Why Houston’s Urban Planning is Better Than London’s
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- čas přidán 2. 03. 2024
- London can't compare to Houston! Freedom is at stake!
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Is there anything more drastic and "soviet level control" than the American HOA's rules?!! 😅😂😅
lol. Just like Soviet committees.
@@harrybarrow6222 ALL POWER TO HOA'S!!!
Don't forget those pesky socialist hospitals that's run by the NHS that also has agreements with the eu to give you free hospital treatment ( you have to get a card thou ) plus they are so nasty they get huge discounts from American firms on equipment and medicine. !!!
It's the same logic as "your taxes are so high" without including everything they pay for equivalent services (particularly health insurance). As soon as it's a private arrangement based on contracts, instead of *gasp* being forced into something by the big bad government, then everything is golden.
So true
That commenter spoke about bureaucracy… It is *illegal* in Houston to build European style housing. Those giant retail parks with a sea of parking aren’t like that because the market chose it- it’s illegal to do otherwise due to minimum parking requirements and a ban on mixed use zoning. Mid rises? Illegal. Flats over a corner shop? Illegal. If you’re that worried about the market not being able to do its own thing, you’re better off calling up Houston’s city planners rather than London I’m afraid :))
It's those Texan commies 🤣🤣
No no no, it's what the commenter is accustomed to so that's just the price of true freedom and upholding the American dream. It's only things that are different that are communist
Have you been watching "strong towns"?
@@afrocentricalbionor "not just bikes", he has a video "why I hate Houston" I think this was where I found out about the zoning in USA. I thought it was absolutely crazy the rules that prevent high density living and promote urban sprawl. I don't think in the UK we have such a thing as zoning, its controlled by planning permission as far as I am aware.
It is only "illegal" to build those housing types in Houston if the particular plot of land has a deed restriction that forbids them. But those restrictions vary from one plot to another, and they get changed fairly regularly. So the issue is not that those housing types are forbidden, the issue is that it is more expensive for developers to build them because it involves more beaurocracy and more uncertainty, since NIMBYs have a lot more power if there's a deed restriction that would need to be changed prior to development. Which is certainly a major issue that needs to be addressed, but implying that those housing types are outright forbidden is highly misleading.
Or if you want to be disproven very simply, just plonk Streetview down in Midtown Houston (try for example Elgin St at Smith St), and you'll find plenty of new midrise apartments with retail on the ground floor.
Here in The Netherlands they had the bright idea to delete the part of the building code that requires every apartment to have outside space such as a balcony. The argument was that market pressure would lead to a diversification of apartments, with cheaper ones having less outside space (or none), while more expensive ones would have balconies.
The result? There's a period of a few years that hardly any apartment buildings with balconies were built, as my country's chronic housing shortage meant that apartments were selling anyway, balcony or no balcony. The requirement to include outside space was inserted back into the building code just a couple of years later.
There's no such rule in the UK. Very few apartments are built with a balcony. However I am not surprised, the UK has so few rules and that's why new houses are so poorly built and should be avoided.
The "market pressures" argument only works when that market has no/little pressure on the consumers.
In a chronic housing shortage, people will buy whatever housing they can get (and often get shafted by the developer in the process).
@@simonoleary9264yeah, it's called inelastic demand. The free market only truly works if the seller is able to sell whatever they want and the buyer is free to refuse to buy unless the thing they want is provided at a quality and price the buyer sees as appropriate. But most people don't have the option to live without a house until the right house at the right price appears. If the consumer is in a position where they have to buy and are forced to choose something from what's available no matter how crappy or overpriced, then the free market no longer works efficiently as the ideologues insist it always does. And when you really think about it, how many of the things we buy are truly totally voluntary decisions that we could just choose not to until the situation changes? Cant do it with housing, or healthcare, or food, or energy, or any number of other things. And when the market is set up in a way where the seller has all the power and the buyer's power is limited by necessity then you either have robust government regulation or people being ripped off
we had the same problem with having a place to store your bike(s).
for decades it was demanded by law that every building in The Netherlands needed a place (either an extra room that's accessible from the outside of the building or something like a brick shed) where the people could store their bikes.
then someone in the government thought if the remove that requirement, developers would still include such a space when building new developments.
turned out they didn't. if they can cut costs and make (a little) more profit, they will do it.
so some years after that law change they changed it back.
and now every new building has to, once again have a place where people can store their bikes.
The "free market" has got to be on the of the dumbest ideas humanity has came up with lmao.
The reason the Council are demanding green roofs and underground parking is because the developers said that's what they would do. Of course they included something like a green roof so the planners will look favourably on the development. And then decided to ignore such things when they built the place. We have a planning system so developers can't stuff up everything. They can only stuff up the things the have permission for.
Exactly. It’s a point of principle too - if planning is ignored without sanction by one developer does that mean everyone else can follow suit? This said, informal housing in the global south can actually create some good solutions to low cost housing and community development but the difference there is the planning evaders are people trying to meet their needs not exploitative developers.
Developers lie ALL THE TIME. Particularly when they promised low income housing. Poor people keep getting shunted out
Biggest point of Green Roofs (or blue roofs) is to restrict the rate of rainwater entering sewers. If it's something you're interested in, the main thing to look up is section SI.13 of the 2021 London Plan which requires certain drainage amenities, focusing on natural solutions
What's odd is that no one was checking along the way. Right at the very beginning of construction - "hey, where's the hole for the underground parking, huh?" Typically building inspectors check for example wiring before the outside of the wall is put on and it would have to be done before construction continues. Or check that columns and beams are the correct material and design etc. before that. In London they just ignore everything for a year or two until it's done? Or those individual inspectors only paid attention to their area, and no one was checking for the bigger picture?
@@emjayay Could be they were allowed to self-certify. Which is, yes, very broken and an issue in many countries.
Yes... in the US _more space is devoted to parking than housing._ So nice to see acres of treeless featureless asphalt burning the atmosphere on hot days...
plus the potential flooding issues (greater in london / the UK as a whole I'd guess).
I'll never understand why you also have residential roads as wide as motorways. I have been told it's because of fire trucks but then that just raises the question why you need to have fire trucks 4 times the size of UK ones. Such wide residential roads also encourage speeding.
partly it's on street parking in residential areas - put cars alongside the curb on both sides, and suddenly the road isn't so wide. The other part is just easing basic transportation - A heavy truck with a standard length 53 ft/16 meter trailer can go to/into basically anywhere (residential or not) which make bringing in construction supplies, and equipment very efficient. @@David-bi6lf
@@David-bi6lfthe country is fucking massive, why not have larger roads.
