Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme [ST03]
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
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This is the 3rd video in the Strong Towns series, and is probably the most important core topic: the fact that American car-dependant cities and suburbs are financially insolvent, and function like a Ponzi scheme. This is the reason most American cities are bankrupt.
If you learned something from this video, consider donating to Strong Towns:
strongtowns.org/membership
Watch the rest of this series here:
• Strong Towns
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This video is a summary of the "Growth Ponzi Scheme" articles, published by Strong Towns:
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/the-growt...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
Strong Towns publishes a lot of cases studies of American municipal insolvency. Here are a few of them:
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...
There is a lot more to read, too! Strong Towns has a library of articles about building strong and resilient towns and cities that goes back over 15 years:
www.strongtowns.org/stmedia
---
Other References & Video Sources:
Give Yourself the Green Light (1954) (Public Domain)
Henry Jamison Handy
archive.org/details/GiveYour1954
According to Plan: The Story of Modern Sidewalls for the Homes of America
Henry Jamison Handy
archive.org/details/Accordin1952
Settlement Pattern and Form with Service Cost Analaysis
Halifax Regional Municipality - Regional Planning
usa.streetsblog.org/wp-conten...
Traditional Development - #6 in the Strong Towns Curbside Chat Video Series
Strong Towns (TH-cam):
• Traditional Developmen...
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:05 The History of Sprawl
1:03 What is a Ponzi Scheme?
1:51 The Problem
2:19 How it Started
4:17 Graphical Examples
6:27 The Excuses
7:35 The Canadian Example
8:12 Conclusion
9:02 Patreon Shoutout
9:18 Outro
![How Bankrupt American Cities Stay Alive - Debt [ST04]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XfQUOHlAocY/mqdefault.jpg)
![How Bankrupt American Cities Stay Alive - Debt [ST04]](/img/tr.png)
Watch the rest of this series here:
th-cam.com/play/PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa.html
77532 haha INS
can you do another one of these suburbs videos I like to watch videos on why sprawl sucks, it reaffirms my bias😁
@@tescomealdeals4613 But... there's no episode 4! :O I want mooore *mwhuuuaaaeehU* (baby noises :D )
@Corey Mcnickle bot account
@Kyle Matthew bot account
Now the rise of the SUV makes sense. The heavy duty wheels and suspension are necessary to survive the crumbling infrastructure. 😂
The suburban pothole machine.
You ain't wrong, I'm from Michigan in the place where all the American automakers except for Tesla are headquartered, and our roads are like what would happen if the surface of the Moon could get snow.
@@AlRoderick Americans are people who think the roads in Belgium are good.
(You can always tell the border from Netherlands to Belgium by the sounds your wheels suddenly start making)
And ironically due to the added weight contribute to faster deterioration of said roads 👍🏾
Also the increased obesity rate in children
The more I learn about the U.S, the more I wonder how this country has survived this long
I always wondered how they could afford to build the roads to every house everywhere. It turns out they couldn't afford it.
They could, if they reduced military spending a bit and put that money into infra
@@sepg5084 they can do both actually, have a high military spending and spend more in infraestructure.
without military the US is no longer US
ofcourse they can't afford it. every road has potholes 🤣
+1
As a civil engineer, I have long suspected that our infrastructure is over-built...there is no way it is sustainable, just spend some time in the midwest or the rust belt.
Were in midwest? Ive seen some amazing places infastructure wise in the midwest. The worst i ever saw was on the coasts and the south
@@junioradult6219 The Rust Belt... where we used to manufacture cars and export goods from. Then we kicked down the trade barriers to Japan and China, Europe recovered from bombing itself into the Stone Age, and Baby Boomers spent decades living in luxury in single income homes in the burbs. That's what was not sustainable, thinking we would be on top forever. The 70's Union Strikes, OPEC, Nixon opening China trade barriers, and Carter Stagflation ended that dream. Now Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have cities crumbling from loss of jobs overseas. No income, no taxes, no infrastructure. Simple economics.
The worst infrastructure goes hand in hand with the largest city spending on pensions, still paying for votes from decades past, no longer able to pay for much else.
You angered one.
Do you have an opinion on why Biden is pushing hard for an infrastructure bill?
The rust belt is interesting and a case study of its own, where a major city can have just about any type of work force these automotive towns are all built to house majority of it's employees. Grew up in a very blue collar city right outside Detroit the auto plants are construct in a specific zone that no less than 10 mins of a drive away.
Years ago I started to wonder why "They", whoever the heck "They" are, keep building new roads when we can't even pay for the roads we have now. I work for a city and can tell you that the administration may know they have a problem and just kick the can down the road until they retire so it becomes someone else's problem. Now That's Good Government!
The problem is not being unable to pay to maintain the roads, Baltimore gets 17% of all fuel taxes from the entire state of Maryland which is multiples of what they actually pay.
The problem with the cities is they are plagued by corrupt politicians who waste money to buy votes and make their friends and donors rich!
I prefer to live in a nice crime free area outside of the suburbs and drive to a store over living in expensive, crowded, polluted, mismanaged cities!
theft in reality
You really just described baby boomers
Happens in big business too...that resignation mindset.
@@motokenny8045 Many of us were raised by the baby boomers.
went from “America’s ok, could use a little public investment, like healthcare and busses” to “My hometown is a mess” in about a week
lol
Literally same
@@urbanistgod
Dearest carbrain, i hope this letter finds you well.
After marching to my internet lightbox, and doing some typing, I’ve discovered that some psychologists found that the most effective first step in brainwashing among cults, is convincing your victim they were brainwashed.
As you can tell, this conflicts with your previous letter. I’d like to believe you’re doing this in good faith, but the tests, both in theory and practice show which one of us stands on the right side of science.
Furthermore, I doubt anyone wants to send out upwards of $8k a year just to keep their personal blunt-force-trauma generators running, as there are far better and far cheaper alternatives to appeasing OPEC.
Still, war is on the horizon. News has it that Russia is preparing to start a war. Though we may be powerless to stop it, the draft is in Uncle Sam’s hand, ready to be thrown in the name of oil, opposed to humanitarian relief.
Other than that, all is well. My three thousand pound paperweight hasn’t been touched in months, and I’ve been able to afford many more luxuries in my life, despite not really wanting them.
@@urbanistgod It's allright. I have a master in urban planning and it's not brainwashing. I'm specialized in housing and financial markets and in post-suburbanization. There's evidence. Believe me not too few evidence. When there will be another serious oil crisis someday it will get quite uncomfortable in the usa my friend.
@@urbanistgod Not going to happen as fast as we need it to. There are also a bunch of other issues. Charging infra isn't there yet, not to mention power in some states, like California, can be as expensive as 35+ cents a kWh depending on where you are (in this case, gas being 4+ dollars a gallon is still cheaper than charging an electric car). Power in other states isn't generated as cleanly as it needs to be. Producing and recycling batteries will be a huge problem in the near future when electric cars do finally catch on. Also, electric cars aren't cheap enough for the average consumer yet.
Electric cars are a bad answer to poor urban planning and terrible public infrastructure. Still better than ICE vehicles, but potentially not by much and has still has a lot of trade offs.
The 1940's was basically when the American motor industry grew big enough to buy the political clout necessary to direct government policies regarding urban development in their favour.
As a german who lived in the us, ca and many other places i must say i never noticed how well designed europe is until i watched this channel. One of my dreams was always to someday move to canada bc of many reasons. Now i know better than that, its rlly sad seeing how the us and ca are screwing themselves over with this scam growth scheme.. as someone who doesnt even have a driver license i sincerly thank you for bringing these issues up as i wouldve hated it living in na!
There are nice areas but sadly it's not the norm and people recognise it as nice so it's way too expensive.
To be fair, in the 1940s your country lent a hand and…let’s say “incentivised” so many European cities to rethink how best they could design their communities. My country did much the same in Japan and later, Korea. US cities haven’t had to completely begin from scratch all over again (yet).
Canada is larger than the United States with a tenth of the population. It's either drive cars or don't leave home.
Here in Chile I'd always hear that "driving is a privilege, not a right", both at driving school and taking the license exams.
But now I see it's a forced right in the US and Canada.
having grown up moslty in N.America; what attributes of American 'city design' do you dislike most of? I wonder, as having family from Europe they disliked the windy bendy roads of their countries past.. me.. i prefer the quaintness, and practically of it - streets and roads, as opposed to "stroads". :)
"America is one giant shopping mall." -George Carlin
Haha yeah, big malls and mini malls
Without sidewalks, so you are forced to drive to it!
