10 Suburbs That Are Becoming More City-Like
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
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Suburbs are often seen as anti-urban, or at the very least sub-urban. But as many of our central cities become increasingly unaffordable, some suburbs are starting to behave more like cities. Which ones? Let's find out!
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TOp TEN CITIES moving away from Giant Squar buildings.. Everything looks like a Warehouse
Progressive gaming circles are what made me an urbanist, your love for the dreamcast is the only thing preventing me from being truly offended by your sunnyvale comments lol
Topic idea: Cities that created coherent mixed-use "second downtowns" such as The Domain in Austin TX, Las Colinas in Irving TX, or Legacy Town Center in Plano TX. My examples are Texas-centric because they're closest to me (geographically).
I am still trying to locate my Dreamcast. It's probably in storage at my parents' house due to the numerous moves in the 25 years since release.
Mister nerd, I suggest an Orange County California on location video. Specifically Irvine and Orange to highlight the vast differences between two cities that are basically neighbors to each other.
It's not an accident that so many of these cities are in California. New California legislation is literally forcing cities to build more housing or else they risk fines and other penalties. The law actually sets a number of new units each city is required to build by a particular year in order to remain compliant with the law.
This is forcing formerly suburban places like Irvine, Calabasas, and Rancho Cucamonga to add mixed-use developments to their housing stock. The results will be interesting to see.
I strongly recommend staying off of the local NextDoor app, though, because holy cannoli, the NIMBY screams can be deafening.
Two laws going into effect this year will also affect urban form in California. One directly by forbidding the enforcement of parking minimums within a half mile of major transit. This includes all of the Caltrain, BART and Metrolink stations in the Bay Area and the LA area. The other forbids parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk, even an implied crosswalk at an intersection with no markings. This will make street parking rarer and make walking and biking safer hopefully helping to encourage more use of non car modes.
That last one is likely to cause some economic fallout as many California cities have come to rely on paid street parking for part of their budget and this will remove multiple spaces on most blocks. Sacramento, for example, has been using its parking revenue to pay off its share of the loans to build the downtown arena. They are already having a post pandemic drop in those that’s been impacting their general fund. This will accelerate that decline.
@@NotaSeaBass I have mixed feelings because they're not totally misguided. In California, our 2 models for "urbanism" are San Francisco and Los Angeles. And if that's your only concept/experiecne of urbanism, I don't blame you for not wanting it in your safe, clean suburb. I think the best way to soothe the NIMBYs is to show them a working model of urbanism. Clean urban places that are also safe exist in Japan and Europe. But they don't exist in the US, which is a major PR problem if you're trying to spread urbanism into the suburbs.
@@kidtrunks2568 They don't exist in the US? Oh, no! You'd better not say that to The Domain, Legacy Town Center, Kentlands/Lakelands, Orenco Station, or any of the dozens of other fine examples of clean, safe, and thoroughly functional "suburban urbanism" right here in the USA -- they might just vanish in a tremendous puff of molecular dust when presented with your superior facts and logic! 🤣🤣🤣
@@dylanryall One way cities could mitigate some of the losses from parking income would be to take a few stroads and put them on a road diet by putting in diagonal parking instead of parallel parking. This would allow more cars in a smaller space and help reduce speeds and can all be achieved with paint initially. It also allows for the expansion of the sidewalk near crossings in the long term, reducing the length of the crosswalk and making them even safer.
I love the extra touch of placing Chicago's 6-pointed star in your graph at 2:00 for Chicago, whereas the other cities have the typical 5-pointed star.
It's the little things
Dear Jeffrey, have you ever looked at a Chicago flag? It’s not a five star it’s a six always has been four stars six points each star has a meaning.
Don't miss the main headline about Mountain View, CA -- we just opened up a pedestrain mall and re-discovered our downtown (Castro St!). I am happy to see California suburbs embracing some walkability. Hard to see from Street View though, since Google can't drive its cars down that road anymore.
Hopefully they're able to send someone with a car/bike/on foot: that seems to be their preferred streetview option for NY & other dense areas
Grew up in Mountain View and while I agree the downtown is getting far better. Its suburbs are still a transit desert and they haven’t allowed more housing downtown at all. It’s still surrounded by single family homes and a few 2-3 story apartment complexes. I’d argue Sunnyvale is much more ambitious with Citylines which spurred after the old mall was demolished.
Edit: forgot to mentioned San Antonio center which borders Palo Alto. While it’s great to have a lot more of your day to day needs within walking distance it has far too many vacant storefronts and is clearly car oriented still. give it 10-15 years to mature I suppose. Only real transit is Caltrain though. VTA buses can keep trying I guess but they need more effective transit. Nothing yet rivals the 5-10 min frequencies across muni in SF.
