"If a city actually has a lot of space decided to freeways, the message that sends is the city itself is less valuable than the time it takes to drive though it." That put it pretty perfectly.
Hello, Mexican viewer here, and former inhabitant of Guadalajara. The reason why we have so few highway-type roads is due to relatively low motor vehicle ownership until the 1970's or even later. There are a few "expressway" kind of road but it isn't fully segregated like American urban highways, they just have preference regarding traffic lights and overpasses to reduce interference with other avenues. In Mexico City, during the 1970s the mayor took to build a grid of such expressways (ejes viales) by widening older avenues and connecting them, but as entire neighborhoods were demolished it was a big political blunder that damaged the ruling party's reputation in the capital. In Guadalajara, one such avenue was built in 1973, Calzada del Federalismo, but is nowhere near a highway, we even call it the slowest expressway in town. I think they resemble more a Parisian boulevard (in function, not aesthetically) than American highways. Some expressways were built on former river beds, like the Viaducto Miguel Alemán in Mexico City, where the river was enclosed in a pipe. As for the Guadalajara ringroads, they were originally two-lane roads to avoid the city centre, and they were expanded over time with some frontage roads and underpasses, that's why the Periferico you showed has very different widths along the route. The other "highway" you showed as I-80 (Calzada Lázaro Cárdenas) was originally a bypass for heavy vehicles but the state governor also wanted it to be a expressway, and is the closest thing we have to a highway here.
I wonder how much the way administrative divisions work affected city planning. In Mexico, municipalities are responsible for urban planning, so it makes little sense to plan for roads outside the municipal border and more sense to build roads and infrastructure to keep people and jobs within the municipality.
@@alex21345 it is a problem with municipalities and in the few cities that are separated by state limits. The best example is Mexico City where you have an abismal difference between the former Distrito Federal and the State of Mexico. In Guadalajara is pretty much the same, some streets end up abruptly in municipal borders so the state government has to invest and plan there
@@CityNerd Actually Mexico City has been on a push to build elevated lanes (coloquially known as the _segundos pisos_, lit. "second stories") on its major highways, with the first section of the Periferico opening in 2006, and some as recently as 2012, with plans to build new elevated sections over existing highways in the northern and eastern inner suburbs (Insurgentes Norte, and Zaragoza or Periferico Oriente). Unfortunately this push means that, since the early 2000s, new transit projects have mostly been confined to new BRT lines, the fateful Metro Line 12, and, until more recently, a few cable car lines and purchasing of new trolleybuses. The Metro was pride and glory of the city, but now it's just an afterthought, and you won't hear many politicians supporting it because it is more closely associated withpoor service, overcrowding, decay and ugly neighborhoods around its stations, instead of its citywide benefits if service was improved and expanded. Since 1997, when the city first gained home-rule (being previously a federally-controlled district), and until 2018, the local and federal governments were always of different colors, and thus willingness to collaborate in expensive, long-term projects like rapid transit wasn't common. The only such case, Line 12, opened in 2012, but was born plagued with technical problems and accusations of corruption, and soon major repairs and closures had to be undertaken. Even if in 2018 both federal and local governments were again of the same color, the mindset had already changed deeply and the Metro was not a priority anymore. Later, the collapse of a section of line 12 in 2021 has, in my view, completely erradicated the possibility of any new Metro construction in the 2020s. Sorry, rant over. Thanks for your videos and for including Mexico in your analysis.
i have made this comment on so many other urban planning channels. why are the examples always the outlier countries of usa canada or australia? from mexico to argentina youll see cities that are both older and newer as those in those countries with other unique and sometimes troubling design. im sure the same could be said for africa and southeast asia!
@@cjoutright9255 Correct. DO NOT confuse a cultural and geographical region. Latin America is a CULTURAL region where languages that come from Latin are spoken, such as french, Spanish, and Portuguese. On the other hand, north and south America are GEOGRAPHIC regions that rely on factors such as size and the tectonic plates, and divisions. North and South America are divided at the Panama channel. From this, Mexico is a Latin American country located in North America, the same for Guatemala, Honduras, etc... P:D. Some people may even divie the Americas further and classify the countries between Guatemala and Panama as Central America.
I live in the medium sized city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, in northwestern México, (fairly dense city, quickly approaching 1M inhabitants) and we don't have anything like a freeway or similar, just some recent under and overpasses. But there has been some talks about a peripheral ring that could surround the city in the coming years, it would relief traffic issues that are becoming a problem. The reasons we don't have freeways are because mass car adoption came later in time, around 70s and 80s, cultural site protection laws and generally not having the same car culture as in the US. My city in particular has been heavily investing in pedestrian and bike safety, so, there's that at least, even thought we have one of the top car ownership percentage in the country. Cheers, new sub!
Thanks for the great comment! I see a lot of Mexican cities making moves with pedestrians and bike infrastructure that put most US cities to shame. I'll keep an eye out for Culiacán!
First of all, congratulations on the 1k subscriber milestone 🎉. Regarding the question, most of the highways in Mexico were built in the other municipalities of the metropolitan areas during the years of rapid expansion (which would count as American and Canadian suburbs, but much denser). For example, Guadalajara's ringroad is practically uninterrupted from Zapopan to Tlaquepaque (~35km), or Monterrey having most of them to connect San Pedro Garza, Apodaca, Guadalupe, and more with Monterrey proper. The central parts of most mexican cities were spared from highway construction (laws regarding protection of historical heritage), and the ones that were built were located in the outskirts at the time.
