Just look at the old east coast small towns. I grew up where a lot of kids parents had just one car - everything wasn’t sooooooo frickin spread out and parents could share a car. One would drop one off at work and then go to their job. It wasn’t super common but it was extremely doable and helped tremendously with money. Cars are so expensive and all these new suburbs every single person in the house needs a car just to live. I don’t know how people afford it
Amen. I grew up outside of Philly and while it was the 80s, we didn’t have a car - none of the adults in my family did as far as I recall except my grandpa with the Lincoln towncar 😂 He would pick us up to take us wherever we needed to go that couldn’t be reached by trolley or bus. We moved to CA when I was 11 and there have been 2-3 cars in my parents’ driveway/garage ever since. I live in TX now, with stints in FL, and there is absolutely no way I’d have been able to make it without one in either state, and that’s multiple cities in those states. I know this because I’ve had car trouble while living in both and having to find a way to do the most basic of things without wheels had been super frustrating. The public transportation in some major cities is absolutely atrocious if you live in a further out suburban area, as I do now in San Antonio. It’s a 2mi walk to the nearest transit station that’s only served by one express bus line that only goes to the downtown areas. Good luck finding a decent job in TX that doesn’t require that you drive 🥴
Agree!! Streetcar suburbs are the way to go; center has stores, train/bus station, city hall and other govt buildings, then small apt buildings, townhomes, smaller single family homes, then larger single family homes. Car dependency ruined the small town
That’s because those cities on the east coast were built decades, and in some cases centuries before the automobile existed. Businesses had to be close to home and easy to access because people couldn’t travel at high speeds to destinations of 10 to 15 miles or more away from home.
YES! Living in a city and a 5 minute walk from the metro, my cost of getting to work/bars/etc is so much cheaper and better than having to own a car and pay for insurance,gas,etc. It seriously changes your brain chemistry. Love seeing your urbanist arc, Cara
I love cars, I'm a car guy; but I hate all the paperwork that goes with owning a car. I'd love to not have to own one and just look at fun ones I see on the road or seeing them online. Owning and fixing a bike is way better and easier than owning a car
@@ambiarock590 dude that’s exactly me. I’m currently looking for a project car to wrench on, and to hopefully take to track days. But just because I think cars are cool, doesn’t mean I think our cities/towns should be designed around them.
Anyone with a family is not going to be able to live in a city without a very nice income. They are cost prohibitive for a lot of people. I would much rather a nice town or outskirts of a town than a city or suburbs. Towns such you can find on the northeast/mid Atlantic US.
The burbs are mentally exhausting. It sometimes feels like a maze trying to find someone's home and can add like 10 minutes to travel time with having to turn down 5 different roads even though they're "technically" only 2 miles away.
Don't forget the secregation of zones. You could have a supermarket, cinema, restauraunts right behind your yard, but there's no direct path to walk there by foot. Instead you need a car to drive a mile round the whole neighbourhood to the main "stroad", then turn back and drive through a sea of empty parking which is being subsidised by your taxes.
@@19Lillith the difference is that you don't have to drive to get places in a good city. I just attended an event where my friend and I wanted to meet up. She drove, and I took the train. I live farther away, left a little later, and stopped at a spot off the train to get a bagel and some coffee, but I still got there sooner than she did because she got stuck in traffic and then had to deal with the massive parking garage at the event. We walked about the same amount of steps, but she paid $20 for parking and was stressed out while I paid $6 for an all day train pass and got time to enjoy breakfast. Also, when fewer people are on the road, it means fewer traffic jams for people that are driving. Cities support way more people on a block than suburbs, so while it sucks to drive them, there's way fewer cars on the road than it would be if you moved everybody to the suburbs where you need to drive, and most people can just walk or take transit.
@@rachaelhapeman2710lol. You don’t live in the city do you? You want the suburbs to be over populated; lower; rat infested; stink; and infested with crime just like the cities. But hey, at least you will have plenty of buses to share with the homeless and violent crack addicts 😂
I moved from the netherlands to Canada for working holiday and I cannot drive. I walk to the stores and there are so many places where I just have to walk over the road. Back home I bike everywhere but even with a bike here, I don't feel safe enough on the road simply because it is all so car centric. During the strong winter there was so much snow and obviously only the main car roads got cleaned out, so I would have been stuck if it wasn't for friends being able to drive me to the grocery store etc. It's horrible and I can't understand why everything has to be this way. There is so much room to make people more healthy/active and to just make the towns nicer.
@@VANILLAMILKISGUD haha I have lived in Netherlands all my life so now I have something to compare it to I guess! But yes roads/infrastructure are way better back home. But at least gas and electricity are more affordable here in Canada etc...Trade offs 😅😅
Canada is a large country and your country is tiny. Of course it will be more car- centric. There’s not enough people in that country to provide taxes, in order to build massive infrastructures for public transit system, in enormous mass of land. Do you have any idea how costly it would be? Having cars is more efficient - costs less and more reliable for timely travel unlike public transit.
@@myranaam8562 hi from Russia . We have public transport . Our cities are wAlkable . And we don’t have much money 🎉😂😂😂 you Can invent other excuses why your towns are unlivable
@@myranaam8562 I didn't even mention public transit once but there are already roads, why not have a functioning bus system at least. My issue that its build with cars only in mind from the ground up. While they very much could have at least have a functioning cycling path or even walking paths etc. Everyone is always driving everywhere despite it not being so far away. Literally like Cara said everything is an "island" you drive to. Heck there are entire places in the US that used to be walkable that have been destroyed in favor of cars, it's a shame. "Having cars is more efficient - costs less and more reliable for timely travel unlike public transit." Truly spoken like someone who has never experienced anything else. What about young people who are not allowed to drive, someone who cannot afford a car etc, the environment? How do you explain larger countries like japan that have a functioning public transit system?There are so many factors and reasons to improve things. Even if it costs a lot, that doesn't take away that it's shit and we can have an issue with it. Did you even watch the video?
THANK YOU!!! I have ranted SO many times about how we romanticize collage in our culture when in reality it is simply the last time we live in a walkable area, designed at a human scale, with community centers where we can meet new people! As it turns out, we can just PLAN CITIES LIKE COLLEGE CAMPUSES!
I think its that way because everyone there shared a culture of learning. It was the main reason you were there. This culture doesn't translate to the real world outside of a college campus because ppl have different goals that definitely dont involve learning. Some positive some negative.
Growing up I would visit Mexico during summer vacation and even as a kid I realized how great it was that in Mexico I could walk to get groceries, school supplies, meat shop, small corner shops and even restaurants! I came back to my suburban town and couldn’t stop bragging to everyone how much I loved Mexico because people walked everywhere! How my grandmother would send me to buy tortillas as she made dinner! We had fresh food available across the street. No need to drive 15 min to a grocery store. Wish I had that lifestyle here. 😊
@@rachaelhapeman2710 that's absolutely wild. I'm so used to a lot of city buildings having bakeries or lil convienience stores below on the ground level and then just living space above it.
Yeah it’s weird huh lol. I go to Mexico and anyone can have a corner store or business at their house. There’s even an extra room/space for these businesses. In the US it’s more of what we use for garages.
The 15 minute city conspiracy is so weird to me. I live in an accidental 15 minute city, like most cities in Europe. I can access all my needs (excluding higher education) in 15 minutes or less. I still could travel daily to the other end of the country if I felt like it lmao
Yeah, in my British suburban home it's a 10 min walk to the supermarket or a 2 min drive. We've driven up north several times for family members who all live up there. It really is just another thing in a long string of completely harmless things that people pretend is bad so they have something to get worked up over.
You are conflating the concept of 15 minute cities imposed vs ones that aren't. There's a large push of people that think they know better vs people that don't want these changes, especially since they lead to slippery slopes. In the short term you'll get your convenience, until in the long term, there is a possibility you can't go anywhere anymore. Why not just let people decide what they want in their cities by voting?
@@pyros4333 literally nobody wants to impose that lmao "the slippery slope" Europe has been like that for thousands of years and the slope hasn't slipped
@@anthropomorphicpeanut6160 Then why is it being announced as an initiative? You can say it's always been around but there's an initiative to start building them lol. I think you're mistaking the argument as 'there's always been apartments but now we gotta make them for others.' My point is, there have always been houses, cabins, townhouses, stores, apartments and instead of making everything into an apartment let's have people decide if they want it. Otherwise you'll get what looks like China with empty apartments everywhere
Dear Cara, stop justifying yourself for how interesting you find the things you talk about in these videos. I clicked on them because I share the same interest! Kisses from Italy, where suburbs are way different
Suburbs were created to get ppl away from the crime of the cities. Im pretty sure the ppl that busted their asses to be to afford to live there feel the same way. This is why many suburbs dont even have sidewalks.
@@thefinancialfreedomgirl Don't worry about nasty commenters. Worry about the people who like you and want to hear what you have to say. We don't want to hear all the big apologies and caveats before you get to your point. If you believe in what you are saying, then stand by it. Good luck :)
As a Norwegian, this is totally relatable.🚗🇳🇴 80% of transport in Norway is done by car. In most areas you are totally dependent on the car, even if you live in or close to a city. In so many job adverts it is stated that you must have a private car to qualify for the job, without any explanation as to why. I think one of the saddest things about it is how it affects our land use. We are demolishing and bulldozing our beautiful country to make room for roundabouts and holiday homes. Insects, birds and animals must die or flee to survive. It makes me so sad! I whish things were to change here, but it is only getting worse.
Amen! We probably leave Norway for France in 2026. All villages on Toten have become garbage, and people drive around in the cultural landscapes, from zone to zone, all day long. All cultural heritage here I live is lost to atomized suburbian bunkers. And now wind turbine farms are coming everywhere. So good bye to Norway this year, we travel France next year, and hopefully move in 2026. Norway is the most photogenic country in the world, but we destroyed it, and the culture here now is sh*t.
My home is on a treed street and my grocery store is a 10 min walk away on the same store, as is the pharmacy, hardware store, gym and coffee shop and pet store. I walk everywhere and make friends and bump into friends made. It’s truly an amazing thing to live in a walkable neighbourhood.
I'm from the UK. I live in a village that somewhat resembles the suburbs in the sense that it is mainly low density housing and it is easier to get places by car, however there is a bus at least every 30 minutes throughout the daytime and there are convenience stores in the village. So it is possible to live without a car where I live, just not as convenient.
i live in Mumbai and the suburbs here are actually so commute friendly. our local trains are the city's lifeline tbh. ofc, there are major issues with them too and the BMC (our municipal corp) is... not very efficient. but i believe compared to US suburbia, mumbai is actually much better commute wise. we have a great auto rickshaw and bus system as well! now i sound like i love this city (i kind of do) but ofc there are many issues here too which cannot be denied! thanks for the insightful video, Cara! i look forward to more of these.
Great point. People are so one directional to think that suburbia is problematic. Reality is that they aren't and they are just the latest target of the "I want to change everything" culture.
I love learning about city planning, I'd say it's my political topic that I feel the most passionate about and advocate the most for. I've been using bikes as transportation for about two years now. I'm a car person but I hate all the paperwork and bureaucracy that is involved in car ownership, and that is required in a lot of the USA, unlike European countries. I don't like lawn work and I hate that I have to maintain this patch of grass when I don't even use it. I like driving but I hate that I HAVE to drive if you catch my drift. Driving can be nice if you're going for joyrides on open roads but not when there is tons of traffic, you can't choose to do anything productive or relaxing when driving, sprawling suburbs promotes rampant consumerism and large grocery trips (which generates lots of wasted food), you don't get a lot of exercise when driving, the list goes on. I would love viable public transport, good bike lanes, and effective city planning. Is this really the "Land of the Free" when you're paywalled out of participating in society by the auto and oil industries who force you to fork over tens of thousands of dollars a year? This kind of money could be spent in so many better ways, personally and within our cities and states. I took a trip to the Netherlands last year and I had some fun random encounters with some natives and it was so cool. Car dependency cannot touch this.
