Guess what? Finally, a useful comment on the Internet! Nebula Lifetime is an amazing way to support what I do, on a platform that really puts creators first. Use my custom link: go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=citynerd -- or gift one! go.nebula.tv/gift?ref=citynerd
Notes & errata. The AAA $12K/year number is for owning a "new" car, so if you must drive, you can certainly do better if you bargain fro a good used car. Just get a bike though
@@CityNerd I moved from San Diego to Cleveland over the summer, and what's going on here is an extension of the 2009 real estate collapse. Basically, they're STILL bulldozing houses rather than taking any steps to preserve housing stock. However, much like SD, the housing shortage is a bit overblown relative to demand. There are a LOT of bargains remaining in the city proper if you are willing to deal with its shortcomings. Yes you do need to visit, the transit backbone is old and reliable even if dated and smelly. I can now take light rail directly into the airport when I need to, something you still can't do in SD. And you need to check out The Frans, a local band that wrote a rock opera about the history of mass transit in Cleveland. I'm not making that up.
Lifetime deals are interesting because if very popular, are not known to be sustainable. So there's some irony there in the "support" pitch, probably. "Get it while you can?" Perhaps. Keep up the great work as always.
Eating out is typically a bit more expensive in cities, but it's laughable when people try and imply you'd need to eat more when anything from a quick glance to an academic study will reach the obvious conclusion that people in urban areas eat significantly less calories on average than the rest of America.
@@schmangusschmangus8628 naw the majority of academic studies related to social sciences are incredibly biased, generally flawed and most are not replicable
Can't wait for the 10 cities with the lowest housing and transportation costs. Also, I'd love a big spreadsheet with every city that met your criteria and how they all stack up. Analysis like this is so valuable, even beyond the top and bottom ten.
@@jethrorust6140 I was honestly surprised to see several rust belt cities on here, so Pittsburgh may not rank as highly as we think it will. Although I'll bet Chicago ranks highly here.
@@williamcheek7206 Going by the who wound up on the list, looks like there's pretty wide variance in housing cost, transportation cost, and incomes. If this list was housing cost dominated I'd expect places like San Francisco and Boston to make the top ten and if it was income dominated I'd expect a place like New Orleans to be in there. Instead all three factors appear to be important.
As a SoCal resident the inland empire is truly a crime against urbanism that I cannot wrap my head around. And people tell me it’s so great because you can afford a 3 car garage ?? 🤨🤨
It's annoying as someone who has family in Inland Empire too because even if you luck out and are able to work out a plan to get to someplace there by Metrolink, it still takes 3x as long and you're stuck at a train station surrounded by parking lot with no way to get to their house anyway. I imagine if/when LA really improves it's transit and it's more viable to live car lite/free throughout the county, Inland Empire and Riverside will be losing their shit at how inconvenient it is for them to drive to the LA area.
When I visited Fontana for the first time for Auto Club Speedway, I couldn't believe how far away Fontana was from LA proper. Whenever I watched races from that track they always talked about being in Hollywood but you still have a whole hour drive to go to get there. It's stupid
Living in SF it’s always shocked me when coworkers transfer/move to LA because they want a “cheaper cost of living”. I hear it all the time. But even if your apartment is 30-40% less expensive, the dramatic increase in transportation costs and decrease in quality of life from having to drive everywhere, coupled with the lower salaries, make it seem like a losing deal every time I’ve ran the numbers. In SF (which is pretty compact) my transportation costs are effectively zero (except for the burning in my thighs when biking up the hills)
You don't really need to utilize all of LA if you get into a good neighborhood. SF is almost too small to be interesting after a while, and it's torn down a lot of its own history in my lifetime.
People that make SF salaries can afford the good parts of LA where you don't NEED to drive much. He mentions this several times in this video for certain cities, but its true for pretty much all of them. Above average salaries dont have the same transportation worries that the median resident has, because they CAN afford to live in any neighborhood if they want to.
@@MrTaxiRob I gotta disagree with your "too small to be interesting" comment - I've lived in SF nearly my whole life and just discovered the Crosstown Trail this summer, which took me through many parts of SF I had never visited. Yes, it's smaller in area than other cities, but there's plenty of variety within the city plus the entire Bay Area to explore. And most parts of the Bay are pretty accessible by some form of transit within a reasonable period of time, unlike LA's sprawl.
But when you start talking about the Bay, you're not talking about SF anymore; and it's also an area the size of LA's statistical area, and both are composed of multiple cities and counties @@rubyfoxall1656. I get what you're saying, but it's beyond the scope of the video.
What hurts many of the low median-income cities on this list is that the cost of rent and median income scale appropriately, whereas the cost of ownership of a car does not.
And purchases of anything that is priced at a national level. A video game for example is gonna cost the same regardless of if the median income of your city is in the gutter or not.
Not exactly. The consumer expenditure survey from BLS does suggest people with lower income spend less on car ownership, though not by enough, and the median rent is still quite a bit above 30% of the median monthly income (either before or after tax) for these.
Tell that to NYC who ended up on the worst 10 list. Median rent scales with density and desirability. It was several factors (not just the fact that he didn’t scale cost of car ownership with income-as is shown to be empirically true) that caused all of these to rise to the top/bottom
I find the mix between super car dependent cities with low income and expensive rental markets to be interesting in this video, and like you said it’s fascinating to see how much “unseen” financial damage owning a car has on those who own them. I wonder why Americans constantly complain about housing costs but almost never complain about car maintenance/purchase costs…
i wonder how much of it is due to car costs being taken for granted as “necessary”. anytime i bring up urbanism to my family for example, i hear the typical “the US is just too big of a country” and “busses and trains don’t go everywhere” lines. i think it’s so ingrained that a lot of people haven’t ever thought about it critically
They do, quite often. The problem is there is no political will on part of the government to do anything about it, bc so much tax revenue comes from automobile ownership.
Agreed. We had an ugly scuffle over Thanksgiving about the real cost of car ownership and the utility of bike riding. Relatives were not impressed with my City Nerd data :)
Maybe they should, but they're pretty different in relative size. Also a lot more people are willing to buy a used car than a "used" house, or one in a marginal neighborhood.
As someone who lives in Miami, I 100% saw that coming. Traffic is awful, most of the city and county outside the rich areas are unwalkable, there's useless public transit, and in the last few years its just gotten so ruinously expensive. I love it here and it has so much potential but its just insane.
Yeah…go ahead and ride the Metrorail full of bums and criminals. Other problem is there is no more space unless you push farther west to the Everglades
I always laugh at you people complaining about bad traffic. When you average time from work to home is 4+ hours to go 24-25 miles come complain to me. And that's from my job in town to my house. The last half hour I cover the last 10 miles of that 24-25. That's 4+ hours to only go in reality 14 miles. (On the freeway) And that's also if the weather is good. The instant it starts raining I go and sleep in my car till 8pm then drive home in like 30-40min. Tack on another 1-2 hours if you live on the west side of the island. Also how the fuck did Honolulu not make the list? $1800 for a studio apartment with no utilities included. The ONLY thing it has going for it is that most of the jobs are already in Honolulu. But if you change that to where most people live the transportation cost skyrocket. Mainly due to our outrageous traffic.
It’s so sad that as a country we do not prioritize regional connectivity and mass transit. If European cities can do it with lower gdp’s , so could we if we really wanted to. This is not sustainable on so many levels. We are on a sinking ship and most never think about the long term lack of efficacy in what we have created . Thanks for the vid!
Hialeah native / refugee here... I used to have a 90 minute commute to FIU each day when I was in college. The traffic everywhere was and is a huge drag. And no one really makes good money. It's a difficult place to live.
We are a 6 figure income couple and had very little saved and not much cash lying around the preverbal". '...don't have $500 for an emergency" that was us. The big thing was debt all kinds of it, cars mortgage (although our home isn't a high price one), student loans for our kids, and of course credit cards. One day we just got sick of being broke and went total scorched earth and became frugal overnight. Paid it all off, it took almost 5 years but now we have no debt and this year our savings rate is 50% on basically the same income that had us perpetually broke. So for us it is mainly staying out of debt and watching our spending, at first it was a real effort to save in our HISA and 401Ks but now it's actually fun watching our money grow. No car or vacation or neighborhood is worth being broke or financially unstable.
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As someone from Hialeah, I am not at all surprised by this video. Hialeah is a special case, even for a city as odd as Miami. It is the 7th largest city in Florida, with over 220,000 officially. However, this city has a HUGE population of undocumented immigrants, which has been skyrocketing especially since 2021, so I would not be surprised if this number was closer to 300,000, making it the 5th largest in Florida. There are many reasons why people from Hialeah don't pack their bags and leave. Most importantly, the city is almost entirely (95%+) Hispanic, of which 75% are immigrants. Most of these immigrants (73%) are Cuban, so the city is the Cuban mecca in the US. People from Hialeah stay there because of family, cultural ties, and a language barrier. Many people in Hialeah barely speak English, and the city's de facto official language is Spanish, which is used in stores, businesses, banks, hospitals, and even government buildings more than English. For a non-English speaker, staying in this city is just too convenient, even if economically it makes sense to move away. Another reason is that extended families live together. It is common to see 10+ people sharing a single house in Hialeah, with everybody working and contributing to the rent or mortgage payment. It is also very common for people to turn a spare room into a studio (we call those efficiency homes). The city is very car-centric, so in nearly every parking lot you see at least 3 cars, and as you may expect, the traffic is a nightmare. There has been a huge exodus of Cubans in the past 2 years, and many of them end up in Hialeah, at least temporarily. Lastly, most people (or at least a sizeable minority) understate their income to receive welfare from the government. This is, unfortunately, a cultural norm here, especially among Cubans who are used to "cheating the system" since that's really the only way to get by in Cuba. Many people who receive food stamps and/or live in low-income housing have nice cars and travel pretty often. I had friends in high school who lived in low-income housing yet they lived a pretty luxurious lifestyle and traveled pretty often (which you wouldn't expect from someone living in low-income housing). Since people understate their incomes so much, the city is poorer on paper than it actually is. Yes, there is higher-than-average poverty in this city, but many people are pretending to be poor when they actually aren't. TLDR: Hialeah is a huge ethnic enclave for Cubans, where Spanish is used more than English, even in businesses and government buildings. Immigrants who do not speak English and want to be close to their family and culture stay here, even if it comes at a premium. The median household income is probably higher than official statistics show since many people understate their incomes. It is common for many people to share a single house, so individuals don't pay as much in rent or mortgage.
I can confirm that all of this is true. I’ll also add that the Miami(Hispanic?) culture seems to encourage spending as much as possible. My Uber driver was telling me how she was trying to buy a $500,000 home. I know a guy who makes $15/hr and drives a $35,000 car and owns a $700,000 home.
@@allankirchhoff6553 Yes, many people in Miami live beyond their means. I've heard from non-Miamians that their biggest surprise about this city is how many fake rich people there are. Every other person is running a side hustle or a shady business. People here love to flex what they don't have, which translates into financial or legal trouble at some point. I am not sure if this is a purely Hispanic or a city-wide thing.
The brutal part of many car dependent cities is that sharing a car with a spouse or roommate is prohibitively challenging. While housing benefits from economies of scale based on your household size, transportation does not. This is how you may find yourself going from needing 0 vehicles to 2, and spending an extra $2k per month on transportation and immediately losing all the housing savings.
"That's why I always buy used cars for $15, and now with my $500,000 in savings 30 years later I'm sooooo much smarter than any of you." --Every TH-cam car owner, probably.
I think that most of the neighborhoods and cities where people can comfortably live car free are going to be at an absurd premium for the forseeable future and it might behoove urbanists to consider how more places can be made comfortable as someone living car lite. I think fixing that delta is easier in the short term than building enough uber walkable urbanist paradises to substantially erode the existing premium
There used to be this thing called "carpooling." Also for small households housing doesn't scale as much as it would seem. There are very few one-bedroom units that aren't rentals, which under normal conditions are considerably more expensive than owning. I see your point, but in most cities it's going to be easier to find two jobs that are located in sequence along a driveable route than it's going to be to find two jobs adequately served by transit.
I'm not shocked by Miami's place on the list AT ALL. I graduated from FIU in 2012, and I wanted to stay in Miami after I graduated but the available jobs were so low pay that it wasn't workable at all. From what I've heard from people I know who live there, conditions have not improved. It's ridiculous and unsustainable.
And, to be fair, biking in that weather for most of the year is not practical. I say this as a year-round bicyclist in Chicago. The humidity in Miami is generally disgusting, not to mention the daily afternoon downpours. Walking and transit are completely viable. Well, I mean they could be with better infrastructure.
@@charlienyc1agreed. I lived in Miami for the final semester of my degree (I did the rest online from Jacksonville) and I didn't take my car because "I can just use the public transportation, it's not that bad". Oof. In the summer, it is that bad. The sun is SO intense, plus the humidity.
I grew up in south Florida and I’m down in right now visiting family. The urban fabric, or suburban fabric, is absolutely insane here. Everything is a strip mall or gated community and you need a car just to get across the street to the grocery store. I love my family, but I’ve grown to hate living in Florida.
I understand about Florida. I couldn't stand all the toll highways, the humid heat, the love bugs jamming up the windshield, but it was picturesque along the coast. Those darn alligators too.
I understand about Florida. I couldn't stand all the toll highways, the humid heat, the love bugs jamming up the windshield, but it was picturesque along the coast. Those darn alligators too.
That's how Texas is, too. The Dallas area is full of the same thing. You have to drive to go literally anywhere, because you're inside a gated community. They also drive go-carts just to visit neighbors. It's pretty gross. Surprised San Antonio was the only Texas city on this list.
This is one of your best videos yet! Because it really speaks to the problems that are intentionally overlooked by the extremes of the cultural divide. Urbanists might long for a place like NYC but suburbanites will scream "who wants to live in a box for $3000 a month!". This video shows, yes that is valid! But likewise, it shows a cheap booming sunbelt city where the transportation costs are rarely considered, and the urbanists go, "see! It's not as cheap or great as you think!" So yes, this combined metric is quite a valuable indicator. I'm excited for your next video. Hope to see my hometown Baltimore on there.
My monthly train pass in Japan was around $250 US. That allowed me to travel at any time between my home stop and my final destination, which was about an hour away. It covered quite a lot of area, including Shibuya, Ginza, and lots of other cool and convenient places. The best part was that my employer paid it! I still took home a decent salary too.