Thanks for the great background. I actually became annoyed while making this video that I didn't really know enough about the history of highway building in Mexico (or at least not as much as I know about US and Canada), so I've been reading up on it more. (Slightly difficult because my Spanish is a work in progress.) Now that you mention it, I want to learn more about the history of municipal boundaries in the big Mexican cities and interface with suburbs.
Its definitely okay to include Mexico in these videos! I think its ok to compare to them to US/C cities it terms of population and maybe size in some instances. But at the same time you are right about the part where you compare the Mexican cities to old European cities, as in keeping it a bit historic and not wanting to have many highways through the city. On top of what these fellow commenters have been saying already, but we for sure love to see Mexico included so we can all see the difference in the Mex/Can/US civil structure
Mexican here, I'm glad you included our cities in your video. I'm from a medium sized city called Tampico, in the Gulf of Mexico, and the closest thing to a freeway here would be a four lane road, it has controlled access but it's small and only conects to the neighboring city, also it's in the outskirts of the city.
hey Chicago native here, I take huge pride in not needing a car except maybe to get to some places in the suburbs. love the train and bus infrastructure even if it's not as nice as DC's metro. when friends come to visit they're usually shocked by how easy it is to get around to attractions and restaurants and neighborhoods all over the city with a CTA 3-day pass!
It hurts to call Chicago underrated because Chicago natives never shut up about their city, but really, if you haven't been there, you should go! Great city.
Fun fact, after Jane Jacobs had successfully organized against Robert Moses in NYC and helped get the Lower Manhattan Expressway cancelled, she moved to Toronto only to find it had its own massive urban highway plans. The Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway were built without opposition because they went through an industrial rail corridor and a river valley respectively. It wasn't until the Spadina Expressway was started that opposition was galvanized. With Jacob's help the highway opposition movement successfully halted construction on the Spadina Expressway, which ultimately killed the rest of the urban highways. The short 4 mile section that got built before cancellation lives on as Allen Road (but it's really an expressway).
"The Death and Life of Great Canadian Cities." I'm slightly embarrassed I didn't even mention Jane Jacobs in this video (after I mentioned Moses), but I already spent more time talking about NYC than I should've. Maybe it warrants its own video. Thanks for the additional background on Toronto -- didn't know that!
@@CityNerd I grew up on a section of the St. Lawrence River that got dammed and flooded in the late 50s to supply electricity to New York. The power dam is named The Moses-Saunders Dam, and where I lived in Ontario is the Lost Villages Region. Flooding the river also eliminated some rapids that prevented modern ships from reaching the Great Lakes. The navigational canals around the Great Lakes in both countries might be interesting to you.
I love your channel. I am an urban geographer and cartographer by trade and training. I knew before the video started that Vancouver BC would be number one and Kansas City would be last. I have spent time in both cities and I am not surprised. The interchange of 71 highway/I-470/I-435 in south Kansas City is truly mind bending. Thanks for mentioning it! There is a reason people love living in Vancouver BC., no freeways downtown!!
Hello from Columbus. The city gets its borders from the fact that it controls the water and sewer service and has made annexation a condition of receiving those services since the 1950s. However there are grandfathered township areas that remain as a patchwork. Columbus has made a *lot* of progress over the past 30 years at having nice urban neighborhoods such as the Short North and German Village. In particular, a highway cap was placed over I-670 and it has made a huge difference in removing the real and perceived barrier between downtown and SN/Victorian Village. We’re fortunate that the state DOT isn’t fighting us and has agreed to build a bunch more caps over the 70/71 split as that highway is improved. Hoping to end up with something a bit like the Big Dig in Boston without the astronomical cost, although this is still a near billion dollar project all in.
This is very welcome development. I remember seeing a picture of Düsseldorf, Germany with a highway going through it in the 90s, and the same place in 2019 with a nice park. What is usually conveniently left out is that the highway wasn't simply demolished, it was moved into a tunnel. In the end everyone won. The road is still there, and the above-ground environment is much nicer. We have the means to do something nice for everyone, but rarely have the political will.
@@dannylittle6766 There are some planning studies being done now to improve the corridor and/or create a bypass that would connect 23 to 71 north of delaware. In addition, I wish that columbus would consider a regional rail system as it has many exurbs and satellite cities like delaware, marysville, lancaster, and newark
On the bright side, the city seems to be attempting to improve their biking infrastructure. They are gradually linking the Scioto River trail to the Alum Creek Trail to carry USBR-21/USBR-50/OHBR-1 through the city, and have properly linked the Ohio State University to the city via OHBR-47 (Olentangy river trail)
Several neighborhoods within Cleveland city limits were annexed the same way pre-WW1. The day Cleveland decided to sell its water/sewer access to the suburbs was the day the city stopped growing geographically. Although I doubt any of them would dream that the city population a century later would be less than half what it was then.
I've lived in both Monterrey and Guadalajara. I didn't expect MTY to be higher in the list than GDL tbh. GDL have more Mass transit coverage, and MTY actually have a reputation of being the most car-oriented city in MX. Perhaps the outer ring from GDL + excluding neighboring cities are doing the trick here. Mty has not only 1, but 2 massive outer semirings northside. But only crosses MTY municipality for a couple miles. Nice content BTW, you got yourself one more Mexican suscriber.