Living in France as a 25y in a city center with shops, bar, coffee place ….. For me suburbs look like a perfect place to live, it’s crazy how my perception was ignoring so many issue that you can have (transports etc) Thank you for you videos ❤❤❤❤
Having grown up and lived in a major city (Philadelphia) I couldn’t wait to move out to the suburbs because I love the quiet and solitude the suburbs provide. I hated taking public transportation because it really wasn’t safe, not to mention having a long ass wait for the bus or train. If metropolitan cities here had pristine subway tunnels, trains and buses (and everything ran quickly) people might be more inclined to take public transportation, but if it smells like outhouse and you have to worry about getting mugged (and yes that DOES happen more often than people think) it seems like more trouble than it’s worth. If people want to be away from so many other people they should be able to have that option.
That's all fine, but you say that people who don't want to be in cities should have the option not to. Which is true. But here in the US, we've only built suburban housing. There is so little dense housing available in cities, or in streetcar suburbs, like Summerville, Massachusetts. We have way too many suburbs and the demand just isn't there. The reason for the existence of a lot of these places is the fact that GM and Ford lobbied Congress in the '60s to basically bulldoze downtowns and build freeways, and that is the reason that we have such a massive amount of suburbs in the country. It's not really based on consumer choice
I would love a good public transportation system in the US but the more we expand suburbs the less likely that will become reality, when we look at places that have great public transit they don’t have suburbs like us. I do like living in the suburbs sometimes, you can go for a walk and not be around hundreds of people and cars and noise, you can have your own garden and do what you want, but where I live they are cutting trees down left and right and it’s annoying, I want these trees to keep it cool and looking nice. You nailed it though.
Not having anywhere but a gas station to walk to is one of the most frustrating things about my suburban neighborhood. And to add further insult, we used to have a restaurant nearby that was always busy, but it shut down and nothing's replaced it because they (the government or a corporation I'm not sure which) say they want to renovate the location first, but it's been 6 YEARS and they STILL haven't got around to fixing up the place, so the building that could host one or more businesses for our neighborhood just rots.
Love not just bikes and city nerds channel. Recently moved to a more walkable part of town and love it! Bike rides with the kids have become more common
I wish my city was more walkable and bikeable. Any time our city tries there's so much push back. For instance a loss of on street parking in front of the houses in streets. Even though they do have driveways .
I lived in a major city, then an adjoining suburb of that city, and now I live in an old single family home neighborhood on large lots or small acreage properties between two small towns an hour from the city. Not fully rural, but out past the suburbs. And this is where I like living the most. I didn't hate living in the city or the suburbs, but we were being quickly priced out of the housing market and I was dealing with serious respiratory problems caused by poor air quality. We moved out here specifically for cleaner air and affordability. And it has been really nice having healthier lungs and less financial stress. A lot of people are leaving cities because they simply can't afford housing, or their health is suffering.
I moved to the UK from the US at 18 for college and prior to that experienced 6 months all over Europe. When I had to move back to the US I was so severely depressed from being back in a place that was so car dependent. I moved to a college town in my home state and that was slightly better but I was still extremely unhappy because it wasn’t very walkable outside of few blocks of campus & downtown. So I convinced my bf to move to Chicago with me last year and I can confidently say that I am no longer depressed & am happier than I’ve ever been! I was paying $800 per month between my car payments, gas, and insurance in Kentucky. Now, I pay $75 per month for an unlimited transit pass. I now live in a neighborhood that’s a 5 minute walk from my train stop, a beach, a grocery store, and sooo many shops and food places. I absolutely love it here and I honestly don’t think I could live anywhere else in the US except NYC, Boston, or DC. The rent up here in Chicago is insanely affordable too! This was a great video & I love your content 🤠
I’m glad Chicago helped you mentally! It really is a great city. We still have our car problems (looking at Lightfoot’s “Chicago is a car city”), but overall it’s significantly better than most areas in the U.S.. You can thrive with a bike and/or transit pass here. Plus, car enthusiasts can still own a car without negatively impacting non-car owners. Dense, walkable neighborhoods are plentiful.
People who were born and lived in the country moved to the cities. People who were born land ived the cities moved out to the suburbs. People who were born and live in the suburbs now want to live in cities again. IMO this phenomenon is just based on 'the grass is greener' stuff.
Actually this is wrong. It's a cycle. No matter where you live you will always want to end up going to suburbia. Especially when you grow up and get a family.
Agreed. As someone who grew up in one of the largest cities in the world, I just hate living in big cities. People from suburbs talk about city planning with a glorified filter, or they only look at the best possibly designed city in the entire world and compare them to any arbitrary suburbs. I have personal preference but I don't think either of them have major problems. Sure they both have problems but it all boils down to pros and cons for personal choices rather than saying one is better than the other.
@@pyros4333 Suburbia is only preferred because we've collectively lost the experience of being in a small town. I grew up in small town 15 minutes out of the nearest city, and I'd prefer raising a family there far more than in a suburb. Suburbs have the most basic of basic necessities, meanwhile, small towns have managed to maintain local shops, cafes, and bars. The older towns tend to still be walkable. They aren't filled with McMansions. People are actually outside of their vehicles.
As an Australian one of the main things that always shocks me with seeing American suburbs is scale .. there HUGE.. houses, spaces between them etc. In Australia the government has been changing how they build suburbs. Everything is getting more compacted and smaller. It makes suburban living easier
Yesssss! Not Just Bikes series on Strong Towns was so helpful for me understanding this more - and made me grateful we love in a city, even if it's still car-dependent I'm hopeful more walkable development can happen too as people get hip to these dynamics
What I hate the most about car centric construction is how badly it affects small (and I mean SMALL) towns. Like, population 1k. My home town (or village lmao) and the towns around it are so car centric you literally can't get around if you dont have a car. You are FUCKED. There's barely any sidewalks so if you want to walk, you're basically walking in ditches. Everything is so spread out for no reason. It's so frustrating because they are so small and if they hadn't been bulldozed for cars, it would have been an amazing cute place you could easily walk around in. It would have made them livelier too. But no, it's so frustrating
You're putting the cart before the horse. You need cars to get to isolated areas. If everyone needs to get there they will all have cars. If you now build up the town, it'll need to accommodate cars. The answer is extremely clear, you need cars. Towns wouldn't exist without it. You're preaching for a system that we aren't able to achieve, ground up, unless you have this town go through years and years of growth to build it into a 15 minute city concept. And Even then you NEED the cars because towns are often isolated.
I get so frustrated when people are so against mix-use zoning, claiming that only gas stations, check cashing and bail bond businesses will occupy them and therefore decrease their property values, yet all the pre-war neighborhoods with mix-use are the most desirable areas in town. Why wouldn't you want commercial business near your home. I just don't understand the steadfast position to live in a residential desert (that likely has restrictive HOA cc&r's)
Hey now, it's not only those businesses -- you also get a wide array of CBD/vape stores and marijuana dispensaries as well! But seriously, part of the problem in the US is the staggering inequality and the dominance of mega-corporations. Most people don't have the money to start small/local businesses, and those that do risk getting mowed down by the bigger fish. Basically, zoning for and building mixed-use developments doesn't manifest small businesses into existence. The other problem with mixed-zoning commerce is that suburbanites don't want the noise/clutter/odors that businesses might bring, but above all, they don't want outsiders coming into or through their neighborhoods, and a corner store might give Those People a legitimate reason to be in the area. So like many things in the US urban planning sphere, it boils down to racism.
As someone that lives in the "hood", I'd embrace all the cons of suburbia without hesitation if it meant not having to worry about catching a stray bullet everytime I go outside. Oh and when it comes to spontaneous encounters with other people, you don't want those around here.
I think you perfectly put into words how I feel living in the US sometimes, granted, I live in a town that has decent public transportation, but having to drive everywhere when you can’t is really annoying. I’ve lived in Taiwan for quite some time, and maybe it’s because I’m used to the convenience of everything, but everything in the US is so far away from one another.
A great show that dispalys the issues of living in suburbia is Desperate Housewives, which deep dives into how expensive and back breaking it is plus the pressure to keep an image
We need to discuss more about how continued support of the suburbs and NIMBYism is still often based on exaggerated fears of crime and lowered property values, and ultimately racism and classism. So much suburban development has been created to be intentionally exclusionary (very literally with housing covenants and overt discrimination in the past) and inaccessible in order to be exclusive. It’s a feature, not a bug. Improvements to mass transit, walkability, and mixed use in some people’s minds means more “others” around and that is not what they want. There has to be more work down to deconstruct these tropes and change societal culture in order to see that shift in development that many of us want (and which will actually improve societal ills so many are fearful of).
I've of the mindset that people who constantly fear others can and should live in the suburbs...but their property taxes should reflect the extra cost of suburban infrastructure. Currently, the suburbs are heavily subsidized and property taxes come nowhere near paying for suburban infrastructure. And so, along with their vehicles, suburbanites live a life of nearly perfect wealth destruction even as they don't feel the full effects of it. Rosa Parks of the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott did force public transportation equality in a city that was almost entirely dependent on public transportation and walkable neighborhoods, but the response there was that in a few short years (around 4) all trams and most public bus lines were dismantled and eliminated. And Montgomery has among the very highest income, property, and sales tax rates in the country while its suburbs have some of the lowest...it's no coincidence that occurred during white flight.
As someone who has only lived in Chicago and its suburbs, there is no exaggeration of crime. Besides that point, I would guess most people in the burbs prefer to live out here because of contrast of life compared to the city (politics, congestion, corruption). The list goes on and on, but probably ends before you get to being a racist… at least for most people. And for the classism point? Some of the wealthiest high class people in the area live in the city. There’s more to the city than just the hood, and not every person who prefers the burbs is some boujee racist
@@steveo5999 It's not the suburban people that's the financial and environmental problem; it's the extremely high cost of car usage and infrastructure costs that comes from urban sprawl. In my opinion, a lot of these can be easily solved by turning highways into toll roads, and implementing congestion pricing to discourage suburban drivers from ever entering cities.
@@steveo5999 Of course there is exaggeration of crime. Data has shown crime has actually declined over the past few years, but based on some reporting and social media histrionics the minute you step foot in Chicago, NYC, LA, Atlanta, etc. you are going to get shanked, mugged, r*aped, and car jacked. Many people both live in, visit, and enjoy cities. Yes, there is more crime than in suburbs but the way cities are being painted as waste lands of desolation and crime is just silly. Also, many suburbs have issues themselves. Even in a place like Chicago crime is concentrated in certain areas. Yes, racism and classism has much to do with it. The problems that exist are a direct result of disinvestment, red lining, predatory lending, bad zoning laws, the war on drugs (versus taking a public health approach to addiction), job and education discrimination, and lack of will to not make upward mobility accessible to many. In regards to classism, most people aren’t “afraid” of cities because of all of the rich people. The fear is the poor, black, brown, and marginalized. You can take your gaslighting elsewhere. ➡️
I actually loved your into about pessimism. I am a pessimist but I’m also a fixer. I will wallow in my pessimism if I don’t brainstorm alternatives and fixes to the problem. I have friends who love living in the suburbs. Why would I take that away?!? I love my friends! Let’s come up with a better way.
The problem is actually if there is a problem in the first place. Tldr; there's no problem. She makes a few points that overall don't actually correlate well. 1) she indicates loneliness as a problem but social media is probably the top cause of loneliness in today's society (you can easily debunk this why looking up the studies on where people feel the loneliest; hint it's cities) 2) she makes the argument that it's economically not as viable but this is misleading. The goal shouldn't be able how much money a town/city can bring in. It should be how much can be done to maintain self sufficiency. If a town earns slightly above it's net costs but the people in the town love living there then why do you need to change the whole system to 'get more money?' the reality is is that it's a bad argument. If the need is there then absolutely, go to denser housing. But towns and cities should aspire to provide what their citizens want, not go for the gusto and fill their own pockets. 3) she indicates that carbon emissions are a problem. But it's a disingenuous statistic. Of course PER CAPITA there's more emissions from a person in suburbia. There's less people there. The real measure to balance it out against is; how much does cities contribute vs how much does suburbia contribute (regardless of people).