My bus pass here in Pittsburgh is cheaper than that. $97.50 while it isn't in the same league as the Tokyo pass, in terms of quality. It is amazing how cheap transit is in much of the US. I visited Japan Last month and I was shocked in many cities like Beppu, Karatsu, Saga, Naha, Tottori and Matsue how expensive the busses were per mile, compared to my city. Like to get from Central Naha to the Chatan American village was 600YEN 1 way, whereas in my city I can go 30mi or more for only $2.75. As for the Trains, I had the Jr pass, but a few other places I used 3rd party rail in Osaka and Tokyo, and it is quite expensive as well.
In most German cities a monthly transit pass used to set you back around 50 eur. If you weren't inside the city a local train pass was considerably more expensive. Luckily our current government had the sensible idea of boosting transit use. A monthly pass to use all local trains, city busses, metros, trams and more anywhere in Germany is now 50 eur.
@@NeXtdra42 I really wonder how they are able to make it so cheap. If you have any insight, I would love to know. I heard on some TH-cam channel that the Netherlands has expensive transit Relative to Canada and the US, so I had just assumed Germany was the same.
Seeing these numbers makes me appreciate how cheap Chicago's Ventra pass is. 75$ a month is all you need to pay, and if you're a student it's free during the semester.
Not surprised by Miami, how much of the housing in those downtown high rises are part time New Yorkers/Chicagoans who only live there December - February (or for a full 6 months + 1 day if they hate taxes)? Those kinds of "vacation cities" can absolutely ruin affordability for those that actually live there full time.
mexico has just announced plans to reintroduce passenger rail connecting a majority of the biggest cities, have plans to build a new inter-oceanic rail corridor, and are completing the tren maya project in the yucatan peninsula. think this would be a great time to have another video looking at the future of mexican cities! theres also plans to build the mexico city to guanajuato high speed railway in the news following the upcoming election. so much stuff to talk about!
Trans-OCEANIC??? That's AMAZING! Which ocean will they cross? Are they going to build a 2,000-mile-long bridge or a 2,000-mile-long tunnel? Where's the money going to come from? That's the GDP of the entire planet times decades!
@@colormedubious4747interoceanic , as in “between oceans” across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (I’ll leave it to you to find out which two). Basically, they want to grab some of the Canal traffic- which is smart.
@@dmrr7739 He originally posted "TRANS-oceanic" before he edited it. Technically, since we are recreationally picking nits, it would be "transcontinental," even though the Isthmus is the narrowest part of the North American continent. Seriously, though, I have some doubts -- given how Mexico has built an insane number of toll roads over the years. I'll believe in the train once they've built it.
7:47 -> Cincinnati Native here! I totally agree! There's a strong local movement towards mixed use development, but it's really a shame that the most valuable parts of our city are the oldest parts we've tried to buldoze over
Seeing how much of Cincinnati got bulldozed for cars just makes me filled with rage about lost potential. Downtown is nothing but parking lots and crumbling empty buildings
The interstate truly destroyed Cincinnati, it infuriates me seeing photos of the beautiful streets, buildings and architecture before. Plus the unfinished subway? Are real loss for cultural.
@@CityNerd The one good thing out of it is that its infuriating nature helped make me the die hard urbanist I am today. Seeing how bad policies ruined what could be one of America's finest cities does that to people if they care.
Guess what state I live in? Ohio. It made it twice on this list. Ohio has traditionally been known as an "automotive state" with huge government ties to the automotive industry, and thus greatly underfund transit. When Amtrak was first established in the early-to-mid 1970's, Ohio congressmen refused to fund Amtrak. To retaliate, Amtrak refused to place stations on Ohio routes, except in the major cities. Great as always, CityNerd!
Moved to DTLA from Nashville and my rent is obviously much higher, but the efficiency is so much higher and has transformed my satisfaction so much. Everything downtown is walking distance. My activity levels have gone up 5x, my leg veins are healing, and I'm socializing more. DTLA still needs a lot of work and investment, but it's criminal if this place doesn't glow up.
DTLA has come a looong way & with the new rail connections opening up, it’s going to be amazing! If u’re interested in the future of LA, check out urbanize Los Angeles, it’s got details on housing construction around LA county. It’s so exciting 🤗
Since you mentioned NYC boros, how about a video comparing each of the five boros? This may only be interesting to outer boro residents who want to score a win against Manhattan. But as a Queens resident I will take whatever I can get
This. #10 started at 70.5%. Although that is bad, I wouldn't doubt that the vast majority of cities that didn't make this list aren't that far behind. If we saw a scatter plot, I'm willing to bet the vast majority of cities used in his metrics are between 65%-70%.
@@mattkoska6521 Chicago is probably one of the most extreme examples because it's got reasonable rents and good walkability but in most US cities, the two have an inverse relationship.
@@empireoftruth3291And yet many people think they need a car here. Most do not need one. The cta did itself no favors during the pandemic influencing many people to avoid transit, though under-staffing was out of their control.
@@empireoftruth3291 true, just did it because it is where i am from. Id assume philly is somewhat similar. Sad that so many US cities are expensive if theyre walkable. Proves there is a demand for walkable urbanism that just isnt being met
That is incredible! It's good for developers, citizens and the general budget, plus with higher percentage mixed use, it makes public transport more of an option too due to number of people in a reasonable proximity to a stop. Congrats Captain!
Even more frustrating for Cincinnati is that there is an abandoned network for subway tunnels under the city. I don't recall how extensive or what the full story is, but long ago there were plans for a subway in Cincinnati, tunnels were excavated and was progressing, then money and politics became problematic and the plan was scrapped. I believe you can still tour the tunnels.
There are several abandoned subway tunnels that were built in locations in Cincinnati, totaling several miles, but the system is far from complete. From what I have heard, the project was an economic boondoggle when it was being built. The tours of the tunnels were discontinued several years ago, as I understand.
Underrated place for CityNerd to do a deep dive on: Tucson. 1 mil+ metro, car centric, but with one key difference from other American metro areas: by and large, Tucson has shunned freeways. The neighborhoods have maintained their urban fabric, even if that fabric is sprawly. Tucson has a weird affinity for small businesses, theres a strong bike culture around the U of A, and a newish tram system.
Thank you for posting a positive review for Tucson. I was stationed at Ft. Huachuca and spent a lot of time in Tucson. It's probably my favorite city in the USA
Thank you! I'm so tired of hearing about how affordable some sunbelt city is, without adding the cost of transportation. To truly figure a baseline of how expensive somewhere is, you should combine rent AND transit, and use that as the baseline number. It's why NYC always comes out on top for me financially - the combo of higher salaries and low transit cost more than make up for the higher rent.
Agreed that having a higher income, walkability and transportation is a huge part of things working out in NYC. I just had a discussion with someone who told me that one can't survive on 53k in NYC. Well it depends on the individual and lifestyle but there are plenty of people living on that salary in nyc. Currently my share of rent and utilities is $1200, my phone is $17, I spend no more than $300 on food, subway is $140 and I est. $150 for toiletries etc. So yeah. NYC is expensive compared to the rest of the country but as with everything else it just depends. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@davo1822I did it, but only when my rent was $400/month incl. utilities and I was making $4.10 an hour. None of those numbers have worked for 20+ years, though.
One critique I would make of this and similar analyses is that it uses the cost of new car ownership, which includes far higher depreciation and financing costs than owning a used car. I suspect most people at or near the median income are buying used cars. But I haven’t been able to find any kind of reliable metric for the cost owning a used car.
I would actually consider this pretty egregious - people at or especially below median income generally don't rent new apartments (i.e., recent construction), and older apartments generally do cost less, so the comparison should be with the median of all car ownership, not new car ownership.
@@RobertIrelan Yeah a better analogy would be to use the mileage deduction cost from the IRS and then figure out the median number of miles driving per capita per metro area.
But second hand cars are often out of warranty or going to be out of warranty sooner and generally have more issues, I don't know what that does for balancing things out though.
i did the real math with my own numbers for my old 94 corolla before i sold it for a move, even in a car that i literally chose not to fix the AC in for a couple years i was putting about 6k a year into it, basic basic insurance, pretty normal (50 mi round trip) commute when peoples mental math is just "gas costs this and insurance costs this and thats my monthly transit cost" they're totally neglecting maintenance and the increasingly frequent major repairs on an older, owned vehicle could not tell you how many times i had some surprise $200-500 bill that just Had to be paid cause hey i gotta work
So I lied in NYC for 15 years. The important thing to learn about that market is that there are effectively 2 housing markets: - Below 96th street and the "cool parts" of Brooklyn and Queens - The rest of the city. Living in a very nice neighborhood like Riverdale in the Bronx, or Pelham, or City Island (though the commute from here is rough), the rent is significantly less. Like about 1/3 of lower Manhattan. But it's hard to generalize what it costs. But I now live in the suburbs of Chicago, and while my housing costs have changed (my mortgage here is about the same as my rent in NYC), I pay more for transportation, and my commute isn't any better.
I live in Cincinnati, the major companies share wage information and coincidentally have similar numbers. Collusion is only illegal if you can't afford lawers.
As a Cincinnati native, I also am devastated to see Cincinnati on this list but not surprised. Cincinnati has soo much potential but is being sacrificed and bulldozed to appeal to the desires of the people living in the exurbs.
Living in Cleveland, I absolutely agree. We have a very low cost of living, but the jobs are generally located nowhere near the weak transit infrastructure. I am fortunate enough to live directly along what was one of the old streetcar lines so my personal choices can be very walkable, but all manufacturing work is about a half hour's drive away or more for just about everyone. We also have a state government that suppresses any change at the local level. You wouldn't believe how many people I see forced to walk to work along soul-crushing stroads or maintaining their ancient bikes because of the cost of maintaining multiple cars on this area's median wage.
Akron has decent transit, but when I lived there the richies in Fairlawn did not want frequent buses out there, thinking it would increase crime. Never mind that the service workers staffing the restaurants where they could afford to dine, generally lived in the city and often could not afford vehicles.
I always come to these videos for the well curated information and how f****** we are. But I stay for the DRY humor and delivery. You’re always an absolute gem
So everyone always talks about how expensive NYC is, but those numbers seem to come from Manhattan & Brooklyn - you can live in the Bronx with full public transportation & walking options with lower housing costs than it seems like most of USA and new housing is going up (at least in my neighborhood) like crazy. Detached homes are ridiculous even here, but rentals exist at reasonable rates. I live car free with a one bedroom rental for $1200/month - and if I wanted to scale down to a studio I could get an $800/month apartment.
It isn't so bad for people to have cars, and still live in a walkable area. I personally live that way. I use my car only 1x a week, and I don't commute or shop by car. And I could give up my car and be fine. I was in many smaller cities in Japan thatwere similar like Tottori, where most people owned cars, but the city itself was so walkable people only used their cars for trips out of the city to see some nature like Mt Daisen or parts of the sand dunes the busses did not go to.
I am actually not surprised that SF didn’t make the list. Salaries here are so good for many jobs and you can easily live here with no or one car that even our high housing costs don’t destroy everything.
I grew up in Miami and I got the hell out as soon as I could. Thanks for shining a light on how garbage it really is. You either live in a condo on the beach, or in suburbs so vast they make LA blush.
as someone who grew up in hiahleah, this isnt surprising. its common to see houses with additions and expansions of questionable quality and driveways and lawns storing 8 cars likely due to people and families sharing houses. not to mention that car insurance rates are extraordinarily high there.
Re: Nebula, I'm also a subscriber of that too, but some things that TH-cam does well are having a vibrant comment section to read, and the notification options. I often see your content first on TH-cam, then look for it again on Nebula. I'm also a Patreon patron so I am figuring all that out too. Anyway, I come for the City Nerd and I stay for the Kitty Nerd.
I moved from Calgary to Toronto about 1.5 years ago. In Calgary I owned a condo in the inner city (ie. mortgage payments + condo fees) and owned a car... because not owning one in Calgary is extremely impractical outside of very specific use-cases at best, or pretty much cuts you off from parts of the city at worst. This was also one car in a two-adult household, which is (anecdotally) pretty uncommon in Calgary, with most households having one car per adult. In Toronto I live in inner-city Old Toronto in a rental apartment that's a little bit smaller, but actually has a storage locker on-site. I don't own or need a car in Toronto and it's working just fine. I'm spending hundreds less per month on the combination of housing + transportation in Toronto than I did in Calgary, despite Toronto housing being significantly more expensive. It's also worth noting that I was paying a mortgage at a much, much lower interest rate than you can get today in Calgary, and both rental and property prices are on the rise in Calgary anyway. And auto-insurance rates have gone up significantly across Alberta since I moved. People don't really seem to be able to believe this when I tell them, but moving from Calgary (marketed as "the land of big houses for cheap" to Toronto residents just last year), to Toronto has been the more affordable choice for me. Edit: For fun, I calculated the percent of my household's after-tax income spent on transportation per year in Toronto, including transit and a generous allotment of Uber/Lyft trips. It's 2.2%. It was many times higher than that in Calgary.
Thanks! There needs to be more TH-cam videos that talk about statistics and demographics in Canada. However, it feels like these are being censored. I made a request to another TH-camrs who created great content about comparing statistics on places in the USA, and asked him to do the same for Canada (because it was an untapped market). He was keen on the idea and was able to make a single video, but then it seemed as though he was shut down. The topic was dropped. I am glad that City Nerd occasionally remarks about Canadian cities. However, everything he says is positive because Canada does a good job with walkability and transit. Unfortunately, there are no videos that talk about all the other information, some of it not so great.
I don't think the average person realizes it, but it's not so far-fetched. Housing in Calgary is on average more expensive than Montreal, which is a much larger city (and a city where one can more comfortably live car-free than most places in Canada) While Alberta is attractive for cheaper housing, there are a lot of things that make it still quite expensive. Auto insurance and utilities are the big ones since Kenney uncapped rates and companies subsequently jacked up prices across the board. Gas prices are cheaper, but the cities are so sprawly that it can be hard to go car-free. We moved to Edmonton from the GTA a few years ago to be closer to some family and our auto insurance nearly doubled. We pay more in utilities too, and comparing grocery flyers to back home it looks like fresh produce is cheaper back east too.