@@srpacific typical response of the american mindset. How about the plethora of reasons why not. There's even one included in my post to help you out.
The thing I'd say to those comparing the size of Houston to London is that they're missing a big point of the city planning. If you compare the Houston metro area and the London metro area, the population is half. 7m in Houston metro area, 14 million in London metro area. Yet, the Houston metro area is more than 10,000 square miles to London's 3300 square miles. The better urban planning means people don't need to travel so far. They don't need to make awkward 2 hour journeys hopping from train to bus to underground etc... Because the planning has meant that things people need to get to are easy to get to and are nearby!
It's a product of land being "cheap" and plentiful for two centuries. Once cars became a thing, it was easier to just expand out rather than just plan better and do more with less land.
There are places in greater Houston that are 100km away from downtown Houston; if you go 100km from downtown São Paulo (where I live), you end up in the middle of Campinas, which is the center of another entirely different metropolitan region lmao. Greater Houston is a bit over 3 times the size of Greater São Paulo, has 7 million people vs 21 million people here, and Greater São Paulo's area is about 2/3s uninhabitable forest and water reservoirs, though to be fair large areas of Greater Houston are farmland. Still, 3 times larger with a third of the population...
@@lucadipaolo1997 Hell, I live about 130km away from downtown Houston and some people consider the town I live in to be part of the Houston area. Houston's sprawl is completely absurd.
@pmc_ If you go a hundred and thirty kilometres west of london, you're almost in a new country ( The same distance east would land you in the sea)
just think of how much of that freedom loving small government Houstonians taxes are being spent building and maintaining all the tens of thousands of miles of unnecessary roads and water pipes and electric lines thanks to all those sprawling above ground car parks. Whenever the free market is allowed the freedom to make money building the cheapest crap possible, it's the tax payer who ends up subsidising those profits
All of these "the market should regulate itself" people don't realise that "the market" would very gladly turn them into soylent green and sell them to the remaining humans if it meant making even the littlest of profits.
Yes, whenever I hear "the market", I think they're trying to claim some form of form of financiral democracy, but then you have to remember financial inequality and realise if it is any form of democracy the one procent gets like 80% of the votes
I think the market is only one step away from that even with regulations and laws, the market is happy to dump carcinogens into the environment, remove safety protections from oil rigs, and hook the population on as many opioid based medicines as possible. And these are the ones we know that the U.S. government has had to address since they became such big issues, but really has done the bare minimum to address each of those three issues, as it can. Still getting carcinogens dumped into the environment, still have oil rigs without basic safety measures and back-ups, and addictive opioid based medicines, sued Purdue/the Sacklers for a laughable amount of money.
The "Market" already builds poor-quality, overpriced rabbit pens for apartments. So yes, sure, let the market decide.
the market self regulating is BS. The 1800s and before demonstrated that. Child Labor, slavery, indentured servitude, etc...
what even is this invisible hand? is it one hand or twenty hands?
The important part is they weren't being told how to do it,they were being told to do it how THEY SAID they would do it, thus adhering to their contract, either written or verbal.
Yes, bit the Houstonian, being on the US right, does not believe in honesty or keeping promises. Tell any lie you like and break any promise once elected.
I usually think British politics is dishonest, but when I look at Congress I am glad I don't live in the best democracy money can buy.
Of course in America, nobody really cares about contracts and there are very few lawyers...
@@trueriver1950 Meanwhile Singapore sees the political gridlock present in democracies & uses that to justify 1 political party dominance
The air quality in London has really improved. I used to commute into London from rural Kent, (by train!) in the early 2000s, and everyday my nose would be filled with black stuff. It never happens when I visit London these days. Massive improvement.
and the air quality in Houston is terrible!
I’m seventh generation Texan and native Houstonian. I’ve also traveled a lot, including Europe and of course, London. Houston is a hellhole compared to nearly everywhere I’ve visited in Europe. You don’t even need a car to get by day to day in most big cities over there. There is no comparison.
But what about my freedum to be required to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to maintain my access to my personal transportation vehicle? Who doesn’t like their taxes going to subsidize the least efficient method of transportation?
Houston paid a huge price for not keeping developers from building in flood plains.
Well London is a flood plain, if there was no Thames Barrier, it would be a disaster every time there's a storm
@@alinaqirizvi1441 what does your hypothetical have to do with what this person said?
@@nonstandard5492 well I'm obviously implying there needs to be some sort of flood defence
Evan, thank you so much for caring about the access needs of the disabled community!! I am a semi-ambulatory wheelchair user, and when I'm not using a wheelchair to get around, I use a walker. It's quite shocking how little some people care about those of us in the disabled community being able to get around and have access to any and all public spaces!
I once went to a physics conference in Houston. The conference centre was about 1km from the hotel. The only people we saw walking to the hotel were road workers, policemen and European academics.
We asked how to walk to the restaurant district and no-one in the hotel knew how to do the 20min pleasant evening walk.
Walking about at midday in August was a bit hot though.
Being someone who lives in the US, I absolutely agree with you that living somewhere where a car is not a necessity would be amazing. In fact, I plan on doing so in a few years. It's not in the US, because there are not many places here where that is possible. I also hate living in a big city personally.
you can easily live without a car in most big cities in the US. But yes, if you want to avoid a big city, it'll be tough. It depends on how you define a "big city". I live in Minneapolis and have never owned a car in my life (30yo), and to me it's not a big city.
We had trains and trolley and light rail in most cities before the car industry took over. It is far more possible, but capitalist don’t like competing with public transportation.
About owning a car in London - a friend of mine lived there for many years and owned a car but it frequently happened that when he wanted to use the car, the battery had gone dead cause he used it so rarely and the main reason was that for most thing it was way quicker and more convenient to use the underground.
This is only true if you travel in zone 1, and perhaps parts of zone 2 where roads are tolled and parking is super expensive. Traveling anywhere to zones 4-6 is much faster by car, especially at night when there is limited service or no service at all.
This is down to the developer cutting corners. He probably saved a million pounds or so by making tweaks to the original, approved design and hoped that nobody would notice.
The thing about the journey between Epsom and Watford Junction isn't even true. You can get a train from Epsom to Clapham Junction (CLJ) on either Southern or Southwestern, and then a train from Clapham Junction to Waford Junction on Southern or the Overground (which would involve a transfer at Willesden Junction). That takes around an hour and half in total.