@@pyros4333have you ever been to an American city? Most of them have been bulldozed for cars, and getting places to meet friends is downright impossible sometimes, especially at night.
@@sokyu7723 of course. But that's where the communities form. In the malls and other districts. Schools as well. Eventually you'll grow old enough to get a car or move out then you can do whatever
I went to Florida like 10 years ago and everything you said was the first thing I noticed when I got there. I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and here the concept of suburb as the american simply does not exist. Everyplace we have supermarkets, drugstores, even if its a small shop, in a walking distance. In my case I live near downtown so I take public transportation everyday, I dont even know how to drive 😂 but when I was in Florida any of this "way of living" existed and it felt so off. It was strange as fuck to have to take a car to eat, to shop, to socialize. I would went crazy if I had to live there permanantly
I gave up and moved to one of America’s few cities that’s both walkable and affordable. It’s WONDERFUL; each day is a treat. If only single-family zoning hadn’t made density illegal to build in most land near our urban cores, then more people could enjoy walkable areas in their daily life.
@@jmsl_910 Yes. For additional ideas, CityNerd has a top 10 list video “Affordable Cities: 10 US Metro Areas With Underrated Livability, Walkability and Transit”.
Burbs are for people who want space and privacy. City for people who want communty and accessibility. Choose what you'd like, but don't try to force people to use what you'd like.
@thefinancialfreedomgirl Idk about your municipality, but 30k a year in property taxes is enough. I mean, I don't pay that much, but there are people I work with who do.
I really enjoyed this longer format!! I love that you put so much research and effort into all of your videos and I hope you won't leave out information just for the goal of making the video shorter. I'm in New Zealand and although our suburbs aren't nearly as big as the US, they have the same problems.
Great topic. I live in South Africa where we are very car-centric, mostly because of crime. I drive to the grocery store that is less than 2km away. But the majority of the population can’t afford cars and so are faced with all the associated risks. I would love for crime to be brought under control and for useful public transportation. Public transport and walkable cities are my favourite things about travelling. Also, on video length, I loved that this was bursting with info, but I’d personally prefer videos under 30mins, or even better, videos around the 20 min mark. I find myself missing out on creators I love because I save to watch later because I don’t have the 50min block of time, and then end up forgetting to watch entirely. I’m also less interested in the video if I have to watch in two sessions, again, I end up watching half and forgetting about it. Just my preference.
@RIPmichael22 Wow! Clever! Yes it IS a me problem. Hence I said twice that it's my preference...in response to Cara asking us to say what we preferred.
I am trying to escape the big city - shallow and self-absorbed people, crime, garbage, expensive rent, dirty air, overcrowded and traffic. I dream of a home 20 minutes drive from the city . I dream of a garden, bigger living room, peace, two dogs and privacy and no annoying neighbours. I dont live in the US so the suburbs here in Europe are somewhat different.
"Denser living spaces with mixed use..." Most people don't want that for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the more dense an area is with regard to population, the more difficult it is to provide effective emergency services and maintain utility infrastructure. Without zoning, you have strip clubs and bars just a stone's throw from schools, daycares, and churches, schools right next to the freeway, noisy hospital ERs right next to townhomes and apartments, the list of combinations goes on. Just look at cities like Houston where we don't have zoning. It is a nightmare for businesses and residential property owners alike. The city has had to cobble together so many ordinances to try to satisfy everyone with something that resembles zoning but often causes more problems. After you have had and raised a family, revisit this and see how much you still agree with it. Keep in mind that "walkability" and "bike-ability" have become more and more of a key amenity in modern suburbs over the past 30 years. Maybe this video would have been more fitting in the '90s.
Stroads. I didn’t hear you say Stroads!! Now you have to make more videos on this topic and talk about Stroads. Maybe a collaboration with “not just bikes”??
Last suburban area I lived in was so ridiculous that there was a 3 call chain of command before somebody could just tell me my car was leaking a little bit of oil and demands to know when that was being taken care of. That is the sort of thing outside of the 10 min trip to leave the complex I didn't care for. 8 years later I live in a more urban area closer to downtown and the car was stolen towed for scrap because ppl noticed it was not running and they wanted the spot...I don't mind not driving all the time because this apt is near a bus stop but I also can't get another car until I can afford to leave it...problem is I can't afford both a better area AND incredible driving expenses
Dane here! Strøget is pronounced more like stroehyed, but it's a hard language, so don't worry about it❤ Also, I've recently moved to Copenhagen from my suburban neighborhood (we also have them, on the outskirts mostly), and it's crazy how connected I feel to the city now! I can bike to the center in less than 20 minutes. The whole center is my oyster. I never realized how nice our bikelanes within Copenhagen are because I always took public transport. Biking costs nothing, is healthy, and is often faster than going by car or public transport due to some exclusive bike/walk roads! Even now, I technically live on the outskirts of Copenhagen, but it does not feel like that at all! Hope your zoning laws get better❤
My two cents that nobody asked for is that that way of making suburbs it’s almost (i said almost) the problem of United States and Canada. I live in Europe and I live in what you would consider suburbs and I have 5 minute walking two big supermarkets, shops, parks, all walkable. It actually would be weird to pick up the car. Bus stops that take you wherever you want to go. Downtown of the metropolis is 30 minutes away by bus or 15 minutes by train. What I mean with all this is that it’s doable.
A walkable village is something so many people would love to have, but so so many don’t. And it is very true that poor people are basically forced out of living in suburbs because of the simple factor of needing a car
this is why i wanna live in a metropolitan big city. i’ve lived in the burbs my whole life (nice and not so nice cities) but i’d rather be in a big city where everything is more convenient.
I grew up in Connecticut, the suburbs of New York City. I spent my adult life and career in the San Francisco East Bay which is the suburbs of SF. I then moved to central Bangkok, Thailand. What a revelation!😮 I had never lived in a big city before. Great public transportation! Everything accessible by foot or public transit. Parks, groceries, markets, restaurants, hospitals, malls, movie theaters. I didn’t own a car for 5 years. I loved it. I eventually moved to the rural countryside, also new to me. I am back to driving but that is OK. It’s appropriate for the countryside. I do have fond memories of suburban living. The older neighborhoods I lived in were peaceful and interesting. There are plenty of housing developments that are sterile environments.
Highly recommend 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community' by Ray Oldenburg - he was touching on this topic exactly
I'm so glad urbanist content is popping up around TH-cam! Super fascinating topic. I'd also recommend CityNerd, CityBeautiful, and the incredibly underrated RadicalPlanning.
I don’t understand why people hate the suburbs. I’m 36, grew up in the suburbs and not now live the suburbs. Whenever I visit a city, particularly New York, I feel claustrophobic and I hate the smell. If you don’t wanna live in the burns then don’t.
I live in Germany, so almost everything is walkable by default. It's great. Busses and trams are prioritised over everything else, so it's pretty fast. Sure, there are those days where you just want to fall in bed with 16k steps, but I don't need a car. I'm a young single adult and disabled without a drivers licence and I don't need one. My ticket is 30 € for a month of country-wide travel flatrate. That's under 35 USD. I had 7 cab rides in my entire life so far and they almost all occurred when I was too ill or weak to take public transport..
They should have suburbs a distance from the city, and then have a special tram system that travels ONLY to those suburbs and then straight into the city. Just back and forth. I think that this would completely change how suburbs are because then it’s like “okay, I don’t wanna live in the city and I want to live in a smaller community with more privacy, but all the suburb communities have a way to travel quickly directly into the city.”
Seeing how things are now, I'm very grateful I was born in '89. I can see now that it was such a great time to grow up & get to be a kid. The world seemed to have so many creative outlets & forms of expression. Ways for kids, teens and adults could interact with our surroundings. We had an environment that had places to go, things to do, places with unique style & very creative design. I really miss the Vibe of that Era. Looking back with hindsight it really did feel like things treated us all like it respected our intelligence, our time & what kind of experience we were going to have. While also providing outlets in our society that helped us feel like a kid inside no matter what age we were. It felt like things acknowledged you. You are a customer, a fan, a person. In a hyper capitalistic society, the least they can do is use basic decency to try and make us feel like they care if we have a good time because without us they can't succeed. The creativity that came from that era really put effort into it's ingenuity. It's almost like every everything took pride in who could find the most creative and unique ways to do things, design things, come up with ways people could enjoy engaging with their company. For things to go from that 90's-Y2K era, to then shift to this bland, soulless, minimalistic approach feels very Dystopian. I really hope we find a way to reconnect with these core things that we clearly saw positive benefits having it apart of our society. The world really needs this right now. Look how soulless so much has become nowadays? Look at the horrible aesthetics, poor quality & poor creative design in modern cities. Even our shows, movies, & video games need a revolution. Things have become so bland, bleek, and minimalistic to the point that it doesn't even make since. Most Old house's/building's/únique shop's are gone. Interesting oddities like drive in movie theaters, indoor fun zones, arcade's, magazines that included a demo disc so you can try out game's. You could go to blockbuster/Hollywood video, McDonald's had N64's & crazy fun zones & covered in wacky art all over. We could preview music before buying it, they had an amazing selection of well made kid's toy's, Roller Rink's, Garbage pale kid's card's. You get the point. Bring back Retro-Futurism. Bring back Y2K Vibes. ANYTHING compared to this current Dystopian toxic positivity. Our society feels more lost now then it ever has. Basic living has never been so unaffordable. Society is solely focused on unhealthy capitalistic agendas. Where anything that isn't constantly increasing profits or gaining investors, is a failure and has no value to society.. Our Quality of Life should be better than this. Basic living shouldn't be this unaffordable. People should be able to have fun, dork around, have things that engage them. The list goes on. Bring me back to the 90's.
Getting Ogden mentioned threw me for a loop 😭 but yes!!! That plus the college campus right there (with a good bus connecting them these days) makes it super easy to navigate, nowadays it can be faster to walk and bus into town than drive
Thank you so much for making this video! You do a great job breaking down issues into bite-sized pieces while providing optimistic advice to fix it. It is my hope that we awake to car dependence as a nation. Keep fighting the good fight!
I'm so glad you're talking about this subject. It's such an important one. My suburban community in metro Detroit just updated our zoning policies for all the reasons you described. And our city is taking action to improve the design and infrastructure of the city. It is possible to strike a balance and getting involved with your local government in the most important thing you can do!
From being blessed growing up in the last good years of suburbia. But just the whole concept of the suburbs it basically destroys local communities cuz you can't have local shops everything you have to drive way to the get it so it's unrealistic. In the suburbs were designed for people with vehicles so which come to find out the architect who they chose to give the blueprint of suburbs turn it up being so upset because his idea of a suburb of town and what we have is totally opposite of what he envisioned. Silver is supposed to be like at mini City where you can walk to your grocery store walk to the movies and then commute to your job. And then like where I grew up at it's just now I become concrete jungles all the businesses have pulled out because thanks of the wage gap for 40 years of wages being stagnant and nobody being truthful about it. This is why I do not like living in the suburbs anymore give me a city any day, lol! And we can fix the problems of the suburban Town East Town has their own public transportation that way the kids and the citizen get around safely and don't have to just rely on vehicles.
As to NIMBY, you would have no opposition to a gun store next to your house? How about a methadone clinic? A safe injection site? A sex and adult video store? A brothel? A cigar lounge? If you oppose NIMBY, you would be in favor of removing nearly all these restrictions?