Im glad you're including San Juan as a candidate your lists! You should do more North American cities. Ik most your viewers are English speakers but it's nice to be included ⭐️
I consider San Juan a US city, so I'll always include it! Even if I sometimes don't include other Caribbean cities in my "North American" videos. San Juan is very cool and unique...I'll talk about it when I can!
For honorary mentions, it would have been nice to hear more about smaller US cities that kept the freeways out of downtown (since that is where they do the most damage), like Lexington and Madison.
Mexican here (CDMX) this video appeared to me in recommendations and I am fascinated! I am also a city nerd, when I get bored I open Google Maps and see the transport systems of cities and their highways... keep it up!
Hi! I am a (newly subscribed) Mexican viewer, and I appreciate you include our cities in your research! Hope to see more of them in your upcoming videos! 👏🏻
I grew up in Vegas and I appreciate you bringing awareness to this! I had no idea for most of my life that there was any better alternative to the endless stroad grid that the city has. Since moving to a similar sized city w transit and walkable areas it has made going home bitter sweet as all I see is how far behind my hometown is. If you are in Vegas for a while, you should check out the water street district in Henderson. Allegedly it is going to be a more walkable/natural downtown for the city of Henderson. Or if you want to experience rage read about failed light rail plans... Ugh
Definitely glad to see some representation of Mexican cities on these lists, though I completely agree that they are so different to their American and Canadian counterparts, it almost doesn't make sense to compare them with. In my case, I lived in Guadalajara for 8 years and then moved to Phoenix a few years ago. And let me say... boy do I miss the walkability of Mexican cities. Sure, they aren't the best, and infrastructure can be messy. But there is a much higher level of social cohesion I think because of how much people walk or use public transportation. Everyone here talking about Mexican infrastructure bring up great points, though one thing I can add is I think there's also a large amount of opposition to car centric infrastructure in many Mexican cities. Guadalajara for example was starting to invest heavily on car-centric infrastructure in the early 2000s but has slowly reversed that course and has been building really good segregated bike paths, improved the bus system, and has been expanding the metro system. When Mexican cities do work on car-centric infrastructure, there's never talk of creating a "freeway", but rather just creating grade separations on busy interchanges, but without full access control. An avenue will just have a bridge to cross over a major signalized crossing and then continue being an avenue along the way. I don't think I've heard anyone mention "autopistas" in cities in Mexico at all. If anything, governments will use words like "via rapida" or "flujo libre". Mexican cities are basically bad copies of American cities (with tons of big box stores in dense urban areas) and bad copies of European cities (there's somewhat of a density but without the fantastic public transport to back it).
Hi, I’m from Columbus, OH. I read that one of the reasons our city is so oddly formed is because one the mayors from the 40s had a very aggressive form of annexation. Essentially if a community wanted to use water line, gas, sewage, etc., he forced them into joining the city so that the could use. It’s called water gun diplomacy. I think it’s still somewhat practiced today only now, new sub-divisions just claim Columbus since it the largest municipality.
Old Toronto’s only really ugly highway is the Gardiner between the Port Lands and the Humber River. All the other highways are in suburbs that were not built to be as walkable (or the Don Valley). Suburban Toronto still feels infinitely more walkable than any US city outside NYC.
Hi! I'm a new viewer from Mexico and I'm super thrilled that you do include our cities in the comparison lists. Regarding why the biggest mexican cities don't have highways there are some reasons: One is that a lot of city centers in Mexico are protected by the national institucion of anthropology and history and some are UNESCO's heritage sites so that's a no go for demolition and building new stuff. The second reason would be money, freeways and highways are very expensive to build and mantain and its just not feasible to have so many in here when it's not affordable. And the third reason I can think of is density. While suburbs do exist they're not as widespread as they're in Canada and the US. Mexico city being the outlier, having a huge commuting time and size, even bigger then some other american cities.
So happy to see Vancouver as the #1 city on this list. 😀 🇨🇦 I’m curious about where Boston and Portland landed in your rankings. Big congrats on 1000 subscribers!
I looked at 39 cities (metro pop > 2M...didn't include Toluca or Puebla, which I consider too far within the Mexico City influence area, or Riverside/San Bernardino, too far within the LA influence area). Portland ranked 16th, Boston...29th. I've had a couple people ask about Boston. Keep in mind I didn't give credit for freeways that are buried in tunnels, so you can definitely quibble with that.
@@CityNerd Yeah, I kind of understand the Boston ranking, at the same time the freeways being in tunnels really do help make them far less intrusive than in some of the cities on this list. The again, that might have to do with public transport availability. For example, even though Portland is higher on the list, I've had to use my car far more than in Boston because public transportation options are much more spread out and far less convenient to use.
this channel helped me decide that i want to be an urban planner. Ive started my first semester at a florida college so we'll see how much i ACTUALLY learn but, love your channel! keep it up. love earing lunch and watching you talk about the same nerdy crap i love too!
hey man, new subscriber here, quick tip, i think the capture software you use for google maps has it's brightness or contrast dialed way too high, it's causing the images to be super washed out, thus diminishing legibility a bit, the operations room yt channel had this problem too and they've solved it , i think you can too love the videos , keep up the urban planning content, i love it greetings from turkey (which probably makes me your first turkish sub i hope )
Big thanks for this comment. I'll look into it! Can't say for sure you're the first Turkish sub, but there's a good chance -- Istanbul definitely features in my Aqueducts video if you haven't seen it. 😀
As a Monterrey-based viewer, I can say that while we don't have many freeways, we do have some sort of continuous-flow roads that have spread widely in the last decades. They're all limited to 50km/h (31mph), sometimes 60 (37) but usual speeds vary between 70-110km/h (~45-70mph), 6 to 10 lanes wide with no pedestrian crossings except at intersections with an over or underpass, some have side lanes, some don't, and they often have curbside parking and a lot of driveways. Av. Paseo de los Leones and Av. Eugenio Garza Sada are great examples of this if you want to take a look. I consider them to be worse than freeways because they try to be one but they're merely a nice little road that got widened at some point to turn into that atrocity and has become unsafe for all modes of transport.