@@flargus7919 Comparing Loblaw’s to Superstore, I feel like produce is a bit cheaper here than it was in Calgary. The only item I’d say is more expensive every time I’ve tried is beef. Everything else is on par or cheaper. However, the small green grocers that are randomly quite abundant in my neighbourhood (not the case everywhere, to be clear) are massively more affordable for produce - generally 1/2 the price I’d pay in Calgary at a chain grocery store, and still a good 30% cheaper than the chains here. It actually encourages me to eat way more fruit and vegetables, since it’s available and affordable like a 15 second walk from my building’s front door.
Similar thing happened with me with moving from Denver (American Calgary), to NYC (American Toronto). I don't work in tech, finance or medicine so I don't make a ton of money, but living in Denver doing a "normal" job was financially ruinous. Rent kept rising 20% yoy, car payments, gas for driving everywhere, maintenance, etc, it all adds up when you are on a middle income salary in a city where housing costs have skyrocketed to 800k for an average 2 bed bungalow and rent is averaging 2k for a 1 bed, but salaries have increased barely more than they were 20 years ago. In NYC I work the same career, but I get paid quadruple what I got paid for the same job in Denver. Still, I'm not living wealthy or anything like that, but I've got a decent rent stabilized pre-war in South Brooklyn, I only pay $30 a month for unlimited transportation (employer covers my fares), and I can walk anywhere I need in my neighborhood. All my friends are nearby and the city is just brimming with opportunities I never had back home. Overall it is financially and mentally better for me to live here, but it is a struggle to start here.
NYC rental is also distorted because most people rent. In most cities, upper middle class people own rather than rent. So rental prices don’t include many upper middle class families. But rental prices in NYC do include them.
These are crazy numbers. I live in Prague, Czechia. I bike everywhere which costs me like $6 a month in maintenance. Overall the expenditures on accommodation and transportation are about 15% of my income. US is a joke. 😂🎉
It might be kinder to say "livability in the US is a joke". There are a lot of us here that don't want things this way and suffer for it. I'm glad it isn't that way everywhere, it gives me hope things can change
I am not at all surprised by Miami + Hialeah. It is pretty expensive, the pay is terrible, and it is so car dependent. Something I wanted to point out is when you did your google earth pan over Hialeah you actually panned over Miami Lakes, FL partially which, while no means perfect, is actually a kinda interesting new urbansist town. It also is basically cut off from all the suburbs around it by a moat of canal, stroad, and highway.
I really really thought Denver was going to be on this list. This is the worst place I have lived, the housing costs are just skyrocketing for no reason at all. The traffic is at LA levels, and he has personally discussed how shit our public transport is. I'm forced to run a car here, and if you factor in the used car boom from covid, the costs of buying a vehicle, let alone maintaining one, have become insane. I used to buy $1000 beaters all day that ran and drove. I can't even get a non running shell for less than 3K these days
House prices are going up due to fleeing Californians from cities like Los Angeles and San Bernardino. The same thing is happening in Salt Lake City, Austin, basically all over the place. The RTD needs a lot of work for sure. It's also my main complaint about Denver. Hard to feel safe riding the local buses sometimes.
LA level traffic in Denver? you are a drama queen, more people live in the LA metro area alone than the whole state of Colorado, only five million people live in the whole Colorado, the LA metro area has more than double Colorado's whole state population, your numbers don't add up
One reason rent & housing is so high in Denver is the cannabis indistry can't put their money in the bank. The banks are federally regulated, and cannabis is federally illegal. So they launder the money through buying real estate. One obvious solution is nation-wide legalization. No reason a silly flower should be illegal. Oh yeah, Colorado is just a super nice place to live. Can't forget that. Fastest? growing state in the union.
since watching your true cost of cars video, ive been thinking about the federal mileage rate that u can charge on business, and its crazy how much that changes the calculus for transit. Its just a shame that where I live, traveling by transit typically takes 2-3 times as long as driving does, so commuting by transit feels like a pipe dream
My neighbor before he died was a metro operator back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Apparently his wife’s dad was actually a streetcar operator in Cincinnati. I always thought that was cool trains used to be much more valued and it always fascinated me as a kid.
As someone from Buffalo/Niagara Falls, I can directly tell you that we have literal areas where you can walk to any location, bike to any location, or even drive to any location. A 50 minute drive can get you through every Western NY city, which is over 30 of them. It can get you from the Niagara Falls, all the way to Rochester NY. Driving isn't essential here, but the one thing you are correct on is public transport. It's expensive. But that's not just the end of it, because Toronto was a lot worse. We don't have alternative forms, but again, that's where the separate side hits. I went to Toronto recently, I spent over an hour getting onto a subway to get from one end of the city to the other in the morning. In the evening, I decided to Uber, which took less than 15 minutes total. In reality, "car ownership" simply is the difference between time and cost, and the time outweighs the cost. Oh, you can also get to Toronto within an hour drive, too.
Our Cost of Living is severely low, as well, along with the cost of a house. Our career path for educated is typically higher than the other parts of NYS, however it's not as high as various other locations across the States. For uneducated workforce, it's been strides, but the rest of the Western NY region is doing well. But this comment in specific is to debunk the car part. It's not a requirement to own a car; I know many who don't and do not spend (much at all) on transportation. And those who do, you can easily find yourself a sub $1,000 car that'll work fine in the winter without any major issues or concerns. It's almost always about the notion that people view this side of NY 'the same as NYC' when, in fact, we are not. Not even remotely. We do not need subways just because we have everything within walking distance, and cities are within biking distance. I had a friend who would Bike from Buffalo to Niagara Falls daily for work (Taking him an hour and some change to get there, but still). It's not "impossible", and everything in this area is literally around the same location as the neighborhoods. Consider Niagara Falls as a fine example. We have residential and commercial divided by the main street, rather than neighborhoods. Then we have Neighborhoods with smaller tightknit stores, but they're only a walk away from the bigger streets.
My other point of contention with the video is at 6:40 ; I don't understand who and why someone would spent over $2,000/month for a car. Unless they're spending a large quantity of that money on the vehicle (Which is absurd, that's a $50,000+ vehicle); I spent $340/month for 4 years on my Infiniti. It's paid off now, however, and I only spend $100/month on a Nissan 350z and Infiniti G37x, both highly reliable cars that are both paid off (Granted, the ones a summer fun car). I do believe that if you factor realistic metrics into this, not the unrealistic metrics, people are likely spending $800/month on vehicle expenses including gas, and that's people with a "newer" vehicle than mine. If I factor in gas, I spend $70 every 2 weeks in gas, factoring around $1800/year in gas. For comparison, I spent ~$20 for a one day trip to Toronto to take the subway from one end of the city, to the other, then back. If I had to do that daily, it'll cost me well over $7,000 USD, assuming that the price for this is consistent for 2 people for 2 trips on public transit in that city. All I know is that it's less than $1 for a bus ride in Buffalo NY, and an uber is cents compared to Toronto.
Let's also just break down my household income for a moment, as a 30+ year old who owns 2 cars, a house and live within the Buffalo NY Region; I spent $0 for my cars, however the one vehicle I had a payment of $340/month on until it paid off a bit ago. I got the car in 2018. I spent ~$110 for 2 cars for car insurances from a reputable national brand. I spend $70/fill up for gas, which lasts 2 weeks going from one end of Buffalo (Batavia NY) to my city (Niagara Falls NY) at least once a week, so it's every 2 weeks. Monthly average rent is $0, as I purchased my house outright in cash, however let's assume it's at the value of the house when acquired originally, if I didn't get it at a city auction, which would be $80,000. This would determine a 15/year mortgage at 6% apr would roughly be ~$450 - $500 a month. I'm not going to dox myself so we'll say each month I rougly save $200 for taxes. This would determine that the house itself is less than $700/month with transportation making it just over $1,000/month. Even if I made minimum wage, which is $15/hr, and worked full time, this would determine that just over 55% of my income is going to transportation. My income is no where's minimum wage. My actual cost I spend on transportation is less than $250 a month, which is insurance & gas. I pay more in city taxes than I do for transportation. Whatever site you're going to for it, is either incredibly inaccurate, or assumes everyone is buying a brand-new off the lot vehicle (Which according to dealers, has been at a record low in the past 5 years), and the distance they travel is a lot. I could also add in EzPass, but that's $2 every week, which isn't much at all comparatively.
Buffalo locals complain that they can't afford to buy a house while out-of-towners say "I can't believe how cheap it is here!" Local wages have historically been low compared to national averages in Buffalo, but with work-from-home trends, our real estate is nationally priced at a bargain compared to much of the nation, so we're seeing even our "nice" neighborhoods getting gentrified, so to speak. Our car dependency is a huge burden, but the suburban population fights any effort to establish public transportation with uneducated arguments. As younger generations take responsibility for public stewardship, I expect these trends to level out and favor urban living, but in a rust belt city that was always a cheap place to live due to "white flight" to the suburbs and being orphaned by a lot of industrial giants, the increased housing costs are hard to swallow for many people. Fortunately, we're on the path to establishing a new metro train line (we only have one at the moment), and as streets get repaved for regular maintenance, we're adopting protected bike paths and making a conscious effort to make car ownership a less desirable option. I got a great deal on my house eight years ago, so I'm placing all of my bets on Buffalo at the moment.
If willing to live in a smaller city, with two trains a day to Chicago, my Mom's teenage home was in a walkable neighborhood, and is very affordable. The factory in the city is enormous and seems to do well.
with NY it's kind of tricky since you're using both the median rent and the average car ownership but the people who own cars live in the outer boroughs where the rent is much lower and the people with higher rent don't own a car
Wasn’t expecting to see Fontana. But it’s true, here people often say, “it’s only a 1 or 1.5 hour drive to get to LA/Palm Springs/the mountains/Vegas/San Diego/Disneyland/the beach/Tijuana”. Lots to do near us, but always only by car.
Here's another thing about Miami. That city has transitioned from a once very poor city to a mega rich city in a time span of about 25 years. I think it was in the year 2000 or 2001 Miami was named the 2nd poorest city in America by income. Now most of those low income people are being pushed out and their neighborhoods are being gentrified and higher income people are moving in and rapidly changing the culture. Can't say I like the "new" Miami either because it's pretty lame now.
I can speak to why people stay in Miami and Hialeah, as a Cuban whose parents immigrated to the city. You underestimate how important family is to people from the Caribbean. Often people live in multi-generational houses to overcome the housing prices, the culture is really different from the rest of the US. People who immigrated to Miami also tend to struggle to a similar community anywhere else in the US. In fact, a lot of immigrants see Miami as Cuba v2 - you never need to fully integrate into American society (which many Hispanics find very jarring and isolating), and you can get by speaking Spanish alone anywhere in the city. Just my two cents answering your question "why do people choose to live here???"
As someone who once grew up in Fontana (or Fontucky) I'll say 2.7 cars per house is... a low estimate... Those house always have at least three cars in the driveway, more on the street. The extra cars are lifted trucks and RVs. So yes, they choose to not just depend on cars, but also invest their free money and time into them.
I could have swore that number 1 was going to be Orlando Florida. We have low paying jobs and a 1 bedroom apartment is around $1700. We do have light rail, but oddly enough, it doesn’t run on weekends. Express buses are almost non existent. The biggest irony is that next to us is the arguably one of the best public transportation systems in America in which people use buses, ferries, a skyliner, and a monorail. Of course that would be Disney World, where people who wouldn’t be caught dead using city transit pay top dollar to have access to Disney transportation. I think the irony and disparity would make a great video. Biggest irony of all, Walt Disney himself was a big proponent of mass transit and yet they limit the amount of public transportation that comes into property, to keep all dollars in property. I do work in Disney Transportation and live 6 miles away from my job. It would take me well over an hour to use public transit to get to work.
I'm at the end of the video and I'm still slightly in shock at the idea that transportation is the second biggest expense for a majority of people (in the US, I'm assuming). I think for me it's like number ...5? After housing, childcare, food, health insurance. But of course if you're taking about owning more than one car in a household, costs will skyrocket very quickly.
As a Cincinnatian, it is hard to see my city on this list, but fortunately there's momentum to turn things around. City council at the moment if all about urbanism, and it shows. They just voted to prevent any new parking downtown, and there's been pretty rapid development of certain corridors to reduce car dependency. Plus there are plans for BRT and streetcar expansion. Hopefully if you redo this list in 5 years, we'll be taken off! 🤞
I think it would be cool if you could make a yearly video showcasing the best improved cities over the year based on walkability, affordability, etc. The City Nerd Awards. Lol
Miami, where the wealthy come from other states and abroad to spend their millions and live in mansions and most of the locals struggle to survive paycheck to paycheck; home ownership for them is just an unattainable dream.
Need someone to start doing these analyses for Canada… even if we only have, like, 11 metros over half a million, so they’d need to embrace smaller metros. (Or just have the same cities in every top ten list.)
I would maybe lower the threshold to 100k so that one could at least expand the field to around 55-60 cities and include the likes of Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Regina, Saskatoon, Saguenay, Chatham-Kent, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Windsor, etc. Drop the threshold down to 80k and one can be looking at Chilliwack, Kamloops, Victoria, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Lethbridge, Niagara Falls, etc There are just so few "big" cities in Canada, and what few there are exist in just five of the ten provinces. There are so many lovely small cities that get overlooked by Canadians looking for affordability or fresh starts or whatever.
@@flargus7919 I think it would depend on the list, but 200K or 100K CMAs are both decent thresholds for most things. I think below that and you’re more looking at towns, though. (Got to use CMA boundaries, though, otherwise you’ll have Winnipeg listed as bigger than Vancouver. 😆)
I'm surprised San Diego didn't show up on this list (or many of your lists). It's shown up as the "Most Expensive" city in a few recent lists. Home prices around me are going for $1000 per square foot. That's nuts! Gas is more expensive than most (all?) places. Electricity kwh is most expensive in the country. Water too, but it's an arid environment and trucked from Colorado, so that's expected. I would love to see an analysis on San Diego. If you want to read up on some juicy (and sad) transportation battles Google Hasan Ikhrata vs the North County commuter cities.
@@patrickrivas2159 Using the same methods as in the video, San Diego comes out at a combined car+rent cost of 58.1% of the median household income. (This is going off of the $1,015 US average cost of car ownership, the 1.96 cars/household in metro SD, a median rent of $2,344 and median HH income of $89,457. Correct if anything is inaccurate.)