Quit wasting your time arguing I promise you nobody is trying to get rid of all zoning laws Nobody is in favor of getting rid of all zoning laws like nobody is trying to do that I don't get why you're trying to argue about this
@@Cheeseoogus_ What's wrong with a methadone clinic? Are you suggesting that opiod drug abuse is only an inner city problem? A safe injection site? As homelessness increases even in the suburbs don't you think that addicts should have a safe clean place to shoot up where their needle waste is disposed of properly? A sex and adult video store? A brothel? If sex work is real work and sex workers deserve to be viewed as regular workers should the product of their labor be available similar to other items? Why don't sex workers deserve to a workplace close to where they live? Are they not entitled to 15 minute cities?
@@JChang0114 The fault I'm gonna start to soft by saying most people don't want zoning that allows people to live near places like that those places should be near the outskirts of the city Not around high density housing but either way we live in a housing crisis and we need to build more houses whether it's ugly or not it's necessary and people are going broke and not being ignored for any houses because they rent prices are crazy there's too much demand not enough apartments so in reality we literally just need more apartments
@@JChang0114 Also the rent prices will go down so much in those areas because people obviously don't want to live near those places but it will also provide affordable housing for people who are in survival mode and it won't affect you in fact more people won't move near your You're ahead if people are living closer to places like that
I grew up in the country on a farm. I’ve lived in suburbs of NYC and Denver, cities, small villages (currently) and my heart longs to be back in the wilds of the country, growing my own food. My husband loves the suburbs, but he knows my soul would *die* if he asked me to live there. The overhead and ground shots of endless housing developments make me literally sick to my stomach and panicking. It reminds me of an industrial egg farm with cages stacked on top of each other. No disrespect to those that enjoy urban and suburban living, but to *me* it feels unsafe and unnatural.
I live in a more rural area in Germany. A lot of the bigger cities in the general area (Mannheim and Heidelberg for example) are built similar to Kopenhagen. Also a lot of smaller hisorical cities are planned like this (mixed use). To be honest, I would hate to live there. Sometimes we visit to go shopping but I‘m always happy to be at home without people around me. Public transportation gives me anxiety. I live in a small village on a farm and I have only a few neighbors (very close-knit community!). We have a big garden with wild flowers where we grow our own fruit and vegetables. We have land of our own with fruit trees and because it‘s our own, we have space for chickens and other pets like goats and horses. I‘m carbound and I know that this isn‘t the most sustainable way of living. Also, there is not enough space for everyone to live like this. However, I wouldn‘t change it for the world. But it was nice seeing another perspective on this topic.
Fantastic video Cara! I feel like you hit a lot of great and diverse points regarding this seriously undervalued issue. I would love more content from you on this topic. This is something that needs so much more exposure and I'm grateful to all the channels and people who push these ideas forward!
Call me crazy but I think ebikes and mini-cars (golf carts) could be an interesting partial solution when paired with in-building and the addition of converting residential to mix use /commercial
Thank you for talking about this, this is something I am also very passionate about. Thank you for being vocal against car dependency and for changing out cities
7:40 it's a great metaphor, thank you for making it. I live in another country were we have normal public transport and the city is walkable, so it was an interesting to know how you see and feel in your cities.
I live central in a middle sized European city and work in the countryside. I don't have a driver's license because: 1. I can't afford it. (It's VERY expensive here.) 2. I have a cognitive disability which wasn't discovered until my adult years, hence when my peers were all about school and driver's licence classes, I was simply too tired and as for now, in my early forties, I don't really see the need for it. 3. I don't need it. I can take reliable public transportation out to the damn WOODS and then walk or bike a couple of kilometers to my job. I keep an old bike hidden in the woods and use it to and from the bus and work. In winter, I walk. If I'm lucky someone in the neighborhood might pick me up on the road in the woods and give me a lift, but mostly, I walk or take the bike. Suburbs here, aren't the same as American ones. For one, the whole idea of suburbs here is to expand the city, not shut it off. Most people use public transportation in our bigger cities and where I live, a middle sized city, it's a pain in the arse to drive and park. Buses or bikes are the number one transportation here aside from walking. Sure, we have more closed off "suburb like" places around town where there are a lot of on family houses and we usually refer to them as "house areas". They're still close enough to public transportation though, even if it's slightly more inconvenient than cars. The car dependency here isn't the lowest, you will need a car if you live in really small towns or on the countryside so it's not really an option for me, but it's nowhere near the US. Also: the whole HOA thing and gated communities? I mean, we have housing cooperatives for people who owns their apartments and rental cooperatives for us who rent, but they absolutely don't control how you paint your house, what you're growing in your garden or anything like that, unless it actually becomes a health or disturbance issue. If I wanted a gated community, I'd enter a monestary, seriously. Nosy neighbors thinking they have a say in the color of other people's houses is just as insane to me, as the idea of a middle sized city not having reliable public transport for everyone living in said town, no matter if it's the central town or 8 km outside of it.
Your point at 17:29 is half true. Capitalism isn't the direct problem. In our case in the USA, it is the combination of capitalism and shareholder value, but capitalism is still the root of the matter. Capitalism in the USA is still meeting consumer demand through creation and innovation as you said. The problem is the consumers are the shareholders rather than the people, which originated after the Friedman Doctrine was popularized. A lot of people tend to think of innovation as a good thing, but a new scam is still innovative. Every economic system, like capitalism and socialism, will produce innovation, but capitalism has the highest likelihood of producing the worse innovations, both morally and ethically. This is why people blame capitalism. Things like the Friedman Doctrine would have been thrown in the garbage in any other economic system.
Nice video. It’s a complex topic and there are gonna be people who hate and love the suburbs. One thing I learned about, that seems really random but is actually very important to this subject, was with the development of nuclear weapons the US military got concerned about too many people being concentrated in a few big cities. So it is rarely talked about but it actually is a national security issue and our government wanted to protect more of its citizens from dying in a nuclear attack. This was before global warming and CO2 was raised as an issue with car culture.
Yay, one more voice in Urbanist TH-cam! I was thankfully able to break away from car dependence and have been car-free for 7 years now, enabling me to graduate from uni debt-free accruing a total cost of $89k.
WTH did I just watch? Leave people alone. If you like living away from the city on a clean area, good. If you like living on top of each other, good. Why was this recommended?
You missed such an integral piece to this. PARKING LAWS. now there needs to be a certain amount of parking per development and so much wasted space is going to parking lots. That are mostly empty. And what they are building is so ugly. Thats why i love new york. Long island was all developed hundreds of years ago, it’s probably the most beautiful suburb. But still i dont want to live there, not when i could live in the metropolitan area.
I'll be honest I love the suburbs lived in them pretty much my whole life. I live in a fairly poor city but it's relatively quite. I like the idea of mixed use spaces, but it sounds like a sensory nightmare reminding me of my absolutely leas favorite times living in an apartment. That's not even thinking about the renting nonsense that's going on in the country right now. Paying $1800/ month for a 800 square foot space that I don't own and am at the mercy of some landlord is not ideal. Putting a $5000 penthouse on top the building doesn't make it any better. It would be nice though if cities thought ahead widened street lane have one of them be a tram or busses only system already built into it along main roads in a grid like pattern.
You have the choice to live in suburban or exurban spaces but the vast majority of America has outlawed the creation of urban spaces, depriving people of that choice
We should promote fully remote work. That will cut down on car emissions and other issues related with commuting. Only people that return to office benefits is the commercial real estate owners.
I think we should make city's a lot more pedestrian friendly but i love the suburbs and id rather drive than live in a city. I hate the densely poplated living
Amen, I grew up in apartments and you couldn’t pay me to go back to living stacked with other people like that again. I like my house, my yard and my neighbors
Jesus wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves so I find it kind of rude to say you hate being around other people. Also, you can still find plenty of nature you can get to w/o a car in well planned urban areas. I don’t mind if you actually want to work in agriculture or some adjacent industry or live car free in a rural walkable community, but low density and car-centric sprawl (suburbia) has to be Upzoned or returned to nature if we want to live both environmentally and economically sustainable lives.
So I’m originally from the Philly suburbs and I now live in DC and the difference in the quality of public transportation is HUGEEEE!!! Now that I live in DC, I find myself exploring and going around the DMV (dc md and va) area and going more into downtown dc a lot more than I ever did when I lived in Philly! Public transportation matters!
2 things: 1. I actually really like your intros/ disclaimers cause it really places your viewpoint within a broader discourse. It‘s proper essay etiquette that elevates the content imo so pls don‘t stop lol. 2. as someone who moved from Switzerland to the US, the public transport layout is actually so atrocious & it‘s a bit of a culture shock …
I was born in Brazil, in a small town. When I was 14, I studied for 8 months in the USA. I stayed in a really nice suburb house with a nice family, but I notice how sterile, boring and also hard to live in a suburb, my host family would not allow me to go to school by bike.
I feel even more depressed and dissatisfied with life after having seen this video. Everything in the United States these days is done in the name of corporate profits, so don’t expect to be an idealist when it comes to change how cities are designed to be more friendly to pedestrians. I live in metropolitan Denver, and our public transportation system, RTD, is derisively referred to as Reason To Drive, because it’s terrible at being able to get around the city, and it’s only gotten worse over the past four decades.
Fun fact. USSR well known in western world by it's " look alike blocky ugly buildings". In the same time, cities and even more rural areas were actually filled with single (sometimes two, or more) family houses. And never turned into american suburbia until 1990's. It's getting worse, but we still hasn't lost fellowship vibes from Soviet era. It's still there. While in the city, in big apartment buildings, atomisation is rampantly growing
Just look at the old east coast small towns. I grew up where a lot of kids parents had just one car - everything wasn’t sooooooo frickin spread out and parents could share a car. One would drop one off at work and then go to their job. It wasn’t super common but it was extremely doable and helped tremendously with money. Cars are so expensive and all these new suburbs every single person in the house needs a car just to live. I don’t know how people afford it
Amen. I grew up outside of Philly and while it was the 80s, we didn’t have a car - none of the adults in my family did as far as I recall except my grandpa with the Lincoln towncar 😂
He would pick us up to take us wherever we needed to go that couldn’t be reached by trolley or bus.
We moved to CA when I was 11 and there have been 2-3 cars in my parents’ driveway/garage ever since. I live in TX now, with stints in FL, and there is absolutely no way I’d have been able to make it without one in either state, and that’s multiple cities in those states. I know this because I’ve had car trouble while living in both and having to find a way to do the most basic of things without wheels had been super frustrating. The public transportation in some major cities is absolutely atrocious if you live in a further out suburban area, as I do now in San Antonio. It’s a 2mi walk to the nearest transit station that’s only served by one express bus line that only goes to the downtown areas. Good luck finding a decent job in TX that doesn’t require that you drive 🥴
Agree!! Streetcar suburbs are the way to go; center has stores, train/bus station, city hall and other govt buildings, then small apt buildings, townhomes, smaller single family homes, then larger single family homes.
Car dependency ruined the small town
so true!!
That’s because those cities on the east coast were built decades, and in some cases centuries before the automobile existed. Businesses had to be close to home and easy to access because people couldn’t travel at high speeds to destinations of 10 to 15 miles or more away from home.
@@collegeman1988 why should they do it anywhere else? I forgot -car lobbies
YES! Living in a city and a 5 minute walk from the metro, my cost of getting to work/bars/etc is so much cheaper and better than having to own a car and pay for insurance,gas,etc. It seriously changes your brain chemistry.
Love seeing your urbanist arc, Cara
I love cars, I'm a car guy; but I hate all the paperwork that goes with owning a car. I'd love to not have to own one and just look at fun ones I see on the road or seeing them online. Owning and fixing a bike is way better and easier than owning a car
@@ambiarock590 dude that’s exactly me. I’m currently looking for a project car to wrench on, and to hopefully take to track days. But just because I think cars are cool, doesn’t mean I think our cities/towns should be designed around them.
Anyone with a family is not going to be able to live in a city without a very nice income. They are cost prohibitive for a lot of people. I would much rather a nice town or outskirts of a town than a city or suburbs. Towns such you can find on the northeast/mid Atlantic US.
Sorry i like being able come and leave as fast as possible. Im down for freeways.
