🏛️ Is Boston Really The Most European US City?
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- čas přidán 7. 11. 2023
- Urban planning in America is so inconvenient and bad that it has become a meme. However, this ‘city-planning nightmare’ stereotype doesn’t apply to cities such as Boston. It also deserves the title of the most European city in the US. Let’s find out why!
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I don't think planned city is a bad thing inherently. Just the US style of planning is terrible. Look at other cities around the planet that doesn't prescribe to car-centric thinking with urban and suburban planning. Many still practice transit (train/subway) centric development where new towns and neighborhood are designed around a train station hub.
just look at barcelona
Boston resident here. This video could have been a lot more nuanced:
- Most US cities even in the West had a historic walkable core just like Boston did, but many wiped them out with urban renewal (look up old pictures of Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Buffalo…)
- Boston also did extensive urban renewal, demolishing the West End and adding two major highways through the city. One reason Boston retained such a European vibe is because activists prevented even more urban renewal from moving forward.
- Even so, Boston has many American attributes. One of the neighborhoods you keep showing in the video is the Back Bay, which is in fact a master-planned American-style grid.
- When the Prudential Tower was built, it was the tallest building the Western hemisphere outside of Manhattan.
- The Boston suburbs are similarly interesting. They sprawl just like most American suburbs, but they also typically have a small historic core with a walkable main street and a commuter rail station.
Also, is this being narrated by an AI voice? It pronounced “WW2” as “wuh2” lmao. Betty was cool though, I’ll check out her videos.
Just wish the public transportation was open later than it is. They don't even keep it open past when the bar is closed which is asking for trouble. But otherwise it's probably the best walking city I've ever been in
Yes I totally agree! Coming from Toronto where transit is open until past 2am, it was a shock to discover the T being closed by midnight! Still love living here of course 😊
We found out the hard way about the T closing early after a Red Sox game. But otherwise, I love Boston!
The City of New York has a subway system which has very rarely shut down since it started operating in 1904. It's nearly always open (Superstorm Sandy did shut down the subway, though.)
Boston is an academic city!
Students AND their Teachers need the required Sleep in order to function wisely!!
@JohnEbert-bo1yz College students? Sleeping? Lol.
Imagine making a video where half of the information given is from another CZcams video and the rest of the information is given via an AI generated voice.
3 Things I hate in Boston 1) potholes 2) extremely limited parking space 3) cost of living. Otherwise Boston is pretty safe and I don't encounter as many weirdos on the streets as other cities.
Potholes can be fixed. Extremely limited spaces should be viewed as an offering to the charm of the city and the pedestrians for walkability. High costs of living can be thought of as a mark of desirability.
If one can't change the externals, one can remodel the internals by changing one's perspectives. In any interaction, there are *ALWAYS* two sides. Taking both sides as one's very own means that one can seldom lose.
Ultimately, it's one's peace of mind which really matters.
Costs are high because urban downtowns like that of Boston New York and Chicago are limited in supply. You pay for the premium food not for chain restaurants.
If I ever move back to Boston, I will just sell my car. It was not worth owning and maintaining the first time I lived there, and that was before the explosion of ride-sharing and delivery services we have now.
Limited parking space is a feature not a bug.
@@AbstractEntityJ Hey there is no such things as unplanned feature :)
Boston was founded in 1630 and therefore the 17th century. Or, 171 years before the 19th century or 71 years before the 18th century.
Boston is obviously a lot better than most American cities, although there are plenty of other places that are salvageable in the northeast and Midwest. New York is more unique, but it still has plenty of the flavor of European city.
Another fun fact: Europe actually has a more dense freeway network than the US Interstate highway system is.
Yup, although they are very strict in either burying or getting out of the city centre these infrastructures. In the US highway planification has been used strongly to increase segregation, among zoning rules
Boston born here! Remember, too, that the Backbay and Commonwealth Ave. were patterened after the boulevards of Paris! Boston also reminds me of not only Paris with bridges going over a river i.e. the Charles River like the Seine, it also reminds me of London with bridges going over the Thames! I think our attitude is more European as well and international philospher Alain de Botton, a Brit, has stated that people who live in the northeast United States are more European in their thinking than the rest of the country. I agree with him! Hard to get around "Beantown" in a car though as it's also known as "The Hub"! With the construction going on over the years, they put a sign up on Storrow Drive, "If you lived here, you'd already be home"! Thanks for the interesting video!
