Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math [ST07]
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
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Car-dependent suburbia is subsidized by productive urban places. That's why American cities are broke. But how bad is it, and who is subsidizing who?
Watch the rest of my Strong Towns series here: • Strong Towns
Urban3 is a consulting company that helps cities better understand the economic impact of development. They have worked with many American cities to better understand and visualize the costs of development, and uncover which properties are productive, and which are not. Some municipalities have been willing to share that information, and it has provided a fascinating glimpse into the financial problems caused by sprawling car-centric suburban development.
www.urbanthree.com/
This video explores some of the cities analyzed by Urban3, and provides some lessons that cities should learn about how to build Strong Towns.
Watch this video ad-free on Nebula here: nebula.app/videos/notjustbike...
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Additional Reading & References:
The Real Reason Your City Has No Money
Strong Towns
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments
Strong Towns
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
About Urban3
Urban3 takes a different approach to land value economics, property and retail tax analysis, and community design. They empower communities with new insights into their own data. Their work makes a quantifiable case for better city planning, urban design, and smarter growth whiling backing up their stories with facts and figures. Urban3 demystify tax codes, government jargon, and municipal finance data, allowing communities to clearly understand the economic impact of development.
www.urbanthree.com/
About Strong Towns
Strong Towns is a non-profit organization and an international movement dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient.
www.strongtowns.org
Eugene, Oregon Zoning Map
experience.arcgis.com/experie...
Photo Credits:
Chase Bank tower, downtown Lafayette
By TheLionHasSeen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
20190224 19 Lafayette, Louisiana
David Wilson (Flickr)
www.flickr.com/photos/davidwi...
Congress & Jefferson Streets, Lafayette, Louisiana. Science Museum at right.
By SnippyHolloW - www.flickr.com/photos/snippyh..., CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
This video contains video licensed from Geddy Images
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:05 Introduction to Lafayette
0:49 Traditional Development and Tax Revenue
1:38 An ROI for Cities
2:17 You Need a Per-Acre Analysis
3:23 Mix-use Walkable vs. Car-dependent Suburbs
4:18 The Strong Towns Analysis
4:48 The Poor Subsidize the Wealthy
5:24 It's Not Just Lafayette
6:32 Exactly Who Subsizes Who?
7:31 It's Everywhere
8:25 What Should We Do?
9:17 Conclusion
9:37 Patreon Shout-out
9:55 Outtro
#urban3
![Would You Fall for It? [ST08]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n94-_yE4IeU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Would You Fall for It? [ST08]](/img/tr.png)
There is so much more to say about the investigations done by Urban3. This video really just scratches the surface.
If you'd like to know more, there are many long-form presentations by Joe and the Urban3 team available on CZcams, such as:
Ask Strong Towns, with Joe Minicozzi
czcams.com/video/nMkIMhFQezU/video.html
Your Questions: Our Data-Driven Answers Part I - April 30, 2020 LAB
czcams.com/video/YNG8_m9ALgE/video.html
Bad Math and the Panther's Path: A Cautionary Tale from Southwest Florida
czcams.com/video/mMQWq0FwPBU/video.html
Exploring the Economics of Infill
czcams.com/video/mTknbfFHG3Y/video.html
Really, there's just SO much good information, if you're into data and mapping. Check out their CZcams channel for more:
czcams.com/channels/eWANE3pvRPD2g7FXLrkyKw.htmlfeatured
If anybody ever tells you that car-dependent suburbia isn’t subsidized, they’re just flat-out factually wrong. Urban3 has proven this over, and over, and over. Now we need to decide what to do about it.
I saw this go up on Nebula then forgot to watch it. Guess I'm catching the premier. I've read Strong Towns and Confessions, and while I sometimes find his conclusions at times at odds with each other in logic, overall they were good works. I'm interested in seeing more and more examples of the infrastructure ponzi scheme.
hi
I wonder what would happen if Urban3 did an ROI analysis of fake London, since most of downtown is just parking lots.
The Dutch (state) subsidies for travelling from your home to your work is also an example of this type of subsidising of people living outside the city.
@@carfreeneoliberalgeorgisty5102 most American cities are the same, but they STILL outperform suburbia. That's the scary part. If US and Canadian cities actually invested in their downtowns, they'd be wildly profitable.
But most planners know this, even in Fake London. That's why Dundas Street looks the way it does now.
Seeing a development that is 1/3 building and 2/3 car park that is also often 2/3 empty really illustrates the insanity of our society....
@@chinbosschinboss2484 He will walk or use public transit next time :)
@@tejareddyatchala3995 only if we have said public transit instead of having to walk down stroads * sigh*
@@chinbosschinboss2484 If there was even one other usable alternative other than cars, they wouldn't need a parking space.
@@lukechen9058 which is why public transit needs to come first, then road redesign, and only then reduction of parking space and demolition of stupid buildings
@@chinbosschinboss2484 That one day each year is probably black Friday. The only day that lot might actually be filled.
I use to play Sim city. It was obvious that in order to not be bankrupt, you had to build density right away so you had a strong tax base.
After watching the whole serie I feel that there is one thing missing. Most people want to OWN their property/condo/apartment, so that they don't feel that they are endlessly wasting their money on a rent that ultimately won't benefit them. However, nearly all of the old and new developpement in my city are rentable only. So knowing that the rent will inevitably keep going up ,as oppose of going down eventually with a mortgage, a lot of people opt to owning a house. And surprise-surprise, the only affordable home to OWN are in these horrible new developpement outside of the city.
Cities need to make those construction developers give option to actually own a property. I personally have nothing against small landlords (6 or less units), however the big corporation are absolutely horrible with rent spikes. And since it's an endless cash cows those units will always be rentable and never be able to be own.
Yup, and historically home ownership is one of the few ways regular people grow generational wealth
IMO, I believe street car suburbs are what we should go back to. More dense and efficient than car suburbs, but not becoming rent slaves.
the only solution is government housing, or properly regulating the developers, if we dont want suburban sprawl.
I appreciate what you're saying but I don't think focussing on greater ownership is the right solution. The US encourages home ownership at the expense of renting, both explicitly through subsidies and implicitly through economic insecurity that makes owning a home one of the few sure sources of wealth. But our central problem is a giant housing shortage, which has nothing to do with the balance of rentals and ownerships. It's true rentals are shockingly unaffordable right now, but so is owning. We could make more it cheaper to own as you suggest, but we could just as easily make it cheaper (and sensible in the long-term) to rent. Both paths would similar, and would face similar obstacles. But there are countries that provide plentiful, desirable, affordable housing with a rental model (Germany, Austria) and countries that do the same with an ownership model (Singapore). The key to both is careful regulation and a large public provider of new units, whether they be for sale or for rent.
We need variety. Some people want to rent, so they aren't tied to a property. Others want to buy, so they can build wealth. Apartments and houses alike can be rented or purchased, so both should be available in every area. Condos are available in most cities along with rentable apartments.
I have to say, this episode is a dramatic shift in the presentability of his case. While his other videos were clearly interesting and had a lot to say, this video was short, sweet, and punchy. It got the point across clearly and concisely, and got out.
Very good job.
This and the "best country for drivers" video are my fav!
He's got an editor now.
Partly because Urban3 produces such intensely obvious images.
Hit it where it hurts. Their Pockets and higher taxes. They all would move to the downtown apartment unit when the real tax it them.
It would be interesting to have a map like this for a European city
More of the same....in areas with transit, very high ROI, in areas with nothing or car dependent sprawl, negative ROI. Unless you are talking about the Netherlands of course, the whole thing is probably positive ROI haha.
I live in Flanders where almost every square kilometer is paved, whilst we also have dense, walkable urban centers,... I think there is huge potential, even here to improve density in town-centers and free up valuable open space for nature, while at the same time making cities more enjoyable, housing more energetically efficient (not even mentioned in this video), supporting water infiltration and so on
@@CityLifeinAmerica European cities don't have car-dependent sprawl. We don't have such a thing as the extremely sparse American suburbia here.
@@aliensinmyass7867 I live in a relatively big city in Europe and much of it really consist of sprawled single family homes. And most German cities are still very car dependent
@@aliensinmyass7867 Well yeah because the European cities just rebuilt the existing building after WWII and have kept the same basic layouts since the 1800s.