I realise that this is quite nitpicky, but if they want to criticise the transport in London, they should atleast do it correctly.
YES
If you say "two trains and you're done" you can't scare as much as if you say "three trains of two different kind no less, plus bus, plus walk." The article was likely nothing but a propaganda piece.
100 percent! I looked up the connections between Watford and Epsom and the one they describe is the longest one Google was willing to return and it supposedly isn't event two hours -- it takes 1h 51m. Yes, it could be rounded up to two hours, but who in their right mind chooses the worst result in a search?
thank you! I was scratching my head trying to work out where you'd be going in Epsom that you're not going to go to the train station and be a couple mins walk - the race course? The whole thing is just poorly conceived and poorly executed.
I think why it felt so weird for that Houstonian, is that Houston essentially does not have any zoning, nothing. City Beautiful I think has a good video on Houston and it’s lack of zoning and weird planning rules
Is Houston not affected by the housing shortage though? Like, I heard the prices in US are also crazy. I was confused what the guy was talking about.
Yes, City Beautiful did a video on that but both he, and others, stated that they have other methods to impose restrictions just like zoning can.
As for housing. The City Beautiful video shows that the lack of zoning law did not create more or cheaper houses (houses were cheaper than from a place like California but about the same as many other similar cities in Texas, that had zoning laws).
Houston (and Texas in general) does have a huge shortage in affordable housing for extremely low-income renters.
Indeed as said by City Beautiful, Houston uses technicalities to claim they don't have zoning while they effectively still have zoning.
@@PKM1010 A 3-bedroom townhouse in the Houston Heights is $650,000.
@@mediterraneanworldthat’s also near downtown and is a very trendy area. You can get a place 10 miles out for less than half that
I think what people often miss when talking about car ownership in cities is that cars are inherently space-inefficient. When space is at a premium, like in cities, it's important to prioritise moving the most people while taking up the least amount of space. That's why cities like New York, Tokyo and London are able to have such a high population density, which in turn leads to a higher density of economic activity
Or Countries like the Netherlands, who design connectivity for people on bikes as well as public transport allowing for that last mile journey on an OVFeits system. (Cycle to the station, park up or take your bike on board, use your connected OV card and hire a public owned bicycle to take you to your outer town destinations.
Need space for a cycle route… Let’s build it over a school! Travel to Nijmegen, Utrecht, Groningen , Delft. Public transport is cheap and efficient.
As a Londoner with a car - I can say my car sometimes sits in my underground car park for a month or more without me needing it. I used to rent cars until they got outrageously expensive! My insurance/MOT costs are cheaper than renting cars for the times I need my car now (my car was a bargain bought from a friend as well). It's definitely a luxury though, I don't NEED the car, but it's much easier for me when I visit family (my mum used to live in the countryside with no public transport so I needed a car to see her - or she'd have to pick me up at a train station miles away)
Surely the fellow from Houston who commented (i m assuming here) would agree that we should keep people to their word. The issue here is not that these buildings do not have a green roof or only provide above ground parking. The issue is the developers were granted huge exemptions to the planning rules (notably on the amount of floor area they were allowed to develop) based on a promise that they chose to make to give back that public space in some other way. Actually imho green roofs on highrise roofs are nonsense, it s just bullshit used to sell schemes to laymen. But the issue is the developers broke their word and their contract with the community. They should be made accountable because that s exactly why we elect a government: to protect us from conmen and liars. I'm sure when that person orders a delivery meal in a restaurant and pays for a burger with beef, cheese and lettuce, they wouldn t be happy to receive just bread and beef. Doesn t make them a soviet dictator
That kind of thinking would not be generally found in Texas, and I am a native Texan, myself. Selfishness and "freedom to act without consequences", or anarchy as every other first world nation would call it, combined with greed and bigotry is the mindset of that commenter, most likely. Too many Americans believe that the national government's literal and ONLY proper function should be maintaining a huge military force.
@@jwb52z9 and letting them have guns
I would disagree with the green roofs. Any plants in urban areas are better than none because they reduce Carbon dioxide.
@@lucie4185don't get me wrong, i love plants. However, the carbon effort of planting and maintaining a green roof very often outweights by far any benefits. Especially that plants do not make carbon dioxide disappear. They just stock it, and release it when they die. And also we are talking about developer green roofs, ie. very often less than 2inches of substrate in which only some specific grass can grow. When they have earth at all as many replace partnof it with mineral landscaping. I'd rather they be forced to plant or better retain a few more trees that we could actually benefit from with the shading and canopy they would provide at street level. Or contribute more to the council landscaping strategies. In case of green roofs on towers, some argue it is actually detrimental to the environment.
@@ElDerpy That's true, but that is never likely to change unless all of the rest does first.
If anyone thinks the rules are harsh, wait until they find out. How tough Danish building legislation is.🇩🇰
I bet Danish homes are built to a very high standard though.
@@lucie4185 If you can afford them 😂😂
@@lucie4185it's because of all that Lego.
Yes but on the other hand you probably won't have the problem of some of the most inefficient and costly to heat homes in Europe like the UK as a result of rising energy costs. I expect they have been built to a much higher energy standard than UK homes for many years. Now that's coming back to bite in the UK, people cannot afford heating and it is far more costly to retrofit homes to higher standard than it would be to build them better in the first place.
@@David-bi6lfnew build UK houses are built to fairly high insulation standards, maybe not Danish standards but winter temps in London are a fair bit higher than Copenhagen.
My pal remodelled his two room terraced cottage to have a an upper floor, because he was gutting the house it had to be built to the current regs, he was required to put in new air gap insulation, room sizes reduced quite a bit, this stuff isn't trivial.
The thing about unregulated capitalistic markets? Its how you get the US healthcare pricing with the efficiency of a 3rd world country (which isnt kinda fair to 3rd world countries).
And with the highest costs in the world.
I genuinely don't understand why so many people on this side of the pond behave as if they're allergic to public transport. I grew up in the Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada, and I never bothered to take my road test and get a car because I could get anywhere I needed to go. In my early 20s I worked a 5 minute walk away from my house and there were buses stopping in front of work every 15 minutes that would quickly connect me to transport hubs in 2 different direction, into Langley city or into the heart of Surrey. From the hub in Surrey I could hop on the SkyTrain and be anywhere in the Vancouver area in under an hour, and from Langley I could catch a different bus system and get closer to the mountains. Then I moved to Newfoundland. Now I need a car.