I just found this channel and I love it, been looking for channels that focus on urban design, and the likes, much like Not just bikes or city beautiful
I think one thing that stuck with me from visiting the US, is not necessarily how much freeway there is, but just how much space is dedicated to roads in general: even downtown, they are so wide, with so many lanes, plus that space is practically entirely devoted to cars
I’m from Columbus Ohio, the city limits are insane. From my understanding it’s because the city annexed surrounding suburbs and smaller towns haphazardly several decades ago, while some neighborhoods resisted annexation
Yeah, I would guess that's what it is. Columbus isn't unique in this, just funny when I started actually trying to figure out what freeways were in the city. Beaverton, Oregon has all kinds of missing chunks for probably similar reasons...including a huge gaping hole where Nike headquarters is.
I think the two worst are the Southwest Freeway in Washington, DC and the Mulberry-Lombard Freeway in Baltimore should be mentioned. Also I-40 West in Nashville, I-277 in Charlotte, and I-95/I-395/SR-836 in Miami. The last one is the worst! The Black neighborhood of Culmer-Overtown was basically drawn and quartered.
I was thinking the same thing. 1-90 is in a trench with major air rights already constructed or in the process of construction throughout the whole Boston corridor. 1-93 through the central city was submerged at a cost of 15 billion! Money very well spent in my opinion. Boston proper has very little actual freeway mileage on the surface.
Based upon City Nerd’s methodology, I’d also like to know where Boston fell on the list of all eligible cities. I agree with the two comments posted above, interstate highways that run through tunnels, or are located in trenches that are being covered by new construction should receive special attention; these solutions avoid the blight and destruction of the urban fabric caused by elevated and surface interstates.
Also northern and Central México looks a lot like the US and Canada outside of historical Spanish founded cities so it's always very interesting when I see US channels or Canadian channels like Not Just Bikes and find out we have the same ordinances, zoning codes and requirements but no one makes videos about that, so i really appreciate it! Also love your channel. I live in a car centered City in Central México where full size and HD pick-ups next to full size SUVs are the norm and no massive transit planning has been put on place and watching your channel is very refreshing. I think your channel is amazing! Hopefully you'll grow even more! I'll be watching every other video!
The youtube wizard decided to promote this to me and I'm so glad. Can't wait to watch all your others. Being an American urban planner is a depressing affair. If Brooklyn were still a separate city it would have the number two or three spot. I grew up in Queens and I love transit and walkability, but if you look at the full network, Moses really just built the bare minimum of freeway miles. Most of it makes sense as we needed to keep regional traffic, especially trucks, off the streets of Queens. I live off Queens Blvd, and despite it still being an 8 laner, there is a miniscule amount of truck traffic. And where freeways were not needed, like in Southeast Queens and Central Brooklyn, they ended up far enough down the priority list that time (1960s anti-hiway activism) and money (over indebted governments and suburban competition) finally killed those, along with the cross Manhattan proposed obscenities. The highways were one of several factors that drove up car ownership. Underfunded transit, incessant propagandization via advertising and ad friendly media are examples of those factors.
Just visited Kansas City for the first time. I caught myself several times asking my wife what on earth was going on with the freeways. Also pointing out so many interchanges in the middle of the city that were bigger than like 4-10 football fields. It blew my mind. I guess they just wanted to use as much space as possible. It takes more than an hour to drive across even on a freeway, and isn’t dense at all.
Mexico City is one of the most walkable lovely cities I've been to. I lived there for 4 months and you don't feel it is that size due to its superb metro and BRT. One of the best public transit in America (OK, the US is the US for me and America the continent, period). Great videos!.
I cannot fathom how my personal heritage is both rated as a top 3 place (Monterrey) yet also a dishonorable mention (Columbus, where I was born). What a journey
There’s now a plan to dismantle the western I-45 Freeway noose strangling Houston. The land is already being bought and buildings razed in hopes of having the best spots to build on. These will be either skyscrapers, residential mid rises or high rises. This would also connect Midtown with downtown. There’s also talk of leaving part of the freeway intact for pedestrian recreational use like New York’s Highline. I realize every city reinvents itself over time, but Houston does seem to want a much better urban fabric downtown these days with new bike lanes and nice pedestrian makeovers like you find on McKinney Street. Glad you enjoyed biking here. We bike downtown as a special treat coming from the White Oak Trail….just like you discovered on your recent video.
I am surprised Pittsburgh didn't make it but D.C did. I remember visiting DC, and was surprised how large the freeways were compared to what we have here. There are 279, 376 and a few others, but not many compared to other US cities I have been to.
Popped up in my recommended videos, probably due to my city beautiful subscription, and loved the video! I also liked the other videos you posted, really interesting content. I have a feeling that you're going to get bigger quickly.