I was just there on Castro and it seemed dead and 1/3 of the stores closed permanently
redwood city and mountain view and sunnyvale all suck for the same reason: El Camino Real. It may be a road for the royals (cars) but it sure ain't a road for humans. And each little city wants to exert its control on that road so it's never safe for pedestrians.
Google Street View has cameras mounted on people and bikes for those car-free areas. Eventually the area will show an update.
There’s an active campaign to restore Santa Clara’s lost downtown that was obliterated by urban renewal. A citizen-led campaign has resulted in a plan being approved by city council in December 2023. They’re adopting a form-based code and zoning for mixed use. It’s a remarkable story. The campaign only began three years ago.
That’s so awesome to hear. I wish there were efforts like this when I was still in school there. I remember it being borderline impossible to go anywhere off-campus without a car back then. South Bay literally has so much wasted potential
Incredible! I'm moving to the area for work and was really saddened by how obliterated Santa Clara was by "urban renewal", but hadn't been made aware of any efforts to reverse it. This comment makes me much more hopeful for the area as a long term place to settle down in.
I've followed that group and given up, it's fractured into two competing factions and the low-intensity NIMBYs seem to be winning.
@@combusean suffering continues.
Is there any project name or key phrases I could use to google for more information?
CityNerd being a Sega kid explains so much.
Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, currently has a higher skyline than Vancouver and is outpacing it in terms of skyscraper construction by an extremely high degree. Now Surrey and Coquitlam want to do the same, and they're even farther out suburbs. Surrey is actually going to have a higher population than Vancouver within a few years, and there's something like over a hundred towers planned for what will be the GVRD's second CBD around the skytrain corridor from Gateway to King George. That's not to mention the utterly massive multi-billion dollar developments of Oakridge, Fleetwood, Fraser Mills, Lougheed, Burquitlam, Lansdowne, and Clayton. With the smallest of those developments being Oakridge at a mere 3300 units and the largest of those developments being Lougheed at 10,000 units, it's going to be fascinating to see our geographically small metro region basically Manhattanize within the next decade or so.
This sounds amazing and too good to be true. Would love to see it and live there as well if it includes bike and pedestrian infrastructure
And Capstan station in Richmond!
@@theblondebomber Some are better than others, but a lot are still in development, leaving many stroads and parking lots in the areas. Every large development in planning and development in Vancouver is pedestrian, cycling, and transit focused, including Oakridge, Jericho, Heather, and Senakw. As you move out, there are varying degrees of success. Brentwood has some pretty great high density mixed use areas, but they're broken up by stroads. Surrey City Center is coming along but it still looks like a bit of a wasteland just beyond the skytrain stations. Coquitlam Center and Lougheed are pretty promising, while Port Moody on a whole is really coming along nicely. There are already three major urban centers outside of downtown Vancouver that have built themselves up to a very similar degree. These would be Metrotown, Lonsdale, and New Westminster - all of which have great walking, cycling, and transit, while really being held back by annoying overcrowded stroads and parking lots.
@@amydothi I also forgot Jericho, the Heather Lands, Westbrook Village, Senaqw, The False Creek Flats, The Oak Lands, the skytrain enactment areas under the new provincial TOD plan, and the Broadway plan. I'm pretty sure there are well over 500k units of housing in the GVRD with those that I missed, and I'm probably forgetting even more. There are too many.
Vancouver's region is such an outlier in North America, IMO it also helps being in Canada particularly now.
I feel like most of Richardson's reasons can be completely explained by the explosive growth of the student population of UT-Dallas located in Richardson, TX.
I lived there car-free between for 4 years between 2019 and 2023 while doing my undergrad and so did a lot of other students especially International ones who sometimes even lived off campus and commuted to school using the DART buses, which are free for UTD students and the 883 Bus (a.k.a The Comet Cruiser) is likely the highest ridership bus in the whole system.
Hey I also did my undergrad there! I came here to say basically the same thing. Richardson isn't a college town - the economy and population aren't dominated by UTD by any imagination - but the student body went from ~17,000 in 2010 to ~31,500 in 2022, compared to Richardson's 2021 total population of 116,382.
The university has a large international student body who walk or take the bus more than the average metroplex resident.
Richardson and UTD specifically are also getting stops on the new silver line that will bypass downtown and end at DFW. It will also be beneficial because it will connect Richardson to other urban areas like Addison and downtown Carrollton. The Addison Circle neighborhood is already pretty dense with some mixed use and many offices accessible to the Addison station.