8:11 my city of Auckland got a mention, so proud I guess. Auckland has a huge group of lobbyists and nimbys fighting every zoning change and every public transport initiative. In the 1950s the city removed the tram lines and started building "modern" motorways and the city started sprawling across some of the most fertile farm land in the country. In the 1960s, Sir Dove-Myer Robinson (Auckland mayor), announced his vision for "Rapid Rail" with a mix of underground and surface level electric trains. He never lived to see the modern electrified suburban rail network. We are so backwards, it took until 2014 for our first suburban electric train service in Auckland. Now we are facing a similar fight for light-rail which was originally planned for Dominion road and other routes. The nimbys are complaining that light rail will destroy the traditional character of these suburbs, the same suburbs that had the tram lines in the 1950s.
I wonder where you can view the 3D revenue map of Auckland in a Apple/Google maps 3D rotatable view? I could not find this on the Urban3 site.
Dominion Road seems to be an example of a dense mixed use street that has been semi converted into a Strode over the years. I do wonder what would happen to all the car traffic if you just ripped the car lanes out and put two tram lines in? If the Trams could be remote driven by drivers in cheaper overseas locations they might also be able to offer a more valuable 24/7 service without building a super expensive raised or underground right of way.
@@tintin_999 You wouldn't even need to rip out any car lanes, Dom Road is two lanes each way plus a full width median strip.
More generally, it would be really nice to see the per parcel profit analysis for Auckland as a whole (that big flat space on the edge of the map seems to be Cornwall Park) well inside all the car dependent sprawl area)
To be fair, Auckland IS very lumpy and crisscrossed by water features.
However, until recently it had a moronically incompetent council who relied entirely on bandaid solutions.
"In the 1950s the city removed the tram lines and started building "modern" motorways "
The same thing happened in my hometown Hamburg, Germany. Tram lines got removed "because they are in the way of cars". Luckily though, the city also built a pretty good underground railway system that just recently got another line added to it. The main shopping street is closed to private traffic (ie only busses, taxis, and delivery vehicles can pass through), but there's still A LOT of car traffic going through. I always wonder who these people are. No one admits to like driving in the city center of Hamburg (or any large city, for that matter) and yet everyone does it?
I have started to pay attention to this situation the more I have become an "adult". There's a place by my friend's apartment that is like this. It's a mixed-use place with shops and food and nice fountains. It is well shaded thanks to being narrow for walking and the buildings being tall. The concept makes total sense. Just hop on the transit train and then arrive where everything you need is within walking distance. No cars, no traffic lights, no honking and is so easy to utilize. There are even apartments/duplex style homes on top of the commercial buildings. At first I thought about who would want to live in a busy area like this, but it actually is pretty quiet since most noise is from music and talking. Neither of which carry very far.
A fun thing to consider in developing more mixed-used areas that encourage walking and the use of public transportation, it would also promote healthier lifestyles due to increased physical activity, thus decreasing healthcare costs in the US
It would also have to be done in a way that isn't leaving people out. I can't deal with a lot of stairs or walking long distances, and would rather not have to buy a walker or chair to bring with me, then try to navigate buildings. I'm in Canada, but a part that's been having a doctor shortage for the past many years, and where often times you have to wait up to 4 years to get a diagnosis, often longer if your GP sends you to the wrong specialist, it's hard to get help with chronic conditions like mine, and without a diagnosis, I can't get proper accommodation officially. So having things easy to access by default would help those like me, as well as those who may get injured, to have better ways to access things. For now, I'm just glad I'm on a bus route.
@@jlbeeen I understand your feelings about walkers and chairs, but sad thing is that having great bike infrastructure really helps people like you a lot. I am Dutch and seeing people in mobility scooters is just an everyday thing, because of that there is no longer a taboe or however you want to call it on it, it is just a normal thing to see them moving around. czcams.com/video/xSGx3HSjKDo/video.html
I would love to see this series go more into how to help convert car-centric cities towards traditional, walkable developments. I think this video, as well as the other videos in the series, have made a rock-solid case for why this style of development is terrible for cities, and I think it's only natural to go into how to promote this to local authorites, and in particular in-between solutions towards getting cities on the right track, especially for the concerned citizens of these cities (such as myself). Love the video and I'm excited for future episodes!
Well, likely isn't a guarantee, so it would be helpful to hear the strategies that are available and why they can be so difficult to implement, and I'd imagine one of the hurdles is people being aware or invested in this, which is something these videos can solve
@@linuxman7777 Re-zone, build transit, eliminate, allow multi-family and ADUs everywhere, parking requirements, allow taller buildings if developers include (X).
@@linuxman7777 I included that in the redoing zoning part implicitly, which is why I separately listed allow multi-family everywhere.
These car-centric places aren't changing. Not unless massive natural disaster allows time and space for a rethink...then again people keep rebuilding in tornado alleys and flood zones...nevermind.
@@jackolantern7342 people build on barrier islands. I have never thought in my life that i want to live on a sandbar 3ft above high tide, let alone with ocean storms, hurricanes, and rising sea levels.
Ill forgive tornado alley because that covers an insane land area ideal for farming. (Just mandate proper basement shelters and that towns have insurance/rainy day funds)
Britain has a huge problem with urban sprawl - in particular it builds far too many car-dependent suburbs. The situation is not as bad as in North America, but it is worse than in our continental European neighbors. Our politicians, led by Boris Johnson, seem to think that if we all rode bikes Britain would suddenly become just like the Netherlands. But our politicians completely overlook the fact that Bikes are only one element in the Dutch paradise. The other elements are well-planned compact towns and superlative public transport planned by National and Regional governments.
I wouldn't put all the blame on Boris Johnstone but rather the people running the councils, most new builds I see up here all-around Scotland are also car-dependent suburbs, this is with a SNP government for over a decade with minority/coalition councils throughout all of Scotland. There is no political appetite for change, so no party is going to campaign on it and risk alienating some of their base, it's a shame. Currently, my hometown, Falkirk, has decided to cut the subsidies to the bus service by a £100,000 to save money. Hopefully the free bus travel for under 22 that just began might help push the younger generation into public transport leading for that new political appetite.
@@blondmutant (Readers should note that Falkirk is in the central belt of Scotland halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow.) I take all your points. I do however have reservations about free BUS travel for under 22s. It will cost a lot of taxpayers money - money which perhaps should be used to subsidize good cheap public transport FOR EVERYONE. Secondly it is limited to buses, and is therefore grossly unfair on rural areas where the main public transport is ferries or trains. Thirdly, and very important in the urban central belt, it will take under 22s off trains (mostly electric) and on to less capacious buses (mostly diesel).
That is too true re: the bike thing. Would be happy to try and take up cycling for my mere 6 mile commute if I weren't afraid for my life on our trecherous roads. Nobody listens to me (as apparently we are content with our shite status quo?) but I've been saying for years that we need total overhaul of many of our existing urban areas and new, better-planned, residential areas. Unfortunately that will cost a shit tonne of public money that we simply don't have since we're not a productive nation anymore.
Maybe it depends where you live? Here in Manchester, most development is in the city centre in the form of high-rise blocks. There is not a lot of sprawl, due to green belt constraints. This is why house prices are going crazy.
Most British towns, even ones with lots of crap suburban new developments are incredibly small and could be easily cyclable and the difference it would make would be astonishing. Particularly with ebikes. But only if the infrastructure was there. And you speak as if this is getting attempted literally anywhere.
No town or city has a comprehensive cycle network. Nor do they have the budget to build one or financial freedom to raise taxes/revenues to pay for it even if they wanted to.
Dutch towns and suburbs have similar levels of suburban lower density areas. They're really analogous with british town density, drop a pin in google maps. It's just we aren't demolishing the central low density stuff and building medium density walkable and cycling stuff in the way they do.
Even as bad as they are the real problem is the new builds are being built without cycling infrastructure, unconnected to wider cycling networks and not built along public transport routes.
Even the terrible suburban hell of most new build developments in the UK could be made cyclable. It's persistent issues with planning, local plans that allow substandard developments and endless nimbyism in the UK.
Wow so glad you brought up NZ, this country has dived head first with the USA suburbia car centric model which made it a literal nightmare if you didnt or couldnt own a car.
An urbanist giving a lecture at my University was talking about all these and suddenly he asked the attending politicians an authorities (and they were til that point oh-so-happy to have him there) whether they lived in the suburbs (here we call them private neighborhoods, since they're gated) or in the open, denser, downtown neighboorhoods. The obvious answer was a deep silence. Point made.... Your presentation rocks!
Nobody wants to live downtown if they can avoid it. Too many bums.
The way you break down these "complex" issues is amazing. I wish this could be a curriculum in public schools. We really need the next generation to adopt this city planning philosophy, unfortunately too many in my generation and older are too stubborn to realize we are doing it the wrong way.