That hits on a philosophic level
Come to Middle East baby 😁
Malls are awesome. If you want , you can go live somewhere else. Thought so.
Read a book called "Geography of Nowhere" that addressed this issue in the 90's. All of our sense of place and identity are being eaten up by sprawling suburbs that all look the same. I live in Phoenix AZ... probably the worst example next to LA. Phoenix has a tiny downtown and 100 miles of suburb in each direction. Driving through Phoenix is like a Flinstones cartoon where they are running and the background just keeps repeating over and over in a loop. I also lived in NYC. This is the exact opposite. The problem there is that dense cities are expensive as hell to live in. So the dense urban design is just for the wealthy. Every time the lower ranks get creative and turn old industrial areas into loft apartments... the wealthy make it trendy, the real estate tycoons buy it up, and rent goes up to $3000 per month.
GG
Boy this guy really knows how to kill a buzz
nice descriptions.
Yeah I hate that sht. It's loathsome actually.
I read James Howard Kunstler's other books like The Long Emergency.
I've been binging these videos recently, and it always surprises me how similar American suburbs are. Every time I see footage of a suburban sprawl, it looks like my hometown. Same asphalt desert with nothing but a shit fast-food restraunt, a supermarket, and a shady bar to entertain you.
Beats the hell of inner city and the emptiness of anywhere rural.
Can we also talk about how a lot of city infrastructures like roads and sidewalks don't actually need to be replaced as often as they are due to decreased production quality so that construction companies can replace them more often? Where I lived when I went to high school had an area of roads and sidewalks that were date stamped from the very early 1900s and they looked better than some of the newer roads. The same with my childhood hometown. I went back after being away for 15 years and the rock-paved road outside my old house was almost exactly the same as what was in my baby pictures give or take a small repair here and there. All the time I lived there until I moved in high school, no one ever did anything to the roads because they didn't need to. America is built on a system of waste in a misguided effort to "create" jobs. Not only do our city layouts need to change but how things get built does too.
This is why capitalism doesnt work
@@Xingmey Until workers size the means of production, the wealth of a society will always flow up, and those who own much will own everything, and those who own little will own nothing at all. That's capitalism's natural trajectory, and awful city planning brought about by lobbying is a symptom of this problem.
I used to work for the state DOT in New Jersey. There are some stretches of concrete highway that were built in the '20s that are still in use today. They tend to be in more rural locations where the roads did not need to be expanded. I don't know what they did different with the concrete back then, but I wish we still used concrete like that.
@@Xingmey It is the least worst economic system, US capitalism doesn't work. A market cannot be completely free because product quality will drop and production gets so efficient that nobody can buy the products you produce. Europe is a lot better but not perfect. Pay grades have to increase almost threefold while regulation keeps improving product standards.
You raise a very good point. And the early 1900s is not even that old. I've walked on roads that were built before Christ. And not just Roman roads in Europe. I've seen some here in Asia, from China to India. Cobblestones, of course, but still fit for walking, cycling and driving.
I retired to a small town in Mexico and everything is SO walkable. Whenever I come back to the US everything seems so big, flat, spread out, and sterile.
Yep...
And I always thought this was just a Texas thing.
Its horrible, everything here looks the same. I’ve been all over this country and 99% of the towns I’ve been to are interchangeable square miles of dilapidated, disgusting commercial districts with illuminated plastic signs surrounded by soulless suburbs for miles and miles. “Sterile” is the perfect word for it. It’s no wonder Americans have become so materialistic, we need something to make ourselves happy while stuck in cities hopelessly deficient in community, beauty, culture, and livability.
@@josephhernandez9531 "It’s no wonder Americans have become so materialistic," Totally *Agree* With Your Statement!!
@@josephhernandez9531 You don't have to live in the burbs if you don't want - there are many wonderful towns with a lot of charm and all of the qualities you mentioned (community, beauty, culture, etc.). You are just in the wrong place.
Not having a car in a Texas suburb is absolutely paralyzing. Walking to the gas station in the winter I manage to pass an old barn and pet horses meanwhile ongoing traffic to the right of me, and 30 minutes of walking past houses. Nothing but houses.
That's not even suburbia, you live in a rural country area and there's nothing wrong with this design.
i live closer to dallas. not good!! i can walk to a few places as im fortunately close to a main road but all thats walkable is this little shopping area with a coffee shop, boutiques, antique stores, etc. otherwise my city (and every other city ive been to in texas) is not very walkable at all, which makes me quite sad as i greatly prefer walking over driving
Probably still better than driving
Once you see how the profitability runs out at end-of-life, the Ponzi scheme analogy makes sense. Basically, the cycle of promised revenue and temporary gains digs the hole deeper and deeper till it crashes. At this point, I've lost track of all the self-defeating and self-destuctive practices that take place in the US.
There's a layer of taxation irony that comes with this narrative as well. That is to say that urban dwellers who live in towers, and who are not contributing to the sprawl, pay way more property taxes per acre, even though they aren't contributing to the ponzi scheme. Even at the individual unit level, they are often also paying more property taxes per square foot of living area within their homes, despite not having a plot of land under them that they individually own.
When I was in Hong Kong or in Amsterdam, I was like.
You know, let's go out, take a walk and grab something to eat nearby and I'll be at home in half an hour
In Denver, everything seems so goddamm FAR away and everything is so car dependent
And thus contributing to climate change more than any other country
@@Rainaman- China is
@@Chandiop not per capita. Also China makes everything for the world while US is mostly service based.
You probably live in a suburb of Denver and not Denver itself. Saying this having lived in Denver proper my whole life, except for college years.
@@Chandiop
Nope.
The per-capita greenhouse gas emissions of the US dwarf those of China.
This must be why Las Vegas is still developing communities despite the fact that there is not enough water in Lake Mead for the current population. 😒
In other words: Greed!
@@mephistopheles6806 It's more that people want to live there. There are plenty of places that have more than enough water, but their weather isn't as pleasant, so people don't move there. The Great Lakes region is cheap and has amazing quality of life, but the weather is pretty bad, so people don't go there.
@@AUniqueHandleName444 you think the Great Lakes are cheap? Come to Western NY. Not cheap. Houses are cheaper but the property and sales taxes are brutal.
@@AUniqueHandleName444 Vegas doesn't have good weather, it's in the middle of a scorching desert.
@@jaoh6659 thats only for 2/3 months, and it aint even that bad, ive gone on walks often here at 100degrees u get used too it, everything is really close here too
I lived in Phoenix AZ for most of 1968-1981. It was obvious that it's own sprawling growth was a major industry and basis for the local economy. It was also obvious that someday the music had to stop. Not sorry I left. I now live in a densely populated old city and take rapid transit almost everywhere.
Suburbs was built to keep a certain demographic out of the burbs. Now, the children of their grand and great grand parents are trying to move back into the city limits because of the lack of public transportations, walkable cities, etc . How things have changed
"driving in soul crushing traffic"
Laughs in Indian.
Moscow #1 doe...
Oh my god, I've been to New Delhi; so yeah lol
@@NickRoman lmao. You don't even have to go to a big city. Go anywhere, people drive so haphazardly here omg.
@@safe-keeper1042 yeah. Vietnam is a beautiful country. They share the same problem as us Indians. Poor road ethics.
@@NickRoman Can confirm last time I was in New Delhi the tuk tuk driver insisted on driving on the wrong side of the road. Still don't know how I didn't shit myself....
The main thing I've learned most from this series of videos: "Why Cities: Skylines feels so unnatural, ugly and problematic to non-American players."
This unironically explains all my issues with the game; I tried to make a game focused on walking and public transport but the whole 'seperate residential and commercial areas' and all that made it really hard and ugly.
Oh wow, is that why this video was suggested to me? Just discovered Citites: Skylines about three months ago. So mad I never heard about it before. I’ve started watching Euro build vids recently which made me stop playing the game. The American cities I started to build just looked so ugly and inefficient, encapsulating so many things that are broken within our country. It bothered me, when I zoned my first commercial area, to watch McDonald’s and Taco Bell auto generate. I immediately thought that all my sims should morph into obesity. That would make the gameplay hella realistic.
I want to be able to design and build an idealized city, not recreate a bloated American one.
I really, really, really wish some company would create a new city builder game that surpasses the limitations of the previous ones.
But Cities:Skylines is a game made in Finland, so its a european game. Granted finnish cities dont actually look like usual Cities:Skylines cities.
i guess it depends on how you play
@@Meitti It's pretty much because they took the zoning system from SimCity, which has no combined residential/commercial zoning. It'd be great if they could implement such a thing, who knows, maybe the game itself could serve to educate people on how our cities could be improved (just as it makes people criticize their area's traffic management, lol).