0:00 Suburbs really are a sort of limbo for so many people. There are people who want to live in the city, but can’t afford it. Then there are the people who want to live in a rural area, but can’t find work.
Everybody can afford the cities, it's just they think they are better than class C efficiencies in rundown urban neighborhoods.
@@pavelow235 There are definitely trade-offs. People often live in places that may not have the highest quality of housing stock because they like neighborhood (you know the phrase). There are also many people that struggle to afford housing no matter where it is located.
@@pavelow235any proof to provide that the city is more affordable? That’s not dangerous!
I tend not to agree, from a Belgian-European perspective. We had tons of suburbanisation here in the 50's to 80's (no wonder some important places in Antwerp were named to American presidents..) and it still didn't really shift today. many people WANT to live in a place where they can have their consumerism-car driven lifestyle without getting into "the dirty immigrant downtown city". We have TONS of stroads, although mostly just two lanes, cutting through the countryside but giving that typical suburban feeling watching to both sides of it, "rope housing" they call it here. People just WANT to live there, having the illusion they live on the countryside looking to the fields behind their backyard, but at the same time the illusion they live almost in the city when they take their car from their driveway in the front. Believe me, it's soul crushing to drive in suburban Belgium on rush hour or on shopping saturday, but many people don't seem to care. Stroad shops make publicity with how easily accessible they are...
@@touwenwaterman1229 I don’t know which group is in the majority, but a lot of people like the way they live because that is the way they grew up. Why do some people put ketchup on certain foods while others use mayonnaise? 🍟
Downtown Richardson is definitely a fun spot that the town seems intent on revitalizing and invigorating. It looks like they're really trying to densify the area near 75, and not to mention that Richardson's Chinatown is an amazing spot (and to think how much better it could be if the giant parking lot was converted into a pedestrian square)
A few times a year it does get pedestrianized! The Chinese Community Center will host festivals and markets and it's delightful. We really really need a rethink of Greenville Ave, those bikes lanes don't cut it.
Just moved out of CityLine, agree with this, Richardson has a lot of things they are doing right, the densification and the multicultural aspects make it feel way more urban than North Dallas/Park Cities areas that are actually in Dallas Proper. Plus the DART stations in CityLine and downtown historic Plano make getting around easy. I definitely see that pocket of 75 v George Bush turning into a semi-urban environment.
I just wish DART had built a stop right at or next to the historic downtown Richardson. I’d take those over Arapaho or Spring Valley that are big parking lots.
I can't wait until the Silver Line is done too. I live a stone's throw from UTD and work walking distance from the DART station in Carrollton. The dream of a nondriving commute is so close. Yet so far.@@jasonmcbride4847
That is interesting. I am in DFW quite a bit and still have family in Plano, but I haven't been to Richardson in years. I will definitely have to check it out next time I'm there.
The bay area suburb urbanization is real. I’m sure a lot of it is being driven by work from home, but I went to school in between redwood city and Mountain View, and I’ve watched all of the suburbs along the Caltrain slowly develop. Unfortunately there’s a long long way to go on housing affordability, but hopefully the new state laws going into affect will accelerate this. I have so much hope for the Bay Area becoming an urbanist hotspot (not just SF)
Sounds like White Flight 2.0 urban San Francisco is tainted, so the developers just duplicate the buildings miles south. Why not leave the suburbs alone (or return to forests) and repair the San Francisco core. That is where the original infrastructure is. Plenty of available building sites that can support supertalls....
@@pavelow235SF Residents said the same thing just in the opposite direction. That SF is full and you should not move to the city. Go live in the suburbs. Now because all Suburb land in commuting distance is taken up, the only way to add more people is to build up. The solution is to build up everywhere in the bay. If you claim Not In My Backyard the place you propose to build instead will claim the same thing. Like it or not everywhere is densifying.
@@sasquatchanbearhunter I don't know what "full" means in your context, but San Francisco is nothing like Manhattan and is emptier than it was 5 years ago, yet it could support that if the local government would make the quality of life a more prominent issue. Instead you have Whites running away from homeless and drugs and duplicating San Francisco style density 15 miles south. Fix the city and concentrate growth there instead. Leave the suburbs alone, that means less humans live the suburban way and less Teslas driving back and forth between San Jose and San Francisco. Got to get "machines" off the road and get people walking and biking ONLY. Can only do that by concentrating on the core.