Thanks! Urban3 does great visualization work. I hope this helps to get their message out to more people.
Not really. He’s just saying “This red area is being subsidized by this black area. This is bad.” The whole video.
@@xx_pcgamer_xx6866 The red and black is a visualization of the underlying data, the net gain or loss a city makes on a plot of land. When you can see what areas make money for a city,, and what areas cost a city money, you can try to determine if these areas have anything in common.
In the end it is this analysis that leads to the statement: high density multi-use zones subsidize low density single use zones.
@@xx_pcgamer_xx6866 That's not quite correct nor what Jason said. All cities have parts that are subsidized, that's not bad per se. It's bad when the total surface area of negative net-loss areas is equal or bigger than the positive areas. Those how cities go bankrupt.
@@korenn9381 what im trying to say is he didnt add much at all to the visualizations he just presented them in a video, and said mixed good.
Holy shit I would have never thought you’d use my town as an example. Oregon cities other than portland almost never get mentioned in anything and I’m always thinking when I watch your videos, “I wonder how this applies to Eugene?” And then you actually said “let’s look at Eugene, Oregon”.
what high school did you go to?
@@farklemybrainsout and why would i tell you that, random stranger on the internet?
I wonder what long term changes there will be now that Oregon did away with single family zoning. I loved the tight urban growth boundary in Eugene bc you could get into nature so easily but it seemed like that also made ownership prohibitively expensive
Origone*
The simple solution which would never happen without a huge change in attitudes, is to convert each suburb into a self contained town. With mixed housing, retail, leisure/entertainment etc.
Great video! You should do another video about Edmonton, which apparently is the only major city in Canada not having a housing price crisis. Why? Because they got rid of the whole single-family zoning almost two decades ago. Now they have housing to spare and stable prices because they have lots of mixed use areas.
And hopefully it means older people can get extra income by subletting parts of their homes when they're empty-nesters. Win win.
but the people in charage will lose short term high record breaking profits i guess./i think. cuz i cant see how this is a good idea for anyone or who profits from this lol.
Having lived and currently living in Lafayette all my life, I nearly shit myself when you said "Lafayatte, Louisiana" lol. I love your channel and this series, so I was ready for my city to get put on blast.
It's cool because I've always ranted to people how River Ranch could be a great start to urban growth, and it's location is great. It still has a long ways to go, because they recently just spent months adding turning lanes down the main street that runs through that area. So two steps forward one step back?
Can't wait to share this with people I know
Nice! There are links to the Strong Towns articles about Lafayette in the description, too. This analysis is quite old; I'm not sure what the city did with this information (if anything).
I am from Lafayette, too, very much surprised i got recommended this. Not complaining as i love it
I hope this channel gets to the size and influence of The B1M. Who knew we'd all be interested in construction engineering now we are interested in urban planning. And I'm a biologist. This is good work.
Right? I never expected to be enthralled by city planning concepts yet here I am haha!
And I'm a neurologist lmao
And I'm into STEM and plan on majoring in Environmental engineering
Yes, we're also enthralled because it shows that much of the financial struggles that our societies have to help its own citizens is due to poor city design and unnecessary and backward-thinking restrictions in zoning, which drains taxpayer money. Many societal issues stem from a lack of city/state/national solvency
You're doing Gods work, please dont stop exposing this mess.
They aren't "exposing the mess": nothing was said about the reasons people leave the core cities- crime, corruption, homeless b*ms, looting and arson by angry m*norities.
144p 👍
👻💬
@@bensoncheung2801 ?
Amazing video as always, and thank you for the shout out @2:44
The last 5 seconds is probably the most powerful way to convey to the average American how much better their communities could look if they got behind the whole "walkable neighborhoods" thing.
@@theonlylolking Last time us brits were there it was like that.
@@theonlylolking Brits: honing in on their own flag, while ignoring all the other flags around.
Why would ever walk when you can drive? That's COMMUNISM!
@@theonlylolking You know that a majority of white americans are descendants of brits, right?
@@theonlylolking there was also a don't tread on me flag in the background of that clip. I guess walkable neighbourhoods are only for libertarians now...
Now I'm curious what a map like that would look like for some Dutch cities.
Urban3 did a very quick partial one for Amsterdam when they were here for a conference a few years ago. I'd like to try to finish it, but it's quite a lot of work. The data is public though (from what I've been told).
I want to see a video on how housing works in the Netherlands. I hear theres a housing crisis right now.
@@MrSea123456 It's a multifactorial problem. In short: elderly do not move out of their family homes, in the last crisis the building of houses stopped, there is a nitrogen deposition problem and the government made some terrible decisions that increased house prices dramatically. And there is more, but these seem to be major drivers.
@@NotJustBikes I would love to see that 😀
@@JanvanHaarst Another major problem is investors using houses as an investment vehicle.
3:30 Funny enough, in several of your videos you mention the benefits of close to street architecture and flexible buildings. The building on the right is an old mechanic shop thats now a pretty popular coffee shop, and this is the example I thought of when you mentioned flexible building
Great video! Crazy to see you analyze my hometown
If you want to see a MARVEL of civil engineering look at the Guilbeau / Camellia / Johnston intersection. It is quite insane
Only if your hometown is not fake London like mine is.
Last week, I ate a burger from a place that used to be where you'd get your transmission fixed.
What on earth is that intersection lol, the crossover on Camellia is insane
@@andrewd8026 it looks like they did some kind of weird diverging diamond-like thing so that left turners wouldn't have to cross so much traffic...I guess?
@@Deadeye313 it looked very plain at first glance but the lanes really are all over the place aha
This might be my favorite vid yet. Love the 3D visualizations - really drives the point home. As a resident of Houston & a bike commuter, the way the city does anything is mind boggling frustrating. Bike & transit advocates simply cannot get a foothold worth anything in convincing the city & developers to redevelop/change ideas. I'd love for you to do a video on TxDOT and how they forcibly drive road construction to their own will, despite community & city pushback.
What I find is that there isn't a single city in the US South that has good public transit. I think a major reason is that people don't wanna get fried waiting outside for the bus during summer. Up north, people just bundle up during winter. The problem is how do u keep the homeless away from the bus stops if you build stops with AC.
@@ericyuan9718 There are some college cities that at least have decent transit (officially for students only, but not all enforce). Maybe not great, but plenty of people live in those areas without cars no problem.
If buses run often enough, you barely have to wait. Problem often is bus frequency which makes riding buses a pain. The best bus systems are ones where you can show up (at least during the weekdays) and just get on a bus soon after getting to the stop without ever looking at a schedule.
you should see the other videos Joe Minicozzi of Urban 3 put together for Florida and how screwed up most of their cities are. His South Bend, Indiana video also goes over how redlining just destroyed tax values (and still affects tax collections to this day) and also contributed to city financial issues. the start of each video below goes thru how his town reacts to development, which is worth a view in and of itself. the florida mansion, towards the end of the florida video, that has its taxable value cut from some $50mil to some $25mil or so was rush limbaugh's former home. he points that out in other videos he did, but i guess when presenting to folks in florida, you can't call that out.
florida - czcams.com/video/bfRaxFtoDtY/video.html
south bend - czcams.com/video/1jzTKd37L3M/video.html
Was not expecting to see the Guelph call-out! We're still not perfect - decades of suburb centered urban planning doesn't disappear with a few infill projects - but things seem to be moving in a positive direction. Zoning is still a mess, though, which really limits the kind of mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods mentioned here.
I recently moved to Guelph and immediately was struck by how good it was, by North American standards. I could tell that a lot of steps in the right direction were being taken. Glad to see NJB flesh this out.
I haven't been there since 2015. Wonder if I would be shocked by a difference. I remember the Costco opening, but the condo across from it wasn't completed. I remember the retail developments opening on Gordon & Clair. There was still a random property for sale on Gordon & Edinburgh (lived nearby). Time to google street view the city, mainly downtown and Arkell road area.
I actually kinda wish NJB would stop using Canadian cities as examples as "better than america" and continue to use more european examples. Because the "not as bad as america" mentality is stopping so much progress in so many fields, But it's not a high bar to reach and although not the intent, these canadian examples encourages inaction/slows progress in cases where we are marginally better than america... The bar in this case should be "as good as europe" not "better than america"
I'm so happy these issues are constantly being brought up now. People don't realize how much of our problems stem from the way we zone, develop cities, and divide communities.
" stem from the way we zone, develop cities, and divide communities." Are you sure you correctly assigned hat's the cause and effect here? Have you consider possibility, that communities were divided to begin with, people who can afford really don't want to put up living near ethnic groups with many times higher crime rate, so would be more willing to accept lack of shops in walking distance?