Honestly, as a New Yorker I hate how other American cities are often laid out. It's just so damn inconvenient to get anywhere, and everything's so far away. This sprawling mindset is also found in places like American military bases abroad, though at least in that case you wouldn't necessarily want everything densely packed due to the risk of enemy attack. In Okinawa, it was extremely inconvenient to get anywhere on foot on-base due to how far apart everything was, which sucks because lower-ranked members were generally not allowed to have their own cars. On the other hand, the city immediately outside the gates very often combined residential and commercial spaces to create interesting, walkable areas along with handy public transit.
@@AirLancer Finnish cities are more like cities in rpg games than cities in city manager games:th-cam.com/video/feBeUJEVswA/w-d-xo.html
A strange mix of cityscape, suburbs and forest wilderness.
Almost the entirety of NJ is suburbia for NYC, and I think that this really illustrates why the taxes are so high here.
See This is why I started to hate playing 'SIM CITY' on my PC, I feel the devs designed the game with American mentality in mind , cuz everything is split into zones. then I'm forced to expand the residential zones to bring more ppl to increase income & keep growing it more & more until I fill the whole cluster & my PC starts to lag. lol And you still get get enough income to cover the city's expenses.
Literally even a computer city Simulation game can show how bad US style urbanism can be. They just want more land mass to consume.
This really seems like a ticking time bomb ignored by almost all politicians because most regular folk don't know or care enough.
thats why there is corona. cant figure out yourself, think further.
It's worse: most regular folk want a large house in the suburbs. So any politician acting against it is going to lose a huge amount of voters.
The planning time horizon for most politicians ends abruptly at their next date for reelection. If a major problem is looming, but will not manifest itself until after that date, then the attitude of most politicians is "not my problem."
A ballot democracy ensures issues like this will never be discussed because which politician will want to upset their constituents?
@@fisherfriendman Yes, the constituents have to care about the future. In a democracy the people get the politicians they deserve. May God help us all, because we have done an excellent job of demonstrating our incapability of governing ourselves.
Conveniently, the typical length of a home loan is equal to that of the average service life of a new road. So by the time you've paid off your home, you're so frustrated about the state of your current neighborhood infrastructure that you want to leave and continue the cycle.
@@dumpeeplarfunny You forgot the step where a land developer buys up a bunch of old, rented out homes and sweet-talks the local planning council into letting them evict everyone and bulldoze the building in favor of luxury apartments that provide less tax outlays, fewer units, and higher infrastructure costs... because everywhere else NIMBY'd the fuck out of his idea.
I live in India, where all cities are growing. I realized same problem here, which now results inner cities in ever poor state. What now I feel that never stay at one home for more than 10-15 years... Keep buying at newly developed location and move on, coz once the infrastructure goes to replacement mode it becomes hell.... A full redevelopment of locality takes at least a generation time.
Nobody in America ever actually lives in a house long enough to pay off their whole mortgage. Like 15 years tops, usually more like 7-10 though. You just roll the equity into a new mortgage over and over until you retire and go fuck off to an 80k condo in Florida.
@@hibiskus828 only to realize that florida is exactly the same as the rest of america in this regard, only somehow its more... cursed? unappealing? shit? i dunno the word to describe it other than a pile of shit... thats been poorly spraypainted with, like, not gold... maybe a shade of bronze that _almost_ looks like gold?
tl:dr florida is like the rest of america, only somehow its just way shittier
@@Rexini_Kobalt The fact that most people are envious of Florida in America makes me loose hope in humanity as a whole. The place is bad but the people make it so much worse.
I've always known what a ponzi scheme is, but that was easily the simplist clearest and most concise description I've ever seen.
he described all banks in a nutshell
@@eclipse369. not banks necessarily just the practice of fractional reserve banking
I live in Denmark, and I love that I have a 5 to 20 minute walk (depending on which store) to like 10 grocery stores and a shopping center. Have access to around 7 bus lines within a 5 minute walk and a city rail system that drives directly to the central intercity train station in the city center, that also doubles as a shopping center.
If I don’t want to walk I just use my electric bike. I will be investing in an electric scooter soon, that can ride on bike lanes, for longer trips as well.
Sounds wonderful. I just moved to Denver, Colorado and incredibly I can walk to two grocery stores in shopping centers. A park with a 16 mile trail that leads to downtown is right there. I will never move back to "the burbs".
I is loved being there! I walked everywhere and everything opens onto a public park with a ton of greenery.
the same in Swiss and Italy!!!
Denmarc is tiny. Your model can’t be used universally.
@@KBS_ar Universally compared to what? Most people live in cities, and if cities are designed properly, then there is no reason why it shouldn't be possible in a lot, if not most cities. My city has almost 300,000 people, it's not like it's a small, close knit village with 10k people. It's the same in capital Copenhagen, where 1.3 million people live.
My hometown of Calgary has this exact problem in a really a bad way... since the price of oil tanked developers have been pushing to build over 14 new "communities" on the outskirts of town, just for the sake of economic growth. It's worrying because the associated cost of maintaining these communities could bankrupt the city, with office towers empty and businesses closing, the city's existing tax revenue simply can't make up the difference.
Yes, this is exactly what Calgary is doing. They are the quintessential example of being in a period of decline due to the failure of an important industry. This kind of "growth" is just patching up the problem, while making it even worse for future generations.
The council voted no to 11 of these new development though, while there are lots of mixed us development being built downtown and nearby. Calgary is (slowly) getting denser and with the to be constructed Green Line, I think the city is going in the right direction?
@@CLMBRT There are certainly some positive things happening in Calgary, like increased density in the downtown core. However, the city continues to promote sprawl (I was referring to the 14 communities approved in 2018, not the 11 additional ones voted down last year). And now the provincial government seems intent on killing the Green Line...with the municipal election next year, things could go from bad to worse if this trajectory continues...
While we, former urban planning students from Breda, The Netherlands, have explicitly given some sound advices on where and how to develop and grow. Mostly TOD further outward and more density and mixed use more to the city center. But hey, what do we Dutchies know, right? 🤣🤷🏼♂️
@@Ikreisrond Thank you for your hard work, I'm sorry we let you down. Unfortunately, what usually happens is our leaders choose the most politically expedient plans, regardless of their negative downstream consequences, to help with their own re-election. As we all know, if you want to change things, you're going to have to risk ruffling a few feathers. Until our leaders can get beyond, we're stuck with the status quo.
I've said this for years, over and over, its not a "democrat/republican" thing, its a broken economic model. It never added up to me, now I understand why.
Pretty much just capitalism
the thing that eats me up, is that this economic model is supposed to benefit the rich, and yet it almost seems to do just slightly less damage to them than everyone else, rather than actually benefitting the rich. so it doesn't even do the stupid part right, which is the whole point of it! i wonder why the rich are not able to do the right thing, even for themselves?
If you're assuming the video was being honest. But it isn't honest and it paints an unrealistic picture of revenue and cost that isn't borne out by fact. If it were honest they would have shown hard ledger data proving their point, but they can't, so they don't.
To alll the whiny internet people that thinks the "system" only benefits the rich please open a book and study the alternatives.
@@notOL01 explain
I honestly love suburban environments, but maybe not typical ones that are in most of the US, rather, ones that actually have dramatic variety between home appearances and layouts. Suburban communities can seriously be beautiful and wonderful places to live, but there’s a lot of obstacles in the way of that most of the time. Usually American suburban areas built within the last 40 years are hot garbage though with those things in mind; no creativity or thought to the home or who would be living there. Literally my home is a suburban house from 1955, it’s pretty modest compared to new suburban ones, being at only about 1200 sq-ft and with just one bathroom. But it was built with great attention to detail and regard to who would be living there, and looks completely different from the houses surrounding it, despite being built at the same time by the same developers. Although suburban areas may not be as efficient, I personally would shoot myself if I had to live in a home attached to someone else’s for my whole life.
Urban sprawl is the scourge of mankind. This is a great video. Having said that, I recently retired from working in the engineering department of a suburban city of Vancouver, BC. City finances were in great shape and I worked under the infrastructure planning section. We had sophisticated detection methods and software to optimize spending on roads, water and sewers. Not all cities are in dire deficit spending situation on infrastructure.
Urban sprawl is fine I guess. Suburban sprawl is the one that’s a scourge.
