stupid US suburban cities where you need a 10 minute drive just to leave the street maze.
Walk Score is what’s having me looking at different places to live now that I switched jobs to one that has an office downtown (Denver). It would have a walk score of 95 (I see some that are 99) vs 48 where I am now. (Their site seems to be struggling at the moment. Getting 504 errors.)
Yeah I've been struggling with their site now too. Hopefully they can get it sorted soon, and hopefully it just means a lot more people are interested in walkability! Hopefully you can use it to you advantage, but honestly a score of 48 isn't too bad for the States.
Most places in my country have a score over 80, ny own suburb scores 89, and the centre of the city scores 97. I live in "Groningen, NL" and consider it one of the best cities to live, in the world. I liked Quebec City in North America, and Niagara-on-the-lake for an example of a small town. It is possible in the USA and Canada.
i live in EU in a small town, in a 5 floor building. In my building one apartment is transformed into massage busines. In the building acros the street thers several apartments transformed into pet store, weding dress store and newly build toy store. I have minimarket and super market in 5-7 min walking distance, mini park in 4min distance, and outdoor compleks of woleyball, tennis and outdor training near a river with changing cabinets to take a swin in a river about 10 mins away. (though bastards didnt built a beach! its all grass and no one swims there.) my parents took me to kindergarden on foot, its 12 mins away, i always walked to school for 12 years for like 15 min. I eaven charish thous memories, walking to and from school with class mates. Stoping at a hill for a winter slide down on our backpacks :D. Bunching at the kiosk for bubble gum or candies.
People got mad for the pi mistake, like jesus relax do you really think he does not know that? It was just an honest mistake, he was more focused on the big picture of the video and not on a little obvious fact that everyone knows. Chill out :)
Likely they had some larger disagreement and grabbed on to some specific thing to convince others the rest of their argument is invalid or based on flawed facts. But yeah some folks just like to show how smart they are because they can correct people on obvious things.
There's also hospitals. In my city, there are 4 hospitals, all about 7 miles away from my house. Three of them are within a mile of each other, and the other is two miles from that. The three closest to each other are huge.
Average North American Virgin: I don't want commercial near my house, it's noisy Me, Average Brazilian Chad: Bruh, I live between a bar and a hair saloon and the only noise I hear in my house comes from the fan in my bedroom. Also I live 4 blocks away from my job.
I live in a residential area and it does resemble a mini suburb but I'm still a less than 15 minute walk away from a church, supermarket, pub, another supermarket, two schools and several restaurants restaurants so all of this just sounds kind of crazy to me
I live in Belgrade, Serbia. I have shopping mall at 7 minutes walk, bus terminus at 3 minutes walk (lines with great connections), small store across the street, 2 fruit and vegetable store near it, a butcher shop, a bakery, an open market, burger shop, drink store and a Chinese store. There is also big parking lot with garages too, centre of my blok is a small park with playgrounds for children.
Another advantage of this mixed used zoning is that the business are smaller and less cost-intensive giving more people the opportunity to start their own business. This is great for the local economy as it creates better jobs and wealth within the community itself.
As a Brit, the fact that large parts US don't have schools, parks(yes multiple) and pubs/cafés/corner shops within walking distance of your houses is just baffeling to me....hell its far from uncommon to also have a clinic, restaurants (in addition to a fast food restaurants), takeaway and a petrol(gas) station also within walking distance over here...
Also sometimes it takes 3 hours to get to and from school both ways in the US! That's 6 hours every weekday in a bus... it's funny, because they never show you THAT in the shows.
@@YujiUedaFan I googled what you said because I was curious. And it seems that those bus routes only happen in really rural areas, not suburban sprawl. This bus driver has a 100 mile trip lol: c8.alamy.com/comp/D3RAJD/pittsburgh-suburb-area-from-1980s-pittsburgh-pennsilvanya-area-archival-D3RAJD.jpg
@@baileyharrison1030 Also they have to wind around roads, which takes even longer to get to school than simply getting a parent to drive a kid to school.
I kinda like the village/small town life better then the corporate consumer city... like... why not just get our own coffee products? Make our own dinner? And have our own backyard? Why does EVERYTHING have to rely on some Corporation to lobby a Politician to give these things to us? Why are we as humans SO reliant on a consumerist society to provide everything then make it ourselves?
This is just how Hong Kong works. Pretty much every residential building has a shop or two underneath. This is just how it’s been done for decades here, and it’s absolutely amazing. I would never live in a city that isn’t like this.
100%! Back in Europe I genuinely didn’t need to own a car. Now I live in America , I have to. I’d love to walk and cycle everywhere but what am I supposed to do, spend 3 hours walking to get a sandwich?
If you find the right city in the US, it’s definitely possible. I live close to one (actually went to college there) where there is a sizable population of people with no cars. And it’s not NYC either.
@@JayVal90 yeah I've lived places where everything you need is within reasonable walking distance and also lived places where the closest store was a 15 minute drive. It just depends.
My hometown is a perfect example of this. The downtown area, which was originally built in the 20s and 30s, has a lot of mixed-use developments, with businesses and services within walking distance. Across the freeway from downtown, and you’ll find the large shopping plazas and enormous, soulless residential tracts; these areas were built much more recently. It’s an interesting contrast that I hadn’t given much thought to before this video; but it makes so much sense now that I think about it. I’m sure glad to live downtown
Heh, as someone who: - grew up and currently lives in Mississauga - has worked full-time in Toronto - went to school in Kingston I can definitely agree with what you're saying in this video. Ever since falling down an urban planning rabbit-hole on RU-vid, I keep on noticing things about my surroundings that make me go "hmm.. wouldn't it be nice if this was organized a little less around cars?"