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 alright sounds good, just pay the city $9,000 a year for that "privilege"
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 have you ever thought that that crime rate might be caused in part by the subsidization of the suburban rich by the urban poor?
@@MacroEnabled "have you ever thought" No, it's even weirder social explanation than usual. It even more would fail to explain why the same ethnic group has comparably staggering crime rate in other places (Haiti) or other Sub-Saharan Africa.
@@MacroEnabled "just pay the city $9,000" Why should I? I live in middle of a city in a country that's ethnically homogeneous and does not have this crime problem.
I think another point that should be made is that subsidizing isn't necessarily BAD, it's just when we're subsidizing things that don't actually benefit anyone that things need to change. Subsidized car-centric infrastructure benefits car manufacturers and gas producers, not the people living and working in those areas. There are plenty of things I would be happy for my tax dollars to subsidize, but paying for this shit isn't even on the list.
I love how literally every sector was massively more profitable than low denisty residential and low density commercial. Goes to show you that Walmart is as equally useless as suburan mcmansion sprawl garbage. It feels like there should only be Urban or Rural with no in-between as we currently know it, and the Urban should be massively reworked to how it used to be, but with certain modern building practices such as higher ceilings, more insulation, and etc in order for the to be higher quality buildings.
There are two basic problems...
01. The "mortgage cost".
02. Changes in the lifestyle and "work" after 2020.
The big cities are losing their advantages, as "better places to live in", not to mention, that you have fewer reasons to move into the city every day.
And that is the biggest challenge for the big city organisms for the next 2 decades.
My suggestion would be big cities - small cities - towns - rural areas
I'm not sure it's quite that simple. What if we forbid religious buildings too because they are tax exempt and low revenue. The same could be said for parks and greenspaces. Road and park maintenance is costly and unprofitable....
You see what's missing here?
@@bilabrin All good points, so one at a time.
First, overall it's not about forbidding single family homes; in fact you will notice that was never mentioned. It's about un-forbidding everything else (e.g. get rid of / reduce areas zoned for single houses, relax restrictions etc)
Second, re: religious buildings, the simple solution is to make them pay taxes like everybody else. Alternatively, treat them like parks. See below.
Lastly, re: parks and greenspaces, and externalities in general.
You could look at it from 2 angles. First is do those places make people more productive. I'm not one to go outside so I wouldn't know, but if residential area + park is more financially productive than without per unit area (including park space ofc), it would make sense.
Alternatively, the city is allowed to spend money on projects that bring positive social externalities even if it doesn't show up on a balance sheet. Provided a city is financially solvent, it might want to spend its surplus to improve lives. Even without increase in productivity, perhaps people will be happier if they can walk in parks or go to church time to time. Perhaps people will be happier if they live in a suburb too.
However in general some common sense fairness has to apply right? Basic things like the poor shouldn't be asked to subsidize the rich, anything paid with city money should be accessible to the public etc. Subsidizing suburbs really doesn't fit into a sort of "positive social externality" category.
So actually I'd say not much is missing. Sure, you can't ever describe every detail of the real world in any number of words, but nothing substantial that would drastically change the conclusion has been left out.
Cities are the drivers/interconnected nodes of the national and international economy so it doesn't make sense why countries around the world such as the US and Canada would hold their cities back so much with bad land use decisions and restrictive zoning. Everything in the economy is tied up in land use so anyone with some basic economic sense should be encouraging cities to put their land to productive uses.
yeah but historically, "the blacks" and "the poors" would live in the cities, so that explains a lot of why those smart decisions were not made throughout history.
@@Blackgriffonphoenixg That was only in the 1950s, the real reason is that people think of mixed use as the projects instead of the types of neighborhoods he described.
Well, that's until we consider two things:
1. R1 zoning tends to have higher costs-to-own/rent per house than anything else, creating economic class segregation that tends to follow historic racial divisions.
2. R1 zoning increases demand for cars and fuel, two industries known for heavy lobbying.
3. Cities are run by voters and politicians, neither of which tend to have the city balance sheet at the top of their list of concerns. (Not to mention, cities historically suck at educating voters.)
@@0xEmmy The thing I never understood is why don't more people just think about how nice downtown or main street is and try to apply that to the city as a whole.
Because homeowners who want value appreciation without investing anything are the ones who pay attention and vote in city elections.
Something I've never seen in the urbanist space is discussion of switching property value-based taxation to property area-based taxation. As useful to city finances as promoting more walkable urban development is, it doesn't actually get the suburban areas to pay for themselves (beyond the conversion of individual parcels). If anything, it almost acts as a crutch because these developments and the people who live and operate businesses there in effect get overtaxed. Switching to an area-based regime where taxation is more closely matched to city servicing costs would put the burden where it belongs along with incentivizing more compact development.
People probably just don't bother talking about it because it's a political nonstarter. The suburbanites will throw the mother of all tantrums if the government tries to raise their taxes.
@@katherinespezia4609 they should give them an option, either allow more mixed use developments, or we have to raise taxes to pay for your car centric lifestyle.
@@katherinespezia4609 100%. In fact, politicians have been playing games with municipalities as well to make the urbanites subsidize suburbanites. Toronto is probably one of the best examples. The former City of Toront (Ontario, Canada), is what most people know of as downtown Toronto today. But over 20 years ago, what we know as Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York and East York were combined to make a mega city "Toronto". The official reason given for the amalgamation was "cost savings". But there were many other reasons. For one, the downtown was a very dense area and was flush was cash because everything was so close by, it was relatively cheap to build things and connect things such as utilities, transit, etc. (Similar to what was discussed in this video). This means with amalgamation, you could potentially siphon off some of the money to the now combined cities/boroughs. The old city of Toronto also tended to vote more for Liberal politicians. On the other hand, the suburban cities that were amalgamated would generally be more conservative. This allowed more conservative candidates to be elected and essentially there was a greater majority and voice of conservative voices than liberal voices at city council.
In the end, the million dollar question is how we can fix this divide between urban and suburban as everyone is looking for their own best interests.
@@Aries2890 True but where I'm from a lot of people are complaining about the crumbling roads and infrastructure. They want a fix but unfortunately our officials just don't give people the honest and hard truths that our suburban living is not sustainable. Like you said, they put their political career above saying and doing the right thing. It's either raise taxes to pay for everything or build up and dense to generate more tax revenue
Taxation is partly a method to spread service costs from those that can't afford it onto others. It'd be more transparent if the real cost of services was actually calculated for each property and then everyone could compare it to the tax revenue. Nobody is expecting everywhere in a city to be net zero on tax revenue. Churches and sometimes recreation centers, for example are usually given a pass on taxes and require large infrastructure but hopefully they provide a large service to the community.
I would like to see them run this same kind of analysis of a very walkable European city like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Århus and so on. It'd be fascinating as a point of comparison.
Oregon now has blanket zoning that allows up to 4 units as the minimum available density. It’s called R-2 zoning, designed to encourage infill housing in areas of low density.
I’m unclear if local government bodies can supersede state zoning laws, which could be the case in Eugene. The HBA in Eugene is politically active, and I suspect they would get a lot of pushback from the home builders, realtors, and local home improvement businesses to keep the higher density designation.
Man I love your content, I’m a huge car guy and never thought I would be so anti car but you’ve uncovered so much of what’s wrong with having a city built all around the car, unfortunately this is just another thing running our country into debt 🤦♂️
Cars are just a tool, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them. But car dependency sucks for everyone.
A lot of people would love cars more if they were used for fun and as an option instead of being held hostage to commutes in them.
I hate commuting and driving so much I moved into the city center and sold my car years ago, best decision I ever made.
Yeah I used to be a car guy too, then I traveled round Europe and saw what it was like in other countries. Then my beloved car started having issues and it was getting expensive just to maintain, I thought the transmission was dead and suddenly I felt pure dread. Stuck in Texas suburban sprawl with no working car. I thought I loved my car, but it turns out it was just Stockholm syndrome 😂, I was actually captive to my car. I got the transmission fixed but started biking everywhere instead. Ultimately I left Texas, sold the car, and live in a real city in New England, it’s old, walkable, human centric. Still have one car because it’s America, let’s be real, but only drive a few miles a week when necessary. Very liberating.
@@delusion2987 Actual if anything covid gas taught me cars are not the main cause of traffic in cities. People are. Working and commuting to Toronto through the entire pandemic it was very obvious to see that the lack of people made cars flow better. Roads and their infrastructure are built to allow optimal flow of traffic. The problem in cities is pedestrians crossing streets when they shouldn't be and just generally slowing the flow of traffic.