So true, I'm from Australia, and drove 12,000klms (8000miles) across America from New Orleans, Austin, Mississippi area, Memphis, Nashville, St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, (Toronto, Montreal), Boston and New York, doing music-y things in 2017... and did a lot of small towns, festivals in other areas, and side adventures along the way. Major highways, byways, and tiny country roads for nearly 4 months, spent time in lots of places and drove around the cities and suburbs and got to chatting to lots of people in music bars all over... and the thing that struck me the most about all over America was... it definitely wasn't as prosperous as it's made out to be. The infrastructure was definitely bad in a lot of places, roads were particularly bad in places, I also saw cement bridges, and highway overpasses that had concrete falling away with the steel reinforcing showing and rusting... It was like a lot of what you see on TV, the places that were significant, the big highways / important ones, main streets / tourist streets etc, were well maintained... but you could go 2 blocks over and they were in a terrible state of repair, pot holes, cracks, surfaces that were falling apart. And there definitely was a cookie-cutter vibe to what was available n the suburbs, deadend places with a Sonic/MacDonalds/KFC/Wendys and a gas station, then a strip mall with all the same outlets. Only some of the more important cities had managed to hold onto some of their own flavour/culture/individuality
... Some of the bigger cities the more poorer areas the streets looked like some of the destroyed, war torn eastern block European countries I have been to. It was an eye opener for what is supposed to be 'America'... it definitely had a facade feeling to it
John Steinbeck described it perfectly. Roughly paraphrased, he said "The trouble with Americans is they don't know they're poor. They all believe they are temporarily embarrassed rich..."
@@thevisitor784 Steinbeck wrote that a long time ago. A looong time ago. He is mostly talking about people that are dead. If you talk to your average American this is not a notion they harbor. It is a very simple, superficial way of dismissing American's though.
@@justleaveit1557 People who think they are "free" because they don't have to spend 4% of their income to support free healthcare for all, while spending 20% of their income on health insurance, are operating under the same delusion. The symptoms may have changed a little, but the propagandized culture of loving your abusers and believing in the myth of upward mobility as tirelessly advertised by popular culture has not changed at all in 100 years.
@@thevisitor784 You talk like nobody knows this. That was my point. Steinbeck was talking about different people. We know dude. We know what you are saying, we're not all just a bunch of walking nationalist zombies thinking we're going to be billionaires. That is superficial at best. Your point is meaningless, Steinbeck is talking about other people. If you think that's what all American's have as the foundation of their psyche, that helps us know more about your psyche, not American's.
@@justleaveit1557 At least 50% of Americans have no idea. The point in quoting the past is that human attitudes can remain terribly constant. That's why we have this thing called "history". Read about it and while you're at it fix your grammar: it's not " American's " - a singular possessive, but " Americans' " that you're trying to write.
The fascist colonialism that started picking up serious speed with Reagan selling drugs and defunding public education has had a profound impact, and the result is that the average American today is not only poorly educated compared to other wealthy nations, but also much less well-off relative to the country's GDP, more like in the dust-bowl years than in the '60s. What is called "middle class" in the US today has a lot of similarities to dust-bowl sharecroppers, esp. when it comes to existential insecurity: Almost 10% of all Americans are at risk of eviction right now. "We know dude" is not true. Nor is "Steinbeck is talking about other people". Try going to California's central valley. It got popular on social media to recognize how capitalism is screwing people in the past 5 years, but it it still a minority.
The truth is that the average working-Joe believes that working harder will remove the insecurity, that there is some sort of "meritocracy". In reality the only merit that capitalism really rewards is the ability to help separate other people form their capital, and most working people don't realize that they're merely trying to earn enough to die while working in an idiotic Ponzi scheme, and believe they will eventually strike some sort of motherlode.
"Don't get me wrong: our cities need affordable housing" - always thought that affordable housing means apartments in multi-storey buildings, while separate houses is actually the most luxury option - just because they occupy more land and the infrastructure is naturally more expensive.
Most Americans don’t understand this logic
Yeah, apartment complexes is the most efficient way to provide cost-effective housing. Singapore HDB flats are exhibit A, look for polymatter's video on how Singapore solved housing
@@ironboy3245 They only solved it because their citizens are socially responsible and compliant. Would never work in the West - people would gripe that the homes were not good enough, or were in the "wrong" place etc.
@@pm2886 we also have racial quotas so we have diversity in our neighbourhoods. Helps stop racism when you're neighbours with Malays and Indians
@@ironboy3245 where are they forcing non white families to move in? That’s horrible
1:10 In Indonesia, this is called 'Gali Lubang, Tutup Lubang' (Dig a Hole, Cover Another Hole)
My dad had a friend take a job with his small town (~13,000 pop.) as department head of public works. The friend found that, despite his reports reporting ample funds, he could not buy a new front loader. He was told that, despite what what was on paper, all the accounts had been raided. He had no money. He resigned soon there after.
I look at aerial shots like 0:52, 3:28 and 6:12 and what I mostly see is parking lot. It really seems built for cars, not for people. Ugh, what an utter waste of space :/
It is because everything is about money in the US. The politicians are bribed by big oil, automakers, insurance companies to create need for cars. That's why the US grants driving licenses the easiest in the world from senior to youth. More car, more oil, more insurance, more driver license and car registration fees -- hence urban sprawl and suburbs.
3:28 is Cleveland. We had a huge influx a while ago and COVID essentially killed it. We’re doing okay it’s just not a lot is open in downtown.
True, especially when they lay flat and not stacked or underground. But hey, at least that space might someday be used for future, denser developments.
@@HellsJerome87 - The world population will start decline within few decades. Already started in Japan, Italy, Korea, Spain,etc.
Paved paradise, put up a parking lot...
The asfalt waste in American cities is insane.
“Spelling” in American cities is even more insane. ;-)
@@gwarlow They wizards??
America, haha...
You guys where booming,!!! 40 years ago... ;)
-Love from Amsterdam 🤣
the good news is - the vast majority (I've seen ~99%) of asphalt is recycled. It's probably the #1 most recycled material in the world. In Russia, somebody literally stole a road to sell the asphalt.
@@codyherring3895 Yeah, but the labour is still wasted. Also the shocks the potholes cause (or even accidents) are a shame to say the least.
I’m surprised that ordinary road of USA is much wider than Japanese highway.
Even financing small roads of Japanese standard costs so much money,and I can’t imagine how vast amount of money is required for entire US roads.
And it's funny our cities are also so full of cars. I live in nyc and i would love to bike everywhere instead of walking but its so dangerous. The number of people dying from a car hitting them on a bike is so high its astounding. Nyc wants so bad to be like a European city but they need to remove all these cars first
It's so sad...I've been living in Europe for a couple years and can't believe how well designed and walkable most cities are. Coming back to Canada and the idea of walking to the store is just unheard of because the suburbs are so massive it would take over an hour just to get there without a car. I have a car back in Europe but only use it for road trips on the weekend and for large grocery trips. Otherwise it's actually more efficient to walk or bike into town.
@@jourgil what
I don't like walking. I love driving my car. For me it's relax.
@@lukasrojko5455
Yes, driving a car with 10k of other cars, thus creating traffic. Yes, and while you stay in traffic, a guy with a bike is beating you, laughing you. Who gets the last laugh?
Where do you live exactly?
@@lukasrojko5455 You don't, but other people do. They should have the option to walk like we do to drive.
The one thing I really do not understand is why it is deemed acceptable to build a country, a culture on debt. How can you sleep at night like that?
Gotta beat the commies
Better debt than red! 🤣
I think "buying on credit" it's very much built into the North American culture. It's the danger of growing up with credit cards rather than debit cards. You get so used to actually paying for your stuff 'after the fact' that you become numb to the dangers of doing so.
I'm not sure how much worse the "U.S. debt" is compared the the "Dutch debt" as far as the country as a whole goes, but when you've been raised to believe in growth and past generations always managed to pay off their debts (or they thought they did, anyway), you loose track of the debt and you become convinced a 'solution will come along in due time'. Until it doesn't... The problem is that far too many regions on earth are suffering the same. China has a massive real estate bubble, the shape Russia's in is no better and the U.S. I am sorry to say is also teetering on the brink. And when any one of these big three falls... I fear they'll pull down the rest with them because investments are so interwoven and international now... And adding covid to the mix...
Debt is irrelevant. Fiat currency and MMT.
The short answer: the Petrodollar.
The first things I associate with America are not baseball, apple pie or soul-crushing traffic. Instead I associate America with obesity, children pretending to be adults and the American dream, more specifically how it was snuffed out.
The American dream exists, the immigrants are living it.
I have lived in the same medium sized Canadian town most of my life, and seen the sprawl lifecycle go to the crisis point... new suburban development side-by-side with earlier neighbourhoods crumbling under the residents' feet
It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. - George Carlin
Cute quote, but largely useless for solving anything.