Love your style my 26 year old son who went to grad school in London for transit/planning linked me this video. Thank you very interesting. We are Americans grew up in the NYC tri state area and then moved 2008-2023 for a job to the Palm Springs CA area so we are well aware of these issue. What's really crazy is the average person we have chatted with in London have not traveled to the USA or if they have they go with a "tourist mindset" and don't seem to pay attention to how car dependent cities effect daily life/ expenses.
9:14 In the first half of the twentieth Century, New York City workers only payed about 1% of their gross income on transportation due to the inexpensive subway fares. The information is from the book *Straphanger*. It is an interesting read.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 My comment is about the 20th Century. It is surprising how little people used to pay to ride the subway. It was only 5¢ until 1948, which wasn’t much even adjusted for inflation.
@@FavoriteThings606 From 1904 - 1948 the flat rate for the NYC Subway was 5¢. Today it is $2.90. Adjusted for inflation 5¢ in 1948 is the same as 65¢ today. When the fare was raised to 10¢ that year it would still only be equal to $1.30 today. In the SF Bay Area, fares start at $2.15 and go up to $17.60.
@@FavoriteThings606 For 40 years the subway fare didn’t charge. So as the years passed people were making more money, but the fare remained the same. At some point during that timeframe it was only 1% of the typical workers income. So apparently in NYC that would be about $2,500 a year. It is not based on 1908 or minimum wage. Also, two income families were not that common during that time. For a $2.50 X 2 X 5 X 50 = $1,250 $1,250 is 1% of $125,000 Is $125,000 typical for Chicago?
I would love to see some of this same type of in depth analysis on small towns. Something like using Strong Towns lists that is mainly small cities, but doing this type of affordability analysis. I understand that there are thousands of small towns, though. Maybe doing it in a region, like New England, or the Cascades or Upper Midwest.
Fascinating. Can't wait to see the 10 best. Using the median cost of transportation exaggerates actual cost for low income cities almost for certain, because low income households have fewer cars and also tend to have much older cars. Many also run without insurance. And the median is also skewed upward by affluent families driving 100K vehicles with a couple of teens also driving pricey vehicles. Low income teens don't drive, or if they do, they are sharing with parents or siblings.
What happen in moreno valley, San Bernardino is that people live there + commute to oc/la for work. Some people have spent their whole lives and careers doing this.
My wife and I are very keen to get out of Texas. Problem is, doing research in walkable cities in the US is extremely discouraging and we just don’t know where to go…
Just moved to San Antonio to live with family/save some money (from a VERY walkable and transit friendly area of Houston 😭), and having been without my car for probably half of this year due to back to back major repairs needed with little income (job searching avidly), please PLEASE make the next video the least crushing cities to live and have access to transportation. I have got to get out of this suburban hellscape where I HAVE to drive to go literally anywhere. PLEASE 🙏🏾
In your promotion of walkable-livable cities, could you look into the ease/difficulty of family raising? There are many demographers who believe the move to dense inner city apartments around the world has led to birth rate drops, and now, decreasing populations. The dynamics are now inner city (young adults) --> suburbs (family years) --> inner city (empty nesters/downsizers).
"Freedom to roam" has a lot of mental/physical health benefits for children, but that shouldn't be the only variable when choosing where to live. Have realistic priorities for your personal situation. There are pros and cons to every option. With that said, having spent half my childhood in a lower-class neighborhood that was fortunate enough to be walkable while still green, peaceful, and quiet, it was so much better for our lifestyle than having to drive everywhere. This was in Sweden, so those are probably impossible standards in most US cities. But with that experience, I'm never raising my children driving them everywhere.
I moved to the suburbs for my kids and for the better schools. Unfortunately you will be driving your kids everywhere until they get a license. And then you will have the additional expenses of adding a second car or insuring a teenage driver. Kids still want to visit with their friends that live in another neighborhood (that’s not walkable), go to the store, mall, etc. I see so many abandoned play houses and swing sets in the suburbs. The kids don’t want to ride their bikes because the landscape gets boring and uninterested after awhile. There’s not even a corner shop the kids could walk to. If I had to do it over again, I’d get something safe in the city near stuff for the kids. And I ended up homeschooling the kids anyway, so there’s that. I think my kids would have enjoyed walking to the library, parks, stores, and catching buses as they got older. Suburbia stunts children IMO. I lived in the suburbs growing up but we were a 10-25 minute SAFE walk to a major shopping mall, bowling alley, mini golf, and many restaurants. It was awesome.
@@autismworldtravel Thanks for sharing! I completely agree, having things to independently walk or bike to while growing up can be really beneficial in my experience.
Hey Ray. This is a great piece. But a couple of thoughts, having lived in some of these places. In a number of cities the “median” house or apartment doesn’t really exist. Example: Chicago has some wonderful urban neighborhoods where you can live car free. But they are all quite expensive. Yet there are poor neighborhoods further out that have significant crime problems where real estate is much cheaper, which distorts the median price. In reality, with taxes and all other costs, I have found Chicago more expensive than Seattle on a similar salary. Likewise, in NY the “median” apartment doesn’t really exist. There are a lot of studios and one bedrooms for the often transient young professional class and a lot of obnoxious high end stuff no one can afford. But next to nothing in the middle. Second, the walkability and transit scores don’t really seem to care where you’re walking to or where that transit takes you. Most US cities that have public transit have star shaped networks which take you to and from the center of town. But if you don’t work downtown you’re SOL. Lastly, I saw a recent statistic that some 30% of morning car commutes are parents taking kids to school. This is probably too complex of a can of worms for your channel, but to really calculate affordability for a family with kids, one would have to take into account the quality of the public school system, cost of tuition of private school alternatives, availability of school buses or walkability to school, availability of after school activities/child care. If a city could get a handle on these metrics it could reduce morning traffic by 30%. But this would be a very complex calculation I’d imagine.
Another factor with driving kids to and from school is how it affects your work schedule or need to find after school day care. If you have to leave work early or take a school hour only shift so you can pick up your kids, you can't work as many hours, reducing your income. If you have to pay for day care, that eats into your ability to save. If your kids can get themselves to and from school and after school activities (as I did growing up in SF), you don't have those costs, and raising your children is cheaper. As a bonus, your children learn valuable life skills such as how to take the bus and navigate their city, how to cook their own snacks, how to manage time wisely.
@@FavoriteThings606 based on what? I made the Chicago -> Seattle move with two kids. Between the absence of state income tax, better public schools, lower real estate taxes and the fact that you still can get more space for your money *near downtown*, Seattle is cheaper by my calculations. Yes, you can get cheap real estate in Chicago if you are willing to accept 1+ hour commutes and the added transportation/car ownership costs. But that’s a wash financially and a massive loss of quality of life. Also in the Chicago area you have much higher heating costs in winter and cooling costs in summer.
Can't wait for the top 10 cheapest, great video as always. Curious that Boston wasn't on here. The rental market it crazy and a lot of people still drive despite the decent transit options.
Same! I use public transportation, but my unwillingness to drive into the city has impacted my options when considering job changes. If it’s not a reasonable commute, I won’t work there. I’ve been able to save substantially by living in the burbs and traveling in on the train. I know people who don’t want the commute, and they’re paying triple for rent than what I’m paying for in a mortgage. Finally, not everyone in Boston is a high earner, which makes paying for rent AND car ownership in the city all but impossible.
Public transit sucks when you have to listen to people having freakouts in public, zero privacy or personal space just causing more stress on the way to work. Sure, dealing with traffic sucks but not as much as having homeless people yell at you on the train.
@@autismworldtravel Happened multiple times to me when I've headed up to San Francisco and take BART in (because you can't park your car in SF proper without getting your windows busted)
As a metro Detroiter who has been living with their mom since they graduated college in 2019 b/c I can afford both a car and housing. I cannot even describe how badly I want public transportation. It would be so nice.
Interesting seeing Miami as the worse city. You always hear how bad New York City and the big California cities are in terms of costs, but rarely is Miami mentioned, a lot of it due to popular and political discourse. I do wonder how much of Miami's popular image is skewed heavily by the wealthier parts or by the lower costs in the rest of Florida.
Dade and Broward counties are actually the only non-rural counties in the state that are shrinking, it’s the rest of the state that is having a population boom.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Even if you subtract the roughly 10% combined state and city income tax from the median NYC income, it still isn't as low as Miami's median income.
@@chemicalfrankie1030Your car and Home insurance cost in Florida will more than make up for that no income tax plus the cost of goods down there isn’t cheap either
Also, don’t forget to add in the two biggest culprits in North America for high housing cost vs median income: Vancouver and Toronto. Vancouver is beautiful, with fantastic transit, but its affordability crisis is on par with Bay Area if not worse.
I recently learned this about NYC broker fees. In other cities the landlord will pay the RE broker one month rent to find a tenant. In NYC the tenant is expect to pay the broker between 2-3 months rent on top of security deposit and first month's rent. Seems like this fee is not regulated and you don't even need to be licensed to collect this fee.
You can get around the broker's fee in some areas of NYC, it just take s a little extra leg work to contact landlord/super directly. Sure, Manhattan and Brooklyn are lost causes but there are other boros. And I'm pretty sure it's only legal for brokers to collect 10% of yearly rent - slightly more than 1 month - at least that's what I always heard.
@@jennifertomaiolo Yes. It's definitely avoidable. I know plenty of long-time NY'ers that live in Manhattan & Brooklyn that have not paid these ever. The only ones I know of who have paid it are newcomers from mid-sized cities who do happen to make well above the median income.
“For those of you who are already nebula subscribers, you should probably be watching this video on nebula” 😅 it’s me-I just signed up for Nebula a few days ago but came back to watch on TH-cam, because otherwise I wouldn’t have learned about the Logistics of Coal Mining as a “what to watch next” suggestion, nor get to read any comments on the video. Thanks for the video as always!
My theory with Miami is that many of the people paying those super high rent prices are wealthy retirees who don't actually count toward the median income numbers, meaning median wealth might be a fair bit higher than median income.
It absolutely blows my mind how Miami can be more expensive than NYC and yet NYC gets to be known as the expensive city.... Interesting to note that San Francisco was not on today's list. Out of curiosity, I wonder where it ranks?
Great video - I'm excited for the other side of this equation. I agree the cost-to-income ratio is so critical. I live in a high income, high cost area and in the past have looked at moving to lower cost areas only to find that the relative drop in salary negates any benefit. And that's not even considering car ownership. At some point in the future, I would be fascinated to see an analysis like but for housing that's adequate for a family (e.g., min. 3 bedrooms). Anecdotally, many people manage in apartments in expensive cities, but find they have to move when it comes to starting a family. Thanks for the videos!
Guess what? Finally, a useful comment on the Internet! Nebula Lifetime is an amazing way to support what I do, on a platform that really puts creators first. Use my custom link: go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=citynerd -- or gift one! go.nebula.tv/gift?ref=citynerd
Notes & errata. The AAA $12K/year number is for owning a "new" car, so if you must drive, you can certainly do better if you bargain fro a good used car. Just get a bike though
Bringing up climate change is harming the anti sprawl movement making it partisan. No wonder it’s not dominant yet
@@CityNerd I moved from San Diego to Cleveland over the summer, and what's going on here is an extension of the 2009 real estate collapse. Basically, they're STILL bulldozing houses rather than taking any steps to preserve housing stock. However, much like SD, the housing shortage is a bit overblown relative to demand. There are a LOT of bargains remaining in the city proper if you are willing to deal with its shortcomings.
Yes you do need to visit, the transit backbone is old and reliable even if dated and smelly. I can now take light rail directly into the airport when I need to, something you still can't do in SD. And you need to check out The Frans, a local band that wrote a rock opera about the history of mass transit in Cleveland. I'm not making that up.
Lifetime deals are interesting because if very popular, are not known to be sustainable. So there's some irony there in the "support" pitch, probably. "Get it while you can?" Perhaps. Keep up the great work as always.
I joined Nebula because of you. Id love to see a retirement without car video. @@CityNerd
Thanks for the "Just stop it" line about folks who say you have to eat more or replace your shoes more if you live in walkable or bikeable city.
Eating out is typically a bit more expensive in cities, but it's laughable when people try and imply you'd need to eat more when anything from a quick glance to an academic study will reach the obvious conclusion that people in urban areas eat significantly less calories on average than the rest of America.
@@electrified0 I love how academic studies are the gospel to you people 😂
Yeah. Walking a lot could lead to “food dependency”! 😂
@@runswithraptorsbetter than anecdotal evidence
@@schmangusschmangus8628 naw the majority of academic studies related to social sciences are incredibly biased, generally flawed and most are not replicable
Can't wait for the 10 cities with the lowest housing and transportation costs.
Also, I'd love a big spreadsheet with every city that met your criteria and how they all stack up. Analysis like this is so valuable, even beyond the top and bottom ten.
I would suspect the variance in housing costs far exceeds that of transport costs.
will be a 10 second video about pittsburgh
@@jethrorust6140 I was honestly surprised to see several rust belt cities on here, so Pittsburgh may not rank as highly as we think it will.
Although I'll bet Chicago ranks highly here.
I’m also seeing Pittsburgh and Chicago on this list
@@williamcheek7206 Going by the who wound up on the list, looks like there's pretty wide variance in housing cost, transportation cost, and incomes. If this list was housing cost dominated I'd expect places like San Francisco and Boston to make the top ten and if it was income dominated I'd expect a place like New Orleans to be in there. Instead all three factors appear to be important.
As a SoCal resident the inland empire is truly a crime against urbanism that I cannot wrap my head around. And people tell me it’s so great because you can afford a 3 car garage ?? 🤨🤨
It's annoying as someone who has family in Inland Empire too because even if you luck out and are able to work out a plan to get to someplace there by Metrolink, it still takes 3x as long and you're stuck at a train station surrounded by parking lot with no way to get to their house anyway. I imagine if/when LA really improves it's transit and it's more viable to live car lite/free throughout the county, Inland Empire and Riverside will be losing their shit at how inconvenient it is for them to drive to the LA area.
Grew up in Ventura County and the IE was only ever a place to go through to get to Vegas or Joshua Tree. Truly a terrible place.