One issue: mixed use zoning is still subject to greed. I live in a mixed use development that was built in 1950s to 1970s and funded probably a decade before that. City then was 70k people. Now it is 330k people. All of the new developments are massive communities with very dense residential areas and no support (stores, restaurants, etc). My community is one of the few commercial areas. The old businesses: butcher, bakery, urgent care, destist, hardware store, and preschool have gone. Life before 2008 was awesome. Everything was here. I could get a roast for dinner, a toilet plunger, go to the dentist, and see my friends in under an hour. It was also AFFORDABLE. No reason to lease out massive spaces with gigantic parking lots. However, investors saw the growth of my city and saw the chance for far more lucrative opportunities. Now there are boba shops with hour long lines and and a seemingly endless rotation of high dollar restaurants people commute 30 minutes to come visit. Now I have to commute from my mixed zoned area just to go to the dentist or buy a toilet plunger. I think my experience is the heart of all nimbyism because my neighbors feel the same way.
I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and THIS is why I never felt like the place had much of a shared culture! You don't see the city, you just drive through it on errands! Thank you for this piece of understanding! Looking forward to living somewhere walkable and community-oriented.
Unfortunately i think most city builder games are designed around the American model of cars and urban sprawl But cities skylines is generally pretty easy and hard to fail in when you get big enough so best of luck making a city in this style
my family lives in the middle of a small town, on a one-way street in europe. within a 10 minute walk you can get literally anything. clothes, food, electronics, doctors of all kinds, medication, dildos, you name it.
Ayyyyy I know of the Northglenn Marketplace too well, haha. It's a nice plaza for what it is although it's still incredibly car centric with its massive parking lots. By far, one of my all time favorite restaurants is there, at the northeast corner, a buffet restaurant. Interesting thing with the plaza is that it goes deeper - It was a big, indoor shopping mall in the day (hence for cars to start with).
Feels like there’s a distinction between commercial and industrial to be made. Keep industrial areas further away, while keeping commercial districts nearby.
i cant remember if it was on reddit or twitter where i saw this, but a lot of American cities are designed where cars are the standard unit of measurement rather than people being used as the standard unit of measurements. of course theres exceptions, i.e. smaller cities or very very old cities like Boston and New York
I live in Germany and I think the urban development here is so different because the big hubs of industry which were build in the last 150 years were cities before that. Cities like Cologne, Frankfurt or Hamburg are like 900 years old and had historical city centres build around walkability.
I’d love to see videos about ways to ease out of car dependency and towards what you are describing. In these types of videos no one ever seems to address questions like “I’m someone who owns a car and drives twenty minutes to work every day. What does my life look like as we start to change to a system more like what you describe? Or what do I do with my car if I decide to move to a transit/walking oriented city and get a new job?”
I do like the case he's made, just as a intellectual exercise I'd like you to make a video primarily focused on the virtues of the system we have adopted. There's definitely a little more to it than just tradition.
These videos generally are made by young, single people that don't have enough life experience to understand why people tend to move out of the city. Once you have multiple kids, the idea of walking or riding a bike everywhere for simple stuff is awful. I have 4 kids, and in the winter the last thing I want to do is walk with my kids to a grocery store through the snow and freezing temperatures, and buy enough things for my family of 6. In most places in the US, summers are significantly hotter and winters are significantly colder than most places in Europe, so designing suburbs around cars makes sense. As families grow, the desire for more space grows as well. Homes in urban cities are generally significantly smaller than homes in the suburbs. They usually lack private yards. As homes and yards get bigger, the natural result is a more spread out city. Sure, sometimes being car reliant is a hassle. But sometimes being bike and foot reliant is a hassle too. Different people have different priorities, and spread out, car dependant suburbs exist because millions of people prefer it that way.
Honestly one of my favorite towns to go to is Eureka Springs, Arkansas simply due to how intertwined it is. It is a little hard to get in and out due to it being on a large hill. But it’s so cool that you can walk from the bottom of the hill and just walk up the hill a bit and then there’s houses. I also like old Chicago for the same reason you can walk straight from some condos and houses to a couple of quaint strips of local business’s. Both of these areas are really pretty and nice and I think it’s simply because of some of the principles mentioned in this video.
You ignore the part where the commercial activity at 3 am wakes everyone in the immediate area. How the 6 am delivery destroys even the morning. And the people coming and going at 7 really is just annoying. It all sounds nice until suffer through this. It sucks. And frankly encouraging empty carbs is just bad public policy.
Where I live Houston,USA fails all of this.I wish it is Walkable but it’s not from my house to my school on car is 20 minutes(3 hours walking) And the nearest park with trees is a 30 min drive(4 hour walk) that’s why people get depressed because they are stuck in a box, driving through neighborhoods for 30 mins that looks exactly the same just for an open green space.
Great idea! Unfortunately I would say I am not nearly knowledgable enough to imbue such a video with any credibility whatsoever, but I will keep it in mind. Cheers.
@@theurbandoctor787 lol I think you're much more informed on urbanism than most people, so with some extensive research you could definitely pull it off! If you're uncomfortable possibly spreading misinformation though, it's perfectly ok to wait until you feel confident enough in your research. Gotta say though, you and a few other urbanism-focused channels have already got me questioning my major when I just commited to the university!😂 A career in urban planning sounds really interesting but also stress-enducing. Anyways, keep up the great work! I look forward to your videos and am delighted watching your channel grow.
As someone with no experience of the north american style suburban sprawl, I think it would be helpful to include some sort of sense of scale on the diagrams (like at 0:08), until you mentioned a football stadium I was imagining it on a completely different scale to what you meant