It’s not just that side of the pond. In the rest of the UK most people are allergic to the thought of ditching their cars and either actively travelling around their cities/towns & Villages. Or utilising public transportation. To even suggest leaving the car at home and walking, cycling or getting a bus with the chavs is blasphemy on the grandest scale.
“Who me? You’d hear them explode. Why would I want to do that? I pay my road tax!
That being said.. our public transport system is very expensive, shockingly poor and doesn’t run on time.
A big issue with ‘letting the market decide’ is the buyers have to have choice for the market to work. Housing in the UK is in such short supply that the buyers (including tenants) have very little choice. Lack of investment in council housing , largely due to restrictions imposed by central government, is a big part of the problem. In the West Midlands, Birmingham City Council has been been building around 1,200 homes a year, the maximum central government will permit them to, but demand has risen by 1,500 to 2,000 a year. Meanwhile all private sector home builders have averaged less than 300 a year combined. It’s not a shortage of land, there’s a lot of empty land owned by private sector building companies but they want to keep supply low to keep prices high.
If birthrates are below replacement levels, why do we need so many new houses?
@@alistairmonro largely internal migration and uneven birth rates. Some parts of the country (mostly rural) have below replacement level birth rates, others (mostly cities) have above replacement. Also there is still a net migration from rural areas to cities and from London to the provinces. On top of that, a lot of our housing stock is aging and beyond economic repair plus there are a lot of vacant properties where the owner isn’t known but no realistic pathway for them to be brought into public ownership or otherwise brought into use. IIRC if all such properties could be brought into use (many are beyond economic repair so this would mean demolish and rebuild) there would be more properties than people seeking housing (although there’s still the question of if the housing is where people want to live and can access work and amenities, there’s no point getting a house if it’s too far from where you work for it to be a practicable commute).
@@StephenBoothUK the UK overall has a below replacement according to ONS. If people migrate internally it would free up another house. You are absolutely correct about the prices being kept artificially high. Just not sure the reasoning lines up with reality. Very rarely a house is beyond repair. Are people moving to the cities or are the cities just swallowing up rural areas? Expansion to the moon! Got to get that GDP up no matter the cost.
Anger context: I lived in a place surrounded by farms but it's all crappy overpriced housing now. It's great, nice and loud, no time to think, forever awakened by sirens. Loads of traffic and some new vape/American sweet shops. Seeing as this video is about regulations can we have some to protect rural areas or is that just fair game because it's a 'crisis'.
@@alistairmonro if someone moves from a rural area to a city, or from a northern city to one in the South or Midlands for work, then that frees up a house in the rural area or northern city. If no-one wants to move the other way, out to the country or to the northern city because there’s no job to go to there (or it’s bought as a second/weekend home), then whilst across the country the net housing supply hadn’t changed there will be a local excess in one place and shortage in another. Similarly, if in cities the average couple have 3 children but in rural areas the average is 1 or lower the national net birth rate may be below replacement but it will be above replacement in the cities and well below replacement in rural areas.
@@alistairmonro there are a lot of dilapidated homes in cities, in some cases whole streets where the industries that used to employ the residents have gone overseas. I saw a report last year about how in one city houses were being sold for literally a few pounds, on the understanding that the new buyer would renovate them but in reality they would need to be demolished and rebuilt because they were so out of date and in such poor state. Many had been empty for a couple of decades.
It’s public transport in the UK, not public transportation,not public transit, just plain old public transport. I feel Americans struggle with this.
It has zero to do with the subjectivity of what people/society consider a luxury in housing. It's simply about sticking to what was specified in the planning permission. You submit documents so all parties are on the same page, so everyone understands what to expect.
They deviated massively, in some ways aesthetically (ugly fascia), in some ways functionally (small windows, stepped balcony door). Regardless, it's on them to supply the agreed product on their own dime.
Honestly, I'd wish the council would go further and set a precedent: seize the property.
Regarding politicians on public transport: In Austria, that actually happens from time to time. A few years ago, I had lunch in the restaurant car of a Railjet train to Bregenz. A few minutes in, the then Austrian president, Heinz Fischer, and his wife showed up and had lunch at the table next to me. I've also seen the current Austrian president, Alexander van der Bellen, as well as several other politicians, on trains and on the Vienna U-Bahn.
they said that the council has "soviet level control of the design" and that that's the cause of the shortage of homes? The USSR didn't have a housing shortage 😭
Yes it did. In fact, it had a shortage of everything.
For real? They had a shortage of EVERYTHING. And most apartment blocks from that era looks horrible.
@@jdb47games No they did not.
@@akatheking82 No they did not. Yeah they look terrible 60 years after they were built and 30 years after they stopped being maintained and you've also probably only seen images taken in winter where everything is gray and there's no green because that's how winter works.
@@jdb47games They had a shortage after WWII, especially the regions which the Nazis basically burnt to the ground, which is why they built so many apartments in those years, much like many Western European governments did at the time, with similar architecture because that's what was cheap and modern and could be built quickly.
I grew up in a similarly planned area in Sweden, the houses may be gray concrete, but they're actually quite nicely planned with access to everything you need usually within a short walk.
I've been a chaperone on a two-week space-themed camp taking kids from Australia to the US. We spent a week in Houston and it was hell. We had to drive (in hire buses) to most places and when we did walk, it was all concrete and broken paths and I was very worried for all the children under my control because there were also zero pedestrian crossings. I think Houston has a lot going for it but its city planning is not one of them.
They have no city planning.
The first (of two things) that Houston has going for it is that it is the setting for the who shot JR fiasco that turned out to be fake (like so much in the US)
The second is that it is a long way from me: the other side of an ocean. Thank goodness!
I am from Houston originally, and though I have not been to London, I have been to Europe and the Middle East. I miss European mass transit, you absolutely can get to EVERYWHERE, by train, or bus.
Houston is a nightmare, it is convinced that Zoning is the devil. Yes, you can attribute Houston's incredible size to unregulated planning, but it also causes issues for businesses because there are no "districts", meaning if you are looking for a particular type of commerce, you get to drive all over that big, big - did I mention big - city, to go to a few different places. I have driven 50 miles roundtrip, more than once, just to pay a Bill.
those of us that live in the walkable part of Houston now can't as the neartown Montrose area has such bad traffic and high density - all the people fleeing downtown now that the best part of living here is disappearing!
Driving in London is a nightmare!!