A three car garage with two brodozers parked outside because they don't fit 😆
When I visited Fontana for the first time for Auto Club Speedway, I couldn't believe how far away Fontana was from LA proper. Whenever I watched races from that track they always talked about being in Hollywood but you still have a whole hour drive to go to get there. It's stupid
kind of like the Los Angeles Angels... of Anaheim @@RacingWorldTV202
Living in SF it’s always shocked me when coworkers transfer/move to LA because they want a “cheaper cost of living”. I hear it all the time. But even if your apartment is 30-40% less expensive, the dramatic increase in transportation costs and decrease in quality of life from having to drive everywhere, coupled with the lower salaries, make it seem like a losing deal every time I’ve ran the numbers. In SF (which is pretty compact) my transportation costs are effectively zero (except for the burning in my thighs when biking up the hills)
I haven't had a chance to visit SF, but I always hear people sh*tting on it (pun intended)
You don't really need to utilize all of LA if you get into a good neighborhood. SF is almost too small to be interesting after a while, and it's torn down a lot of its own history in my lifetime.
People that make SF salaries can afford the good parts of LA where you don't NEED to drive much.
He mentions this several times in this video for certain cities, but its true for pretty much all of them. Above average salaries dont have the same transportation worries that the median resident has, because they CAN afford to live in any neighborhood if they want to.
@@MrTaxiRob I gotta disagree with your "too small to be interesting" comment - I've lived in SF nearly my whole life and just discovered the Crosstown Trail this summer, which took me through many parts of SF I had never visited. Yes, it's smaller in area than other cities, but there's plenty of variety within the city plus the entire Bay Area to explore. And most parts of the Bay are pretty accessible by some form of transit within a reasonable period of time, unlike LA's sprawl.
But when you start talking about the Bay, you're not talking about SF anymore; and it's also an area the size of LA's statistical area, and both are composed of multiple cities and counties @@rubyfoxall1656. I get what you're saying, but it's beyond the scope of the video.
What hurts many of the low median-income cities on this list is that the cost of rent and median income scale appropriately, whereas the cost of ownership of a car does not.
Housing costs are increasing at a much bigger rate than income
Agreed. Gas prices vary widely by city and state. But it's not always correlated by rents and incomes.
And purchases of anything that is priced at a national level. A video game for example is gonna cost the same regardless of if the median income of your city is in the gutter or not.
Not exactly. The consumer expenditure survey from BLS does suggest people with lower income spend less on car ownership, though not by enough, and the median rent is still quite a bit above 30% of the median monthly income (either before or after tax) for these.
Tell that to NYC who ended up on the worst 10 list. Median rent scales with density and desirability. It was several factors (not just the fact that he didn’t scale cost of car ownership with income-as is shown to be empirically true) that caused all of these to rise to the top/bottom
I find the mix between super car dependent cities with low income and expensive rental markets to be interesting in this video, and like you said it’s fascinating to see how much “unseen” financial damage owning a car has on those who own them. I wonder why Americans constantly complain about housing costs but almost never complain about car maintenance/purchase costs…
i wonder how much of it is due to car costs being taken for granted as “necessary”. anytime i bring up urbanism to my family for example, i hear the typical “the US is just too big of a country” and “busses and trains don’t go everywhere” lines. i think it’s so ingrained that a lot of people haven’t ever thought about it critically
They do, quite often. The problem is there is no political will on part of the government to do anything about it, bc so much tax revenue comes from automobile ownership.
Agreed. We had an ugly scuffle over Thanksgiving about the real cost of car ownership and the utility of bike riding. Relatives were not impressed with my City Nerd data :)
Maybe they should, but they're pretty different in relative size. Also a lot more people are willing to buy a used car than a "used" house, or one in a marginal neighborhood.
Marketing & private contracts are a lot to blame.
As someone who lives in Miami, I 100% saw that coming. Traffic is awful, most of the city and county outside the rich areas are unwalkable, there's useless public transit, and in the last few years its just gotten so ruinously expensive. I love it here and it has so much potential but its just insane.
I don't think climate change will help much with its long-term prospects either sadly.
Yeah…go ahead and ride the Metrorail full of bums and criminals. Other problem is there is no more space unless you push farther west to the Everglades
You mean global warming?
I always laugh at you people complaining about bad traffic. When you average time from work to home is 4+ hours to go 24-25 miles come complain to me. And that's from my job in town to my house. The last half hour I cover the last 10 miles of that 24-25. That's 4+ hours to only go in reality 14 miles. (On the freeway) And that's also if the weather is good. The instant it starts raining I go and sleep in my car till 8pm then drive home in like 30-40min.
Tack on another 1-2 hours if you live on the west side of the island.
Also how the fuck did Honolulu not make the list? $1800 for a studio apartment with no utilities included.
The ONLY thing it has going for it is that most of the jobs are already in Honolulu. But if you change that to where most people live the transportation cost skyrocket. Mainly due to our outrageous traffic.
@@x808drifter its not a competition man, we're all struggling. im sure its bad there too
It’s so sad that as a country we do not prioritize regional connectivity and mass transit. If European cities can do it with lower gdp’s , so could we if we really wanted to. This is not sustainable on so many levels. We are on a sinking ship and most never think about the long term lack of efficacy in what we have created . Thanks for the vid!
15 mins cities is reaching the US. Dont worries. ( or Becareful what we wish )
@a: After BART, bullet train, and VTA trains in the SF and CA that cost of billions of taxpayer money for not very much, I’d rather have R than D.
Hialeah native / refugee here... I used to have a 90 minute commute to FIU each day when I was in college. The traffic everywhere was and is a huge drag. And no one really makes good money. It's a difficult place to live.
We are a 6 figure income couple and had very little saved and not much cash lying around the preverbal".
'...don't have $500 for an
emergency" that was us. The big thing was debt all kinds of it, cars mortgage (although our home isn't a high price one), student loans for our kids, and of course credit cards.
One day we just got sick of being broke and went total scorched earth and became frugal overnight. Paid it all off, it took almost 5 years but now we have no debt and this year our savings rate is 50% on basically the same income that had us perpetually broke. So for us it is mainly staying out of debt and watching our spending, at first it was a real effort to save in our HISA and 401Ks but now it's actually fun watching our money grow. No car or vacation or neighborhood is worth being broke or financially unstable.
Congratulations on taking the steps necessary to get yourself out of the financial bind you were in.
Facing your medicine can be difficult. However, with commitment, you'll ultimately reach a highly satisfying place. It's all about the actions you're willing to take.
Your financial journey is truly inspiring, and I'm currently striving to achieve the goals you've reached. Could you please share some tips to help others learn and navigate their own paths to financial success? Your insights would be invaluable.
Samuel Peter Descovich that's whom I work with
I believe everyone could benefit from having a personal financial advisor. They can assist you in reaching your customized financial objectives at any point, ensuring you remain profitable.
As someone from Hialeah, I am not at all surprised by this video. Hialeah is a special case, even for a city as odd as Miami. It is the 7th largest city in Florida, with over 220,000 officially. However, this city has a HUGE population of undocumented immigrants, which has been skyrocketing especially since 2021, so I would not be surprised if this number was closer to 300,000, making it the 5th largest in Florida.
There are many reasons why people from Hialeah don't pack their bags and leave. Most importantly, the city is almost entirely (95%+) Hispanic, of which 75% are immigrants. Most of these immigrants (73%) are Cuban, so the city is the Cuban mecca in the US. People from Hialeah stay there because of family, cultural ties, and a language barrier. Many people in Hialeah barely speak English, and the city's de facto official language is Spanish, which is used in stores, businesses, banks, hospitals, and even government buildings more than English. For a non-English speaker, staying in this city is just too convenient, even if economically it makes sense to move away.
Another reason is that extended families live together. It is common to see 10+ people sharing a single house in Hialeah, with everybody working and contributing to the rent or mortgage payment. It is also very common for people to turn a spare room into a studio (we call those efficiency homes). The city is very car-centric, so in nearly every parking lot you see at least 3 cars, and as you may expect, the traffic is a nightmare. There has been a huge exodus of Cubans in the past 2 years, and many of them end up in Hialeah, at least temporarily.
Lastly, most people (or at least a sizeable minority) understate their income to receive welfare from the government. This is, unfortunately, a cultural norm here, especially among Cubans who are used to "cheating the system" since that's really the only way to get by in Cuba. Many people who receive food stamps and/or live in low-income housing have nice cars and travel pretty often. I had friends in high school who lived in low-income housing yet they lived a pretty luxurious lifestyle and traveled pretty often (which you wouldn't expect from someone living in low-income housing). Since people understate their incomes so much, the city is poorer on paper than it actually is. Yes, there is higher-than-average poverty in this city, but many people are pretending to be poor when they actually aren't.
TLDR: Hialeah is a huge ethnic enclave for Cubans, where Spanish is used more than English, even in businesses and government buildings. Immigrants who do not speak English and want to be close to their family and culture stay here, even if it comes at a premium. The median household income is probably higher than official statistics show since many people understate their incomes. It is common for many people to share a single house, so individuals don't pay as much in rent or mortgage.
I can confirm that all of this is true. I’ll also add that the Miami(Hispanic?) culture seems to encourage spending as much as possible. My Uber driver was telling me how she was trying to buy a $500,000 home. I know a guy who makes $15/hr and drives a $35,000 car and owns a $700,000 home.
@@allankirchhoff6553 Yes, many people in Miami live beyond their means. I've heard from non-Miamians that their biggest surprise about this city is how many fake rich people there are. Every other person is running a side hustle or a shady business. People here love to flex what they don't have, which translates into financial or legal trouble at some point.
I am not sure if this is a purely Hispanic or a city-wide thing.
Please please make the top 10 most affordable H+T cities!
The brutal part of many car dependent cities is that sharing a car with a spouse or roommate is prohibitively challenging. While housing benefits from economies of scale based on your household size, transportation does not. This is how you may find yourself going from needing 0 vehicles to 2, and spending an extra $2k per month on transportation and immediately losing all the housing savings.
"That's why I always buy used cars for $15, and now with my $500,000 in savings 30 years later I'm sooooo much smarter than any of you." --Every TH-cam car owner, probably.
This is such a strong point.
I think that most of the neighborhoods and cities where people can comfortably live car free are going to be at an absurd premium for the forseeable future and it might behoove urbanists to consider how more places can be made comfortable as someone living car lite. I think fixing that delta is easier in the short term than building enough uber walkable urbanist paradises to substantially erode the existing premium
There used to be this thing called "carpooling." Also for small households housing doesn't scale as much as it would seem. There are very few one-bedroom units that aren't rentals, which under normal conditions are considerably more expensive than owning.
I see your point, but in most cities it's going to be easier to find two jobs that are located in sequence along a driveable route than it's going to be to find two jobs adequately served by transit.
@@josephfisher426 that's the thing though. Carpooling is logistically challenging even in very optimal situations.
I'm not shocked by Miami's place on the list AT ALL. I graduated from FIU in 2012, and I wanted to stay in Miami after I graduated but the available jobs were so low pay that it wasn't workable at all. From what I've heard from people I know who live there, conditions have not improved. It's ridiculous and unsustainable.
And, to be fair, biking in that weather for most of the year is not practical. I say this as a year-round bicyclist in Chicago. The humidity in Miami is generally disgusting, not to mention the daily afternoon downpours. Walking and transit are completely viable. Well, I mean they could be with better infrastructure.
@@charlienyc1agreed. I lived in Miami for the final semester of my degree (I did the rest online from Jacksonville) and I didn't take my car because "I can just use the public transportation, it's not that bad". Oof. In the summer, it is that bad. The sun is SO intense, plus the humidity.
Pandemic cause housing to ballooned. It’s well known
But at least they have Cuban sandwiches. Not as good as Tampa's, of course, but still good.
@@chemicalfrankie1030Amazing what the personal cost of that is. But we just don't think about that🤪
I grew up in south Florida and I’m down in right now visiting family. The urban fabric, or suburban fabric, is absolutely insane here. Everything is a strip mall or gated community and you need a car just to get across the street to the grocery store. I love my family, but I’ve grown to hate living in Florida.
1000000% agree. I only saw the title and knew 305 would be here lol.
I live in south Florida for 46 years and I still love it. We have it all down here
I understand about Florida. I couldn't stand all the toll highways, the humid heat, the love bugs jamming up the windshield, but it was picturesque along the coast. Those darn alligators too.
I understand about Florida. I couldn't stand all the toll highways, the humid heat, the love bugs jamming up the windshield, but it was picturesque along the coast. Those darn alligators too.
That's how Texas is, too. The Dallas area is full of the same thing. You have to drive to go literally anywhere, because you're inside a gated community. They also drive go-carts just to visit neighbors. It's pretty gross. Surprised San Antonio was the only Texas city on this list.
This is one of your best videos yet! Because it really speaks to the problems that are intentionally overlooked by the extremes of the cultural divide. Urbanists might long for a place like NYC but suburbanites will scream "who wants to live in a box for $3000 a month!". This video shows, yes that is valid! But likewise, it shows a cheap booming sunbelt city where the transportation costs are rarely considered, and the urbanists go, "see! It's not as cheap or great as you think!" So yes, this combined metric is quite a valuable indicator.
I'm excited for your next video. Hope to see my hometown Baltimore on there.
My monthly train pass in Japan was around $250 US. That allowed me to travel at any time between my home stop and my final destination, which was about an hour away. It covered quite a lot of area, including Shibuya, Ginza, and lots of other cool and convenient places. The best part was that my employer paid it! I still took home a decent salary too.
My bus pass here in Pittsburgh is cheaper than that. $97.50 while it isn't in the same league as the Tokyo pass, in terms of quality. It is amazing how cheap transit is in much of the US.
I visited Japan Last month and I was shocked in many cities like Beppu, Karatsu, Saga, Naha, Tottori and Matsue how expensive the busses were per mile, compared to my city. Like to get from Central Naha to the Chatan American village was 600YEN 1 way, whereas in my city I can go 30mi or more for only $2.75.
As for the Trains, I had the Jr pass, but a few other places I used 3rd party rail in Osaka and Tokyo, and it is quite expensive as well.
In most German cities a monthly transit pass used to set you back around 50 eur. If you weren't inside the city a local train pass was considerably more expensive.