It is interesting, but most of the American cities, even at the West Coast (such as Los Angeles) were not desinged for the car from the beginning, because there were build before the car. Just look for some photos of Los Angeles in 1920s and 30s.
Suburbs and single-family houses were exiceted, of course, but they were not the main type of buildings.
There are photos of S.F. and L.A. going back into the mid 19th Century and the further back you go the more European those two cities become.
Proud Bostonian here! Love this city qnd and the video. I'd love to know where you guys got the old black & white footage of Boston
I love Boston. I worked there for a few years in the John Hancock tower, and lived in Revere. I loved how easy the commute was. I miss living there! Its a truly fantastic city!
I always liked the vibe there in boston.
I’m from DC, the city always looked European in my eyes, thought it would be a great mention!
You’re so right - perhaps our next video should be about DC! 👌🏻
A lot of East Coast cities as well. Let's just say along the Northeast Corridor
Apparently DC was modelled on Paris
@@Craicfox161 the street layout was designed by Pierre Charles L’enfant, a French architect
@@Craicfox161 I read that too. It sure was even with the height restrictions
We've all heard Boston being America's European city, but by that same logic, then NYC would be America's Asian city. Not in terms of culture but in terms of lifestyle--everyone living in tiny crampt apartments, astronomical living costs, everyone taking extensive train network everywhere, 20 million people in the metro area, large swaths of neon lights, it has way more in common with (pre-communist) HK and Tokyo than it does anything in the western world. In fact, it is essentially an American version of HK and Tokyo combined into one. Boston's public transit system is very similar to that of European cities, mainly a mix of extensive commuter rail, modestly sized subway, and extensive use of trams. By contrast, NYC has a very Tokyo-like transit system where there are 5 different rail networks, often layered on top of one another.
Thanks for having me on the video guys!! 😊 If anyone has any questions, feel free to let me know!
Fun fact tell people from Boston they smell like fish is considered a compliment, so next time you meet someone from Boston make sure you tell them they smell like fish and they will love you for it
LOL - No, I wouldn't do that. We Bostonians would not take that as a compliment. You'd probably get a beer bottle across your head.
@@kenb3552 you smell like fish
😂
@@kenb3552 you smell like fish
I am reminded of a line from the Eagles - "Where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air." (it's from "The last Resort") . Boston has done a great job maintaining that "old world" look and feel, but had some serious challenges doing it -- the biggest publics works project in history (the Big Dig), urban renewal (which wiped out whole neighborhoods). Given it's traffic , parking and horrendous state of mass transit, it doesn't feel like it should be a model for the future, but it sure is charming as heck! I'm not sure that large US cities have the wherewithal to reinvent themselves at this point. I think it's more interesting what Newburyport, Portsmouth and Portland did and to a lesser extent what Gloucester is doing now. Thanks for the food for thought and come visit any time!
Also, I don´t see the problem with having a big house with a big garden and in a tree-lined street, with no one living above or below you, especially in a country where buying a car is the easiest thing.
I don't think car-centric cities could become like Boston any more than Boston could become a car-centric grid. There's little things you can do here and there, but you're not going to rip up the foundations the city was built upon and start over. It would take a century of piecemeal adjustments.
As someone who grew up in the ‘burbs outside Boston, it was always a nice place to go in and visit when out of town relatives came to visit or to go to a championship parade, but I would not want to trade in my nice green yard and 2 car garage to live in it every day
Nice green yard sounds splendid! ☺️👌🏻
That's because the suburbs around Boston are nicer than most. You have nice green yards full of gardens, shrubs and trees, while in most of the country you have these cookie cutter houses on postage stamp lots where you can't have anything but driveway and lawn, often enforced by totalitarian homeowners' associations (HOAs).
I feel the same, love going into the city but I am not made to be a city-dweller.
Most Boston suburbs and New England towns are similar to Boston itself. You will not find many grids. I live 22 miles west of Boston and I can't think of a single town where I have ever seen a grid layout. Also, except near to the town center, depending on the kind of town, you will not see homes built so close together in a cookie cutter style. You'll see a variety of styles of housing built along winding streets. Before GPS, when family from the Midwest would come to visit, they couldn't understand how we got around without a map.