I guess full disclosure I'm from Liverpool so maybe drive down once in a blue moon, and only if there is a few of us going to a family thing. If is just me, I'll always get the train. The underground is just so easy, everything is so close!
I would never wanna drive in London! So many windy roads and pedestrians everywhere! Much prefer driving in the states but prefer living in London :’D
Driving in England in general is a bit rough in my opinion cause the roads are so narrow but that’s my US bias
Driving in London is fine at night when the roads are a bit quieter. I haven't bothered with owning a car for five or six years but I kinda miss skanking out to the pirate radio stations and cruising around at night.
Plus I would hate to see the insurance prices in London, yikes
Now I've lost all my no claims bonus from not having a car insured for years, I couldn't find anything cheaper than £1200 a year for a fifteen year old Ford Focus and I'm an old git@@nodeepthought2910
Uk trains are getting really expensive. A journey that was £35. 10 years ago is now £185. 😢
I went for a walk out of my Houston suburbs hotel when I was briefly there a decade ago.
Impossible. Roads so wide you had to sprint across because if you walked it would take too long and drivers there give you no quarter.
In the end I just exercised by walking round and round a massive carpark. Boring but at least I avoided being mown down.
In a place like that you might see something 400 meters away from your hotel and not be able to get to it without driving there.
Hey! I’m a Houstonian myself (I didn’t get summoned, though, I’ve been here for awhile 😅)
We actually have made some decent progress with walkability and public transit over the last decade, especially inside the 610 loop. The lack of zoning laws has actually been somewhat beneficial in building mixed-use areas inside the city that aren’t legal to build in some other American cities, and there’s some really cool parts of the city where you can walk to world-class museums, walk to go get some amazing food, and then take a short bus or light rail ride to see live music or any other events happening downtown. However, we still have way too many goddamn highways cutting through the city, and even the roads in the walkable neighborhoods are almost exclusivel multi lane stroads (*shudder*). The parking situation is also atrocious, although to be fair, we can’t really build underground parking because our soil is like 90% clay and we have a relatively high water table (similar reason that Gothenburg, Sweden doesn’t have a metro, funnily enough, but least they have the decency to build trams). There’s no denying, though, that all the surface parking is an eyesore that makes swaths of the city look like they just got carpet bombed. The combination of urban highways, surface parking, and oversized stroads also creates a pretty severe urban heat island effect - being outside here is *unbearable* from June-September, and it makes people even less likely to walk or cycle.
Our newly elected mayor, unfortunately, is moving us backwards and actively ripping up bike and buss lanes. Hopefully we can keep a few steps ahead of the truly dumbass changes that make the city more hostile to people outside of a car. Nothing frustrates me more than wasted potential, and it felt like Houston was moving forward in a direction that was better utilizing its potential. I wanna keep being able to defend Houston as an underrated city, dammit!
I guess all of this was to say that hey, at least *one* of your viewers is from here and isn’t a ford f-150 pilled chud. Your channel has been a really cool way to see how living outside of American norms can, at many times, be a good thing, and I hope that in the future, Houston can take a little inspiration from London and other proper world capitals that actually make an effort to make their cities nice places to be.
Mixed use is pretty much common place in Europe and is considered good planning, especially in redevelopment of ex industrial area, etc. Zoning law are driven by NIMBYS which is a different thing from good urban planing. Of course you are always going get planning objection, but the process has to be balanced. The was a good documentary on how the parking requirement of new development in the US is based on faulty maths that has never been corrected, and now has a political bias behind it rather than accurate figures.
Exactly - only that now the traffic is so bad in Montrose/River Oaks - people who live here don't leave their homes on the weekend! I think it is great however all of the development is displacing residents - especially lower income people who worked in the neighborhood. It's funny how now everyone wants to lee the suburbs for the inner city!
I moved to downtown Houston two years ago and the poles in the middle of the side walks have always puzzled me!! I enjoy riding my bike around town and the poles (in addition to the horrific traffic) make it a tad more stressful. I watch moms push their strollers on the street, next to the side walk, rather than on it because of the poles. Defeats the entire purpose of a sidewalk🤦🏽♀️ It is baffling.
I owned a car when I first moved to London over 10 years ago (from a more rural part of UK, where it was necessary to own one). I only used my car for visits to family outside of London, or occasionally for bulky grocery shopping. In honesty, if we'd not found places to rent with parking included, I would have sold my car before I moved - so long as you don't have a special need for a vehicle (e.g. you have to regularly transport large equipment, you have mobility issues, or maybe you have a brace of small children to drag around) a car is really just an expensive and pointless possession in London.
Oh, and the article mentioning a "brisk 7 minutes walk" is a little funny to me; sure, if you have mobility issues, then walk time is a concern, but for most people 7 minutes walk is nothing! My regular journey to work includes at least a 20 minute walk (by choice, I could get a bus instead, but the walk is good) and sometimes I increase that by 10 minutes at the other end of my journey by walking instead of taking a 2nd tube line.
I've been told (by someone that works in Houston city government, I think) that Houston's lack of zoning is greatly exaggerated. Even though they don't technically have zoning, I'm told that they still have effectively most of the same kinds of laws that are found in a typical American zoning code. They're just written down somewhere other than in a zoning code.
Which helps explain why Houston still looks like any other American city with a zoning code arguably more overbearing than London's is.
Also, I had a very cathartic moment when, upon landing in London for the first time, there were some businessmen in suits that looked like they cost £5,000 sitting near me on the Tube ride from the airport. A very "not in American anymore" experience.
Taking the bus is a personal mark of shame for a lot of people/places in the US. Its not that people openly mock you for taking a bus, but that bus riders themselves are very aware of the fact that lots of strangers might consider them low class or a failure. When I lived in a city with almost-decent public transport (by US standards anyway) i took the bus/walked to work for several years and no one ever trashed me for it, also i live by the credo that 'what other people think of me is none of my business' so I didn't feel embarrassed so much as i just became aware of the stigma of not having a car (although I had a car at the time, but i let my wife use it to get to her job).
Some similar feelings in the UK. One aristocrat once said “Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life.” I use buses occasionally but it's quicker to make short journeys by bicycle.
@@jackwalker4874 it was the Duchess of Westminster, who was quoting a poet but definitely backed the phrase. The Aristocracy has always been out of touch with the people tho, so this can not be a surprised. The idea of even having to talk to a mere commoner was probably looked down on by these types. Interestingly this phrase is often misattributed to Margaret Thatcher but there is not any real evidence she ever said or quoted it at any point.