@@Professor_Utonium_ Carlin was a pessimist through and through, he'd probably say we're f$cked either way, so stop whining, or something to that effect. I like to be a little more hopeful, but honestly, I understad why he thought it's all going to ruin.
@@barvdw I can accept that "so stop whining" part of it. Complaining just drains effort from doing more practical stuff. I also understand my hypocrisy here complaining, myself, so I'll see my way out now lol
@@Professor_Utonium_ it isn’t meant to solve anything. And it is not useless: it makes an important point in a funny way that sticks.
A dream is unattainable usually because its a dream
"Every year we just build a bigger suburb to pay for the maintenance costs of all of our previous suburbs, _thus solving the problem once and for all!"_
"But..."
*"ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!"*
Futurama reference
We need Futurama now more than ever
Colorado Springs is a great example of this. The city bought into this idea that we needed more water for a future influx of people with growth like 20x its current size on the very outskirts of town. Then 2008 hit and all the housing developers pulled out. But they had already spent millions upon millions diverting a river uphill for the houses and not even paying for it, just giving an "IOU" to the land owners. They tried and failed to pass a tax to pay for it 3 times over the years and it only barely passed before the whole project was dropped right before it was finished.
I work in a community that is far below the poverty line and possesses the largest trailer park in Indiana. Personally, I think the roads were more drivable before the state gave the county a multi-million dollar grant to improve the roads in 1996... Dirt and gravel roads are more drivable than crumbling asphalt without the funding to repair it.
“So they paved paradise and put up a parking lot..”
I swear I heard that as lyrics in a song a few years back...
Don't it always seem to go like that
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley nah, it's an updated paraphrased adage from when they tore down 'THE' original enchanted forest to build the colosseum in Rome. The name literally translated to enchanted forest more or less. It was something like mystical arborium or whatever. Anyway, can you beleive they had the nerve to save one tree as an homage no less. A reminder of how beautiful it WAS. Like that makes it okay. That's apparently the origin story of ygdrasil too.
Shit's fucked up man. Real fucked up...
Guess it just goes to show:
You dont know what you've got,
till it's gone.
@@kilikfanof2mrow You don't know what you got until its gone.
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley you did. Big Yellow Taxi-Joni Mitchell
I was actually having a conversation with my roommate about how infrastructure and urban planning were a root cause for a lot of American problems just before this video came out. thanks for the strong evidence for my point.
There's way more than this when it comes to the cause of American problems. Watch this playlist from donoteat01:
th-cam.com/video/0lvUByM-fZk/w-d-xo.html
Who cares if its cause for a problem. I don't want to live in an apartment my entire life, I would much rather own some land & have a house & some privacy. Have some trees between myself & the neighbour's.
@@zaptowee6625 And you have that right, but governments need to make fully informed decisions before allowing suburbs to be built. That means the cost of such houses should go up, which raises their property tax, which makes them sustainable economically.
In Economics terms this means you pay the full cost including all externalities, instead of being subsidized by the government like houses are now.
@@EmperorNefarious1 Yeah, people in their neighborhood should be responsible for their own roads. Also developers should be allowed to build as much as they want. Housing is a matter of supply & demand like anything else, if the big problem & not affordable housing then increase supply. If there is financial incentive for devs to build then let them.
But then communities should be on the hook for maintenance but now this presents an issue. What about lower class communities who cant afford to pay their own maintenance, well its gotta be subsidized. But is that fair for the people who have to pay a higher property tax, why should they pay a higher tax if their not getting anything in return for it?
See now it's too complex, are places now suppose to privatize road maintenance to avoid this? I think the current system is actually pretty good as is. Year crap roads suck but that's one of the tradeoffs we have to make. Also worse roads lead to worse properity prices. It's all supply & demand.
@@zaptowee6625 The problem is housing really isn't just a matter of supply and demand. if Local governments knew the true cost of a development they would go back to the developer and say "We did a cost analysis for the next 30 years and it looks like we're going to be up to our ears in debts in the long run with this deal. So give us a better one or no permit." then they would reach a good deal and the houses are built, or they don't make a deal and other developers get a chance to bid for the land. Or even a private individual, or group might want to buy the land and create actual sustainable communities that people want to live in, instead of the dead cookie cutter developments.
It is an extremely complex problem, and the only solution to complex problems is information. With out it any answer people find is always going to be wrong or incomplete.
My comment on property taxes is related to land value, if it costs a developer more to build the houses, they will charge more to sell them; Property tax is usually a percent of land value with some adjustment.
Oh and thanks Not Just Bikes for the playlist, it was very informative. My roommate will be pleased to know I have even more facts to drown our discussions with.
I've never ever sat through an ad before but the ad you put from nebula with the people biking was totally worth it. No annoying voiceover about anything; just a nice sunny day with the sound of bikes in the background. Now this I can sit through ;)
Took me 10 minutes to walk to the store in Norway. It takes me 10 minutes to drive to the store in America. One is healthy and the other is a massive financial liability. Sigh...
@@mattolson7037 It loses value over time, needs maintence, has multiple registration fees, and often requires you to have insurance. It's definitely a liability to own an automobile.
@@mattolson7037 it's not a freedom if you have no choice but to buy a car, just to survive.
@@mattolson7037 where can I go with a car in this country, besides being stuck in traffic on government subsidized roads? Restricted to the whims of the infrastructure on how long I have to wait for me to get pass traffic.
If there were less cars on the road, there'll be more freedom for those who want cars. Yet since everyone needs cars to survive in American, you can't have the freedom of traveling across the country without getting through hours of traffic.
All this asphalt/concrete everywhere is so ugly as well.
if you want to see smooth, fresh (Darker black) Asphalt (we use less concrete), you should visit the Netherlands. We do pay higher bills, but when it has rained and frozen, our streets are so smooth we can ice skate on them!
Bad thing is concrete roads are cheaper and last longer.
@@ingmarsteenbergen2619 Dutch asfalt roads are ugly to and need also to go just like the rest of the system gartbadge.
I see those smooth concrete driveways in the suburban american homes and think they look amazing.
It's not just ugly, it's an environmental catastrophe.
In the Netherlands we also eat a lot of apple pie, I didn't even know it was considered American lol
That's because America doesn't stand for any other values 🤣🤣🤣🤣
the saying is "as American as apple pie" so I guess we really like our pie
Because ours is different and it was also brought over by your immigrants that your government illegally brought over here
@@lying_lynx hey we gave you apple pie. So be happy 😜
In my mind the most American food are hamburgers, followed by barbecue, hot dogs, milkshakes, cornflakes, orange juice and Coca-Cola.
I'd really love to see you analyse Australian suburban sprawl. It's not your wheelhouse perhaps but we have a similar problem with housing affordability problems thrown in
Ironic how the country that’s “built for the car,” has the worst roads and the worst drivers. 🤔
Especially those Oregon drivers 🤮
The US for the most part has well-maintained roads.
@@dallashill23 I am an airport driver and I heard Oregon ,vegas, texas, LA, new york and I work in fort lauderdale , looks like is in the whole country Americans don't know how to drive .
Spoken by someone that apparently has not been on streets in many other countries to see how awful the traffic and drivers are around the world. I swear, in many places, they don’t really drive, they just sort of aim their cars and motorcycles in the direction of their destinations and hope nothing gets in the way.
Ever been to Thailand, China, Mexico, Italy, Greece, Spain, India, . . . I guess not.
All my favorite city planning channels always call out my hometown metro of Kansas City. Which makes sense, we got duped into removing all our streetcars in order to get a car factory. Hey, you should do a video in that!
As a kc native this hits hard
Damn, Judge Doom got to you, too? Condolences.
I'm so sorry.
The other issue is how the streets are built..aka, super cheaply.
Germany builds roads that have very small maintenance costs over time. This isn't difficult..you use better process and materials designed to last 50 years without maintenance.
I mean...there are Roman roads which are still usable. It is perfectly feasible to build roads that can last hundreds of years.
That's because all of their roads are concrete 8 inches thick
Feasible but not so profitable for governor's nephew, who is also a developer, by coincidence.
You forget one VERY important thing: many of Europe's roads are built on top of old Roman roads, and the other thing you're forgetting is that suburban sprawl *just doesn't happen* on the level that it happens here in America.
You're not even comparing Apples to Oranges; you're comparing Apples to Almonds while forgetting massive leaps in timelines are happening.
I want to agree on principle, but not all roads lead to Rome. In my shithole, roads are terrible because I live in a swamp. It's also terrible because your most pertinent point is correct: my local government doesn't envision roads that last forever, much less for a few years.