Multiple times through this pandemic everyone was back working but the streets had a distinct lack of pedestrians due to the fact no one had anything recreational to do, yet everyone was back at work so driving. The normal 1 hour 15 min commute was down to 45mins with a near same amount of cars on the road.
Cars don't cause traffic in city centers, pedestrians do. Therefore the idea that we all need to drive less to have less traffic isn't really correct.
@@chrish4439 Even if their was the same amount of cars on the road, which I am really doubting, because people do not use their cars just to work, but also remote work was way more practice during the pandemic, and the economy slow down a lot so their was also way less work related car traffic. You did recognize that pedestrian traffic was near to a complete stop, that means the total traffic of the street was down compared to normal times, the street had less people using it than normal times (yeah pedestrian are traffic too not just cars), so it is not a realistic simulation of all of the traffic being converted to cars because in that situation you would put every single one of those pedestrian in cars on the road. All your comparison prove is that if there is less traffic one type in a street, leading to less overall traffic, then there is less traffic problem overall. That's useless information, our goal is to optimize traffic, so that it can accomodate all of the people that need go where they want with minimum travel times. Not to diminish traffic, by forbidding some people to go out when they want, or forbidding activities during certain time for certain people.
It's very frustrating as a dense neighborhood plan is being considered in Winnipeg, but because the developer got the land via our last crooked mayor, the Property department has been thwarting the development at every step. After a court loss and council reluctantly voting to approve, now the Property department is holding up development as every road in the development needs to be wide enough for a school bus to turn around on. This development is the whole reason we built an inefficient rapid transit line that included a jut out into an undeveloped part of the city - dense transit oriented development.
School busses don't turn around in the middle of the road, they always use a driveway (or snowplow turn around).
And from my experience we never turned around in town, its not like the blocks are so long its worth the hassle of the effort.
So that is a super nitpicky item.
I hear ya. Around here, we’re trying to build a subway which will connect two “spokes” in our public transit system and make a huge difference.
But it will go under (with no stop) one of the Uber rich neighborhoods so they’re complaining about the “noise” and inconvenience. Which is obviously ridiculous. I hope the city just laughs at them and continues on, but rich NIMBY’s have a history of messing stuff up for the rest of us…
That’s just stupid. All roads need to be at least wide enough for tractor-trailers carrying wind turbines to turn around on.
i guess winnipeg will remain a frozen s***hole
@Jeff Parker Do you know how dutch high density mixed use cities deal with school busses?
We don't. Because they don't exist. Everyone can walk or cycle to their school because they don't have to be built 10 miles away. That dense neighbourhood should contain at least 1 school as well and those arguments will stop having any basis in reality.
After watching this video, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that most American cities may soon end up looking like Detroit, where vast stretches of crumbling, abandoned suburbs are being bulldozed and literally turned back to nature.
How do I force-feed this video series to every politician in America?
To say we’ve royally screwed up zoning would be an understatement. It’s gonna take a long time to undo this kind of damage, but some cities are making progress with the issue. For instance, last year, San Diego, CA completed an extension of its MTS Blue Line (MTS is the public transit agency that runs buses and light rail) that now connects UC San Diego to the nearby mall and to downtown. And apparently because of the proximity to rapid transit, everything within a mile of the line’s extension is now zoned for medium density, so that should lead to some more dense housing options in the area. A good start, if you ask me 👍
Where can I find that reference to the zoning change? I wonder if we could expand that to 2 or 5 miles. The blue line extension is good, and we need to continue that down the 52 and 56 corridors.
I live in San Diego
Yup same thing happened to my family's house in LA when a metro line near it was finished in 2019. Nowadays, half of their street is 3 story apt buildings mixed with single family homes.
I hope the same future for San Diego.
@@GirtonOramsay What metro line is it, and where along it should I be looking? I'm interested in seeing the area through street view
"To say we’ve royally screwed up zoning would be an understatement"
And yet everyone here and the presenter pretend to know best how to zone, just like the city zoners pretended. Top down clown shows, and everyone here is top down advocates.
Imagine if ppl knew they don't know what other ppl want.
I really enjoy these videos, but they also engulf me with rage when thinking about my own city and it's new inept development.
Yeah, sorry. That's a known side-effect of the channel. 😔
@@NotJustBikes Which I think is a really good thing. Discomfort is the driver of change :)
@@perfectallycromulent definitely visiting boston this summer
@@perfectallycromulent the Boston metropolitan area is really beautiful but it has a fairly mediocre public infrastructure system. I wish that wasn't the case.
Haha, it does the exact same for me. Researching history and finding out that my city used to have robust public transportation which they tore up for roadways?!?!? It was a depressing week for me haha
I live In Eugene, OR and have for quite a long time. I will say that everyone that I know here would vastly prefer a denser, mixed-use urban development style. This town is extremely sad, like many American towns. The sprawled out suburbs aren't as boring and cookie cutter as other places in the US, but the long roads jutting away from downtown of strip-mall, larger stores with large parking lots, and fast food places are not only very difficult to get to on foot and bicycles, but are just extremely depressing to look at and be around.
I found it irrationally fun to call out "I Found IT!" each time he asked "Can you find downtown on this map?"
Dora the Suburban Explorer
I really wonder what these graphs would look like for Dutch cities and their (less-extreme) car-dependent outskirts.
Probably still the same trend, but covering a smaller bandwidth. For example: the American suburbia may be negative 5k on their ROI while the Dutch suburbia may be negative 1k on their ROI.
Even if it is still negative, it’s still important that it’s LESS negative since it makes it easier for the city to maintain itself as a whole because the “profitable” sections don’t have as much slack to pick up.
I’m sure some excuse would be created by the owner of this channel on why Dutch cities are “better” by design
@@srpacific it's true tho hahaha
@ Suffering from cognitive dissonance, guys?
@@ottoreinstra9323 Maybe you should look up what that term means.
It's great to see the strong towns data and discoveries spread around ny other channels - they're excellent at the research and analysis, but because they don't focus on their youtube "presence" the data is not as easily accessible as it desperately needs to be.
I think that’s kind of a common issue with scientific minds. That’s why so many CZcams channels seem popular like this one which focus on breaking down good research so that laymen can grasp it.
Wow. I watched this entire series in one go, it's just superb! Thank you for this! And a big shout out to Urban 3 and Strong Towns for their excellent work! Would love to know what changed in Lafayette...
I would never want to live in a big city (I like having land and I want to keep chickens), but making the suburbs more walkable is a goal worth aspiring to. Making things less car dependent is a good goal as well. Why do suburbs have to be so spaced out? Walking is good for you and fun!
Generally, the suburbanites that I know associate proximity to businesses/services with litter, crime, and traffic.
@@DEAR7340 in the city I last lived in, that was the case. In less than five years I saw a bustling mostly peaceful city-burb morph into a crime ridden and violent place. It was sad. The city found out that due to the opening of numerous nightclubs and hookah bars (that allowed bring your own alcohol) within a small radius, they attracted a bad crowd. Local businesses that had been there for decades were forced out by higher rent prices. Trash started appearing all over formerly clean streets. There had always been homeless folks there but more homeless people who were much more strung out and violent started appearing. The whole thing was a mess. I had to get the hell out after my building lobby was almost broken into by a tweaker, and my apartment was right next to the lobby. I bought a home in a small town where things are still walkable. It's all about what is walkable - there's no shady hookah bars in my new town.
@@DEAR7340 Yes, making suburbs more dense kind of defeats the purpose.
I live in Brooklyn. There are community chicken coops and whatnot. I live on the 5th floor of a 7-floor low-rise elevator building. There are 72 apartments in this building, and mine is about 1200 sqft. My mortgage is $1400, and my total monthly cost is under $2,000 - including bills and insurance and taxes. My total transportation cost is about $25/mo. I don’t have to pay for lawncare, and any infrastructural issues (electric, plumbing, roofing, brick pointing) aren’t my concern. I live a short walk from prospect park. My neighborhood is full of live music and restaurants and cafes and bars and shops and groceries and street vendors and public transit. There are food and culture festivals at least once a week within walking distance. I have a 60 plant hydroponic garden in my home, growing herbs and fruits and vegetables and flowers and greens. As a building, we’re considering building a large communal green space, considering contracting out commercial fiber optic internet as a free service to residents, considering transforming our rooftop into an urban farm.