Mexico City viewer here! As you correctly said, Mexico has a more "european style" cities. What I think is one of the most important things is that the block size in mexican cities is almost always less than a 100 meters (around 300 feet) which makes it very convenient for pedestrians. Also some places like Mexico City have always had a good amount of public transit such as the tranvias (streetcars) which unfortunately are no longer there. However, we have many subway lines, BRT lines, bikelanes and a good amount of pedestrian infrastructure. Public transit is incredibly cheap compared to owning a car, even more after considering that the minimum wage is very low compared to USA or Canada which does not allow many people to buy a car. Fortunately, we had the time to notice how dangerous is to dedicate too much infrastructure to cars before our minimum wages started to rise, so now that the minimum wage is rising a lot and the medium class is growing, we are building even more public transit and restricitng more and more the use of cars in order to discourage their use. For example, we have very strict emission controls so that cars need to be replaced for more efficient cars within a few years which represents a huge cost for car onwers, we are also now deleting minimum parking requirements for new constructions and implementing maximum parking laws as well. So in general I think we noticed just in time about what was going to happen and we are trying to change the perspective towards cars before it is too late. The good thing is that this growing medium class comes from a background where they always used public transit so many of them are not migrating to cars even if they could now afford them. Thanks for your great videos!!
@@CityNerd Yes it's great because now you can build apartments without parking making them very affordable, and not only that, now if you build with parking you are limited on the maximum number of cars per unit and if you build more than certain number of parkings, you have to pay huge taxes for each one.
Great video as always! I'd love to see an episode specifically on the mental health benefits of walking and biking for most of your transportation. I'm a mental health clinician and I purchased my first house in the SF Bay Area through a challenging combination of adhering to our budget, finding a walkable/bikable city, decent schools, and being close to transit. We ended up with a freeway-adjacent single-family home which is not ideal but we can't have it all. Knowing that my kids can and will continue to walk or bike to school for the remaining 9 years that they are in K-12 schools is a huge relief, as well as their ability to do any tasks that they need to do (12 years and older with lots of rules) like go to the library, get food from a small market, or meet friends at a bakery or coffee shop. It's so rare here in the Bay Area and it's a childhood I think everyone should get! There's other little towns around in the North Bay, wine country, South Bay, and even some spots of Berkeley that are similar but we can't afford any of them. I think small, affordable adjustments to a few Bay Area cities could make them super attractive car free spaces with a lot of smiles on peoples faces :)
Great comment! I have a more recent video on my car-free life in the Vegas Valley and I do touch on the mental health piece a bit, but it might be fun to do something more direct on the topic.
New suscriber here! I live in the 8th largest city in Mexico, Querétaro. Here we do have 3 main highways crossing the city. The 57, 45 and 45D. Of course this highways serve local traffic as they cross through the city, but a lot of long distance freight traffic also crosses through here. The city of Queretaro is one of the fastest growing cities in Mexico thanks to the aerospace and manufacturing industry. The rapid growing of the city and the fact that the citie's budget is going directly to highway infrastructure, the congestion of the city is in a really bad situation. Standstill traffic jams are an everyday thing, and the city is barely 1.5M people. Right now there is the plan to build a two level highway in the city to ease down the traffic situation but a lot of people are asking to invest in the public traffic instead! We'll find out what happens next! Love your content!
I just spent a week in Querétaro and I think I want to move there. Amazing, amazing city, but I'd hate to see any more freeways. Put in a Mexico-City style Metrobus system!
0:44 Honestly, I have to say that, as a driver myself who enjoys going fast from time to time, freeways aren't really that necessary for drivers who love driving fast down the open road. In fact, one could say that interstate freeways are actually detrimental to those drivers (including myself).
Something to consider for Chicago, every major rail line ends up in Chicago too. It just became a transfer and trade hub of, basically, the entire country if you're looking to ship goods, services, or people cross continent. So when a transfer was happening from less trains to more trucking, its kinda unsurprising that freeways would largely cut into and through Chicago. Even still, given that its at #8 out of NA says something on how they've focused public transit and limited their effect on the city, though the Ike displaced a lot of people. . The L and CTA is arguably one best public transit systems in the U.S. Still don't recognize DC though. No one wants to go to DC by any method, people are forced to be in DC.
Hello, Mexican here, I've worked wirh Mexican city and state governments. We do have proper freeway mirroring Canada and the US cities. They are called periféricos or anillos. And most metro areas are designed that way. One of the examples should be The Puebla Metro Área made of 4-5 cities. It is a continuous, non interrupted 8 lane highway with only interchanges. The Guadalajara one used to be like that but some cities in Mexico have had reorganizations and freeways have been modified to work lile arterial roads such as tbe Guadalajara one. Another very important thing to understand is that there are two types of Mexican cities. Spanish-founded (following euro mixed with North American zoning codes but mostly Euro) And Modern cities, relatively Young suburbs connected by freeway's that evolved into cities totally reliant on North American zoning codes, same minimum parking requirements, minimum parking slot size, minimum lane size, etc. My city is a huge offender with 18 lanes!
Next video: Why is it so hard for architechs and engineers can't seem to build sports stadiums that integrate with the local city? The best designs I've seen are Key Arena in Seattle and Soldier Field in Chicago.