@@jacobsmithjr You mean american, roman or german streets?
Amazing dude! Great video, and your easy-to-follow references and citation is much appreciated!
Wow this very informative thank you
This explains so much. It really feels like America is in decline and why being a millennial feels like you're getting screwed. It explains why many Rust belt and North Eastern cities look so dilapidated, neighborhoods in terrible shape, population decline, and no money to fix it.
California is so expensive, rents and taxes are ridiculous, but what you get in services are hardly worth it. California is nearing at the end of its cycle.
Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Idaho are booming with low taxes because they're in the early stages of this Ponzi scheme.
The North East and Rust belt have taxed residents into submission to pay for insane programs. Social programs and wasteful spending will kill anything.
florida is in the early stages? lol thats a good one...
Florida is part of cuba an I can assume since the Republicans don't see that but do say Nevada an Texas *is* becoming part of another nation; that its worse there
@@rjacobherman The west coast is herion needles an feces everywhere; just describing the landscape. An every building has a needle deposit box. Grocery stores, churches, etc
@@ShawnJonesHellion I have been there. Its a 3rd world country
Cities tend to cut their own throat when they are forced to give tax incentives just so corporate companies will open shop in their communities.
@@AhhhhMyLeg amazon and tesla end up costing cities money in the long run rather than producing. Increased strain on infrastructure and demands for cities provide extra services or else "they'll pack up and leave".
@@AhhhhMyLeg damn that's a much different situation than in my city of 4 million where I sit in traffic for 1.5 hours each day. Suburbs, parking lots, crime, and traffic.
@@AhhhhMyLeg big business tends to bring the low wages with them, making it even more difficult for the working class to be the economic driving force necessary for a modern world.
@@AhhhhMyLeg if that were true, Worker Unions would not have been necessary for wage bargaining or worker protections.
@@AhhhhMyLeg no they haven’t, wages have only risen due to people leaving for unionized jobs or threatening to unionize their current jobs, prior to unionization the “precious” big businesses were basically enslaving workers by paying them in a currency only accepted at the company store.
I love that there are three types of comments here:
People agreeing with the video, complaining about the awfulness of suburbs
People disagreeing with the video, saying suburbs are actually good
People saying Taco John's is good
I remember reading a reasearch paper that basically concluded that for future suburbs you will get the worst of both worlds.
That is the crowd and crime of the city because of population density and the boredom of the suburbs as sprawling takes you far from entertainment districts.
roads DONT last 25 years! I have literally WATCHED a developer pave asphalt right on top of DIRT! what does he care? once they turn it over to the city - ITS YOUR PROBLEM!!!
By the books it should be re-surfaced every 10-15 years. Maybe in dry southern states it can be 25y, but in north with frost, rain, salt the surface can degrade fast.
@@Rainaman- I think you might have missed the point there. While weather and temperature can accelerate the degradation of the road surface. Therefore, resurfacing interval. The amount of traffic also play a role. The weight of every vehicle that use it. Different dirt can hold different amounts of load.
@@Amin.Ashraf "different dirt" roads are not built on dirt lmao. It is gravel and sand at frost level that holds it.
@@Rainaman- right, I forgot to put quotation on dirt. As long as you get what I mean, it's fine.
@@Rainaman- engineered dirt can hold a surprising amount of load.
can we get a video of comparing north america "mindset" vs dutch "mindset" when it comes to this? roads/building houses . i mean this is super interesting and would like to hear your toughts about our dutch "problem" ( housing problem )
Best solution to the housing problem here? Stop building row houses (riijtjeshuizen) and start building apartment buildings again.
@@TurboEncabulator188 while most "nature" in the Netherlands has essentially been built, I do agree with your point that we should make efficient use of the limited space the country has. We don't want to turn it into one big city after all.
@@TurboEncabulator188 problem with highrise in the Netherlands is mainly the composition of our soil. In most areas our soil is polder or veengrond which has a lot of water in it. That makes for a terrible base to build skyscrapers on because they have lots of weight on a relatively small footprint.
60s/70s galerijflat habitant here, please dont dress them up a bit, they did that here, living hasnt inproved, but the cost of living is increased from a total of 450 euro to 690 euro a month, and i'm in the ''social'' section. Government needs to build durable modern galerijflatten, its great for ''sociale huurwoningen'' but the current privatised owners of that market will never do that because they want profit each year, so renovation & building cant cost a lot. Dutch politics have to effectively ''socialize'' the social market again but with them spending so much on saving the climate and other invisible problems like cow farts i dont see that happening anytime soon, they will just build more rijtjeshuizen tot de weilanden en parken op zijn. because thats profitable.
@@TurboEncabulator188 Building higher isn't necessary for sustaining housing. 4-6 floor buildings are just fine, it's just that there needs to be more of them. Vienna has almost no high rise buildings but the cost of living there is considerably cheaper than Amsterdam at around 2.5 times the population
I don't understand the appeal behind american style suburban living anyway. I understand that owning your own property is awesome and all, but not this way. EVERYTHING looks the same in suburban america. It's honestly almost uncanny valley territory for me. Just imagining myself walking down a street like this at night and seeing 200 of the almost exact same house makes me feel weird.
Great video! It’s important to also note the corporate interests that profit from suburbia and could care less about Municipal, State, or Federal debt (they’ve successfully avoided their fair share of taxes for decades): Car Manufacturers, Car Insurers, Home Manufacturers, Home Insurers, Asphalt Manufacturers, Road Sign/Marker Makers, Street Light Makers, etc. These companies aren’t playing in a free market. They are more than willing to induce more demand (more suburbs) by Lobbying and Advertising their product down our throats. As is the case with so many painful, systemic problems efficiency (free market solution) and the social good does not align with profits. That’s why we pay $70,000/yr. per prisoner instead of investing in public education, parks, drug rehabilitation, vocation schools, etc. Private prisons and a whole bunch of prison suppliers would lose their profits
When the way we do things doesn't make sense, follow the money to see why...
a free market solution would cut the government out of the picutre, and there'd be no government to lobby or take advantage of. If cities couldn't grow sparsely in a free market, then they'd just grow compact if that's the ideal layout
The concept of private prisons is ridiculous. Give huge companies with a lot of money a lot of incentive to increase crime, criminalize things which shouldn't be a crime (drug use), keep people in prison for longer, maintain a fucked up prison culture so that when they get out they stay in the crime life and end up convicted again, etc
I used to think that old buildings in European cities are old... but I couldn't be more wrong. The facade are old, centuries old, the inside however, are air-conditioned, cellular network, wi-fi, fire alarm, adjustable LED lights, smart building systems... it makes them very desireable.
These old European city buildings can be repurposed for anything. In Rome, I encountered a Carrefour express supermarket build into an old semi building-part cave systems. The roof are still rough patch of cave rocks, probably dating back to Roman empire era. It is fascinating. Next to it is a trendy Italian cafe.
Bright Sun Films has a large compilations of video exploring abandoned American malls and suburban mega store buildings that is practically useless after being abandoned. That unique Taco building, the uniquely designed Toys-R-Us themed building facade might be affable for McDonald's or other business franchise looking for their own "branding" and that's the massive problem. Suburban decay is a blight and left a plainly visible mark, urban decay can heal and re-transform itself.
As an American we like things shiny and new. Although I feel that desire is now fading with the younger generation more into repurposing and reusing to avoid creating waste
@@jimmybaldbird3853 lol
What is affable? The abandoned US mall?
I have traveled to Europe since the 60s and also used to marvel over the beautiful old buildings however, then I re learned about the Marshall Act which reconstructed Europe. Many of the buildings were actually reconstructed as they were originally to keep the illusion of old Europe alive, so they were not as old as they seemed. One example is the parliament building in Budapest and the original construction plans, which were used to rebuild that building which in fact was bombarded during WWII.
@@ipodtouchfreak100 Nah it's mostly cause the younger generation is too poor for things like new houses and new cars.
Young people definitely purchase other goods brand new, they're just cheaper than cars or a house.
I live in Charleston SC and we just moved to the suburbs 4 years ago in March. I hate it so much. The traffic is horrible. You have to drive everywhere. It’s so boring. No bus system comes this far. And they are building more of them and our main road is a 2 lane highway🤦🏾♀️. I’m already planning my move in 1 to 2 years.