Luckily our current government had the sensible idea of boosting transit use. A monthly pass to use all local trains, city busses, metros, trams and more anywhere in Germany is now 50 eur.
@@NeXtdra42 I really wonder how they are able to make it so cheap. If you have any insight, I would love to know. I heard on some TH-cam channel that the Netherlands has expensive transit Relative to Canada and the US, so I had just assumed Germany was the same.
Seeing these numbers makes me appreciate how cheap Chicago's Ventra pass is. 75$ a month is all you need to pay, and if you're a student it's free during the semester.
@@mego7389 Same thing here in Pittsburgh, if you are a student at a qualifying university, the busses are free. I used them so much as a student.
Not surprised by Miami, how much of the housing in those downtown high rises are part time New Yorkers/Chicagoans who only live there December - February (or for a full 6 months + 1 day if they hate taxes)? Those kinds of "vacation cities" can absolutely ruin affordability for those that actually live there full time.
mexico has just announced plans to reintroduce passenger rail connecting a majority of the biggest cities, have plans to build a new inter-oceanic rail corridor, and are completing the tren maya project in the yucatan peninsula. think this would be a great time to have another video looking at the future of mexican cities!
theres also plans to build the mexico city to guanajuato high speed railway in the news following the upcoming election. so much stuff to talk about!
Trans-OCEANIC??? That's AMAZING! Which ocean will they cross? Are they going to build a 2,000-mile-long bridge or a 2,000-mile-long tunnel? Where's the money going to come from? That's the GDP of the entire planet times decades!
@@colormedubious4747interoceanic , as in “between oceans” across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (I’ll leave it to you to find out which two). Basically, they want to grab some of the Canal traffic- which is smart.
@@dmrr7739 He originally posted "TRANS-oceanic" before he edited it. Technically, since we are recreationally picking nits, it would be "transcontinental," even though the Isthmus is the narrowest part of the North American continent.
Seriously, though, I have some doubts -- given how Mexico has built an insane number of toll roads over the years. I'll believe in the train once they've built it.
7:47 -> Cincinnati Native here! I totally agree! There's a strong local movement towards mixed use development, but it's really a shame that the most valuable parts of our city are the oldest parts we've tried to buldoze over
Seeing how much of Cincinnati got bulldozed for cars just makes me filled with rage about lost potential. Downtown is nothing but parking lots and crumbling empty buildings
It's an absolute travesty. Maybe the most beautiful urban form in the US back in its day, and a lot of the good bones are still there!
The interstate truly destroyed Cincinnati, it infuriates me seeing photos of the beautiful streets, buildings and architecture before. Plus the unfinished subway? Are real loss for cultural.
@@CityNerd The one good thing out of it is that its infuriating nature helped make me the die hard urbanist I am today. Seeing how bad policies ruined what could be one of America's finest cities does that to people if they care.
@@cal7148Cincy has an unfinished subway 🥺
Never knew that.
Please release the 10 cities with the lowest housing and transportation costs. The people need to know!
Guess what state I live in? Ohio. It made it twice on this list. Ohio has traditionally been known as an "automotive state" with huge government ties to the automotive industry, and thus greatly underfund transit. When Amtrak was first established in the early-to-mid 1970's, Ohio congressmen refused to fund Amtrak. To retaliate, Amtrak refused to place stations on Ohio routes, except in the major cities. Great as always, CityNerd!
I keep hearing information about lite rail and high speed rail in Ohio being proposed
Moved to DTLA from Nashville and my rent is obviously much higher, but the efficiency is so much higher and has transformed my satisfaction so much. Everything downtown is walking distance. My activity levels have gone up 5x, my leg veins are healing, and I'm socializing more. DTLA still needs a lot of work and investment, but it's criminal if this place doesn't glow up.
from Knoxville originally and currently living in DTLA as well, people are sleeping on it
DTLA has come a looong way & with the new rail connections opening up, it’s going to be amazing! If u’re interested in the future of LA, check out urbanize Los Angeles, it’s got details on housing construction around LA county. It’s so exciting 🤗
Since you mentioned NYC boros, how about a video comparing each of the five boros? This may only be interesting to outer boro residents who want to score a win against Manhattan. But as a Queens resident I will take whatever I can get
Would be interesting to see any pair your variables in a scatter plot. Not just the bottom 10, but all cities in the dataset.
This. #10 started at 70.5%. Although that is bad, I wouldn't doubt that the vast majority of cities that didn't make this list aren't that far behind. If we saw a scatter plot, I'm willing to bet the vast majority of cities used in his metrics are between 65%-70%.
@@josephcarreon2341 did the math for chicago and it come out to 56.8%. Was surprising
@@mattkoska6521 Chicago is probably one of the most extreme examples because it's got reasonable rents and good walkability but in most US cities, the two have an inverse relationship.
@@empireoftruth3291And yet many people think they need a car here. Most do not need one. The cta did itself no favors during the pandemic influencing many people to avoid transit, though under-staffing was out of their control.
@@empireoftruth3291 true, just did it because it is where i am from. Id assume philly is somewhat similar. Sad that so many US cities are expensive if theyre walkable. Proves there is a demand for walkable urbanism that just isnt being met
From Thousand Oaks and I'm happy to say we got mixed use passed as a part of our new general plan last night!
That is incredible! It's good for developers, citizens and the general budget, plus with higher percentage mixed use, it makes public transport more of an option too due to number of people in a reasonable proximity to a stop. Congrats Captain!
Even more frustrating for Cincinnati is that there is an abandoned network for subway tunnels under the city. I don't recall how extensive or what the full story is, but long ago there were plans for a subway in Cincinnati, tunnels were excavated and was progressing, then money and politics became problematic and the plan was scrapped. I believe you can still tour the tunnels.
There are several abandoned subway tunnels that were built in locations in Cincinnati, totaling several miles, but the system is far from complete. From what I have heard, the project was an economic boondoggle when it was being built. The tours of the tunnels were discontinued several years ago, as I understand.
Underrated place for CityNerd to do a deep dive on: Tucson. 1 mil+ metro, car centric, but with one key difference from other American metro areas: by and large, Tucson has shunned freeways. The neighborhoods have maintained their urban fabric, even if that fabric is sprawly. Tucson has a weird affinity for small businesses, theres a strong bike culture around the U of A, and a newish tram system.
Thank you for posting a positive review for Tucson. I was stationed at Ft. Huachuca and spent a lot of time in Tucson. It's probably my favorite city in the USA
Thank you! I'm so tired of hearing about how affordable some sunbelt city is, without adding the cost of transportation. To truly figure a baseline of how expensive somewhere is, you should combine rent AND transit, and use that as the baseline number. It's why NYC always comes out on top for me financially - the combo of higher salaries and low transit cost more than make up for the higher rent.
Agreed that having a higher income, walkability and transportation is a huge part of things working out in NYC. I just had a discussion with someone who told me that one can't survive on 53k in NYC. Well it depends on the individual and lifestyle but there are plenty of people living on that salary in nyc. Currently my share of rent and utilities is $1200, my phone is $17, I spend no more than $300 on food, subway is $140 and I est. $150 for toiletries etc. So yeah. NYC is expensive compared to the rest of the country but as with everything else it just depends. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@Myraisins1woah thanks for that breakdown. May I ask which borough?
@@Myraisins1 How does one only spend $300 on food a month? This is a genuine question
@@davo1822I did it, but only when my rent was $400/month incl. utilities and I was making $4.10 an hour. None of those numbers have worked for 20+ years, though.
@@davo1822lots of rice, beans, eggs, peanut butter, & eating less beef/restaurant dining
One critique I would make of this and similar analyses is that it uses the cost of new car ownership, which includes far higher depreciation and financing costs than owning a used car. I suspect most people at or near the median income are buying used cars. But I haven’t been able to find any kind of reliable metric for the cost owning a used car.
I would actually consider this pretty egregious - people at or especially below median income generally don't rent new apartments (i.e., recent construction), and older apartments generally do cost less, so the comparison should be with the median of all car ownership, not new car ownership.
Agree, especially for lower income households, they are driving 15 year old cars and usually just one vehicle
@@RobertIrelan Yeah a better analogy would be to use the mileage deduction cost from the IRS and then figure out the median number of miles driving per capita per metro area.
But second hand cars are often out of warranty or going to be out of warranty sooner and generally have more issues, I don't know what that does for balancing things out though.
i did the real math with my own numbers for my old 94 corolla before i sold it for a move, even in a car that i literally chose not to fix the AC in for a couple years i was putting about 6k a year into it, basic basic insurance, pretty normal (50 mi round trip) commute
when peoples mental math is just "gas costs this and insurance costs this and thats my monthly transit cost" they're totally neglecting maintenance and the increasingly frequent major repairs on an older, owned vehicle
could not tell you how many times i had some surprise $200-500 bill that just Had to be paid cause hey i gotta work
So I lied in NYC for 15 years. The important thing to learn about that market is that there are effectively 2 housing markets:
- Below 96th street and the "cool parts" of Brooklyn and Queens
- The rest of the city.
Living in a very nice neighborhood like Riverdale in the Bronx, or Pelham, or City Island (though the commute from here is rough), the rent is significantly less. Like about 1/3 of lower Manhattan. But it's hard to generalize what it costs. But I now live in the suburbs of Chicago, and while my housing costs have changed (my mortgage here is about the same as my rent in NYC), I pay more for transportation, and my commute isn't any better.
Can’t wait for the “best cities” version of this analysis! Hoping it comes out next week 😃
Pittsburgh and Chicago, Philly too
I live in Cincinnati, the major companies share wage information and coincidentally have similar numbers. Collusion is only illegal if you can't afford lawers.
As a Cincinnati native, I also am devastated to see Cincinnati on this list but not surprised. Cincinnati has soo much potential but is being sacrificed and bulldozed to appeal to the desires of the people living in the exurbs.
Living in Cleveland, I absolutely agree. We have a very low cost of living, but the jobs are generally located nowhere near the weak transit infrastructure. I am fortunate enough to live directly along what was one of the old streetcar lines so my personal choices can be very walkable, but all manufacturing work is about a half hour's drive away or more for just about everyone. We also have a state government that suppresses any change at the local level. You wouldn't believe how many people I see forced to walk to work along soul-crushing stroads or maintaining their ancient bikes because of the cost of maintaining multiple cars on this area's median wage.
Akron has decent transit, but when I lived there the richies in Fairlawn did not want frequent buses out there, thinking it would increase crime. Never mind that the service workers staffing the restaurants where they could afford to dine, generally lived in the city and often could not afford vehicles.
I always come to these videos for the well curated information and how f****** we are.
But I stay for the DRY humor and delivery.
You’re always an absolute gem
So everyone always talks about how expensive NYC is, but those numbers seem to come from Manhattan & Brooklyn - you can live in the Bronx with full public transportation & walking options with lower housing costs than it seems like most of USA and new housing is going up (at least in my neighborhood) like crazy. Detached homes are ridiculous even here, but rentals exist at reasonable rates. I live car free with a one bedroom rental for $1200/month - and if I wanted to scale down to a studio I could get an $800/month apartment.
Really!!!???? I’m paying $1700 for a 2 bdrm 2 bath in fking Ohio.
It isn't so bad for people to have cars, and still live in a walkable area. I personally live that way. I use my car only 1x a week, and I don't commute or shop by car. And I could give up my car and be fine.
I was in many smaller cities in Japan thatwere similar like Tottori, where most people owned cars, but the city itself was so walkable people only used their cars for trips out of the city to see some nature like Mt Daisen or parts of the sand dunes the busses did not go to.
I am actually not surprised that SF didn’t make the list. Salaries here are so good for many jobs and you can easily live here with no or one car that even our high housing costs don’t destroy everything.
Why own a car, who wants a spark plug thrown at the window anyway
I'm rather shocked Atlanta didn't make this list.
I grew up in Miami and I got the hell out as soon as I could. Thanks for shining a light on how garbage it really is. You either live in a condo on the beach, or in suburbs so vast they make LA blush.
as someone who grew up in hiahleah, this isnt surprising. its common to see houses with additions and expansions of questionable quality and driveways and lawns storing 8 cars likely due to people and families sharing houses. not to mention that car insurance rates are extraordinarily high there.
Super interesting video! I would love to see the "honorable mentions" of this list, so I would definitely support the mood striking you next week!
And the best cities!
Re: Nebula, I'm also a subscriber of that too, but some things that TH-cam does well are having a vibrant comment section to read, and the notification options. I often see your content first on TH-cam, then look for it again on Nebula. I'm also a Patreon patron so I am figuring all that out too. Anyway, I come for the City Nerd and I stay for the Kitty Nerd.
The relatively diverse & unexpected results made this a fresh, unique list for the channel! Love the mixed-method approach to find new results.
I moved from Calgary to Toronto about 1.5 years ago. In Calgary I owned a condo in the inner city (ie. mortgage payments + condo fees) and owned a car... because not owning one in Calgary is extremely impractical outside of very specific use-cases at best, or pretty much cuts you off from parts of the city at worst. This was also one car in a two-adult household, which is (anecdotally) pretty uncommon in Calgary, with most households having one car per adult. In Toronto I live in inner-city Old Toronto in a rental apartment that's a little bit smaller, but actually has a storage locker on-site. I don't own or need a car in Toronto and it's working just fine. I'm spending hundreds less per month on the combination of housing + transportation in Toronto than I did in Calgary, despite Toronto housing being significantly more expensive. It's also worth noting that I was paying a mortgage at a much, much lower interest rate than you can get today in Calgary, and both rental and property prices are on the rise in Calgary anyway. And auto-insurance rates have gone up significantly across Alberta since I moved.
People don't really seem to be able to believe this when I tell them, but moving from Calgary (marketed as "the land of big houses for cheap" to Toronto residents just last year), to Toronto has been the more affordable choice for me.
Edit: For fun, I calculated the percent of my household's after-tax income spent on transportation per year in Toronto, including transit and a generous allotment of Uber/Lyft trips. It's 2.2%. It was many times higher than that in Calgary.
Thanks! There needs to be more TH-cam videos that talk about statistics and demographics in Canada. However, it feels like these are being censored.
I made a request to another TH-camrs who created great content about comparing statistics on places in the USA, and asked him to do the same for Canada (because it was an untapped market). He was keen on the idea and was able to make a single video, but then it seemed as though he was shut down. The topic was dropped.