@@Turshin I lived in Los Angeles for two years and drove everywhere. I get around so much faster on the metro
The burbs are mentally exhausting. It sometimes feels like a maze trying to find someone's home and can add like 10 minutes to travel time with having to turn down 5 different roads even though they're "technically" only 2 miles away.
Don't forget the secregation of zones. You could have a supermarket, cinema, restauraunts right behind your yard, but there's no direct path to walk there by foot. Instead you need a car to drive a mile round the whole neighbourhood to the main "stroad", then turn back and drive through a sea of empty parking which is being subsidised by your taxes.
And what exactly is the difference to a big city? It also feels like a maze and driving anywhere and finding a parking space is really annoying.
@@19Lillith the difference is that you don't have to drive to get places in a good city. I just attended an event where my friend and I wanted to meet up. She drove, and I took the train. I live farther away, left a little later, and stopped at a spot off the train to get a bagel and some coffee, but I still got there sooner than she did because she got stuck in traffic and then had to deal with the massive parking garage at the event. We walked about the same amount of steps, but she paid $20 for parking and was stressed out while I paid $6 for an all day train pass and got time to enjoy breakfast.
Also, when fewer people are on the road, it means fewer traffic jams for people that are driving. Cities support way more people on a block than suburbs, so while it sucks to drive them, there's way fewer cars on the road than it would be if you moved everybody to the suburbs where you need to drive, and most people can just walk or take transit.
No it's worse trying to find a place in the city vs suburbs
@@rachaelhapeman2710lol. You don’t live in the city do you?
You want the suburbs to be over populated; lower; rat infested; stink; and infested with crime just like the cities. But hey, at least you will have plenty of buses to share with the homeless and violent crack addicts 😂
I moved from the netherlands to Canada for working holiday and I cannot drive. I walk to the stores and there are so many places where I just have to walk over the road. Back home I bike everywhere but even with a bike here, I don't feel safe enough on the road simply because it is all so car centric. During the strong winter there was so much snow and obviously only the main car roads got cleaned out, so I would have been stuck if it wasn't for friends being able to drive me to the grocery store etc. It's horrible and I can't understand why everything has to be this way. There is so much room to make people more healthy/active and to just make the towns nicer.
I’m so sorry you had to go to Canada. I would much rather be in the Netherlands (sounds a little bit more nicer).
@@VANILLAMILKISGUD haha I have lived in Netherlands all my life so now I have something to compare it to I guess! But yes roads/infrastructure are way better back home. But at least gas and electricity are more affordable here in Canada etc...Trade offs 😅😅
Canada is a large country and your country is tiny. Of course it will be more car- centric. There’s not enough people in that country to provide taxes, in order to build massive infrastructures for public transit system, in enormous mass of land. Do you have any idea how costly it would be?
Having cars is more efficient - costs less and more reliable for timely travel unlike public transit.
@@myranaam8562 hi from Russia . We have public transport . Our cities are wAlkable . And we don’t have much money 🎉😂😂😂 you Can invent other excuses why your towns are unlivable
@@myranaam8562 I didn't even mention public transit once but there are already roads, why not have a functioning bus system at least. My issue that its build with cars only in mind from the ground up. While they very much could have at least have a functioning cycling path or even walking paths etc. Everyone is always driving everywhere despite it not being so far away. Literally like Cara said everything is an "island" you drive to. Heck there are entire places in the US that used to be walkable that have been destroyed in favor of cars, it's a shame.
"Having cars is more efficient - costs less and more reliable for timely travel unlike public transit." Truly spoken like someone who has never experienced anything else. What about young people who are not allowed to drive, someone who cannot afford a car etc, the environment? How do you explain larger countries like japan that have a functioning public transit system?There are so many factors and reasons to improve things. Even if it costs a lot, that doesn't take away that it's shit and we can have an issue with it. Did you even watch the video?
THANK YOU!!! I have ranted SO many times about how we romanticize collage in our culture when in reality it is simply the last time we live in a walkable area, designed at a human scale, with community centers where we can meet new people! As it turns out, we can just PLAN CITIES LIKE COLLEGE CAMPUSES!
For some it is the first, last, and only time.
I think its that way because everyone there shared a culture of learning. It was the main reason you were there. This culture doesn't translate to the real world outside of a college campus because ppl have different goals that definitely dont involve learning. Some positive some negative.
@@Turshin No, its the walkability.
Nope. Just nope . Even campuses are car centered .
@todddammit4628 I don't want ppl walking around my home. SMH you just don't get it.
Growing up I would visit Mexico during summer vacation and even as a kid I realized how great it was that in Mexico I could walk to get groceries, school supplies, meat shop, small corner shops and even restaurants! I came back to my suburban town and couldn’t stop bragging to everyone how much I loved Mexico because people walked everywhere! How my grandmother would send me to buy tortillas as she made dinner! We had fresh food available across the street. No need to drive 15 min to a grocery store. Wish I had that lifestyle here. 😊
I didn't realize mixed zoning is.... not normal outside of Europe apparently 😭
In some places it's actually illegal. Lots of the USA prohibits it.
@@rachaelhapeman2710 that's absolutely wild. I'm so used to a lot of city buildings having bakeries or lil convienience stores below on the ground level and then just living space above it.
@@rachaelhapeman2710 Correction. In MOST places is actually illegal in the USA.
Yeah it’s weird huh lol. I go to Mexico and anyone can have a corner store or business at their house. There’s even an extra room/space for these businesses. In the US it’s more of what we use for garages.
It is normal in most of the world. Go to third world countries and you’ll see
I appreciate the fact you read a book before making a video on the topic. It is fairly rare seeing youtube doing a proper prep.
You need to start watching better quality videos. The ones I watch are top tier, some with weeks or months of data before videos.
The 15 minute city conspiracy is so weird to me. I live in an accidental 15 minute city, like most cities in Europe. I can access all my needs (excluding higher education) in 15 minutes or less. I still could travel daily to the other end of the country if I felt like it lmao
Yeah, in my British suburban home it's a 10 min walk to the supermarket or a 2 min drive. We've driven up north several times for family members who all live up there. It really is just another thing in a long string of completely harmless things that people pretend is bad so they have something to get worked up over.
I live in a mountain community that all my needs can be met within 2-4 miles. Most just down the street
You are conflating the concept of 15 minute cities imposed vs ones that aren't.
There's a large push of people that think they know better vs people that don't want these changes, especially since they lead to slippery slopes.
In the short term you'll get your convenience, until in the long term, there is a possibility you can't go anywhere anymore.
Why not just let people decide what they want in their cities by voting?
@@pyros4333 literally nobody wants to impose that lmao "the slippery slope" Europe has been like that for thousands of years and the slope hasn't slipped
@@anthropomorphicpeanut6160
Then why is it being announced as an initiative?
You can say it's always been around but there's an initiative to start building them lol.
I think you're mistaking the argument as 'there's always been apartments but now we gotta make them for others.' My point is, there have always been houses, cabins, townhouses, stores, apartments and instead of making everything into an apartment let's have people decide if they want it. Otherwise you'll get what looks like China with empty apartments everywhere
Dear Cara, stop justifying yourself for how interesting you find the things you talk about in these videos. I clicked on them because I share the same interest! Kisses from Italy, where suburbs are way different
She does that every video. A big apology tour before getting to her thesis. Youth I guess. 🙄🤷♀️
Where suburbs are functional and convenient.
Suburbs were created to get ppl away from the crime of the cities. Im pretty sure the ppl that busted their asses to be to afford to live there feel the same way. This is why many suburbs dont even have sidewalks.
@@kensiblonde4203 it's more a strategy to mitigate nasty commenters (and it works for the most part!)
@@thefinancialfreedomgirl Don't worry about nasty commenters. Worry about the people who like you and want to hear what you have to say. We don't want to hear all the big apologies and caveats before you get to your point. If you believe in what you are saying, then stand by it. Good luck :)
As a Norwegian, this is totally relatable.🚗🇳🇴 80% of transport in Norway is done by car. In most areas you are totally dependent on the car, even if you live in or close to a city. In so many job adverts it is stated that you must have a private car to qualify for the job, without any explanation as to why.
I think one of the saddest things about it is how it affects our land use. We are demolishing and bulldozing our beautiful country to make room for roundabouts and holiday homes. Insects, birds and animals must die or flee to survive. It makes me so sad!
I whish things were to change here, but it is only getting worse.
Amen! We probably leave Norway for France in 2026. All villages on Toten have become garbage, and people drive around in the cultural landscapes, from zone to zone, all day long. All cultural heritage here I live is lost to atomized suburbian bunkers. And now wind turbine farms are coming everywhere. So good bye to Norway this year, we travel France next year, and hopefully move in 2026. Norway is the most photogenic country in the world, but we destroyed it, and the culture here now is sh*t.
My home is on a treed street and my grocery store is a 10 min walk away on the same store, as is the pharmacy, hardware store, gym and coffee shop and pet store. I walk everywhere and make friends and bump into friends made. It’s truly an amazing thing to live in a walkable neighbourhood.
I'm from the UK. I live in a village that somewhat resembles the suburbs in the sense that it is mainly low density housing and it is easier to get places by car, however there is a bus at least every 30 minutes throughout the daytime and there are convenience stores in the village. So it is possible to live without a car where I live, just not as convenient.
Milton Keynes looks like an American suburb
i live in Mumbai and the suburbs here are actually so commute friendly. our local trains are the city's lifeline tbh. ofc, there are major issues with them too and the BMC (our municipal corp) is... not very efficient. but i believe compared to US suburbia, mumbai is actually much better commute wise. we have a great auto rickshaw and bus system as well! now i sound like i love this city (i kind of do) but ofc there are many issues here too which cannot be denied!
thanks for the insightful video, Cara! i look forward to more of these.
There are no suburbs in any of Indian metro in the same sense as US
Great point. People are so one directional to think that suburbia is problematic.
Reality is that they aren't and they are just the latest target of the "I want to change everything" culture.
I love learning about city planning, I'd say it's my political topic that I feel the most passionate about and advocate the most for. I've been using bikes as transportation for about two years now. I'm a car person but I hate all the paperwork and bureaucracy that is involved in car ownership, and that is required in a lot of the USA, unlike European countries. I don't like lawn work and I hate that I have to maintain this patch of grass when I don't even use it. I like driving but I hate that I HAVE to drive if you catch my drift. Driving can be nice if you're going for joyrides on open roads but not when there is tons of traffic, you can't choose to do anything productive or relaxing when driving, sprawling suburbs promotes rampant consumerism and large grocery trips (which generates lots of wasted food), you don't get a lot of exercise when driving, the list goes on. I would love viable public transport, good bike lanes, and effective city planning. Is this really the "Land of the Free" when you're paywalled out of participating in society by the auto and oil industries who force you to fork over tens of thousands of dollars a year? This kind of money could be spent in so many better ways, personally and within our cities and states. I took a trip to the Netherlands last year and I had some fun random encounters with some natives and it was so cool. Car dependency cannot touch this.
"If you want the option of suburbia, you should be paying for it." Amen to that!
Living in New York, I take for granted how subpar the public transport options are in the US. Great video.
Living in France as a 25y in a city center with shops, bar, coffee place …..
For me suburbs look like a perfect place to live, it’s crazy how my perception was ignoring so many issue that you can have (transports etc)
Thank you for you videos ❤❤❤❤
Having grown up and lived in a major city (Philadelphia) I couldn’t wait to move out to the suburbs because I love the quiet and solitude the suburbs provide. I hated taking public transportation because it really wasn’t safe, not to mention having a long ass wait for the bus or train. If metropolitan cities here had pristine subway tunnels, trains and buses (and everything ran quickly) people might be more inclined to take public transportation, but if it smells like outhouse and you have to worry about getting mugged (and yes that DOES happen more often than people think) it seems like more trouble than it’s worth. If people want to be away from so many other people they should be able to have that option.