I used to drive Uber in San Antonio, and I got a lot of people who would Uber home from work on pay day as a treat because the bus for a few miles took over an hour. And San Antonio has a TON of buses.
A lot of people want to bash on Texas urban planning, which is fair because it is awful, but take for granted that these cities aren't very old and popped up out of farming communities. The roads make no sense because they are all old cattle trails. Most roads in Texas are either Farm-to-Market or Ranch to Market roads.
Without an extremely aggressive tearing down of the current cities and completely master planned rebuild, it will likely take at least half a century to even start being walkable.
By contrast, The Woodlands, a master planned community north of Houston designed in the 60s, is extremely well designed and walkable. Trees everywhere, children's parks every half mile, neighborhood "village markets" that have most necessities a manageable walk away.
But there are almost no apartments and the houses start at half a million dollars. Also, this is still Houston, so even with a flood plane designed and enforced by the Army Corps of Engineers the place still floods. It's a hundred degrees with 100% humidity in the summer. Walking to the grocery store and back is likely to give you a heat stroke if you aren't careful.
Houston is not designed. Never was. But to get it designed would require massive amounts of demolition and a fundamental change in the attitudes of Texans. Good luck with that
Talking about “soviet era rules”, most US states requirements for parking!
That’s insane on a level far above any European rules.
‘Oh, look at this nice old townhouse, I want to start a cute tiny pub there’
US: ‘well, then you gave to buy the other 8 townhouses too, tear them all down and make parking lots everywhere’
‘Hmm, thinking of starting a barber side business in my house..”
US: ‘well, then you need to purchase your neighbours house in all directions, flatten them and make parking lots!’
Parking lots, parking lots, everywhere beautiful grey squares
I have a variable disability (so sometimes have to use a wheelchair or mobility aid and other times not), and I'm also a parent. I feel like a thing people don't seem to realise is how much physical accessability benefits everyone, not just people who use wheelchairs. A pavement with poles in the middle, or a building with only stairs, is going to cause problems for other people with mobility issues, for people with prams and buggies, for people carrying deliveries, for people walking with little kids... and so on. It's really important for the whole of society.
That said, even if something in a modern building/city is there only for wheelchair users, it's still essential IMO.
Aussie here and As a seriously disabled person and I have to have a car to get around and it takes a lot of time to get in or out of the car. Also just saying Perth is an amazing city as it is the easiest way to get around and I lived there for 7 years and because of the layout and public transport. And majority of the time I could go anywhere within Perth for free
In today's show, Evan Edinger trolls Houston for 18 minutes xD
Great video as usual!
The only planning failer here is why people have not pressed the subscribed button and Evan has not got the golden play button yet!
In Milan underground parkings for new buildings are mandatory since '80s and no one considers 'em as a luxury thing.
They became required because mass motorization simply overwhelmed public space and a new building should provide space for the cars of its residents.
Unlike Houston and many other American cities there is not all that space to put everything overground, over all if you build with high/middle density which is pretty common in Milan and in Italy in general.
So you have to go underground.
Woooo bioshock mention 😂😂 always happy for that
The all sorts of people you get on buses genuinely makes it more fun! 😂
I have no idea where Texas Monthly got their directions from Watford to Epsom but as a Canadian who has NEVER been to London, I am smart enough to use the TfL route planner. The most direct route I saw for a 10am-ish journey was 2 Southern trains and took 1:39.
Saying “the people want it” is also flawed logic. As he admits, there’s a housing shortage, therefore people will take what they can get. That doesn’t mean they *want* to live in a block of flats built with only the developer’s bottom line in mind.
People may well say that the fact there is a housing shortage means destroying the flats is silly and while it does suck for the people living there, it’s a necessary evil to stop dodgy builders doing this sort of thing again in the future.
The ironic thing is that America is actually far more controlling in what the city governments allow to build. In most places it is literally illegal to build mixed use development or anything denser than a single family home.
Houstonian here and looking forward to another 30 days of wonderful public transport in England this September.
My son has a cerebral palsy and the tube is not very accessible unfortunately. He loves theatre and when we take him to a West End show we usually drive to an underground car park in Soho. It’s hit and miss with traffic but I’ve got used to it now and we don’t have to pay the congestion charge. It’s a shame I guess but the tube infrastructure is old and difficult to change and I doubt the Lion King will ever reach the Loughborough area!
Indeed the Underground needs to become far more accessible to people with mobility impairments. TfL have done a huge amount of work on that front over the past couple decades, but with more than a century of infrastructure to upgrade, there's still a long way to go.
Same in NYC, but there are often (more complicated and time consuming) ways around it. For example, in Brooklyn the elevated subway station near me has no elevator, but the next station had one installed, and there is a bus that follows the same route. And the low floor buses they have now are vastly better for accessibility with a simple flopping out ramp at the front door instead of the complicated elevator thing at the back on old buses (once they had them at all). It used to take five minutes to get a wheelchair on or off, and now it's maybe a minute. And of course there is a space on the bus for the chairs.
@@emjayay Yes more to do. I remember at the 2012 London Paralympics some of the UK competitors, like David Weir, used the media attention to remind people that while they might be able to surge down the track at record speeds they couldn't get across London using the underground.....
Evan breaking out his inner Michael Jackson at 14:10 😂
Well, I'm 4hrs late with my comment 😂
Gotta love Texas. At least it was a well-formed comment. Your note about the space around Houston, and the ability to just spread out on ultra-flat land, is spot-on.
I love that this full video is one big double down with great points that will still unfortunately fall on deaf ears
Lol I live near Houston and the only reason we complain about the walk it’s because we only have like maybe 3 months out of the year where the weather is actually nice to walk in and it doesn’t feel like a hot sauna. Either than that yeah I wish we had some type of public transport. Also I can’t drive more than 10 minutes without some type of construction going on.
Wait…You’re telling me you wouldn’t want to walk in 101F degree (39C) weather in 89% humidity? Come on, ya wimp. But what if we made the sidewalks really pretty, what about then? Surely all Houstonians would be walking then…because the weather in Houston surely isn’t that different than in England. Dumb Houstonians. Just walk more!
I live in Spain, a country which has weather that isn't very different from that of Houston, especially inland where I live.
I, and most of the population here, have no problem walking around the town, even in the height of summer. There are certainly times when it is sensible to keep to the shade but, here's the thing, we have loads and loads of TREES, so finding shade really, really isn't a problem. It's so much NOT a problem that even my 86 year old mother-in-law regularly takes a walk of about 3 miles most of the year (the exception being high summer).