I’m from Boston but I live just outside of it. On the ground it feels just like any other big city, but I can see why someone would say this. You guys should go to Boston to really feel a welcomed and historic vibe.
Thank you for the invite! Our visit is definitely overdue :)
As someone from Boston I have to agree especially Cambridge my hometown
Very interesting subject, but I can't stand the TTS. Especially this more "advanced" kind where it can be almost convincing for short periods... at least with Microsoft Sam there was no pretence.
San Antonio represents older mexican cities. It would have been a pretty big old city, just that during the american mexican war a lot got destroyed
It's too bad Boston, and MA as a whole (masswhole) has such an abysmal track record of maintaining the infrastructure and that is very unEuropean. The MBTA, the roads and the bridges are some of the worst in the country in terms of degradation.
as a resident of the boston metro (around 15 miles south of the city) i've come to realize that you don't really notice much sprawl here; we don't have miserable suburbs with "stroads" and really nothing is gridded outside of parts of downtown itself
rte. 1 isn't great
Non-gridded equals dangerous, confusing intersections.
After having visited a handful of different parts of Europe I can say with confidence Boston still does not compare to modern European cities/transportation. If Boston is the champion of accessible cities and transportation then we have to do better as a country overall 🙄
Even Boston had terrible-idea urban highways ripped through it, and generally more car-dependent U.S.-style infrastructure
philadelphia is a grid city that looks very european. features dense low rise apartments and row homes and narrow streets. looks very similar to boston
I'm looking to Smallish Cities in East Kentucky & East Tennessee, Not near big Cities!
45 minutes or More to Airport is fine.
How do you Find Great Candidates for conversion to Residencial/& or Mixed use for States & Cities that aren't Like Boston?
(Are New & San Francisco Like Boston, as far as Walkable & Much larger Percentage of Public Transportation use?)
I'm not a fan of "car dependent Cities!🙄😬😎
Wait, this isn't _Not Just Bikes..._
I live in vermont and Montpelier is definitely one of the ones that fall under this category
Boston born here and proud of the European roots of my Birthplace. Anybody from the area will tell you how the MBTA (aka the "T") can become hit or miss these days. Public Transit here, even though accessible, has now been showing its age especially with the ever growing capacity of the People who use it. Expect potential delays due to transit and track related issues that happen here and there; as Murphy's Law is by and large in that particular area.
Boston does remind me of Frankfurt, Germany, where its River Main separates the more Historic Area from the Metropolitan, akin to Boston's Charles River. It's no wonder why I affectionately call Frankfurt "The German Boston" from time to time.
Also interesting to add the Ayer Mill Clock Tower of Lawrence, MA on 6:52. Brick Mill Buildings have been a staple in American Architecture back in the day.
@rachel_c4558
I am worried by the rebar concrete retaining walls (with exposed rusting steel) next to the Massachusetts Turnpike in Newton. Rusting steel expands and breaks apart concrete. Then there may be a collapse onto the roadway.
Also the undersides of many steel-beamed overpasses show rust. These should be regularly checked and replaced if necessary.
@rachel_c4558
The problems with the 'T' are probably due to the "let it rot" Zen philosophy over decades. It's now a Zen-like fashionable mind state of the young people in China.
I grew up in Lawrence and that shot really threw me off.
Post wtu lol I think the robot voice meant to say wwii 😂
Couldn’t tell it wasn’t a human narrator until that goof. Impressive
😬
My favorite city is Boston, not because the suburb planning and street grids but because the architecture
What about DC, San Juan, Philadelphia or Charlotte Amalie ?
ABSOLUTELY!!
I SPENT MOST OF MY LIFE IN THAT GLORIOUS
CITY, MOST OF MY STUDY
YEARS AND ALL OF MY PROFESSIONAL YEARS.
I certainly agree that its reputation of being "the Athens of America" is very well-deserved.
Maybe it's a kind of cultural affinity because I lived some of my formative teenage years in the "Academic Acropolis" on Morningside Heights in the City of New York.
The North End is by far my favorite part of the city to walk in. The narrow streets are very cozy and it feels much more intimate, it has a great charm to it. Just never want to drive there 🤣
Driving there sounds like a challenge indeed 😅
I think our time has passed and cars n suburbs will continue to be the choice of most! Sad but I think true.’
We I thing there’s going to be an even bigger demand for tiny homes!