You could probably also include the Georgia/Dunsmuir viaducts and the Granville Street bridge in the calculation for Vancouver, but there are plans to tear the viaducts down and also put the Granville bridge on a road diet and make it walkable/bikeable. There is a push also to extend Skytrain to the North Shore (West and North Vancouver) which would alleviate a lot of traffic on the Second Narrows Bridge (the one attached to the Trans Canada Highway on the eastern side of Vancouver). As someone who grew up in Vancouver, it's shocking how bad other cities are in North America w/r/t their freeway systems, and it's equally baffling why there are still people in Vancouver who clamour for freeway expansion, particularly in the suburbs. The replacement for the George Massey Tunnel (Highway 99 between Delta and Richmond) and the widening of the Trans Canada Freeway in Langley and Abbotsford (to the south west of Vancouver) come to mind. I think some of the suburbs in Vancouver are finally starting to understand how unique the region is, but it's really, really hard to fix things like broken street grid systems and acre after acre of parking lots and strip malls.
About Here has a good summary of the history of the Vancouver viaducts and their association with the racist "urban renewal" agenda: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ReDPLxaTwjI.html
Yeah, I actually thought about including the viaducts -- I biked under those bad boys last time I was up there! -- but lots of cities have long viaducts over, like, railroad tracks/yards, and I just didn't want (or have the time) to get that granular. I'm excited to see those come down -- it's the least pleasant part of downtown Vancouver.
When I lived in Vancouver they were upgrading the freeway near my house near Phibbs and for what? Traffic on either side of that section was always bullshit, the worst anywhere in Van. I reckon the real litmus test for freeways is how people who want then don’t want them near them. Yes In Someone Else’s Back Yard
Yes, Vancouver *proper* is very bicycle and transit-friendly, but many of its suburbs are a different story (and not all that different from North American norms).
@@CityNerd A street tunnel under that highway just at the Vancouver border was closed, and the skateboarding community gained permission to turn it into a skateboard park.
I'm actually from Monterrey so yeah, this is very interesting. And yes older Mexico's cities were designed in many cases for XVI century horse carriages and walking, but there are freeways of course, many of them are toll roads too. Many cities were designed in the times we were part of Spain, you can see the historic quarters of Veracruz, Puebla, Queretaro, etc. Mexico City is just to big to say it was conceived at once, it had a main quarter designed under the New Spain era, but the city was greatly redesigned at the time of the Second Empire (Emperor Maximilian von Hapsburg) when a lot of French and Italian architects redesigned the main arteries such as Paseo de la Emperatriz (Paseo de la Reforma nowadays), and under the Porfiriato period when the French design continued (thus many turnabouts in the city, major ones like in Reforma and Insurgentes Avenue.) You can't see much of that in the north of the country where U.S. influence took over and you have a lot of grid designs.
I live in Raleigh NC and when i got older i realized how little freeways there were. We only have a small belt line surrounding the outskirts of downtown and a larger belt line that’s only halfway built.
I love your channel, but man you forgot the city that CARE always forget New Orleans. It has a small freeway footprint and currently serious talks are being made to remove half of the freeways downtown.
San Antonio native here. Totally did not expect to have my hometown pop up in any way when i clicked into this vid, but since you mentioned it, I have my perspectives to share. The three rings and radial 'spoke' highways are in my opinion a masterstroke, although probably accidentally so. Up until the last decade or so, you could average roughly a mile a minute (!!!) going from place to place in San Antonio because you were generally close enough to a highway, and some combination of highways represented a straight enough line, that you were able to traverse this large area very quickly. How far are you going? 23 miles? Well, that should take about 23 minutes! That really is how we lived here. As a driver, I never understood why some people seem to have an unreasoning fear or dislike of highway driving. The primary things that make driving dangerous are vehicles travelling at different speeds and/or in different directions. Highways have relatively much less of those things compared to surface streets and so also give much less opportunity for errors of judgment, or baseline lack of competence to come into play and create traffic dangers. Vehicles are also more efficient at highway speeds (Hybrids and EVs aside which are recent developments in the ~120 year history of 'car roads'. I have owned 5 hybrids to date). I would say that San Antonio's road system is losing its appeal now primarily because an explosion of population growth (*local taxing authorities begin subconsciously salivating*) is far outpacing the improvement of road infrastructure. This is surely wonderful for city planners who seem to love density above all else, but it's also a reflection of a problem with city planning in general: A lack of control over the factors that really matter in determining the course of a city's future. What has caused San Antonio's population growth? Other, larger cities' exoduses! What did other cities do to drive out so many of their inhabitants? Well, they grew! Cities grow in spite of themselves. They grow in ways that help almost no one aside from bean counters comparing tax revenues to infrastructure costs. What is the utility of cities in general? People by and large do not live in cities as a lifestyle choice. Primarily, people live in cities because of a relative lack of employment opportunities OUTSIDE of cities. Go to the outskirts of any urban area and see that those who can ALMOST afford to escape the city model their 'small acreage' plots to NOT resemble city living. The same money would buy vast tracts in places that those people cannot afford to move to because they cannot be so distant from their city jobs. Wage slavery creates cities, not any of the appeal of the various dressings applied by planners. There was a time when the growth of cities was essentially curtailed by commute times. Cars changed this and allowed cities to grow. Unfortunately, that model is now broken because cities CONTINUE to grow despite having road congestion creating commute times IN CARS that exceed what people used to do on foot over a century ago! This is fundamentally a loss to the position of labor in