I am glad that City Nerd occasionally remarks about Canadian cities. However, everything he says is positive because Canada does a good job with walkability and transit. Unfortunately, there are no videos that talk about all the other information, some of it not so great.
I don't think the average person realizes it, but it's not so far-fetched. Housing in Calgary is on average more expensive than Montreal, which is a much larger city (and a city where one can more comfortably live car-free than most places in Canada)
While Alberta is attractive for cheaper housing, there are a lot of things that make it still quite expensive. Auto insurance and utilities are the big ones since Kenney uncapped rates and companies subsequently jacked up prices across the board. Gas prices are cheaper, but the cities are so sprawly that it can be hard to go car-free.
We moved to Edmonton from the GTA a few years ago to be closer to some family and our auto insurance nearly doubled. We pay more in utilities too, and comparing grocery flyers to back home it looks like fresh produce is cheaper back east too.
@@flargus7919 Comparing Loblaw’s to Superstore, I feel like produce is a bit cheaper here than it was in Calgary. The only item I’d say is more expensive every time I’ve tried is beef. Everything else is on par or cheaper. However, the small green grocers that are randomly quite abundant in my neighbourhood (not the case everywhere, to be clear) are massively more affordable for produce - generally 1/2 the price I’d pay in Calgary at a chain grocery store, and still a good 30% cheaper than the chains here. It actually encourages me to eat way more fruit and vegetables, since it’s available and affordable like a 15 second walk from my building’s front door.
Similar thing happened with me with moving from Denver (American Calgary), to NYC (American Toronto). I don't work in tech, finance or medicine so I don't make a ton of money, but living in Denver doing a "normal" job was financially ruinous. Rent kept rising 20% yoy, car payments, gas for driving everywhere, maintenance, etc, it all adds up when you are on a middle income salary in a city where housing costs have skyrocketed to 800k for an average 2 bed bungalow and rent is averaging 2k for a 1 bed, but salaries have increased barely more than they were 20 years ago.
In NYC I work the same career, but I get paid quadruple what I got paid for the same job in Denver. Still, I'm not living wealthy or anything like that, but I've got a decent rent stabilized pre-war in South Brooklyn, I only pay $30 a month for unlimited transportation (employer covers my fares), and I can walk anywhere I need in my neighborhood. All my friends are nearby and the city is just brimming with opportunities I never had back home. Overall it is financially and mentally better for me to live here, but it is a struggle to start here.
NYC rental is also distorted because most people rent. In most cities, upper middle class people own rather than rent. So rental prices don’t include many upper middle class families. But rental prices in NYC do include them.
These are crazy numbers. I live in Prague, Czechia. I bike everywhere which costs me like $6 a month in maintenance. Overall the expenditures on accommodation and transportation are about 15% of my income. US is a joke. 😂🎉
It might be kinder to say "livability in the US is a joke". There are a lot of us here that don't want things this way and suffer for it. I'm glad it isn't that way everywhere, it gives me hope things can change
I am not at all surprised by Miami + Hialeah. It is pretty expensive, the pay is terrible, and it is so car dependent. Something I wanted to point out is when you did your google earth pan over Hialeah you actually panned over Miami Lakes, FL partially which, while no means perfect, is actually a kinda interesting new urbansist town. It also is basically cut off from all the suburbs around it by a moat of canal, stroad, and highway.
Good catch. I lived in Miami Lakes for a few months and didn't notice the lack of chickens, etc. in the heart of Hialeah.
I really really thought Denver was going to be on this list. This is the worst place I have lived, the housing costs are just skyrocketing for no reason at all. The traffic is at LA levels, and he has personally discussed how shit our public transport is. I'm forced to run a car here, and if you factor in the used car boom from covid, the costs of buying a vehicle, let alone maintaining one, have become insane. I used to buy $1000 beaters all day that ran and drove. I can't even get a non running shell for less than 3K these days
House prices are going up due to fleeing Californians from cities like Los Angeles and San Bernardino. The same thing is happening in Salt Lake City, Austin, basically all over the place.
The RTD needs a lot of work for sure. It's also my main complaint about Denver. Hard to feel safe riding the local buses sometimes.
LA level traffic in Denver? you are a drama queen, more people live in the LA metro area alone than the whole state of Colorado, only five million people live in the whole Colorado, the LA metro area has more than double Colorado's whole state population, your numbers don't add up
One reason rent & housing is so high in Denver is the cannabis indistry can't put their money in the bank. The banks are federally regulated, and cannabis is federally illegal. So they launder the money through buying real estate.
One obvious solution is nation-wide legalization. No reason a silly flower should be illegal. Oh yeah, Colorado is just a super nice place to live. Can't forget that. Fastest? growing state in the union.
since watching your true cost of cars video, ive been thinking about the federal mileage rate that u can charge on business, and its crazy how much that changes the calculus for transit. Its just a shame that where I live, traveling by transit typically takes 2-3 times as long as driving does, so commuting by transit feels like a pipe dream
In Cincinnati, some of my great grandparents used the street car and also there was even funiculars to get up the hills
My neighbor before he died was a metro operator back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Apparently his wife’s dad was actually a streetcar operator in Cincinnati. I always thought that was cool trains used to be much more valued and it always fascinated me as a kid.
As someone from Buffalo/Niagara Falls, I can directly tell you that we have literal areas where you can walk to any location, bike to any location, or even drive to any location.
A 50 minute drive can get you through every Western NY city, which is over 30 of them. It can get you from the Niagara Falls, all the way to Rochester NY.
Driving isn't essential here, but the one thing you are correct on is public transport. It's expensive. But that's not just the end of it, because Toronto was a lot worse. We don't have alternative forms, but again, that's where the separate side hits.
I went to Toronto recently, I spent over an hour getting onto a subway to get from one end of the city to the other in the morning. In the evening, I decided to Uber, which took less than 15 minutes total. In reality, "car ownership" simply is the difference between time and cost, and the time outweighs the cost.
Oh, you can also get to Toronto within an hour drive, too.
Our Cost of Living is severely low, as well, along with the cost of a house. Our career path for educated is typically higher than the other parts of NYS, however it's not as high as various other locations across the States. For uneducated workforce, it's been strides, but the rest of the Western NY region is doing well.
But this comment in specific is to debunk the car part. It's not a requirement to own a car; I know many who don't and do not spend (much at all) on transportation.
And those who do, you can easily find yourself a sub $1,000 car that'll work fine in the winter without any major issues or concerns. It's almost always about the notion that people view this side of NY 'the same as NYC' when, in fact, we are not. Not even remotely.
We do not need subways just because we have everything within walking distance, and cities are within biking distance.
I had a friend who would Bike from Buffalo to Niagara Falls daily for work (Taking him an hour and some change to get there, but still). It's not "impossible", and everything in this area is literally around the same location as the neighborhoods.
Consider Niagara Falls as a fine example. We have residential and commercial divided by the main street, rather than neighborhoods. Then we have Neighborhoods with smaller tightknit stores, but they're only a walk away from the bigger streets.
My other point of contention with the video is at 6:40 ; I don't understand who and why someone would spent over $2,000/month for a car. Unless they're spending a large quantity of that money on the vehicle (Which is absurd, that's a $50,000+ vehicle);
I spent $340/month for 4 years on my Infiniti. It's paid off now, however, and I only spend $100/month on a Nissan 350z and Infiniti G37x, both highly reliable cars that are both paid off (Granted, the ones a summer fun car).
I do believe that if you factor realistic metrics into this, not the unrealistic metrics, people are likely spending $800/month on vehicle expenses including gas, and that's people with a "newer" vehicle than mine.
If I factor in gas, I spend $70 every 2 weeks in gas, factoring around $1800/year in gas. For comparison, I spent ~$20 for a one day trip to Toronto to take the subway from one end of the city, to the other, then back. If I had to do that daily, it'll cost me well over $7,000 USD, assuming that the price for this is consistent for 2 people for 2 trips on public transit in that city.
All I know is that it's less than $1 for a bus ride in Buffalo NY, and an uber is cents compared to Toronto.
Let's also just break down my household income for a moment, as a 30+ year old who owns 2 cars, a house and live within the Buffalo NY Region;
I spent $0 for my cars, however the one vehicle I had a payment of $340/month on until it paid off a bit ago. I got the car in 2018.
I spent ~$110 for 2 cars for car insurances from a reputable national brand.
I spend $70/fill up for gas, which lasts 2 weeks going from one end of Buffalo (Batavia NY) to my city (Niagara Falls NY) at least once a week, so it's every 2 weeks.
Monthly average rent is $0, as I purchased my house outright in cash, however let's assume it's at the value of the house when acquired originally, if I didn't get it at a city auction, which would be $80,000. This would determine a 15/year mortgage at 6% apr would roughly be ~$450 - $500 a month. I'm not going to dox myself so we'll say each month I rougly save $200 for taxes.
This would determine that the house itself is less than $700/month with transportation making it just over $1,000/month.
Even if I made minimum wage, which is $15/hr, and worked full time, this would determine that just over 55% of my income is going to transportation.
My income is no where's minimum wage.
My actual cost I spend on transportation is less than $250 a month, which is insurance & gas. I pay more in city taxes than I do for transportation.
Whatever site you're going to for it, is either incredibly inaccurate, or assumes everyone is buying a brand-new off the lot vehicle (Which according to dealers, has been at a record low in the past 5 years), and the distance they travel is a lot.
I could also add in EzPass, but that's $2 every week, which isn't much at all comparatively.
Buffalo locals complain that they can't afford to buy a house while out-of-towners say "I can't believe how cheap it is here!"
Local wages have historically been low compared to national averages in Buffalo, but with work-from-home trends, our real estate is nationally priced at a bargain compared to much of the nation, so we're seeing even our "nice" neighborhoods getting gentrified, so to speak. Our car dependency is a huge burden, but the suburban population fights any effort to establish public transportation with uneducated arguments. As younger generations take responsibility for public stewardship, I expect these trends to level out and favor urban living, but in a rust belt city that was always a cheap place to live due to "white flight" to the suburbs and being orphaned by a lot of industrial giants, the increased housing costs are hard to swallow for many people. Fortunately, we're on the path to establishing a new metro train line (we only have one at the moment), and as streets get repaved for regular maintenance, we're adopting protected bike paths and making a conscious effort to make car ownership a less desirable option. I got a great deal on my house eight years ago, so I'm placing all of my bets on Buffalo at the moment.
CITY NERD!!!!!!!! I'd love to see a top ten things to advocate for at city council meetings video
If willing to live in a smaller city, with two trains a day to Chicago, my Mom's teenage home was in a walkable neighborhood, and is very affordable. The factory in the city is enormous and seems to do well.
with NY it's kind of tricky since you're using both the median rent and the average car ownership but the people who own cars live in the outer boroughs where the rent is much lower and the people with higher rent don't own a car
Wasn’t expecting to see Fontana. But it’s true, here people often say, “it’s only a 1 or 1.5 hour drive to get to LA/Palm Springs/the mountains/Vegas/San Diego/Disneyland/the beach/Tijuana”. Lots to do near us, but always only by car.
Here's another thing about Miami. That city has transitioned from a once very poor city to a mega rich city in a time span of about 25 years. I think it was in the year 2000 or 2001 Miami was named the 2nd poorest city in America by income. Now most of those low income people are being pushed out and their neighborhoods are being gentrified and higher income people are moving in and rapidly changing the culture. Can't say I like the "new" Miami either because it's pretty lame now.
I can speak to why people stay in Miami and Hialeah, as a Cuban whose parents immigrated to the city. You underestimate how important family is to people from the Caribbean. Often people live in multi-generational houses to overcome the housing prices, the culture is really different from the rest of the US. People who immigrated to Miami also tend to struggle to a similar community anywhere else in the US. In fact, a lot of immigrants see Miami as Cuba v2 - you never need to fully integrate into American society (which many Hispanics find very jarring and isolating), and you can get by speaking Spanish alone anywhere in the city. Just my two cents answering your question "why do people choose to live here???"
As someone who once grew up in Fontana (or Fontucky) I'll say 2.7 cars per house is... a low estimate... Those house always have at least three cars in the driveway, more on the street. The extra cars are lifted trucks and RVs. So yes, they choose to not just depend on cars, but also invest their free money and time into them.
I could have swore that number 1 was going to be Orlando Florida. We have low paying jobs and a 1 bedroom apartment is around $1700. We do have light rail, but oddly enough, it doesn’t run on weekends. Express buses are almost non existent. The biggest irony is that next to us is the arguably one of the best public transportation systems in America in which people use buses, ferries, a skyliner, and a monorail. Of course that would be Disney World, where people who wouldn’t be caught dead using city transit pay top dollar to have access to Disney transportation. I think the irony and disparity would make a great video. Biggest irony of all, Walt Disney himself was a big proponent of mass transit and yet they limit the amount of public transportation that comes into property, to keep all dollars in property. I do work in Disney Transportation and live 6 miles away from my job. It would take me well over an hour to use public transit to get to work.
I'm at the end of the video and I'm still slightly in shock at the idea that transportation is the second biggest expense for a majority of people (in the US, I'm assuming). I think for me it's like number ...5? After housing, childcare, food, health insurance. But of course if you're taking about owning more than one car in a household, costs will skyrocket very quickly.
Very interesting. I’ve lived in Chicago, Atlanta, and San Antonio in the US, and by far San Antonio has been the most affordable one yet
As a Cincinnatian, it is hard to see my city on this list, but fortunately there's momentum to turn things around. City council at the moment if all about urbanism, and it shows. They just voted to prevent any new parking downtown, and there's been pretty rapid development of certain corridors to reduce car dependency. Plus there are plans for BRT and streetcar expansion. Hopefully if you redo this list in 5 years, we'll be taken off! 🤞
That's good to hear after 8 years of "we gotta compete with Kenwood" (a suburb with a big luxury mall) Cranley.
I like how you figured car dependency from the average # cars / household. It's shorthand but also clever
0:10 why do the cars in the middle road look like they are going the wrong way?
I think it would be cool if you could make a yearly video showcasing the best improved cities over the year based on walkability, affordability, etc. The City Nerd Awards. Lol
Miami, where the wealthy come from other states and abroad to spend their millions and live in mansions and most of the locals struggle to survive paycheck to paycheck; home ownership for them is just an unattainable dream.