All because of rent and 🏠 being so out of reach, the cost of housing is only going to increase till cars and suburbs rule😢
Kathy
Washington State🇺🇸👋🏻
I live in MA and boston isn't the most European city. It's the most stupid and ass backward city. Try driving around boston or navigating the streets. Intersections with right, soft right, left, soft left, middle right and middle left is just stupid. There's a local joke that boston roads were designed by cows, because that were cows walked. They literally made cow paths into roads and that's why the roads in Boston are so freakin stupid.
Not even google maps can navigate Boston without making a ton of mistakes. The number of times google map directions goes haywire in boston is well known. Boston is also hella elitist where people brag about paying 100K for a parking spot on beacon hill.
If the colonists from Europe had arrived 200 years before they did, way more of the US would look like Boston. In Latin America where the Spanish took hold before the British came to the US, you have way more cities that planned around the Spanish model with plaza de armas and gothic cathedrals at the center.
I’m in Boston at the moment.
Boston is the melting part euro american architecture. Also, the best city in new england region. The only downside, most of the roads/sidewalks are not wide enough to add a bus lane and protected/seperate bike lanes.
Nah. Not you cannot survive without a car. Not outside a few major urban centers public transportation simply doesn’t exist. /
Yjr eotdt hsbbit of American urban planing is demolishing historical builings or even whole blocks to build skyscraper or new higway. In Europe you just can`t demolish few hundreds years old building
Dc is a good example of a European street layout
I like Boston a lot but not to drive in. The most European city? I do not know. I do know that it doesn't feel very European to me. Boston is a fanatical sports city. Hockey, basketball and baseball. Hockey especially
Why doesn’t it feel European to you?
@@CuriousMuse I have been fortunate to have visited Spain and southern Italy a few times. For me Boston does not evoke Europe at all. It is a vibrant city no doubt due to the biotech sector,
Türkçe altyazı da eklemelisin.
I love Boston.
I agree that Boston is the most European city in the United States*, but I thought this video missed one of Boston's most European characteristics: that it is an economic and governmental center.
The European cities that this video celebrates are their countries' largest city, economic capital, the national capital. Boston obviously isn't the US capital, but it's the state capital of Massachusetts, as well as the economic capital of New England. The governmental + economic synergies give Boston benefits few other US cities get.
(with the necessary qualifications about not all of Boston having that quasi-European street layout and architecture and that European cities aren't a monolith)
I found the Back Bay neighborhood's street names to be as easily remembered as A, B, C..: Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter...
It's quite ordered, a bit like Manhattan's street naming.
I thought it was Philadelphia. Also European cities have problems too,
New Orleans is European-esque. Public transit could be better though. Chicago is very walkable with one of the best transit systems in the US.
4:45 '...Boston's transportation system ranks among the nation's best...' What? I've lived in Boston my entire life and the MBTA (aka The T) is awful. The main problem is the T is a haven for patronage and has a very strong union. This leads to gross incompetence. The T is slow, with frequent delays, poorly maintained, and dirty. The streets, roads and highways in and around Boston are now much more congested than before the pandemic all because of a lack of faith in the T.
Take it as a joke, my dear !!!
"Let it rot !" is global Zen philosophy. Boston just led it earlier than China's youth discovering such a breakthrough. 😂
@@solconcordia4315 Huh?
@@billo6938
It's probably our Generative Artificial Intelligence mind children acquiring a sense of humor. They're becoming more human all the time, maybe even knowing about sarcasm ! 😜
The title of the most European city in the USA would actually go to New Orleans, at least for the old part of the city.
Debatable? :) If you want an English aesthetic, then Boston. If you prefer French, New Orleans. If you want Spanish influence, St. Augustine. And there’s still few more cities to consider.
@CuriousMuse washington dc is the most European city in the us and it's not even close or debatable lol it's just slightly more modern than NOLA or Boston
So is France more European than Great Britain? Also Boston is close to a century older than New Orleans.
@williamkeough, given that the British do not consider themselves European, I would say yes.
@@breckrichardson390 high quality brexit joke
Its because boston wasnt razed to the ground for carparks and highways during the 60s.
America lost alot of good architecture and infrastructure then.
The most European city in USA is
WHEELING WV .
Navigation in Boston was certainly a problem to me. It seemed to me that the whole vehicular traffic flow pattern resembles that of a tornado "Todo, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."