general in the economy. As an anecdote, I lived for several years in San Marcos, which is about 50 miles away from San Antonio. At that time (~08-12), the level of congestion on I-35 between the two cities was so light that I could commute between a home in San Marcos and a job on the north end of San Antonio in 45 minutes. How many commutes WITHIN San Antonio (which is not even 50 miles across) are now in excess of 45 minutes? Yet, growth continues. The growth is caused by the majority of people having a relative lack of options (ever shrinking) to live OUTSIDE of cities. Employers, by definition a minority of the population, dictate where the majority of the population will end up based on what is most profitable and efficient for them (density, cities). City governments bend over backward to attract ever larger, more powerful and more intractable employers with tax exemptions and infrastructure incentives because those employers attract tax base that cities then fail to adequately plan for or provide adequate infrastructure for, leading to a general shrinking of a city-dweller's physical presence in their city as it becomes impractical, with the amount of time available to them AFTER fulfilling their wage-slave work obligations, to travel very far in their own city. This, in vehicles that easily could do better than a mile a minute if the infrastructure allowed it. Eventually that becomes untenable and people leave. Where do they go? Smaller cities! Essentially, it's SRD. Shit Rolls Downhill. Growth and density ruin the livability of cities because government/planners are de facto guided by trickle down economic theory but do a very poor job assessing the subjective factors that actually make cities nice to live in. The opportunity costs of lost hours sitting on congested roads that are only 20% larger than they were when they carried 50% of the traffic are borne primarily by individuals and not government. People may spend longer getting from place to place, but that doesn't come out of their WORK hours. It comes out of their happiness. They still DID their work hours, so their value as taxable entities remains the same. The basic incentive structure of city government is counterproductive to cities' 'livability'. The general aversion of city planners to car travel and glorification of walking and mass transit feels very euphemistic considering that the main reason MOST people want to get away from their cars is not because they hate their cars, but rather because they hate the government property, that government planners planned, that they themselves paid for, that they are forced to operate their cars ON. One gets the feeling that city planners are car-averse partially because they stand on the shoulders of giants, giants of abdication who have done such a poor job for so long that the problems of a city's road infrastructure needs now seem totally intractable, to the point that the only viable solution seems to be to socially engineer people out of their need for roads in the first place. It doesn't change the conditions that led to the problems. It's just government letting itself off the hook of having to fix it. The basic growth model of cities is what created the problems, and what needs fixing. Anyway, I found the video interesting and learned some stuff. 😁
Loved your channel! Subscribed already, congrats on the Subs milestones. Seems like you are heading towards 10k. To your point about Mexican cities, I know that even Brazilian (my country) cities could be analysed in a similar list. We didn't have a highlighted decade of freeways like the US did, but we certainly copied a lot from that decade into our countries in Latin America when started having more motor vehicle usage.
Portland went through a freeway revolt also, but unfortunately it was after most of the damage had already been done. The original plans were somehow even worse. I've always been jealous of our neighbor to the north lol.
So glad you mentioned Kansas City as the worst. You can’t go anywhere in that city without having 4 different freeways in your route and the super tight ring road around downtown is an absolute mess of on and off ramps.
Oh and Kansas City has always been my second home and I lived there for awhile and I totally agree. The KC metro has one of the worst freeway nightmares I've ever seen and I've driven from coast to coast.
Ohioan from Columbus here. So Columbus for the longest time has been very spread out into the suburbs, as the downtown focus of the city hadn't been the main point of construction until recently. The "City of Columbus" refers to the areas the city funded services reach and provide for, including the school district, and foothold on law enforcement/fire stations/etc. Since the population of the city has started to explode, that is why the reach of the downtown city limits are everywhere. We pretty much say everything inside of 270 is the city, everything on the outside is the suburbs.
Great content as usual City Nerd. It's great seeing a qualitative analysis of US, Canada and Mexico. It is very nice feedback on the things that some places are doing well, and on other things that may not have been done so well. I would agree that Mexico does have a certain European quality to it due to it's age and also partly because of the low automobile ownership. Once again, thank you for the analysis.
As an amateur review for Monterrey. I can tell you that there are definitely some ugly parts here. We don’t have highways per say, but we do have some 4 lane atrocities that try to be them while also being near buildings. They are take however, not like a 4 lane street in the US, think of it like a Boulevard but it’s chunkier. Some newer areas like San Jeronimo are great but I think San Pedro Is a better place to live. On an entrance to that city you immediately get introduced to a big center roundabout and continuous Kilometers of narrow parks that substitute lanes on streets. That is the best city in Mexico IMO
I love these kinds of videos. If it were scaled down to Canadian cities, I think the most freeway-light city would be Winnipeg 100%. 800,000 people without a single freeway. Worst would probably be Quebec City, with around the same population as Winnipeg, having 6 freeways.
@@CityNerd yeah definitely, I live in Edmonton and no freeways even come close to the core thankfully due to a big freeway revolt which stopped a very Tulsa-esque plan to destroy inner city neighbourhoods and parks. Calgary isn’t too bad either although they definitely have more with Deerfoot Trail and Crowchild Trail coming close to the centre, but it’s not as destructive.
I recently discovered your channel and I'm enjoying your old comments. If you get bored, you could pin comments about small stadiums that matched your subscriber count when these older videos were made. I hope more new people find your content!