I never lived in an inner city 🏙️ before in my life and lived in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and Raleigh Durham and Washington DC in my life.
That's all fine, but you say that people who don't want to be in cities should have the option not to. Which is true. But here in the US, we've only built suburban housing. There is so little dense housing available in cities, or in streetcar suburbs, like Summerville, Massachusetts. We have way too many suburbs and the demand just isn't there. The reason for the existence of a lot of these places is the fact that GM and Ford lobbied Congress in the '60s to basically bulldoze downtowns and build freeways, and that is the reason that we have such a massive amount of suburbs in the country. It's not really based on consumer choice
I would love a good public transportation system in the US but the more we expand suburbs the less likely that will become reality, when we look at places that have great public transit they don’t have suburbs like us. I do like living in the suburbs sometimes, you can go for a walk and not be around hundreds of people and cars and noise, you can have your own garden and do what you want, but where I live they are cutting trees down left and right and it’s annoying, I want these trees to keep it cool and looking nice. You nailed it though.
Not having anywhere but a gas station to walk to is one of the most frustrating things about my suburban neighborhood. And to add further insult, we used to have a restaurant nearby that was always busy, but it shut down and nothing's replaced it because they (the government or a corporation I'm not sure which) say they want to renovate the location first, but it's been 6 YEARS and they STILL haven't got around to fixing up the place, so the building that could host one or more businesses for our neighborhood just rots.
as someone who walks 2 miles to school that takes me around an hour this is so relatable, everywhere we want to go is just so spread out
You sound young. Once you grow up you'll want to move back. But go to a city for now
@@pyros4333 yeaaah. Shall we talk about elderly people and problems with driving at the old age 😢😢😢😢😢😢
Love not just bikes and city nerds channel. Recently moved to a more walkable part of town and love it! Bike rides with the kids have become more common
I wish my city was more walkable and bikeable. Any time our city tries there's so much push back. For instance a loss of on street parking in front of the houses in streets. Even though they do have driveways .
I grew up in the suburbs and loved it. I had a lot of friends in the neighborhood. With plenty of things to do.
I lived in a major city, then an adjoining suburb of that city, and now I live in an old single family home neighborhood on large lots or small acreage properties between two small towns an hour from the city. Not fully rural, but out past the suburbs. And this is where I like living the most.
I didn't hate living in the city or the suburbs, but we were being quickly priced out of the housing market and I was dealing with serious respiratory problems caused by poor air quality.
We moved out here specifically for cleaner air and affordability. And it has been really nice having healthier lungs and less financial stress. A lot of people are leaving cities because they simply can't afford housing, or their health is suffering.
I moved to the UK from the US at 18 for college and prior to that experienced 6 months all over Europe. When I had to move back to the US I was so severely depressed from being back in a place that was so car dependent. I moved to a college town in my home state and that was slightly better but I was still extremely unhappy because it wasn’t very walkable outside of few blocks of campus & downtown. So I convinced my bf to move to Chicago with me last year and I can confidently say that I am no longer depressed & am happier than I’ve ever been! I was paying $800 per month between my car payments, gas, and insurance in Kentucky. Now, I pay $75 per month for an unlimited transit pass. I now live in a neighborhood that’s a 5 minute walk from my train stop, a beach, a grocery store, and sooo many shops and food places. I absolutely love it here and I honestly don’t think I could live anywhere else in the US except NYC, Boston, or DC. The rent up here in Chicago is insanely affordable too!
This was a great video & I love your content 🤠
I’m glad Chicago helped you mentally! It really is a great city.
We still have our car problems (looking at Lightfoot’s “Chicago is a car city”), but overall it’s significantly better than most areas in the U.S.. You can thrive with a bike and/or transit pass here.
Plus, car enthusiasts can still own a car without negatively impacting non-car owners. Dense, walkable neighborhoods are plentiful.
People who were born and lived in the country moved to the cities.
People who were born land ived the cities moved out to the suburbs.
People who were born and live in the suburbs now want to live in cities again.
IMO this phenomenon is just based on 'the grass is greener' stuff.
No way. There are major qualitative differences in the building patterns.
Actually this is wrong.
It's a cycle. No matter where you live you will always want to end up going to suburbia. Especially when you grow up and get a family.
Agreed. As someone who grew up in one of the largest cities in the world, I just hate living in big cities. People from suburbs talk about city planning with a glorified filter, or they only look at the best possibly designed city in the entire world and compare them to any arbitrary suburbs. I have personal preference but I don't think either of them have major problems. Sure they both have problems but it all boils down to pros and cons for personal choices rather than saying one is better than the other.
Nope. This is a lazy take, and wrong.
@@pyros4333 Suburbia is only preferred because we've collectively lost the experience of being in a small town. I grew up in small town 15 minutes out of the nearest city, and I'd prefer raising a family there far more than in a suburb. Suburbs have the most basic of basic necessities, meanwhile, small towns have managed to maintain local shops, cafes, and bars. The older towns tend to still be walkable. They aren't filled with McMansions. People are actually outside of their vehicles.
As an Australian one of the main things that always shocks me with seeing American suburbs is scale .. there HUGE.. houses, spaces between them etc. In Australia the government has been changing how they build suburbs. Everything is getting more compacted and smaller. It makes suburban living easier
Yesssss! Not Just Bikes series on Strong Towns was so helpful for me understanding this more - and made me grateful we love in a city, even if it's still car-dependent I'm hopeful more walkable development can happen too as people get hip to these dynamics
What I hate the most about car centric construction is how badly it affects small (and I mean SMALL) towns. Like, population 1k. My home town (or village lmao) and the towns around it are so car centric you literally can't get around if you dont have a car. You are FUCKED. There's barely any sidewalks so if you want to walk, you're basically walking in ditches. Everything is so spread out for no reason. It's so frustrating because they are so small and if they hadn't been bulldozed for cars, it would have been an amazing cute place you could easily walk around in. It would have made them livelier too. But no, it's so frustrating
You're putting the cart before the horse.
You need cars to get to isolated areas. If everyone needs to get there they will all have cars. If you now build up the town, it'll need to accommodate cars.
The answer is extremely clear, you need cars. Towns wouldn't exist without it.
You're preaching for a system that we aren't able to achieve, ground up, unless you have this town go through years and years of growth to build it into a 15 minute city concept. And Even then you NEED the cars because towns are often isolated.
@@pyros4333how did towns exist before the invention of the car?
@@hallucinatrix9341 horse and carriage, and you are absolutely right, towns were made to support horses and cater to wagons during then too
@@pyros4333have you ever heard of trains and public transport ?
@@pyros4333not every person had a horse back then .) 😂😂😂 I will tell you they existed - in 15 minute villages
I get so frustrated when people are so against mix-use zoning, claiming that only gas stations, check cashing and bail bond businesses will occupy them and therefore decrease their property values, yet all the pre-war neighborhoods with mix-use are the most desirable areas in town. Why wouldn't you want commercial business near your home. I just don't understand the steadfast position to live in a residential desert (that likely has restrictive HOA cc&r's)
Me neither . I literally live in
Another country in a suburb and we have everything we need naturally thanks to capitalism .
Hey now, it's not only those businesses -- you also get a wide array of CBD/vape stores and marijuana dispensaries as well! But seriously, part of the problem in the US is the staggering inequality and the dominance of mega-corporations. Most people don't have the money to start small/local businesses, and those that do risk getting mowed down by the bigger fish. Basically, zoning for and building mixed-use developments doesn't manifest small businesses into existence.
The other problem with mixed-zoning commerce is that suburbanites don't want the noise/clutter/odors that businesses might bring, but above all, they don't want outsiders coming into or through their neighborhoods, and a corner store might give Those People a legitimate reason to be in the area. So like many things in the US urban planning sphere, it boils down to racism.
As someone that lives in the "hood", I'd embrace all the cons of suburbia without hesitation if it meant not having to worry about catching a stray bullet everytime I go outside.
Oh and when it comes to spontaneous encounters with other people, you don't want those around here.
We need to build more charming, walkable towns - in harmony with nature.
Bring back the street car suburbs we see on TV. To hell with these sprawling McSuburbs
I think you perfectly put into words how I feel living in the US sometimes, granted, I live in a town that has decent public transportation, but having to drive everywhere when you can’t is really annoying. I’ve lived in Taiwan for quite some time, and maybe it’s because I’m used to the convenience of everything, but everything in the US is so far away from one another.
I want a real community, a real human habitat, not a sanitized, and atomized cookie-cutter box.
I'm planning to build some cool new walkable self sustaining towns soon.
comparing cars to Lion Turtles just makes them seem cooler
A great show that dispalys the issues of living in suburbia is Desperate Housewives, which deep dives into how expensive and back breaking it is plus the pressure to keep an image
We need to discuss more about how continued support of the suburbs and NIMBYism is still often based on exaggerated fears of crime and lowered property values, and ultimately racism and classism. So much suburban development has been created to be intentionally exclusionary (very literally with housing covenants and overt discrimination in the past) and inaccessible in order to be exclusive. It’s a feature, not a bug. Improvements to mass transit, walkability, and mixed use in some people’s minds means more “others” around and that is not what they want. There has to be more work down to deconstruct these tropes and change societal culture in order to see that shift in development that many of us want (and which will actually improve societal ills so many are fearful of).
I've of the mindset that people who constantly fear others can and should live in the suburbs...but their property taxes should reflect the extra cost of suburban infrastructure. Currently, the suburbs are heavily subsidized and property taxes come nowhere near paying for suburban infrastructure. And so, along with their vehicles, suburbanites live a life of nearly perfect wealth destruction even as they don't feel the full effects of it.
Rosa Parks of the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott did force public transportation equality in a city that was almost entirely dependent on public transportation and walkable neighborhoods, but the response there was that in a few short years (around 4) all trams and most public bus lines were dismantled and eliminated. And Montgomery has among the very highest income, property, and sales tax rates in the country while its suburbs have some of the lowest...it's no coincidence that occurred during white flight.
Exactly
As someone who has only lived in Chicago and its suburbs, there is no exaggeration of crime. Besides that point, I would guess most people in the burbs prefer to live out here because of contrast of life compared to the city (politics, congestion, corruption). The list goes on and on, but probably ends before you get to being a racist… at least for most people. And for the classism point? Some of the wealthiest high class people in the area live in the city. There’s more to the city than just the hood, and not every person who prefers the burbs is some boujee racist
@@steveo5999 It's not the suburban people that's the financial and environmental problem; it's the extremely high cost of car usage and infrastructure costs that comes from urban sprawl. In my opinion, a lot of these can be easily solved by turning highways into toll roads, and implementing congestion pricing to discourage suburban drivers from ever entering cities.
@@steveo5999 Of course there is exaggeration of crime. Data has shown crime has actually declined over the past few years, but based on some reporting and social media histrionics the minute you step foot in Chicago, NYC, LA, Atlanta, etc. you are going to get shanked, mugged, r*aped, and car jacked. Many people both live in, visit, and enjoy cities. Yes, there is more crime than in suburbs but the way cities are being painted as waste lands of desolation and crime is just silly. Also, many suburbs have issues themselves. Even in a place like Chicago crime is concentrated in certain areas. Yes, racism and classism has much to do with it. The problems that exist are a direct result of disinvestment, red lining, predatory lending, bad zoning laws, the war on drugs (versus taking a public health approach to addiction), job and education discrimination, and lack of will to not make upward mobility accessible to many. In regards to classism, most people aren’t “afraid” of cities because of all of the rich people. The fear is the poor, black, brown, and marginalized. You can take your gaslighting elsewhere. ➡️
I actually loved your into about pessimism. I am a pessimist but I’m also a fixer. I will wallow in my pessimism if I don’t brainstorm alternatives and fixes to the problem. I have friends who love living in the suburbs. Why would I take that away?!? I love my friends! Let’s come up with a better way.
love this mindset!!
The problem is actually if there is a problem in the first place.
Tldr; there's no problem.
She makes a few points that overall don't actually correlate well.