The urban core of pre-WWII Charleston looks like a rather fine place to live, walkable/bikeable. I've semi considered moving there. Brings up another good point made by strongtowns, most Americans see "traditional city development" as a tourist attraction not "how things should be done" (like historic Charleston, historic St. Augistine, the French Quarter, etc)
@Safwaan It's not suburbs per se that are the bad thing and not all suburbs are exactly alike, but what is disliked is the specific sprawling design and strict separation of uses that gives many such suburbs a negative feel to a lot of people.
@@3of11 yes, the old town of Charleston is great. Very walkable and would be an awesome place to live. Some parts are bike-unfriendly due to the very bumpy cobblestones! But once you know which streets you can avoid them. Also the drivers tend to be very patient, there are always slow-moving vehicles around (like horse and carriage tours) so drivers don't expect to get anywhere in a hurry! Unfortunately that part of town is very expensive to live in. You can find more affordable housing outside the old downtown but then you lose a lot of the walkability.
@Safwaan illinois has great roads. you know that?missouri sucks ohio is terrible. indiana is ok but getting ragged around the edges. i dont know a state that knows how to patch roads as seamlessly as illinois.
Pretty much the case everywhere I see. I moved to a small rural town that didn’t even have a police department. Now people found out about the cheap houses here, and immediately there’s so much traffic here. Our roads were not made to handle all this new traffic.
Not sure why this video and the Houston video showed up on my home page but I’m glad I did. Learned a lot in these two videos.
Fantastic series, thanks
Fascinating video, I'm so glad I left New York and returned to the west of Ireland 🇮🇪 . Healthier food, easier lifestyle and astounding scenery.
NYC is worse then ever now !
Plus the lovely Irish women of Ireland are the best women to be around with in the world 👌🏼
Well....you lived in new york lol. What's not even America, really.
Upstate, downstate (NYC)? That's such a broad statement it really does sound like you just didn't make the right moves there....Healthy food and scenery are choices IMO
@@artemiscool67 Born in Baltimore lived in Brooklyn for 10 years. Now I live in Houston. NYC is the greatest city on earth.
I read Strong Towns: A bottom-up revolution to build American prosperity after one of your previous videos. I now see that Strong Towns is also one of your Train patreons, so it seems like there is some mutualistic symbiosis going on there ;)
I really enjoyed this video and I feel like it did a great job of explaining the American suburban ponzi problem,
Yes, Strong Towns came in as a patron *just* as I was finalizing the Patreon graphic for this video. It is a bit weird as it makes it look like they sponsored this video, but of course they didn't: they've just found my content (and not just the Strong Towns videos) good at getting out their message.
I've been a big fan of Strong Towns for a long time, and I've been promoting them on reddit for at least 6 years already. I'm just glad that I have a platform here to share their content as well, because I think it's really important. You can't make a city truly great if it's financially insolvent.
how did you comment 4 days ago the video is 19 minutes old
@@Maussiegamer I think the video is released earlier for patrons
@@matthieuraynaud580 ok so you are saying that if i start a communiet revolution i would be able to see not just bikes videos earlier?
im in
@@Maussiegamer Sorry I wasn't clear enough. "Patrons" are what we usually call supporters on Patreon, the funding platform. Unless you were joking xD
Thank you for all your videos. They are truly eye opening.
You know, this explains a lot about why my creations kept failing in management games where you have to balance spending with profit and public opinion. 😅
"and the same goes for Canada too" - thank you for not leaving us out, thank you
Canada is just America with Healthcare lol
Dude. He's Canadian. That's why he noticed at all.
@@gromm93 I realized it later lol Canada maintains it's boring out of the news status then.
Mexico: sad noises.
Canada is better than America.
I love all of the stock footage of Kansas City. As a citizen of Kansas City, I can say that it really is much worse on a bike. Heaven forbid you try and actually walk!
Gues go to work on biky is not an option there.
I guess road bikes are not as popular in us then
@@petrfedor1851 hell no most jobs are far out anyway. 20min in cars
@@mattao313 Half of that time in trafic jam. Bikes can often take shorter road. Especialy in city.
@@petrfedor1851 nope 20min is traffic free on the highway
My employer going permanently remote lead to my exodus from the city. I now live in an unincorporated community in a mostly agricultural county. I have no desire to go back to living in an overpriced 500 square foot shit box with crime outside my window every night, awful public schools, traffic, congestion, etc. Though I am hardly the only person in the world with an all remote gig. This little town of 800 that probably has not had significant outside investment in decades now has a sign for a proposed subdivision off the highway they plan to break ground on. Very disheartening to say the least.
Clear, specific, coherent about suburbias built in dependency on eternal growth and eternally growing debt.
Funny thing is, it’s not just suburbia. It’s the entire economy.
Seeing the signage for a “Flaming Hot Cheetos Burrito” is what did it to me
@Steve Acho You get what you pay for, i doubt the food is healthy if it's that cheap. Processed, added sugar... But it's not like you have a choice, capitalism fucks everything in our lives if left uncontrolled enough like in the US. The food, housig, work, enviroment, everything degraded and minimal maintainance and investment because profit for the rich few comes first, as they're the major shareholders and wealthy people who have the power.
Fire Hot Cheetos sandwiches? Yeah, that’s that classic good ol’ hood eating we did growing up as a kid in the Southeastern US states 😂
What most watching won't realize is that it goes a lot deeper than just the basic ponzi scheme talked about here. It's one thing to say "it happened after WW2" and quite another to actually name names and look at the connections and motivations of those who led the charge.
Just subscribed. Very interesting and insightful
Here in Germany almost every village has small employment zones in the periphery and businesses along the main roads and their business taxes go to the village. That way it seems to work just fine.
Noone outside of America associates apple pie with America.
Yep, that's absolutely true. But Americans have a saying, "As American as apple pie." Even though Apple pie is Dutch.
@@NotJustBikes However, Dutch apple pie is not like American apple pie. At the risk of offending Dutchies.,not only do I prefer American apple pie, I dislike Dutch apple pie. (Ducks as chairs/ pie are thrown my way) /:
@@NotJustBikes lol
@@rebeccaalbrecht771 not throwing anything...
You can't question tastes
It's funny because both apples and pies are associated with English cultures but not apple pies. No justice.
When I became a citizen planning commissioner, one of the truisms I learned fairly quickly was that suburban residential development NEVER pays for itself (taxed on a fraction of actual value). Another problem that the Chamber of Commerce always fails to mention because it's related to the ever-increasing debt of the municipality in question is that the higher tax rates on commercial and industrial development are also based on a fraction of actual value, and that new commercial and industrial development is often partially financed through tax breaks, which further reduce municipal revenue. "Tax incentives" offered to businesses are essentially bribes, paid to the business in question by the city, and paid for by the other residents of the city.
What do you mean taxed on a fraction of actual value? I always found the city tax assessor to value property much higher than what the market calls for. What developments pay for themselves in your experience?
I also dont understand how a city trying to secure buisnesses by offering lower tax rates hurts if sales tax and additional income from workers offsets it. If you look at Texas and California as examples you can see how at the state level at least Texas is doing much better at the moment.
Why dont we just privatize education and have property taxes go solely into infastructure.
@@johnnyistoc5051 Your city assessor might err on the side of higher value, and thus higher taxes, but if so, your city is very much the exception. The most recent assessment for my house was about 55% of what realtors are telling me it's worth. "House flippers" routinely offer far more than the city-assessed value, and they intend to put a little money into it and make a nice profit on the resale. Undervaluing residential real estate has been the standard practice in each of the three metro areas I've lived in over the past 75 years. Why? Because NO ONE likes paying taxes. We all (including businesses) want the mythical "free lunch" of streets that don't cost anything, schools that are free, clean water we don't have to pay for, parks at no cost to ourselves, etc.
Commercial development comes much closer to paying its own way - one of the primary reasons why cities fall over themselves trying to attract commercial businesses, and perhaps THE primary reason why suburbs fight tooth-and-nail to have the latest/newest shopping area in THEIR suburb rather than the neighboring one. Alas, too often, the same suburb will shoot itself in the foot by offering tax breaks to the developer in the hope that, over the long term, taxes collected will be far more than taxes given up. That's a significant gamble that doesn't always work to the benefit of the city. Even without tax breaks, relying on sales taxes can become catastrophic if/when the economy goes south and people stop spending, as nearly happened in the pandemic.
Privatizing education puts us back to the days of the country's founding, when the only people with an education were the relatively wealthy who could afford to hire teachers/tutors. Everyone else largely remained ignorant and illiterate. Good luck maintaining a technological society on that basis…
Anyone ever calculate what fraction of inefficiencies are responsible for the high costs of maintaining infrastructure.
You don't have an unlimited amount of money to waste as a city.