Former Mexico City resident here. Keep in mind that greater Mexico City (basically the valley of Anahuac) is 3,000 Sq miles. The state od Delaware is just under 2,000 square miles. I'm going to go out on a limb and say Delaware probably has more 75 miles of expressways (and definitely more than 50 miles)
I recently moved from Cleveland to Downtown Columbus. The amount of highways here is astounding, and you need a car to go anywhere. There’s absolutely no rail transit and the bus system is awful. I thought Cleveland was bad, but even in downtown, Columbus feels like one giant suburb. The city’s highway craze turned it into a Swiss cheese, making downtown a pedestrian island with few crossings. Even downtown, it’s just a smattering of buildings in a sea of parking lots. Most of the historic infill buildings present in the downtowns of Cleveland and Cincinnati have been raised in favor of parking lots in Columbus. Although, I must admit some of the inner-ring neighborhoods in Columbus have maintained their integrity and architecture much better than downtown. Also, I read somewhere that Columbus forced annexation upon many of its surrounding suburbs by holding hostage water and sewage connections with the city’s systems. Apparently this was a guise in order to maintain its tax base while it migrated to the newer suburbs.
I'm Mexican and I been in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City, the reason we don't have freeways is because sadly Mexican cities grow without any urbanism plan, and to resolve this we do have a lot of stroads( which I don't like) that can be quite wide like Lazaro Cardenas in Guadalajara that have 10 lanes, in this case in big intersections with a lot of traffic we just do overpasses and over the years we have stroads without any traffic lights.
I think you were right when you said that you really couldn’t compare cities in Mexico with those of the US when it comes to freeways, because Mexico’s cities are more comparable to European cities because of their age, which you also pointed out. I’ve only been in Mexico for a little more than a year and this distinction is one of the things about Mexico that I prefer over US cities and add to that most cities in Mexico are much more walkable in my experience. I enjoyed the video all in all. Thanks for putting it out there!
Yeah, thanks -- take a spin through the other comments, though. There are several pretty knowledgeable folks who weighed in with interesting thoughts on why there are relatively few autopistas in large Mexican cities!
One that comes to mind for me is Winnipeg, since the ring road is notarially a freeway, since it includes a number of at-grade intersections and even at-grade railroad crossings.
As a Mexican urban planning student, i want to thank you for taking us in count for your videos, usually Canadians and USAmericans when referring to North America, they only include these 2 countries with that said, in Mexico our "interstate" highways, usually marked with a -D , like 15-D, 1-D , 40-D , goes outside the city with by passes (libramiento) as Mazatlán, Culiacán, Tepic and Guadalajara (macro libramiento) or Durango, Torreon, Saltillo and Monterrey taking 40-D , there are exceptions like Querétaro or San Luis Potosí wich follow a more USA and Canadian freeway concepto , most of the times Mexican freeways are main avenues , where traffic lights where replaced by tunnels and bridges , like Guadalajara in López Mateos or in their Periférico(ring road), México City in Circuito central (inner circuit) and their Periférico or Merida with their Periférico too... Also we need to take into consideration two things, when the USA developed their freeways back in the 50s and 60s, Mexico was a very rural country, it was only Mexico City and that was it, the other cities were very undeveloped yet , and second, you already mentioned, Mexican cities are very old, specially the ones in central México (Puebla, Veracruz, CDMX, Gdl, León, Aguascalientes, Oaxaca) having a freeway next to a 1500s-1700s city center would be a catastrophe, Querétaro was the exception, they have a freeway surrounding their colonial city center
Another example of these Mexicans "freeways", a main road with traffic lights turned into tunnel and Bridges Is Dr. Jose Eleuterio González Avenue better known as Gonzalitos, by no way this avenue is a freeway by USA standards, but by Mexican ones it could be considered as one
Is Gonzalitos in Monterrey? I'm trying to check all these things out in Google Earth.. Urban development in Mexico is super fascinating to me, for a lot of the reasons you mention -- older city centers and more recent urbanization. I haven't visited Monterrey or Guadalajara yet, but I'm excited to explore them next time I get a chance to come down this way.
Actually, Raleigh, North Carolina is a city of almost 500,000 people and the closest freeway to the urban core, not just the downtown area, is a good mile to 2 miles away. If you’re driving into Raleigh on I 40 and you want to go to some parts of downtown Raleigh, you have to take an exit, Drive about a mile, turn left and drive a half a mile, then turn right and drive through one of the most surprisingly urbanist streets in the country, which is Hillsboro Street, almost another mile before reaching the city center.
I'm not sure if how the other cities on your list are structured but Vancouver (the actual city rather than the metro area) does not reach your 2 million criteria, it is only about 700 000. Great video, loved it. By the way, I liked the inclusion of Mexico.
The 2M population criterion is for metro areas, not cities proper. Seattle proper has only about 750K, so if Vancouver doesn't belong on the list then neither does Seattle.
Montreal has the biggest urban parks in Canada , pedestrians streets , the best bike city with 450 km of biking lanes and most dense city in Canada and the largest underground city and subway system
Ouch! I live in Kansas City...and I still agree. We are a car-centered town trying to catch up with the twenty-first century with some limited rail transit. But yeah, if you don't have a car here it's really tough. Some neighborhoods are charming though, and somewhat walkable. At least we don't have too much traffic most of the time.
Vancouver was a little late to the freeway building party and planned a freeway but only the viaducts were built, at the same time people realised communities would be lost or split so they protested and only the viaducts were built, they are being removed in a couple of years. The causeway exists to serve the Lions Gate Bridge, one of only 2 crossings and that is why it's so busy. That decision 50 years ago is regarded as the start of how Vancouver evolved into the liveable world class city we have become.