1) she indicates loneliness as a problem but social media is probably the top cause of loneliness in today's society (you can easily debunk this why looking up the studies on where people feel the loneliest; hint it's cities)
2) she makes the argument that it's economically not as viable but this is misleading. The goal shouldn't be able how much money a town/city can bring in. It should be how much can be done to maintain self sufficiency. If a town earns slightly above it's net costs but the people in the town love living there then why do you need to change the whole system to 'get more money?' the reality is is that it's a bad argument. If the need is there then absolutely, go to denser housing. But towns and cities should aspire to provide what their citizens want, not go for the gusto and fill their own pockets.
3) she indicates that carbon emissions are a problem. But it's a disingenuous statistic. Of course PER CAPITA there's more emissions from a person in suburbia. There's less people there. The real measure to balance it out against is; how much does cities contribute vs how much does suburbia contribute (regardless of people).
@@pyros4333have you ever been to an American city? Most of them have been bulldozed for cars, and getting places to meet friends is downright impossible sometimes, especially at night.
@@sokyu7723 of course. But that's where the communities form. In the malls and other districts. Schools as well.
Eventually you'll grow old enough to get a car or move out then you can do whatever
@@pyros4333 people still need to make friends when they’re not of age to have cars? The world shouldn’t be paywalled behind “get a car”
I went to Florida like 10 years ago and everything you said was the first thing I noticed when I got there. I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and here the concept of suburb as the american simply does not exist. Everyplace we have supermarkets, drugstores, even if its a small shop, in a walking distance. In my case I live near downtown so I take public transportation everyday, I dont even know how to drive 😂 but when I was in Florida any of this "way of living" existed and it felt so off. It was strange as fuck to have to take a car to eat, to shop, to socialize. I would went crazy if I had to live there permanantly
If you enjoy studying about planned cities, check It out Brasilia, Brazil's capital. The streets makes an airplane shape to the city
I gave up and moved to one of America’s few cities that’s both walkable and affordable. It’s WONDERFUL; each day is a treat. If only single-family zoning hadn’t made density illegal to build in most land near our urban cores, then more people could enjoy walkable areas in their daily life.
where??? i'm guessing chicago!!
@@jmsl_910 Yes. For additional ideas, CityNerd has a top 10 list video “Affordable Cities: 10 US Metro Areas With Underrated Livability, Walkability and Transit”.
You know we are all going to ask where this special place is, ha.
Burbs are for people who want space and privacy. City for people who want communty and accessibility. Choose what you'd like, but don't try to force people to use what you'd like.
just gotta make sure those in suburbs are paying the true cost for it, which isn’t currently happening (said as someone who lives in the suburbs)
@thefinancialfreedomgirl Idk about your municipality, but 30k a year in property taxes is enough. I mean, I don't pay that much, but there are people I work with who do.
I really enjoyed this longer format!! I love that you put so much research and effort into all of your videos and I hope you won't leave out information just for the goal of making the video shorter. I'm in New Zealand and although our suburbs aren't nearly as big as the US, they have the same problems.
Great topic. I live in South Africa where we are very car-centric, mostly because of crime. I drive to the grocery store that is less than 2km away. But the majority of the population can’t afford cars and so are faced with all the associated risks. I would love for crime to be brought under control and for useful public transportation. Public transport and walkable cities are my favourite things about travelling.
Also, on video length, I loved that this was bursting with info, but I’d personally prefer videos under 30mins, or even better, videos around the 20 min mark. I find myself missing out on creators I love because I save to watch later because I don’t have the 50min block of time, and then end up forgetting to watch entirely. I’m also less interested in the video if I have to watch in two sessions, again, I end up watching half and forgetting about it. Just my preference.
Sounds like a YOU problem.
@RIPmichael22 Wow! Clever! Yes it IS a me problem. Hence I said twice that it's my preference...in response to Cara asking us to say what we preferred.
I am trying to escape the big city - shallow and self-absorbed people, crime, garbage, expensive rent, dirty air, overcrowded and traffic. I dream of a home 20 minutes drive from the city . I dream of a garden, bigger living room, peace, two dogs and privacy and no annoying neighbours. I dont live in the US so the suburbs here in Europe are somewhat different.
Great topic and very relatable to me, I live in egypt
"Denser living spaces with mixed use..." Most people don't want that for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the more dense an area is with regard to population, the more difficult it is to provide effective emergency services and maintain utility infrastructure. Without zoning, you have strip clubs and bars just a stone's throw from schools, daycares, and churches, schools right next to the freeway, noisy hospital ERs right next to townhomes and apartments, the list of combinations goes on. Just look at cities like Houston where we don't have zoning. It is a nightmare for businesses and residential property owners alike. The city has had to cobble together so many ordinances to try to satisfy everyone with something that resembles zoning but often causes more problems.
After you have had and raised a family, revisit this and see how much you still agree with it. Keep in mind that "walkability" and "bike-ability" have become more and more of a key amenity in modern suburbs over the past 30 years. Maybe this video would have been more fitting in the '90s.
The people who complain about suburbs have never seen hard times.
They just know better places .
Stroads. I didn’t hear you say Stroads!! Now you have to make more videos on this topic and talk about Stroads. Maybe a collaboration with “not just bikes”??
Last suburban area I lived in was so ridiculous that there was a 3 call chain of command before somebody could just tell me my car was leaking a little bit of oil and demands to know when that was being taken care of. That is the sort of thing outside of the 10 min trip to leave the complex I didn't care for. 8 years later I live in a more urban area closer to downtown and the car was stolen towed for scrap because ppl noticed it was not running and they wanted the spot...I don't mind not driving all the time because this apt is near a bus stop but I also can't get another car until I can afford to leave it...problem is I can't afford both a better area AND incredible driving expenses
Dane here! Strøget is pronounced more like stroehyed, but it's a hard language, so don't worry about it❤
Also, I've recently moved to Copenhagen from my suburban neighborhood (we also have them, on the outskirts mostly), and it's crazy how connected I feel to the city now!
I can bike to the center in less than 20 minutes. The whole center is my oyster. I never realized how nice our bikelanes within Copenhagen are because I always took public transport.
Biking costs nothing, is healthy, and is often faster than going by car or public transport due to some exclusive bike/walk roads!
Even now, I technically live on the outskirts of Copenhagen, but it does not feel like that at all!
Hope your zoning laws get better❤
My two cents that nobody asked for is that that way of making suburbs it’s almost (i said almost) the problem of United States and Canada. I live in Europe and I live in what you would consider suburbs and I have 5 minute walking two big supermarkets, shops, parks, all walkable. It actually would be weird to pick up the car. Bus stops that take you wherever you want to go. Downtown of the metropolis is 30 minutes away by bus or 15 minutes by train. What I mean with all this is that it’s doable.
A walkable village is something so many people would love to have, but so so many don’t.
And it is very true that poor people are basically forced out of living in suburbs because of the simple factor of needing a car
Not Just Bikes!❤❤
this is why i wanna live in a metropolitan big city. i’ve lived in the burbs my whole life (nice and not so nice cities) but i’d rather be in a big city where everything is more convenient.
I grew up in Connecticut, the suburbs of New York City. I spent my adult life and career in the San Francisco East Bay which is the suburbs of SF. I then moved to central Bangkok, Thailand. What a revelation!😮 I had never lived in a big city before. Great public transportation! Everything accessible by foot or public transit. Parks, groceries, markets, restaurants, hospitals, malls, movie theaters. I didn’t own a car for 5 years. I loved it. I eventually moved to the rural countryside, also new to me. I am back to driving but that is OK. It’s appropriate for the countryside.
I do have fond memories of suburban living. The older neighborhoods I lived in were peaceful and interesting. There are plenty of housing developments that are sterile environments.
Highly recommend 'The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community' by Ray Oldenburg - he was touching on this topic exactly
I'm so glad urbanist content is popping up around TH-cam! Super fascinating topic. I'd also recommend CityNerd, CityBeautiful, and the incredibly underrated RadicalPlanning.
I don’t understand why people hate the suburbs. I’m 36, grew up in the suburbs and not now live the suburbs. Whenever I visit a city, particularly New York, I feel claustrophobic and I hate the smell. If you don’t wanna live in the burns then don’t.
I live in Germany, so almost everything is walkable by default. It's great. Busses and trams are prioritised over everything else, so it's pretty fast. Sure, there are those days where you just want to fall in bed with 16k steps, but I don't need a car. I'm a young single adult and disabled without a drivers licence and I don't need one. My ticket is 30 € for a month of country-wide travel flatrate. That's under 35 USD. I had 7 cab rides in my entire life so far and they almost all occurred when I was too ill or weak to take public transport..
They should have suburbs a distance from the city, and then have a special tram system that travels ONLY to those suburbs and then straight into the city. Just back and forth. I think that this would completely change how suburbs are because then it’s like “okay, I don’t wanna live in the city and I want to live in a smaller community with more privacy, but all the suburb communities have a way to travel quickly directly into the city.”
Suburbanites would oppose such a system because they don't want Inner City People to have easy access to their neighborhoods.
Seeing how things are now, I'm very grateful I was born in '89. I can see now that it was such a great time to grow up & get to be a kid. The world seemed to have so many creative outlets & forms of expression. Ways for kids, teens and adults could interact with our surroundings. We had an environment that had places to go, things to do, places with unique style & very creative design. I really miss the Vibe of that Era. Looking back with hindsight it really did feel like things treated us all like it respected our intelligence, our time & what kind of experience we were going to have. While also providing outlets in our society that helped us feel like a kid inside no matter what age we were. It felt like things acknowledged you. You are a customer, a fan, a person. In a hyper capitalistic society, the least they can do is use basic decency to try and make us feel like they care if we have a good time because without us they can't succeed. The creativity that came from that era really put effort into it's ingenuity. It's almost like every everything took pride in who could find the most creative and unique ways to do things, design things, come up with ways people could enjoy engaging with their company.
For things to go from that 90's-Y2K era, to then shift to this bland, soulless, minimalistic approach feels very Dystopian. I really hope we find a way to reconnect with these core things that we clearly saw positive benefits having it apart of our society. The world really needs this right now. Look how soulless so much has become nowadays? Look at the horrible aesthetics, poor quality & poor creative design in modern cities. Even our shows, movies, & video games need a revolution. Things have become so bland, bleek, and minimalistic to the point that it doesn't even make since. Most Old house's/building's/únique shop's are gone. Interesting oddities like drive in movie theaters, indoor fun zones, arcade's, magazines that included a demo disc so you can try out game's. You could go to blockbuster/Hollywood video, McDonald's had N64's & crazy fun zones & covered in wacky art all over. We could preview music before buying it, they had an amazing selection of well made kid's toy's, Roller Rink's, Garbage pale kid's card's. You get the point. Bring back Retro-Futurism. Bring back Y2K Vibes. ANYTHING compared to this current Dystopian toxic positivity. Our society feels more lost now then it ever has. Basic living has never been so unaffordable. Society is solely focused on unhealthy capitalistic agendas. Where anything that isn't constantly increasing profits or gaining investors, is a failure and has no value to society..
Our Quality of Life should be better than this. Basic living shouldn't be this unaffordable. People should be able to have fun, dork around, have things that engage them. The list goes on. Bring me back to the 90's.
Getting Ogden mentioned threw me for a loop 😭 but yes!!! That plus the college campus right there (with a good bus connecting them these days) makes it super easy to navigate, nowadays it can be faster to walk and bus into town than drive
Thank you so much for making this video! You do a great job breaking down issues into bite-sized pieces while providing optimistic advice to fix it. It is my hope that we awake to car dependence as a nation.
Keep fighting the good fight!
I had a friend once that referred to all vehicles as chariots. He also liked to smoke crack.
I'm so glad you're talking about this subject. It's such an important one. My suburban community in metro Detroit just updated our zoning policies for all the reasons you described. And our city is taking action to improve the design and infrastructure of the city. It is possible to strike a balance and getting involved with your local government in the most important thing you can do!