It wouldn't matter how much they get it will never be enough because in most cases they are incompetent idiots.
@@rayschoch5882 Back in the day many children attended Catholic schools which were very cheap. I am aware of 2 private religious schools around a 15 mile radius of where I live that costs around 5000 a year to attend.
It's not cheap but when you consider property taxes in my area are around 6 to 9 thousand it makes you wonder why you cant opt out of public education and simply deduct whatever private tuition would be from property taxes. There could still be public schools but it would give parents more choice. The current system as it is, is doing a very poor job of educating children for today's technical society.
@@bondjames652 in the South before the Civil War the people living here wer some of the most educated people on planet Earth and there were no Public Schools. It takes very little money to educate someone correctly. The government forces the parent to put their children in school or go to prison that should be your first clue. Them the government schools poison the children's mine with a bunch of crap and that takes a lot of money to do.
But a suburb with no public transport and nothing but identical houses keeps at distance all the **ethnicity** out there (#Sarcasm).
Just became a Strong Towns member and bought the book.
Most of Rome, Italy is small neighborhoods that have pretty much all you need within a short walk. A backpack is handy. If for some reason you need something from farther away a cheap cab ride gets it done.
Rome is stagnant and dirty and corrupt. And you can't build in any case because the Kingdom, Republic, or Empire are under every shovel-full of dirt.
@@Peter_Schiavo And America isn't? And good, no grubby people to buy up the land and put useless shit there.
I love driving.
@@lukasrojko5455 I doubt you’d love it in places where there is grid lock.
Cheap cab @ Italy? You must be kidding.
Ah yes. I remember playing Sim City as a kid, not knowing how to play.
My towns ended up just like these examples with roads straight up disappearing
Great channel. Subscribed.
Interesting video.
And a small observation about "USA-vs-Denmark"; when you (rather seldom) see one of those huge american SUVs or pickup trucks on the streets here, they simply seem out of place, size-wise.
Like they were not really built for foreign markets, exept maybe Canada, Australia and the Gulf states.
I mean they are good in rural areas, I see them all the time in Latin America but yeah most of the time they don't really work well in cities.
Funny story (well, at least to me): I lived in the UK for nearly 8 years, working for the US government on a military base. Because of this, we also were able to import American cars. My wife and I had a 4-cyl Ford Escape at the time. We regularly would get comments from Brits on our "big american car", even though it was literally the same size as the Ford Kuga (which was seen as sensible). Even had it said once when I was parked next to a much larger Range Rover.
This makes so much sense. In my city, all of the credible shopping areas, restaurants, and malls are in the suburbs. They seem to be well off, but they are struggling just like the rest of us. They opened a new mall 10 years ago, but they built the newer 3 miles down the same street. It takes all of 7 to 10 years for the original mall to be filled with Dollar Trees, antique stores, and the newest hair salon. None of which revenue goes into the main city.
The solution is to stop worrying about 'revenue into the main city'. Private industries should be allowed to thrive regardless of how the government is doing. Believe it or not, we'd do just fine if the government stopped maintaining infrastructure and handed it off to private industry.
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago that wasn’t expensive when I was a kid but got gentrification within the last 20 or so years. But it was always very walkable. Seems like a lot of the older suburbs that developed along the railroad lines are that way. People all over town walk or bike to the train and are downtown in 20 minutes or so. You could live without a car. Property taxes all over Illinois are insane. But because of gentrification I couldn’t afford to live in the town I grew up in. Moved to a modern sub-division ex-urb semi-rural. It’s quiet. Got a house twice the size of the house I grew up in for half the price. The new suburbs are growing along the interstate rather than the railroad. Can’t walk anywhere in a short time. But with remote work and door delivery it’s kind of irrelevant and I’ve rarely gone back to the city for anything. I got used to it. But give it 10 years it might get congested out here too. The problem is AFFORDABLE HOUSING. That pushes people out of cities even if they want to live somewhere walkable. Doesn’t Matter how you design it if working people can’t afford it.
Agenda/ideal driven people always create new problems with their solutions... to which they'll be there with NEW solutions... that then beget new problems and so forth. For example, their plan to push people back to urban areas will result in rapidly increasing housing costs, which they'll then subsidize... that subsidization will then increase taxes and/or debt and reduce homeownership... which they'll then have an expensive program to address... which will result in higher taxes... which will eventually result in people at the higher end of the income scale and their businesses fleeing to lower tax suburbs (or states)... which will result in reduced tax revenue and blight... which the people who made this video will then blame on capitalists and people who want a better life rather than bloated, inefficient government, high taxes and the results of their own crappy and short-sighted plans.
@@derekrichards2859 Worse, as you see with college in the US, subsidies raise the cost because these crooked parties figure they can charge even more than any reasonable, non-subsidized market would allow.
You mean property taxes around Chicagoland area... because southern Illinois has low property taxes. But why move there? Right? Lol
@@cabron247 the only thing wrong with southern IL is lack of jobs. But also when population increases the taxes get raised to put in infrastructure that people want that wasn’t there before. Remote working might allow more people to live out there though.
Good points. I think remote working is going to change this whole debate. People will be able to choose to live further from big cities, but not have to commute back to them for work, reducing the strain on infrastructure.
Great video this is extremely interesting information.... but I have to ask - how are cities any different?
Not to mention, every other infrastructure cost increases superlinearly in relation to the area size of the city. Water lines and fire department are much easier to finance when the city is denser.
This is why whenever there is a boom in a small town, the people that have lived in it, hate when new wealthy out of state people move in. Where I live they have Mostly moved from California and Washington, and especially the clueless Texas. It is so bad that if you have lived and worked here. You can not afford to live here. They have killed our markets and all the natives are hoping and praying they all go Broke and lose everything. Lots of hate.
@@impeach4666 yeah
It's pretty sad. They are all pretty clueless to themselves and their actions.
Gentrification
@@Jasondirt It is simple economics. The prices go up much more in the big cities, so people leave to cheaper areas.
@@darrynfrost3401 there is a difference between a slower natural growth and what is happening now. When wages can't match the increase in the cost of living it has massive problems. I get it you guys got your money. But you miss or ignored so many problems that are created just because of greed. For one instance where I live. The county wanted more tax money. So they Used eminent domain took land that wasn't for sale.. Put cheap houses on it.. Sold those houses for way way more than they were worth. Small town wages can't afford new buffet economics. This house are built by unskilled workers. Who will work for less. Now the houses are made cheap and at t times unsafe. Not enough insulation, bad wiring and bad plumbing. Septic systems leak into water tables. Or to many people drill wells to close and dry them up. That's just one aspect. Local wildlife to local small businesses all get killed off. Less jobs. Less choice. More government. If everything came up slowly and matched its normal and good usually. Last time we had this senerios happen it led to a giant Recession. Bad for everyone except those at the very top.
@@Jasondirt Thats not the problem of the citizens who leave though. Its the problem because of the American Monetary system that mostly affected cities, but now is affecting suburbs. Everything becomes more expensive, but the wages stay relatively the same as they were, because America is build on a money making society rather than taking care of the citizens. Its only getting worse if America doesn't change their ways. What Americans don't realize, is that most European countries look down upon America (And the USA specifcally) as if its a third-world country and start to not take USA seriously anymore due to all their problems.
Basically, the USA us devolving instead of evolving, which is a problem, because its entirely focus on its industry rather than the people living in the country.
A lot of Americans are also Brainwashed (If that is the right word even), in thinking American Way is the best way, until they go abroad to Europe (If they can even afford to do so, which is the other issue, due to the wage issue), which then opens their eyes the American Way isn't the best way.
Kind of strange how close Ponzi schemes are to fractional reserve banking.
Because of the debt based system it is. Fractional reserve banking isn’t when Money is used and not fiat currency.
I don't see the resemblance
@@duckhuntergaming4713 when you deposit money in a fractional reserve bank, they only keep some of the money in the vault. the rest is given to other people when they withdraw money. this is similar to a ponzi scheme. the two big differences between the two are that banks give loans while scammers take loans, and that fractional reserve banks create money in the form of tradeable IOUs. this puts more money into circulation and allows a bank to functuon even when people are withdrawing money faster than theyre depositing.
@@lotionman1507 I know how it works, I still don't see the resemblance, when you add everything up including debt, the bank hasn't created any money at all, it has found a way to rip everyone off with interest, but that's it.
@@duckhuntergaming4713 thats true, no net money has been created since its balanced by debt, but theres more money in circulation, and that stays the case until the debt is repaid. but thats beside the point. the connection is that both take your money and give it to someone else.
I live in a city that can't afford to fix our streets.