The point I’m getting at is that cities - even huge ones, like New York! - are often mischaracterized. There’s a strong sense of community, of knowing your neighbors. There are so many cultural experiences and green spaces. You can walk to community gardens, farms, etc. The fact that it’s all walkable, accessible by bike/skateboard/whatever, and heavily serviced by public transit makes it a very easy place to live in. Apartments here are no longer appreciably more expensive than apartments elsewhere; a friend of mine rented a beautiful 2 bed / 1 bath apartment 7 minutes from prospect park for $2150. Rent stabilized. Pet friendly. Quiet neighborhood. No car or auto insurance or gas or heating bills or water or sewer - the only things you pay for in this city are your electric bill, your internet/cable/phone, your rent, and the subway.
@@hesham8 I used to work a lot in NYC years ago and there are actually a lot of parks. Of all the misconceptions i had about the city that was not one i expected to be proven wrong about but i was proven wrong, there's parks everywhere.
These types of arguments are awesome because of how “profit obsessed” our capitalism culture is! It’s literally in our best financial interest to densify…it just happens to be better for the environment as well! 😀
The only thing that terrifies me is that capitalist densification enmasse may just be a redux of the state of cities during the industrial revolution (albeit many cities are pretty much like that just sprawled nowadays)
It really boggles me how few people actually think about this and how few support this!
@@dylanica3387 yea! Great example: my mom was visiting me and my wife this past weekend. While we hung out in my apartment, I casually mentioned that I can’t see us ever living in something other than a townhome. This apparently shocked her.
She just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to live out in the middle of nowhere in the biggest house I could afford.
Now, to her credit, as she listened to me explain the many many benefits (most of which I learned from this channel) she eventually understood my point of view and even said she could see why retiring and downsizing to a condo might be a good choice for her and my dad!
Its probably partly because not only is our society obsessed with profit, but also with clout/status so most people advocate for something like everyone having electric vehicles rather than fixing our cities because you cant really own or showoff a city, but you can own and showoff a cool new car by the funny wholesome meme man himself: elon musk.
You don't understand Human Behavior. When one dominant group has a generational worldview that compels them to hate another subordinate group, regardless of why, Capitalism will demand that the subordinate group financially underwrite the dominant group. As pointed out in the video, "the poor subsidize the wealthy". Example: From Slavery (yes, I went there) to Convict leasing, to the incarceration State funding the criminal justice industrial complex, as much as "liberal" minds want to desperately believe things will get better - things won't.
It's not an "environment thing," It's not a "race thing", its a human behavior thing. We see this in Eastern Europe today, Blond-haired, Blue-eyed humans are being treated like so much garbage - but when others , who didn't look the same - met the same barbaric fate under other circumstances, human behavior prevailed: little or no outrage. This town in Louisiana, or Eugene, WA will never, under any circumstances, change the understory of the poor (less than human) subsidizing the wealthy (Supremist).
I have used the last example of the city block tax revenue to change a mind, but seeing this visually REALLY will help so much. Thank you and I am going to check out more
one was a food joint with a drive through and 50x the visitors. the other random services and several businesses. want to get out of your car and sit in a 10 sq ft restaurant. if you can even find a spot to park. you likely will be out of business. no restaurants??
Genuinely fascinating analysis.
This series makes a whole part of life that I had never even thought about suddenly interesting.
absolutely brilliant presentation in this video, love what you've done with the subtle background noise corresponding to the location shown, really makes it feel more "real"
For a lot of Americans like me, when we see a mixed use development our first thought is "How could I afford to live there?"
Usually apartments in these places are astronomical for some reason...
The reason being that they're actually nice places to live and they're in short supply. Build more of them and the prices would normalise at a lower rate, the city could lower property taxes while you're also saving on gas and car costs (might not even need to own a car).
@@sugoruyo This past weekend I told my son we could ride our bikes to his friends house sometime, my wife asked if there was a coffee shop or someplace to get food we could visit nearby. I had to tell her nope, they live in a suburban wasteland.
@@nate4fish that’s just sad. I grew up in central Athens, Greece where I could literally buy from coffee to a car within 15’ walk. Used to walk to all my friends’ places as a kid unless they lived far. Then I’d either take the bus or get driven if it was far enough. I’m a car lover but a life dependent on driving to get things done sounds horrible.
Good ol' fashioned American classism. Only rich people get to have nice things.
@@nate4fish coffee shops are only for rich people; bikes are for poor people. the two are not compatible.
I just wanted to give a major thank you to this channel. I've learned so much and you've helped me realize I have a passion for urban planning! Inspired by your work (and that of Strong Towns), I wrote a major investigative paper (with a case study!) about how unsustainable suburbia is economically, socially and environmentally. I plan to study civl environmental engineering in Uni :)
Damn, that's a huge change. I've been interested in sociology for a long time and I can't imagine what it would be like to mix it with urbanization/urban planning
@Tom okay
@Tom You're right.... Another few years of Rutte will be disastrous! Let's hope for a GroenLinks-PvdA-SP-D66 coalition in 2025!
@@aidancollins1591 Hahahahahahahahahah. Says Groenlinks. If you want your country to go to the shitter even more, vote Groenlinks.
@@nickdentoom1173 10 years of Rutte, what do we have to show for it? Rent is through the roof, houses are unaffordable, we still use natural gas for our heating so that cost is high. Widening wealth inequality, continuing budget cuts to essential services, accusations against 20,000 poor parents of defrauding the government (then lying about it). All great stuff!
Love Guelph! I lived in one of the new developments you mentioned and it made visiting downtown accessible and part of my daily routine! Plus great parks, riverside and sporting fields all there too!
Very nice! When I was young, there is no way you would want to live anywhere near downtown Guelph. They've improved a lot!
Man, your content is perfect. The narration is concise and informative, the shots are awesome with great quality and the infographics are very good.
Guelph shoutout hell yeah! I'm a student at UofG here and wow I had a feeling that Guelph was so much to get around and visit people than in Aurora or Newmarket! Also I have to give massive props to Guelph too as someone who just read their intire transit master plan which is focusing on adding a protected cycling network within the next few years. The city is incredibly progressive when it comes to it's planning and honestly if I choose to stay in Canada, I hope to live here someday! Fun fact, it is faster for me to cycle to campus than it is to drive (The money saved is a nice bonus too!) Though public transit is somewhat lacking, they do have huge plans on improving it! There will be reduced car usage here in the next decade
I moved from Eugene, Oregon to The Netherlands 7 months ago. Eugene is one of the better US cities that I have lived in but I love the infrastructure in The Netherlands so much more! I bike and walk everywhere and don't own a car. I could consider moving back to the US only if the car-centric infrastructure was changed significantly.
How was your time in Eugene? Ive lived here close to 6 years without a car. Between the biking paths and the amazing bus system i take a car maybe 1-2x a month. I guess i choose where i live based on the fact that i don't have a car. Currently living in an old medium density neighborhood along the river and only a block from the river path. I wonder if my neighborhood doesn't stand out on the map because of it's proximity to massive public parks all along the river. The neighborhood he pointed out is inaccessible to bikes and requires a car to get to. One of my family members lives in that area and it's surrounded by fast roads and on the edge of town in a more suburban area.
i have a question
do i have to learn dutch?
@@c.8292 I'm from texas particularly houston where if you dont own a car you won't survive. If you live in a suburb you're basically screwed as the little public transportation we have doesn't go out that far
Meanwhile I got to live in the Portland area for all of 2021, also got to see the other cities like Eugene. It's amazing how much better it is in Portland to get around. I stayed in the Beaverton area and it was amazing to me how there were so many ways I could get around without a car. Wether the max train, all the trails, etc....its not perfect there but it's miles above texas and the rest of the south
@@nomaderic I moved from southern arizona which is car dependent so I totally understand. I decided to move here because it was a time that I wanted to stop driving and it was the most accessible of the places I was looking at to exist without a car. It is night and day from where I grew up, and like most of the rest of the country!
@@guitargatekeeper If you're planning on sticking to the expat communities you won't have to learn Dutch. Most shops, services, companies speak English.
But don't expect the Dutch to be very welcoming of you if you stick to English. My advice, come over but as soon as you are here make an effort to learn Dutch.
Watching this video, I was thinking about this relative to Eugene, OR where I lived for over two decades. I also thought specifically about Crescent Village as an example of recent mixed use development. And then you mentioned them!
As US cities go, Eugene has pretty good bike commuting infrastructure, smart traffic lights & planning and decent public transportation (Land Transit District buses) including bus rapid transit routes. It definitely had traffic congestion problems but getting around was better than other similarly sized US cities.