@@davidcolin6519 think she maybe wants to holiday in the UK and drag me about on a cart in our high summer? its too much for me! ;D
@@davidcolin6519 Oh I agree Houston needs to have more trees and shaded areas and even walkable sidewalks but unfortunately we don’t have that. Downtown Houston is getting better but we still have a long way to go from that. With out the shade most of us get discourage to even go outside especially when we hear in the new of all the deaths because of the heat waves. Also I wish we had the public transportation unless you live downtown it’s basically non existing here and the more you go out of downtown the farther away everything is making it hard to walk to places.
I've walked quite a lot in Houston, and it is remarkable that the planners design the worst possible pedestrian environments for a hot city. So many of their sidewalks are completely exposed slabs of concrete right next to gigantic asphalt roads or parking lots. That's basically a recipe to make pedestrians as hot and uncomfortable as possible. Dedicating roadway space for trees that would shade the sidewalk, and more space-efficient transport modes that don't require gigantic asphalt areas would go a long way towards making it less horrible to walk around in Houston.
I watched this video at x2 speed, and learnt alot. Mainly that it confirmed what I suspected - that Americans really do speak faster than Europeans. Glad I clarified this.
Pledging allegiance to the flag daily in school, sounds like soviet level imperial control indoctrination to me
I' m sorry, but literal soviet level control made the best places to live in. The old communist planning was incredible- districts were build so they would include a place for market, shops, local healthcare center, kindergarten , schools as well as libraries, playgrounds and football field or tennis court. There are also plenty of green spaces. And places for children were build away from busy roads.
People say social housing is low quality and repetitive while defending American suburbs
While the Council was correct is this instance, planning laws in the UK are too strict. They encourage NIMBYism which is why we have a housing shortage in the UK
"If this were a safety issue..." Disability access is a safety issue.
Also what gives these "bureaucrats" the right to do this is: they were elected by the people.
As an expat Brit now living in Houston, Texas, this vid made me laugh out loud. Evan, you've really got Houston's number! LOL
Evan, UK people used to say, when due to go to London, they're "going down the Smoke" as that was its nickname for a long time, with coal-fired factories, homes & railway locos, diesel & petrol powered motor-vehicles
Lol, Soviet level control of the design?
Wonder if this man knows that the Soviet Union, for all its well deserved faults, built houses for the utility of living in them, and then made sure that people were put in them, without slapping on a quarter of a million price-tag. The USSR did a lot of awful things, but the one thing it didn’t have was a crisis of homelessness.
Just a comment about the air pollution. I was born in London and lived there for 25 years. As a teenager and young adult, I used to get a nose bleed approx. once a month, and under my nails were nearly always filthy, no matter how often I scrubbed them)
I now live in Devon (and have done for almost as long as I lived in London) and have probably only had about 2-3 nose bleeds in total, and my nails are rarely black.
I can't say for sure that this is purely down to the air quality, but I do think it is a significant part of it.
When I was in London for a week whenever I had to blow my nose it came out black like Evan mentions in the video.
Underground, overground, wombling free
The wombles of Wimbledon Common are we
Making good use of the things that we find
Things that the everyday folks leave behind
As an American who cannot legally drive due to a disability, honestly I can't wait to escape this hellhole.
I do walk a lot more. I'm in a new area to me of London and there was so much traffic and buses were on diversion i actually got off at streatham common and walked the 20mins to where i was staying in tooting. Was such a lovely walk. I must say though planners are making pollution worse by blocking off the side roads and causing all this horrid traffic we've been having lately. But much prefer living in london because you can walk everywhere
That Watford to Epsom journey wouldn't actually take that long. The journey planner results you get are based on the very worst case scenario with changing trains and transferring by tube in London. That's the worst case against which the train company will pay you compensation if you are delayed, but in reality you could easily do that journey half an hour quicker.
as a houstonian, you’ll be happy to know that there are a decent percentage of people who agree with everything you’re saying lol. there’s a really twisted concept of freedom here in the states and even more so in texas
Oh this video was so good. It reeks of British sarcasm and I love that. Also love the "No!" from uttering Chips'n'Fish. Good for you!
Houston, TX actually has a really good bus system. It's brilliant because no-one ever uses it.
And they got 'Overland' from Top Gear, where it is used in their explination of their public transport route from Wembley to San Siro stadium when racing a mustang. I am assuming that Houston's only view of Britain comes from car related television.
At least that's the only time I've ever heard it used.
@@rhyswilliams7884 I think they just made up the word in the same way, as a parallel to underground
As a mobility-impaired person (not in a wheelchair), I don't think I'll be back to London. Got stuck in underground stations more than once. I hate Houston (used to live there), but I'd live there over London for sure. Drive up to the entryway of wherever I'm going and don't go into heart failure trying to get around.
Whoop whoop! I’ve been waiting for a video like this. I adore urban planning. Houston is such a fun/terrifying case study.
I thought the really bad thing about the above ground car park was that it was supposed to be a playground, which there is now no space for. Am I misremembering?
And people wonder why there are no children in London...
I'm not suggesting the UK implements US style planning, at all, but I do think UK planning laws need a drastic update. UK planning use is concerned with integrating buildings so they don't look out of place, very strong regulations need followed for environmental reasons but one idea i would take from my time living in the us is for UK planning to dictate the min size of bedrooms (no more box rooms), in areas outside the centre of cities we should mandate each house has off street parking to start getting rid of cars vommitted all over the sides of the roads, change our new build house tax so that it becomes economically stupid to build anything that doesn’t have some sort of solar on the roof (& use tax money to encourage development of solar roof tiles since private market [musk etc] hasn’t risen to the challenge). That said, the endless strip malls in the US and the shocking waste of land for low value use can stay on the other side of the Atlantic where they just have so much more land available. Every metre of land is just too valuable in a country this size with this many people on top of each other unfortunately - tho our no green belt development laws need changed, best intentions aside we went way too far on that topic.
As a texan who doesn't drive because of a disability... i used to live in an area that had a dart (dallas area rapid transit, the local public transportation network) paratransit program where about 13 or so cities around the dallas area contributed and allow access to anywhere within those cities outsourced to lyft (or with a worse short bus program. Worse because they didn't have anywhere near enough busses for the number of people using the service). It was a program that turned dallas suburb cities like richardson and garland from virtually unlovable if you don't drive to genuinely perfectly decent cities. When i was leaving, they were implementing a $3 charge per trip but if i was still in the area i would use it regularly.