From being blessed growing up in the last good years of suburbia.
But just the whole concept of the suburbs it basically destroys local communities cuz you can't have local shops everything you have to drive way to the get it so it's unrealistic. In the suburbs were designed for people with vehicles so which come to find out the architect who they chose to give the blueprint of suburbs turn it up being so upset because his idea of a suburb of town and what we have is totally opposite of what he envisioned.
Silver is supposed to be like at mini City where you can walk to your grocery store walk to the movies and then commute to your job.
And then like where I grew up at it's just now I become concrete jungles all the businesses have pulled out because thanks of the wage gap for 40 years of wages being stagnant and nobody being truthful about it.
This is why I do not like living in the suburbs anymore give me a city any day, lol!
And we can fix the problems of the suburban Town East Town has their own public transportation that way the kids and the citizen get around safely and don't have to just rely on vehicles.
As to NIMBY, you would have no opposition to a gun store next to your house? How about a methadone clinic? A safe injection site? A sex and adult video store? A brothel? A cigar lounge?
If you oppose NIMBY, you would be in favor of removing nearly all these restrictions?
Quit wasting your time arguing I promise you nobody is trying to get rid of all zoning laws Nobody is in favor of getting rid of all zoning laws like nobody is trying to do that I don't get why you're trying to argue about this
@@Cheeseoogus_
What's wrong with a methadone clinic?
Are you suggesting that opiod drug abuse is only an inner city problem?
A safe injection site?
As homelessness increases even in the suburbs don't you think that addicts should have a safe clean place to shoot up where their needle waste is disposed of properly?
A sex and adult video store? A brothel?
If sex work is real work and sex workers deserve to be viewed as regular workers should the product of their labor be available similar to other items?
Why don't sex workers deserve to a workplace close to where they live? Are they not entitled to 15 minute cities?
@@JChang0114 The fault I'm gonna start to soft by saying most people don't want zoning that allows people to live near places like that those places should be near the outskirts of the city Not around high density housing but either way we live in a housing crisis and we need to build more houses whether it's ugly or not it's necessary and people are going broke and not being ignored for any houses because they rent prices are crazy there's too much demand not enough apartments so in reality we literally just need more apartments
@@JChang0114 Also the rent prices will go down so much in those areas because people obviously don't want to live near those places but it will also provide affordable housing for people who are in survival mode and it won't affect you in fact more people won't move near your You're ahead if people are living closer to places like that
Lol, there are already a ton of cigar lounges and cbd places in suburbs of states where it’s legal.
I grew up in the country on a farm. I’ve lived in suburbs of NYC and Denver, cities, small villages (currently) and my heart longs to be back in the wilds of the country, growing my own food. My husband loves the suburbs, but he knows my soul would *die* if he asked me to live there. The overhead and ground shots of endless housing developments make me literally sick to my stomach and panicking. It reminds me of an industrial egg farm with cages stacked on top of each other. No disrespect to those that enjoy urban and suburban living, but to *me* it feels unsafe and unnatural.
Sure , lady . The only offer. Never ever try to use medical resources in your rural area .
I live in a more rural area in Germany. A lot of the bigger cities in the general area (Mannheim and Heidelberg for example) are built similar to Kopenhagen. Also a lot of smaller hisorical cities are planned like this (mixed use). To be honest, I would hate to live there. Sometimes we visit to go shopping but I‘m always happy to be at home without people around me. Public transportation gives me anxiety. I live in a small village on a farm and I have only a few neighbors (very close-knit community!). We have a big garden with wild flowers where we grow our own fruit and vegetables. We have land of our own with fruit trees and because it‘s our own, we have space for chickens and other pets like goats and horses. I‘m carbound and I know that this isn‘t the most sustainable way of living. Also, there is not enough space for everyone to live like this. However, I wouldn‘t change it for the world. But it was nice seeing another perspective on this topic.
Fantastic video Cara! I feel like you hit a lot of great and diverse points regarding this seriously undervalued issue. I would love more content from you on this topic. This is something that needs so much more exposure and I'm grateful to all the channels and people who push these ideas forward!
Call me crazy but I think ebikes and mini-cars (golf carts) could be an interesting partial solution when paired with in-building and the addition of converting residential to mix use /commercial
Lots of good points....but no one is forcing anyone to live in the suburbs... it is a choice. We want choices.. and all come with consequences.
This is the one of the most comprehensive videos that I have seen on this topic. Great job!
Thank you for talking about this, this is something I am also very passionate about. Thank you for being vocal against car dependency and for changing out cities
7:40 it's a great metaphor, thank you for making it. I live in another country were we have normal public transport and the city is walkable, so it was an interesting to know how you see and feel in your cities.
I live central in a middle sized European city and work in the countryside. I don't have a driver's license because:
1. I can't afford it. (It's VERY expensive here.)
2. I have a cognitive disability which wasn't discovered until my adult years, hence when my peers were all about school and driver's licence classes, I was simply too tired and as for now, in my early forties, I don't really see the need for it.
3. I don't need it.
I can take reliable public transportation out to the damn WOODS and then walk or bike a couple of kilometers to my job. I keep an old bike hidden in the woods and use it to and from the bus and work. In winter, I walk. If I'm lucky someone in the neighborhood might pick me up on the road in the woods and give me a lift, but mostly, I walk or take the bike.
Suburbs here, aren't the same as American ones. For one, the whole idea of suburbs here is to expand the city, not shut it off. Most people use public transportation in our bigger cities and where I live, a middle sized city, it's a pain in the arse to drive and park. Buses or bikes are the number one transportation here aside from walking.
Sure, we have more closed off "suburb like" places around town where there are a lot of on family houses and we usually refer to them as "house areas". They're still close enough to public transportation though, even if it's slightly more inconvenient than cars.
The car dependency here isn't the lowest, you will need a car if you live in really small towns or on the countryside so it's not really an option for me, but it's nowhere near the US.
Also: the whole HOA thing and gated communities? I mean, we have housing cooperatives for people who owns their apartments and rental cooperatives for us who rent, but they absolutely don't control how you paint your house, what you're growing in your garden or anything like that, unless it actually becomes a health or disturbance issue.
If I wanted a gated community, I'd enter a monestary, seriously. Nosy neighbors thinking they have a say in the color of other people's houses is just as insane to me, as the idea of a middle sized city not having reliable public transport for everyone living in said town, no matter if it's the central town or 8 km outside of it.
Your point at 17:29 is half true. Capitalism isn't the direct problem. In our case in the USA, it is the combination of capitalism and shareholder value, but capitalism is still the root of the matter. Capitalism in the USA is still meeting consumer demand through creation and innovation as you said. The problem is the consumers are the shareholders rather than the people, which originated after the Friedman Doctrine was popularized. A lot of people tend to think of innovation as a good thing, but a new scam is still innovative. Every economic system, like capitalism and socialism, will produce innovation, but capitalism has the highest likelihood of producing the worse innovations, both morally and ethically. This is why people blame capitalism. Things like the Friedman Doctrine would have been thrown in the garbage in any other economic system.
Nice video. It’s a complex topic and there are gonna be people who hate and love the suburbs. One thing I learned about, that seems really random but is actually very important to this subject, was with the development of nuclear weapons the US military got concerned about too many people being concentrated in a few big cities. So it is rarely talked about but it actually is a national security issue and our government wanted to protect more of its citizens from dying in a nuclear attack. This was before global warming and CO2 was raised as an issue with car culture.
Seriously ?
@@junglesuperstar9270main cities are countervalue targets, yes
Yay, one more voice in Urbanist TH-cam! I was thankfully able to break away from car dependence and have been car-free for 7 years now, enabling me to graduate from uni debt-free accruing a total cost of $89k.
Agree with you 100%. Most people can't see this problem. Because they never left the US.
WTH did I just watch? Leave people alone. If you like living away from the city on a clean area, good. If you like living on top of each other, good.
Why was this recommended?
You missed such an integral piece to this. PARKING LAWS. now there needs to be a certain amount of parking per development and so much wasted space is going to parking lots. That are mostly empty. And what they are building is so ugly. Thats why i love new york. Long island was all developed hundreds of years ago, it’s probably the most beautiful suburb. But still i dont want to live there, not when i could live in the metropolitan area.
Great video. Love how at the end you included strategies people can implement to make a difference
I'll be honest I love the suburbs lived in them pretty much my whole life. I live in a fairly poor city but it's relatively quite. I like the idea of mixed use spaces, but it sounds like a sensory nightmare reminding me of my absolutely leas favorite times living in an apartment. That's not even thinking about the renting nonsense that's going on in the country right now. Paying $1800/ month for a 800 square foot space that I don't own and am at the mercy of some landlord is not ideal. Putting a $5000 penthouse on top the building doesn't make it any better. It would be nice though if cities thought ahead widened street lane have one of them be a tram or busses only system already built into it along main roads in a grid like pattern.
You have the choice to live in suburban or exurban spaces but the vast majority of America has outlawed the creation of urban spaces, depriving people of that choice
"The suburbs have no charms to sooth the restless dreams of youth" RUSH
We should promote fully remote work. That will cut down on car emissions and other issues related with commuting. Only people that return to office benefits is the commercial real estate owners.
I think we should make city's a lot more pedestrian friendly but i love the suburbs and id rather drive than live in a city. I hate the densely poplated living
Amen, I grew up in apartments and you couldn’t pay me to go back to living stacked with other people like that again. I like my house, my yard and my neighbors
Jesus wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves so I find it kind of rude to say you hate being around other people. Also, you can still find plenty of nature you can get to w/o a car in well planned urban areas. I don’t mind if you actually want to work in agriculture or some adjacent industry or live car free in a rural walkable community, but low density and car-centric sprawl (suburbia) has to be Upzoned or returned to nature if we want to live both environmentally and economically sustainable lives.
Definitely more videos like this! This was very thorough, and I love that you covered solutions as well
So I’m originally from the Philly suburbs and I now live in DC and the difference in the quality of public transportation is HUGEEEE!!! Now that I live in DC, I find myself exploring and going around the DMV (dc md and va) area and going more into downtown dc a lot more than I ever did when I lived in Philly! Public transportation matters!
2 things: 1. I actually really like your intros/ disclaimers cause it really places your viewpoint within a broader discourse. It‘s proper essay etiquette that elevates the content imo so pls don‘t stop lol. 2. as someone who moved from Switzerland to the US, the public transport layout is actually so atrocious & it‘s a bit of a culture shock …
thank you :) I really appreciate your kind words on my intros! and yes, the transport layout in the US is atrocious!
I was born in Brazil, in a small town. When I was 14, I studied for 8 months in the USA. I stayed in a really nice suburb house with a nice family, but I notice how sterile, boring and also hard to live in a suburb, my host family would not allow me to go to school by bike.
Thank you so much for handing the resources in your video description
One of my favorite finance youtubers covers city planning. Never thought I'd see this collab lol
Please do a video on investing 😢
I feel even more depressed and dissatisfied with life after having seen this video. Everything in the United States these days is done in the name of corporate profits, so don’t expect to be an idealist when it comes to change how cities are designed to be more friendly to pedestrians. I live in metropolitan Denver, and our public transportation system, RTD, is derisively referred to as Reason To Drive, because it’s terrible at being able to get around the city, and it’s only gotten worse over the past four decades.
The inner city is terrible. I've lived in them.
Yes, love this subject. Jane Jacobs Death and LIfe of American Cities is the original book that introduced me to the subject.
Burbs slander comes from people who don't know what it's like to own a home.
There are a ton of downsides to owning a home
Fun fact. USSR well known in western world by it's " look alike blocky ugly buildings". In the same time, cities and even more rural areas were actually filled with single (sometimes two, or more) family houses.
And never turned into american suburbia until 1990's. It's getting worse, but we still hasn't lost fellowship vibes from Soviet era. It's still there. While in the city, in big apartment buildings, atomisation is rampantly growing