The town I live in and the city it's within the metropolitan area of are textbook examples of this, right down to every point you made in this video and the previous ones you mentioned. Admittedly, it's a bit painful to know this and watch it play out in my day-to-day life.
However, your content, along with a few other city-focused CZcamsrs, have helped to spark a deep passion and interest for this subject in me. With this passion came a desire to do something about it. As a result, I plan to get a job in the future that will help facilitate the change needed to revive the places in which we live. Making the plans you discuss happen means a great deal to me.
Given all of this, I thank you very much for contributing to the creation of my passion. I am very grateful you make these videos and hope you keep doing as long as you feel like doing so. This stuff is amazing.
The scene at 9:32 is disgusting. Its hard to imagine anyone driving down that street and thinking, "this is fine, lets make more of this". Even if it were financially stable, its just terrible to look at.
At least there are trees in the background.
omg SO much of America looks like this. It's awful, but most Americans are completely ignorant to the alternatives.
Oddly the first time I saw people making fun of this nonsense was on a visit to /pol/. Even Nazis hate it.
Incredibly ugly, could do so much better.
Even better is the Culs-de-sac zing at 2:43. Design mandated partly because fire departments demand that they have the ability to turn their big trucks around. When the homeowners are forced to directly pay for their asphalt the size of the road gets smaller. Suburbia is also rife with really dumb rules likes you can't park within 10 ft of a driveway in some areas.
Yeah it's hideous, but it is very convenient. The issue is that until you can ditch the car, places that aren't car-centric are a royal pain to drive to, park and visit. I'm not sure how we bridge the gap when it will take us generations to get cities with actually good public transit/bikeability.
I would love to see the 3D ROI graph for a walkable Dutch city.
It'd be a blast to do a Dutch city. Urban3 did a rough model of Amsterdam a couple years ago, but it was a draft test. Unfortunately, these models take some effort and time.
Wow! I’m so glad I watched this video. You articulated your point very well and made it understandable for any viewer. Very informative
Same issue in Australia. Greenfield low density development introduces expensive new services due to minimum subdivision design guides, which over 20 years introduce massive maintenance bills not captured under existing revenue.
Yes, I’ve heard American cities separate shops and houses, poor and wealthy.
In Australia suburbs often have a mix of everything, and from what this clip says, therefore perform better economically and socially.
Unfortunately politicians are slow to make big change. Send them the stats.
It's so weird and depressing to think about that you would be forced to use a car just to get to the shops
We’re probably better off sending more constituents the stats. Politicians are often in the pocket of companies who profit off of these decisions so it takes a lot of public opinion to get them to change course.
Unfortunately, the outer suburbs of capital cities are following the American style development in order to appease the supposed demand for single family housing. If you go to new estates, there’s no public transport, huge shopping centres and developments hostile to anyone not in a car.
Unfortunately, the outer suburbs of capital cities are following the American style development in order to appease the supposed demand for single family housing. If you go to new estates, there’s no public transport, huge shopping centres and developments hostile to anyone not in a car.
Exactly, in my country despite having a lot of issues there wasn't a restriction of mix use development. We need to increase mix use development. Not destroy suburbs, just improve them.
Definitely didn’t expect to see my hometown show up in this video as a good example. I’ll have to look into the ROI you said they did in 2013. The city has been making strides to become more bike friendly, allow more high rises, and they recently approved a transit expansion plan, but it certainly still has a long way to go to undue the amount of existing sprawl and car dependency that’s been built up.
Apparently they've done a lot of good work since 2013. These things take time, but they're setting themselves up for success.
@@NotJustBikes I was wondering if you have any data about home ownership in the Netherlands vs the US. The American dream (forced out of the urban areas due to redlining (incredibly discriminatory) focuses on home ownership (which then requires cars and subsequently stroads). I loved visiting Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Copenhagen and was amazed by the lack of stroads and the amount of bikes.
Came across this video on ebula, and aving watched it, came straight over here and subscribed t the channel. Superb work!
Your channel has gotten me thinking about my own town. I live in a small town near a larger city. We're urban enough to be suburban, but far away enough that our public transport is nearly nonexistent. I'm very car dependant. But fixing the problem is not obvious...the town already exists.
Excited to see Eugene mentioned in a video!! (Despite the pronunciation of Oregon)
Yeah that was a bit painful, but forgiven considering the predictably high video quality.
Your best video to date and it doesnt even take into account the effects on the environment.
Yeah, I try to stick to one topic at a time in a video. The last video was about the environment.
never expected to see wilmington on your channel -- but glad you showed one of the best parts! hoping to see more areas like market street soon
One time I drove from NYC to Austin TX and it was pretty much all fast food, used cars and empty strip malls with a couple of porn stores. Brings me back to when Walmart moved in to the town next door and bankrupted small businesses left and right
Native Dutchie here: I love your channel and in particular the message about American suburbia. I remember growing up - living in a small home in a small dutch city - how much bigger the homes were in America (as shown on television). Only thanks to your channel and strong towns do I realize what a mirage it was. The ‘American Dream’ is Unsustainable. I do have a question: in NL we do have ‘VINEX-wijken’ and I wonder how they fit in this calculation. 🤷♀️🌷🌻
VINEX neighbourhoods are not car-dependent (by definition: the VINEX rules prevent it), so they are about as "bad" as the best new American neighbourhoods.
@@NotJustBikes yes, fair point, we can always take a bike or use public transport 🌷✅
North America has the largest supply of timber so timber is cheaper than anywhere else. We also have lower population density so land has generally been cheaper. Those are also reasons suburbanization has flourished.
@@davidturner4076 There is also much more land to build on in the US, compared to the Netherlands.
Also as stated in the video, the single family homes are unsustainable, because they are being subsidized by everything else.
@@davidturner4076 - if affordality of housing is your goal, you don't need to keep subsidizing. All you need to do is build your neighborhoods in such a way so that they are affordable without being subsidized. That way you can stop raking away money from the other neighborhoods.
I've been to Lafayette many times and I never even realized there was a downtown. I've only ever seen endless stroads, stripmalls, and single family housing 🥴
I think someone might look at these graphs and say "of course the residential areas are a net drain, but they exist in a closed system with the commercial downtowns-people live in the suburbs and commute to their offices. So it's not fair to pick on the suburbs, you have to measure their net effect paired with the downtown areas they supply with people." But that's basically the broken windows fallacy, or shooting yourself in the foot only to congratulate yourself for stitching it up. The point is that if the whole city were mixed-use and high-density, then the whole city would be reasonably productive rather than a few areas of high productivity balancing out vast areas of miserable inefficient sprawl. That would be a city with a much greater net economic potential, to say nothing of so much more pleasant to live in.
And even if you want to make this point honestly: apparently the residential area is not making the downtown productive enough to offset the costs.
My own leisure time is less financially productive than the time I spend working, but it is still a net positive. Maybe an attempt should be made to quantify ROI per citizen stratified by residence type. That way you can properly correct for earning in one place and spending in another.
My friend is visiting the US soon so I was looking at this random American town in google earth yesterday. First I noticed that even though it looked like her accomodation is near a shop (any shop), it's actually 40 minutes walk away!!!!!!! The perspective was skewed because American suburban houses are on such huge allotments. Then I spotted a McDonalds, so I went into street view and pretended that I was a wheelchair-bound pedestrian approaching from a certain direction. If the restaurant was, as the crow flies, only about 20 metres away, I had to take a detour of easy 7x that distance, mostly riding on the road of the carpark and across the egress driveways because there were no ramps or paths, etc. I literally had to travel all the way around the restaurant, but still really far away from it because 3/4 of the restaurant's sides were surrounded with drive-thru and no pedestrian thoroughfare. It was painfully ironic that in the street view I saw several real-life examples of children and wheelchair users actually forced into the road. I suddenly deeply understood the breadth of America's problem. This was one single building in one single town. I am completely astounded that a "developed" country can have such terrible accessibility for pedestrians. No wonder nobody walks anywhere. How can you ever begin to fix this problem!!!!????
This is America, we’re going to continue to build garbage like that.
You can't afford to. The cities will go bankrupt.
@@VideoDotGoogleDotCom Gov't bail out to the preferred constituencies
Yup. There's little that will make modern America turn against something like it being beneficial for all.
Then the clear thing to emphasize is the profits. Since it is about profits, bring up profits first, then PR, then finally social benefits.
We got a issue.
Britain is doing garbage like that as well.
HELP.