I now live a bit farther out in a collin county and have no access to any public or paratransit services. My town used to have a paratransit but canceled it because "not enough people were using it" (actual quote) and Collin county denied a dart expansion. I cannot stress enough how much i genuinely believe my city wants anyone disabled or otherwise not driving out of it. Like, there's virtually no job opportunities in this town anyway if you don't want to work in a restaurant but i am 100% convinced that it actively makes itself hostile towards any accommodations for any public good in an effort to keep people away.
Genuinely, i am convinced texas is largely actively hostile to the public.
As someone who lives in Houston, the building requirements for parking are the totally disruptive and ridiculous bureaucracy.
For apartments(as that was the focused building); 1.333 parking spaces per one bedroom unit, 1.666 parking spaces per two bedroom unit, 2.000 parking spaces per 3+ bedroom units.
If the original building in questions "purpose built flats" all qualified as one bedroom units and it had the nonsense Houston requirements they'd need 272 parking spaces. Using the imperial units that's over 9,000 square feet of parking for the building.
I grew an hour outside of Houston and decided not to move there after high school because in less than one week a bus caught on fire and a driver was arrested (warrants don’t remember why) while on the highway. The city didn’t care because nobody takes the bus. Somehow the news managed to talk to 5 stranded passengers on the bus on side of the highway. So I moved 3 hours away to a city with a working bus system. The buses weren’t that great back then but I thought it was worth the move.
As a houstonian, I completely and utterly agree!
Why can't we have walkable nice cities 😢
To be fair to Houston, imagine suddenly having to be in charge now and wanting to sort it out... no way.
12:03 "The people in charge of urban planning in Houston aren't people, they are just cars." 😂
No kidding. Putting them in the same sentence as Soviet planners is an insult to them. After all, soviet era buildings look ugly because they had to quickly build housing for the millions of displaced by the cities destroyed during WW2, but all thinks considered, their city blocks were pretty good, while the ** from Houston literally demolished their own city to build parking lots.
I live outside of London (Buckinghamshire to be precise) and I own a car because I am a car guy, but I have to say that you are missing out if you haven't gone for a drive through the countryside, popped into pubs in little villages and generally enjoyed the more scenic part of England. Sadly, public transport is about efficiency not about enjoying the scenery. I fell in love with England more as I got to drive around it.
The true market design is Tofu infrastructure.
I don't want to have to return to the Hammurabi code to be able to believe my roof won't kill me.
Slight point i'd like to make is that while that Watford and Epsom route is one choice, you could also just jump on the southern train from Watford Junction change at Clapham Junction and then get off at Epsom (ignoring the Southern issues for a minute!) and take 1h 15m.
I really liked this video. Thank you for sharing. 🌷
Parking lots are gigantic wastes of space. Even out in a very small town, I see parking lots that are several orders of magnitude larger than the buildings they're meant to service.
The town where I live is less than 3.5 square miles (just under 9 square kilometers), you'd think it'd be a pedestrian paradise, but often times there is no pedestrian route to where I need to go whatsoever, or sidewalks that go literally nowhere. If I hadn't found my own routes, cutting through areas of grass or through other businesses' parking lots, I'd be forced to drive to reach a grocery store that's not even a full kilometer away from my house.
All of the barriers put in place just make it harder for housing to be developed. That’s why London has such a crazy housing crisis. Regulations should be done within reason.
That classic film "Local Hero"-1983- is set in Houston and Scotland.
Surveys have shown air quality on the underground is poor compared to air quality above ground & outside central London there is not a pollution problem, in addition every vehicle has to pass an annual MOT emission and safety test.
Let me tell you about the horrendous city planning of Houston. I was staying at a hotel located on a 10-lane stroad. I needed to pick up few toilettries from a pharmacy located 600 ft. away but on the opposite side of the stroad. Under normal circumstances, 600 ft. would be a 2-3 minute walk. Unfortunately, there was no safe way for me to cross the stroad unless I walked 1 mile to a designated crosswalk, crossed to the other side and walked back 4680 ft. in the direction I came from. I ended up driving there.
😂😂
7:28 regarding the tale of northerners coming back from London to find their boogers are black, I've had that happen to me pretty much every time I get one of the deeper tube lines, like Bakerloo, Piccadilly, etc. There's a lot of soot down there that constantly gets stirred up into the air by the trains passing through, so it gets breathed in and stuck in your nose. But this only happens on the deeper tube lines, not the shallower ones or outside in the city.
I love London and have visited from Yorkshire many times. Sad to say, the black booger thing is true though 😕 happens every time I go
I don't recall if I've ever commented on one of your videos before, Evan, but I love watching them. You're highly entertaining with really good quality videos. Also, I just wanted to give you a comment for your next comment read video by teasing you by saying, I'll have some chips and fish please. 😂🤣
Houstonian here. Texas is so proud of its "independence" that it has it's own electricity grid. That "independence", plus being in the pocket of big fossil fuel meant that when we had our polar vortex in 2021 (when Ted Cruz was seen taking his family to Mexico), many people lost power and heat because the grid couldn't keep up with demand, and some power stations decided to not get more fuel because the surge pricing couldn't be fully passed along to customers.
That commenter is right that there are too many regulations on development, but the regulations that have the most significant impact on housing affordability are not requirements for green rooves, they are minimum parking requirements, maximum height, maximum density, minimum setbacks, land use restrictions, etc. There are of course some valid applications of each of those, such as maximum heights near airports, or keeping residential areas away from heavy industry, but generally speaking the Official Plans and Zoning Bylaws in North American cities are exceedingly restrictive, which undermines the market's ability to provide affordable housing and walkable neighbourhoods.
Bloody hell, where I live in QLD 🇦🇺, you have to travel at least 2 hours (4 hour round trip) to a bigger hospital to give birth.
My work offsider’s mum spent 7 years travelling what was a 4 hours round trip each week to a bigger place to have dialysis. My neighbour’s mum moved to Brisbane (8 hour round trip from us) because she need dialysis and the 4 hour trip was too much
I remember my London friends back in the nineties call it 'the overland'...? 🤔🤷🏽♂️
Doesn't America actually have soviet-level control over parking space in the form of parking minimums?
This was a really interesting video Evan! I love learning different things from around the world! Thanks to CZcams too! From 🇨🇦with ❤️.