Need someone to start doing these analyses for Canada… even if we only have, like, 11 metros over half a million, so they’d need to embrace smaller metros. (Or just have the same cities in every top ten list.)
Do a top 5 and bottom 5 and ignore Kingston or whatever the mid-est city is
@@Mr00Ted Kingston is well below half a million people, but… London (Ont.) can happily be ignored, I’m sure.
I would maybe lower the threshold to 100k so that one could at least expand the field to around 55-60 cities and include the likes of Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Regina, Saskatoon, Saguenay, Chatham-Kent, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Windsor, etc.
Drop the threshold down to 80k and one can be looking at Chilliwack, Kamloops, Victoria, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Lethbridge, Niagara Falls, etc
There are just so few "big" cities in Canada, and what few there are exist in just five of the ten provinces. There are so many lovely small cities that get overlooked by Canadians looking for affordability or fresh starts or whatever.
@@flargus7919 I think it would depend on the list, but 200K or 100K CMAs are both decent thresholds for most things. I think below that and you’re more looking at towns, though. (Got to use CMA boundaries, though, otherwise you’ll have Winnipeg listed as bigger than Vancouver. 😆)
The Bass Pro Shops pyramid just blew my mind. I honestly had no idea such things existed in the country.
I'm surprised San Diego didn't show up on this list (or many of your lists). It's shown up as the "Most Expensive" city in a few recent lists. Home prices around me are going for $1000 per square foot. That's nuts! Gas is more expensive than most (all?) places. Electricity kwh is most expensive in the country. Water too, but it's an arid environment and trucked from Colorado, so that's expected. I would love to see an analysis on San Diego. If you want to read up on some juicy (and sad) transportation battles Google Hasan Ikhrata vs the North County commuter cities.
I seriously thought SD was gonna be number 1. It’s pretty much like LA but with worse transit and lower paying jobs.
@@patrickrivas2159 Using the same methods as in the video, San Diego comes out at a combined car+rent cost of 58.1% of the median household income.
(This is going off of the $1,015 US average cost of car ownership, the 1.96 cars/household in metro SD, a median rent of $2,344 and median HH income of $89,457. Correct if anything is inaccurate.)
Me too! I assume it's because most people there are rich?
Love your style my 26 year old son who went to grad school in London for transit/planning linked me this video. Thank you very interesting. We are Americans grew up in the NYC tri state area and then moved 2008-2023 for a job to the Palm Springs CA area so we are well aware of these issue. What's really crazy is the average person we have chatted with in London have not traveled to the USA or if they have they go with a "tourist mindset" and don't seem to pay attention to how car dependent cities effect daily life/ expenses.
Before the final 3 I really guessed “Detroit, Miami or New Orleans” and snap… I got 2/3!
9:14 In the first half of the twentieth Century, New York City workers only payed about 1% of their gross income on transportation due to the inexpensive subway fares.
The information is from the book *Straphanger*. It is an interesting read.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 My comment is about the 20th Century. It is surprising how little people used to pay to ride the subway. It was only 5¢ until 1948, which wasn’t much even adjusted for inflation.
@@FavoriteThings606 It is still not anything close to how cheap the NYC Subway was.
@@FavoriteThings606 From 1904 - 1948 the flat rate for the NYC Subway was 5¢. Today it is $2.90. Adjusted for inflation 5¢ in 1948 is the same as 65¢ today. When the fare was raised to 10¢ that year it would still only be equal to $1.30 today.
In the SF Bay Area, fares start at $2.15 and go up to $17.60.
@@FavoriteThings606 For 40 years the subway fare didn’t charge. So as the years passed people were making more money, but the fare remained the same. At some point during that timeframe it was only 1% of the typical workers income. So apparently in NYC that would be about $2,500 a year. It is not based on 1908 or minimum wage. Also, two income families were not that common during that time.
For a $2.50 X 2 X 5 X 50 = $1,250
$1,250 is 1% of $125,000
Is $125,000 typical for Chicago?
Always great when my favorite lunch time watch channel drops a new video
have a good lunch sir
@@MrMcMuggelthank you!
I would love to see some of this same type of in depth analysis on small towns. Something like using Strong Towns lists that is mainly small cities, but doing this type of affordability analysis. I understand that there are thousands of small towns, though. Maybe doing it in a region, like New England, or the Cascades or Upper Midwest.
Fascinating. Can't wait to see the 10 best.
Using the median cost of transportation exaggerates actual cost for low income cities almost for certain, because low income households have fewer cars and also tend to have much older cars. Many also run without insurance.
And the median is also skewed upward by affluent families driving 100K vehicles with a couple of teens also driving pricey vehicles. Low income teens don't drive, or if they do, they are sharing with parents or siblings.
I could purchase a decent e-bike plus a nice pair of running shoes every month for the cost of car ownership.
What happen in moreno valley, San Bernardino is that people live there + commute to oc/la for work. Some people have spent their whole lives and careers doing this.
There’s also more privacy to cook (and consume) meth out there.
My wife and I are very keen to get out of Texas. Problem is, doing research in walkable cities in the US is extremely discouraging and we just don’t know where to go…
Maybe the issue is not the combined cost of housing and car ownership but really lower income levels.
Half of the Country earns less than $23/hr.
Yes, so true!
Just moved to San Antonio to live with family/save some money (from a VERY walkable and transit friendly area of Houston 😭), and having been without my car for probably half of this year due to back to back major repairs needed with little income (job searching avidly), please PLEASE make the next video the least crushing cities to live and have access to transportation. I have got to get out of this suburban hellscape where I HAVE to drive to go literally anywhere. PLEASE 🙏🏾
Downtown San Antonio is really nice I met some people who live downtown and they barely use their car
In your promotion of walkable-livable cities, could you look into the ease/difficulty of family raising? There are many demographers who believe the move to dense inner city apartments around the world has led to birth rate drops, and now, decreasing populations. The dynamics are now inner city (young adults) --> suburbs (family years) --> inner city (empty nesters/downsizers).
"Freedom to roam" has a lot of mental/physical health benefits for children, but that shouldn't be the only variable when choosing where to live. Have realistic priorities for your personal situation. There are pros and cons to every option.
With that said, having spent half my childhood in a lower-class neighborhood that was fortunate enough to be walkable while still green, peaceful, and quiet, it was so much better for our lifestyle than having to drive everywhere. This was in Sweden, so those are probably impossible standards in most US cities. But with that experience, I'm never raising my children driving them everywhere.
I moved to the suburbs for my kids and for the better schools. Unfortunately you will be driving your kids everywhere until they get a license. And then you will have the additional expenses of adding a second car or insuring a teenage driver. Kids still want to visit with their friends that live in another neighborhood (that’s not walkable), go to the store, mall, etc. I see so many abandoned play houses and swing sets in the suburbs. The kids don’t want to ride their bikes because the landscape gets boring and uninterested after awhile. There’s not even a corner shop the kids could walk to.
If I had to do it over again, I’d get something safe in the city near stuff for the kids. And I ended up homeschooling the kids anyway, so there’s that. I think my kids would have enjoyed walking to the library, parks, stores, and catching buses as they got older. Suburbia stunts children IMO.
I lived in the suburbs growing up but we were a 10-25 minute SAFE walk to a major shopping mall, bowling alley, mini golf, and many restaurants. It was awesome.
@@autismworldtravel Thanks for sharing! I completely agree, having things to independently walk or bike to while growing up can be really beneficial in my experience.
Hey Ray. This is a great piece. But a couple of thoughts, having lived in some of these places.
In a number of cities the “median” house or apartment doesn’t really exist. Example: Chicago has some wonderful urban neighborhoods where you can live car free. But they are all quite expensive. Yet there are poor neighborhoods further out that have significant crime problems where real estate is much cheaper, which distorts the median price. In reality, with taxes and all other costs, I have found Chicago more expensive than Seattle on a similar salary. Likewise, in NY the “median” apartment doesn’t really exist. There are a lot of studios and one bedrooms for the often transient young professional class and a lot of obnoxious high end stuff no one can afford. But next to nothing in the middle.
Second, the walkability and transit scores don’t really seem to care where you’re walking to or where that transit takes you. Most US cities that have public transit have star shaped networks which take you to and from the center of town. But if you don’t work downtown you’re SOL.
Lastly, I saw a recent statistic that some 30% of morning car commutes are parents taking kids to school. This is probably too complex of a can of worms for your channel, but to really calculate affordability for a family with kids, one would have to take into account the quality of the public school system, cost of tuition of private school alternatives, availability of school buses or walkability to school, availability of after school activities/child care. If a city could get a handle on these metrics it could reduce morning traffic by 30%. But this would be a very complex calculation I’d imagine.
Another factor with driving kids to and from school is how it affects your work schedule or need to find after school day care. If you have to leave work early or take a school hour only shift so you can pick up your kids, you can't work as many hours, reducing your income. If you have to pay for day care, that eats into your ability to save. If your kids can get themselves to and from school and after school activities (as I did growing up in SF), you don't have those costs, and raising your children is cheaper. As a bonus, your children learn valuable life skills such as how to take the bus and navigate their city, how to cook their own snacks, how to manage time wisely.
@@FavoriteThings606 based on what? I made the Chicago -> Seattle move with two kids. Between the absence of state income tax, better public schools, lower real estate taxes and the fact that you still can get more space for your money *near downtown*, Seattle is cheaper by my calculations. Yes, you can get cheap real estate in Chicago if you are willing to accept 1+ hour commutes and the added transportation/car ownership costs. But that’s a wash financially and a massive loss of quality of life. Also in the Chicago area you have much higher heating costs in winter and cooling costs in summer.
In that shot of downtown brooklyn you can see my old building where I paid $3400 for a 1BR, it now goes for $4700 lol
Can't wait for the top 10 cheapest, great video as always.
Curious that Boston wasn't on here. The rental market it crazy and a lot of people still drive despite the decent transit options.
Same! I use public transportation, but my unwillingness to drive into the city has impacted my options when considering job changes. If it’s not a reasonable commute, I won’t work there. I’ve been able to save substantially by living in the burbs and traveling in on the train. I know people who don’t want the commute, and they’re paying triple for rent than what I’m paying for in a mortgage. Finally, not everyone in Boston is a high earner, which makes paying for rent AND car ownership in the city all but impossible.
Public transit sucks when you have to listen to people having freakouts in public, zero privacy or personal space just causing more stress on the way to work. Sure, dealing with traffic sucks but not as much as having homeless people yell at you on the train.
@@mikeydude750I wonder how much that actually happens tho 🤔🤔
@@autismworldtravel Happened multiple times to me when I've headed up to San Francisco and take BART in (because you can't park your car in SF proper without getting your windows busted)
As a metro Detroiter who has been living with their mom since they graduated college in 2019 b/c I can afford both a car and housing. I cannot even describe how badly I want public transportation. It would be so nice.
Cleveland “at least were not Detroit.” Based on this list is true
there are some fairly urbanist areas in cleveland despite the high suburban population
@@cdw2468Cleveland is very urbanist. You get it confused with the suburbs but the city residents are really poor
Interesting seeing Miami as the worse city. You always hear how bad New York City and the big California cities are in terms of costs, but rarely is Miami mentioned, a lot of it due to popular and political discourse. I do wonder how much of Miami's popular image is skewed heavily by the wealthier parts or by the lower costs in the rest of Florida.
Dade and Broward counties are actually the only non-rural counties in the state that are shrinking, it’s the rest of the state that is having a population boom.
you hit the nail on the head. Also, as someone who lives here, its always been expensive but post-COVID its just become completely untenable.
people also usually conveniently omit the difference in wages between those cities
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Even if you subtract the roughly 10% combined state and city income tax from the median NYC income, it still isn't as low as Miami's median income.
@@chemicalfrankie1030Your car and Home insurance cost in Florida will more than make up for that no income tax plus the cost of goods down there isn’t cheap either
Also, don’t forget to add in the two biggest culprits in North America for high housing cost vs median income: Vancouver and Toronto. Vancouver is beautiful, with fantastic transit, but its affordability crisis is on par with Bay Area if not worse.
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You should do a reverse top ten. Like, randomly select 3 cities and create a metric that includes all three in the top ten.
I recently learned this about NYC broker fees. In other cities the landlord will pay the RE broker one month rent to find a tenant. In NYC the tenant is expect to pay the broker between 2-3 months rent on top of security deposit and first month's rent. Seems like this fee is not regulated and you don't even need to be licensed to collect this fee.
You can get around the broker's fee in some areas of NYC, it just take s a little extra leg work to contact landlord/super directly. Sure, Manhattan and Brooklyn are lost causes but there are other boros. And I'm pretty sure it's only legal for brokers to collect 10% of yearly rent - slightly more than 1 month - at least that's what I always heard.
@@jennifertomaiolo Yes. It's definitely avoidable. I know plenty of long-time NY'ers that live in Manhattan & Brooklyn that have not paid these ever. The only ones I know of who have paid it are newcomers from mid-sized cities who do happen to make well above the median income.
“For those of you who are already nebula subscribers, you should probably be watching this video on nebula”
😅 it’s me-I just signed up for Nebula a few days ago but came back to watch on TH-cam, because otherwise I wouldn’t have learned about the Logistics of Coal Mining as a “what to watch next” suggestion, nor get to read any comments on the video.
Thanks for the video as always!
Totally saw my house on your San Antonio screenshot! Appreciate you backing up what I already knew about my city unfortunately.
My theory with Miami is that many of the people paying those super high rent prices are wealthy retirees who don't actually count toward the median income numbers, meaning median wealth might be a fair bit higher than median income.
It absolutely blows my mind how Miami can be more expensive than NYC and yet NYC gets to be known as the expensive city.... Interesting to note that San Francisco was not on today's list. Out of curiosity, I wonder where it ranks?
Great video - I'm excited for the other side of this equation. I agree the cost-to-income ratio is so critical. I live in a high income, high cost area and in the past have looked at moving to lower cost areas only to find that the relative drop in salary negates any benefit. And that's not even considering car ownership.
At some point in the future, I would be fascinated to see an analysis like but for housing that's adequate for a family (e.g., min. 3 bedrooms). Anecdotally, many people manage in apartments in expensive cities, but find they have to move when it comes to starting a family. Thanks for the videos!