Fantastic video. My husband and I made sure to buy a house in a walkable neighbourhood seven years ago, because I'm a daily walker and I walk to everything. It's really paying off now. (Note: our neighbourhood isn't particularly dense or downtown, but it does have all the services nearby.) People can't really make this choice immediately to ease the high cost of gas, but it can (and should) be part of any discussions next time you move.
Seriously incredible video and channel. Very well done
You should make a video, or teach in videos, more how to get involved in city decisions. I would love to get more involved in my own city developments but don't know how. I really like what you explain in your videos.
Loved this video content! What a beautiful way to shed light where it needs to be seen. Thanks!
In Europe is common to have a yearly tax on each house that depends on its size and location. If you live in big house on a sprawl neighbourhood you will pay more
This is a way to compensate the different public investment between areas
There is a yearly tax on each in the USA, but it is based on appraised value. 1 house on 1 acre of land is rarely worth the same amount as all of the units combined in a condo building or rowhomes/townhomes on that same acre of land.
I think treating service similar to how the electric grid works would be a good start.
Basically your bill is composed of 2 parts, a distribution rate (cost of the physical wires and equipment to get the electricity to you) and a generation rate (cost of actually generating electricity).
To addapt this to say water & sewer have 1 component be the cost of treatment (you don't have a sewage meter so water consumption counts towards both) and the other would be the cost of installing, maintaining, and upgrading the pipes for your "zone" and then average over capacity and lifespan and thats your water bill. Do similar for all the services and now you actually pay for your services what they cost the utility.
Rural can be ultra low density because every property has to provide its own services. Want water and sewage then you better drill a well and install a septic tank and leech field. (Which won't fit on a suburban plot if you want safe drinking water)
funny to see Eugene Oregon there lol. Portland, however, recently made some changes to their zoning laws with some decent strong town changes, most notably, removing minimum parking requirements, legalizing a ton of building types ANYWHERE in the city (townhomes, rowhomes, 4 & 6plexes, cottage clusters, etc etc).
have high hopes for Portland!!!!
Bravo on this type of content. This is the type of useful information that I try and find here, but it can be difficult...
i did not expect new hampshire to end up in one of these videos i'm really happy it did
aside from the white mountains the only place people really visit here is downtown portsmouth because its so pleasant. i've lived here my whole life and its by far my favorite part of the state
A lot of the old mill towns should be quite easy to fit into this kind of scheme. They were originally densely built around rail connections in a time when people had to walk to work. Manchester seems to be trying to capitalize on this somewhat. The truly rural areas have somewhat different economies, and people will be more likely to have septic systems and wells versus town water/sewer. Hard to get away from roads and electric, however.
@@SeanColbath Outside of the rural areas and the cities there's a lot of suburbia too, places where you absolutely need a car. It's not uncommon for people to live in an area where it takes 15 minutes by car to the closest shop, or a 20 minute walk to reach a friend's house just 1 street down (no sidewalks included). The cities tend to be in good shape to take up a more walk-able design standard, but I don't know how the suburbs could adapt.
@@brippadedp4188 its hard to say. i live outside of salem and they seem to be on track to continue building car centric infrastructure which is super annoying. there's a ton of businesses there because its in a really good area (right on methuen border and off of 93) but i absolutely hate going there. i'm really hoping they start adapting to some more walkable infrastructure at some point but it really doesnt seem like they want to
Hey NJB, Just wanted to say thank you for your video’s! Incredibly informative, and sprinkled with some great humor (“Because Canada”)! I love watching your video’s and I can’t wait for the next!
Love from The Netherlands! (Noordwijkerhout, to be exact)
Thanks!
I am a longtime subscriber of yours and this video is by far my favourite. I think in the foreseeable future there will always be many different opinions on how a livable city looks like, but the financial aspects just cannot be denied. Sadly here in Germany the Car Lobby is very well funded which makes it difficult to redirect public funding towards other forms of transportation and bicycle infrastructure. Its a process.
Wait, you mean the rich live in luxury on the backs of the poor? Who could possibly have predicted that plot twist?
You always find a new way to advocate for walkable neighborhoods. Great video. Congrats!
That statewide 3D visualization of every downtown cluster for New Hampshire's has got the GIS chunk of my brain going crazy. Absolutely beautiful plot
Great! Thanks for including Auckland NZ. Far from clean and green, Auckland and NZ generally are in dire straits urban planning wise and environmental/climate wise. Thanks again Not Just Bikes for a clear and accurate description of modern suburbia and other environs.
I’m sure it may feel that way from where you are, but I was in NZ for my honeymoon before Covid. Just watching the local news showed how different it is from America cause emissions and climate change were normal and accepted parts of the discussion.
You may want to improve (we all need to after all) but I’m just hoping America can be like NZ in 5 years!
I did not know that the plural of cul-de-sac was culs-de-sac. I’ve also never wondered what it was but still.
thank you! this is so useful in debates on subsidies downtown being so controversial while suburbs do with zero scrutinization.
The long awaited sequel! Thank you so much for this quality content :)
Glad you enjoy it!
I think i found my favorite video on this channel, very well, thank you alot
I used to live by crescent village in Eugene. I can tell you I always went out of my way to spend time over there. It’s so beautiful and quiet.
Star trek TNG got it more right than I could have ever imagined. Everytime they show something happening on earth its in a mixed use walkable urban area.
Yes, and they have trains, too. San Francisco looks awesome in Star Trek.
*magic rainbow hands* FTL Transporters. If you can invent that, or Arthur C. Clarke's "Travel by Wire", that would go a long way making that a reality. Where all other forms of transit are technically optional. Where we don't have to plan around the movement of goods/food from outlying production into denser population centers.
@@NotJustBikes trains are for cargo, not people. People trains are a luxury expense only government waste can afford to expense at a loss.
@@deshawnwashington3798 Yeah, sure, trains for people are a luxury. Except that cars and roads and parking are even more expensive to pay for and maintain than trains are. Let alone planes or helicopters or anything like that would be even more expensive. Lol.
@@NotJustBikes Yeah, in Star Trek I love how they got rid of the b*ms and the riots, and nobody s**** in the streets anymore. And nobody gets mugged.
I really like the revenues map, but the way it's displayed I basically have to trust that the affordable parts are the more walkable ones. Maybe it'd be cooler to be able to look at the revenues map vs how the city actually looks like, so we can judge it a little better :D
Completely agree. They need 3 different colours on the map for the Residential, Commercial, and Mixed-Use neighbourhoods.
To keep it readable I suppose they could height and shade to represent the magnitude, and then colour group to show type of neighbourhood?
Whist they are visually appealing, the graphs don’t actually substantiate the claims that ‘suburbs bad’ on their own, which sadly makes them pretty useless visualisations for this argument.
I think a map like this is created as a first step of a complete analysis: where does city make or lose money on its land use. It is not meant to prove that an area is more affordable because it is more walkable.
@@hendman4083 Yes, that's a great point, I think I miscommunicated in my first comment. I meant from an analysis point of view I think the data could be better displayed. For instance, displaying a zoning map(like the one at 7:27) side by side with the revenues map would probably give us more context about the whole story.
The thing I wrote about having to more walkable neighborhoods are more affordable are because that was his point in the video :)
@@fellipepessanha6805 Was that his point in this video? He only pointed out two spikes, one in Lafayette and one in Eugene, which stood out, because both were spikes outside the downtown areas, and both happened to be mixed use zones that were walkable. 😊
For a NJB video having two of instances of promoting walkability is actually a low number. 🤣
I have become a huge fan of your page and others like it with the same message on the zoning problems in American suburbs. So much so that I look at the current gas price problem and think if only I lived in a mixed use suburb I would be able to walk/bike to the store. Possibly even walk/bike to work. Zoning needs to be part of the conversation with rising gas prices. Just think how much less gas per person the Netherlands uses.
“Watch the toys r us go out of business.”
That hurt.
I love this channel keep going. Do one on the uk, swindon has a few strods and is trying to become a cycling town.
Big fan of this channel and glad to see Auckland get a mention! I'm from auckland myself and wherever you generalise about "American and Canadian" cities I always wanna scream "NZ and Aus" too!! Your channel has made me want to move to Amsterdam. I was always planning on moving to europe somewhere and you put Amsterdam at the top of my list 😊
I live north of Atlanta GA. In the last few years there have been more and more mixed use places being built. But they are done the American way unfortunately. With only the highest priced shops and restaurants. Along the highest priced home's. Cars? Of course! There are parking places you can buy and valet services so you don't have to walk there.
And remember, years ago we stuffed our cities with our poorest so that the old buildings would not have to be updated and the landlord could maximize profits and move to the suburbs