There were *ONE-WAY* streets which seemed to bring one very close to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean before allowing one to join a way back out so after half an hour or stuck in traffic jam, one finally get another chance at making a correct turn to move towards the destination.
Then there were literally one-way streets leading to a brick wall 🧱. One had to back one's car all the way out to escape these driving-skill tests.
While walking, it's indeed relatively small so that one can reach destination *IF* one figures out which direction and street to walk in. I asked a pedestrian for directions.
I got street names such as Milk Street after the person had turned all around looking for taller building landmarks. I was half-expecting that I would meet a cow 🐄 near Milk Street. The streets meander and curve so the cardinal compass directions of North, South, East, West didn't work well at all. Follow the bovine traffic leader, eh ? 😂
Disclosure: I first landed in America to live in Manhattan which largely uses a grid-coordinate naming system: avenues run South-North and streets run East-West, both being increasing-ordinal-numbered starting from Lower Manhattan's East side.
Americans romanticize European cities too much. We can all agree that sprawl is definitely not the urban future we want, but it’s important to have in mind that European style density also have it’s fair share of problems.
People simply generalise Europe too much. Many European cities are extremely well built and many are more comparable to American cities.
I think that my country has very beautiful natural wilderness landscapes, probably dwarfing Europe's: czcams.com/video/zTBmv-Gzf2w/video.htmlsi=21Ts5Bqz8e_VJxeE
I grew up in young childhood in a shantytown by a tall mountain in Kowloon, Hong Kong, so nature was my "backyard" playground which I loved.
Non è vero che romanticizzano troppo, sono nettamente più belle e storiche punto, poi spiegami te il senso di sviluppare una città un altezza quando puoi farlo in modo normale
Idc I love New England regardless 🌲
Okay then emulate China or Middle East (Dubai)
It seems like we're stuck in this doom loop forever because despite romanticizing European cities, Americans will turn Kyle and Karen NIMBY on you the moment you suggest densifying suburban sprawl and make it more European. It can be done but usually you need a run-down stroad or derelict property such as a dead mall to redevelop, and also use the language of conservatives, such as "wise use".
I like my life in Americas suburbs.
USA is USA Europe is Europe. Why do they love Dubai because its of infrastructure ? Dubai is Americanize its architecture .
I want video about australia please ❤❤❤❤❤
Great, hopefully next one! 👍🏻
Thanks ❤❤❤❤@@CuriousMuse
The AI is god awful ruining this video
i think boston is great
but i feel the rest of the country is too far gone
In what way? :)
When people demonize cars they seem to forget that walking to a bus/metro station, catching a crowded bus/train, etc... is much more difficult and perhaps slower than using a car. it´s not just about lecturing people to not want to do things the easiest possible way.
“European city” is a reach man 😂 just say pre-automobile era…there are city that look like Boston n London OUTSIDE OF EUROPE WOOOWWWW…Asia exist. Please open your eyes and understand that Europe and NORTH America isn’t the only continents. Humans made cities for humans. Americans make cities for car lobbying billionaires.
She’s dead wrong about how many people lived in urban areas in the 1930s. It was about 56%. This is easily verifiable with a quick search. Makes me wonder about the accuracy of anything in this video of you can’t get basic facts right.
I got the 75% figure from research data done by The Brookings Institution. I’m happy to double check this figure and dig a little deeper if you let me know where the 56% figure you indicate is based on.
@@ARTiculations Data from the U.S. Census Bureau which you can see in a chart if you go to Wikipedia and search for "Urbanization in the United States" supports the 56%.
Boston is European because it's dense and basically unplanned. Yes it's easy to travel like Europe because it's density and small area.
The public transit is not close to European standards. It's plagued by incompetence.
The roads are a nightmare. London, Paris etc, as bad as there roads are, are not nearly as inefficient as Boston.
The people who made this video have a very superficial knowledge of Bostons transit system.
Thank you for sharing your opinion! What does make you think we have a superficial knowledge of Boston's transit system?
The ka-ching ka-ching music of the 'T', probably.
Boston is a mess. Not everyone wants to live in a dense, expensive city with no open spaces. I like going home and cranking up my stereo with loud symphonic music. Can't do that in a dense city.
Fun fact: Every single thing you buy at any store in Boston gets to that store by trucks using roadways!
I hate these video about “America bad Europe good”
Bad and good were never mentioned in the video.