@@pavelow235 Don't know why it has to be either / or. San Francisco can certainly work on its undeniable quality of life issues by further densifying and constructing more mixed use / mixed income developments leading to more affordable housing and getting more homeless off the streets in sweeping new "housing first" initiatives. But the suburbs can densify as well, leading to more, yes, affordable housing which is always a plus in a democratic society. Densification will also lead to greater cultural amenities as denser environments can support more world class museums, galleries and unique shopping environments so quality of life can go up in the suburbs as well. Win-win.
@@guydreamr Because eventually suburbs of the suburbs will develop in 50 years, that is the easy answer. Urban Sprawl is what you're describing. Tell me how many buildings over in San Francisco over 50 stories??....would you believe there is only 5.....there should be 155....San Francisco is underbuilt and promoting growth in other regions just allows the richer folks to look away from the problems of the city and pretend they don't exist. This is the same logic Levitt used when he built tract housing in a potato field far away from Manhattan. Stop kicking the can down the road.
Richardson is being intentional about transit and active transportation. As an inner ring suburb it benefits from cheaper housing that is well located to jobs in in Dallas, Plano, and Frisco. While not always next to transit, more apartments usually mean opportunities for people to live close to work. Additionally, Richardson is more diverse than many Dallas suburbs.
Born and raised in Redwood City. So cool to see it change throughout the years. Both my grandmothers moved to downtown Redwood City from Southern California about five years ago and it has been great for them to be in a walkable place, they seem so much happier and healthier now. I also find it really easy to ride my bike downtown to go see them. I would love to see you make a more in depth video about my hometown! I think a lot could be learned from the progressive city planning going on.
12:45 CA passed a law abolishing parking minimums within a certain proximity to transit. No way that would already have accounted for this spike though, since it only came into effect last year.
A few cities here in Oregon did that same abolishing (or at least easing) pretty recently, and a surprising amount of housing has already went up in all those places that weren't big enough for a lot of apartments with a high parking requirement.
Interesting to see which suburbs are becoming almost their own cities over in North America, here in Australia and more specifically Sydney we have multiple examples of this where small satellite cities are popping up around major shopping and transport routes, Parramatta and Liverpool being the biggest 2 examples of this
Greetings from Mountain View. We are truly not used to being mentioned. I do wish you had focused a bit on our very small but vibrant downtown on pedestrianized Castro Street with its emphasis on independent restaurants. Also, I carried mail in Redwood City decades ago and it has gotten much better.
Was a kid in Redwood City in the early nineties. Over the past 3 decades it has transformed more than almost anywhere in the Bay Area. Downtown was completely dead back then, except for a few businesses (shoutout to defunct pizza and pipes!) Now incredibly vibrant for a suburb and the density has expanded significantly beyond the few blocks of heritage downtown.
Sooooo true, I visited in 2022 and noticed that
I grew up nearby in Palo Alto and remember calling it “Deadwood City”. Definitely a huge improvement, even in the last decade. Sucks that the fun stuff like Malibu is gone though.
Redwood City is going to be the next big city in the Bay. I’d like marin, or Napa to grow but the wealthy homeowners there would fight tooth and nail to prevent that.
Density is the only way to make a downtown vibrant. You can't keep nagging the few residents to keep coming to your restaurants. Raise the number of residents 10-fold and those bars and restaurants will keep their doors open.
the new development of the shopping center that the safeway is in is gonna be really great!
I think Haddonfield, NJ deserves an HM. It is right on the PATCO high speed line to Philadelphia, and is a quiet, walkable community with lots of great restaurants and other things to do.
some of the NYC suburbs in Nassau and Westchester are allowing a lot of apartment construction close to commuter rail
Cool to see my hometown of Redwood City 1st on this list! Redwood City has grown so much in the last couple of years, and I hope the downtown would expand onto the lot of Sequoia Station and to completely redo that area.
I used to work at LinkedIn and I visited the Mountain View campuses about 2 years ago. I can attest they are indeed bike-friendly. In fact, there are rideshare bikes available to all employees to ride in between campuses. There are even free food trucks along the way if you want a snack!
Richardson, Texas resident here happy to be contributing to the city’s decreased car usage. I live with my brother, and we only have one car that we share between us. He works from home, and I take the DART to get to my college classes most days. We still have to drive to get to the DART station and a few other places, but we’ve worked it out in our schedules such that we don’t have much of a need for a second car.
re: biking in MTV. Google was threatened with extra taxes from Mountain View due to excessive car traffic. Google has a lot of programs to subsidize employees biking to work, including free e-bike rentals and a free basic commuter bike if the employee agrees to commute by bicycle a certain number of days per month. google also offers free bicycle repair for simple issues and built out secured employees-only bicycle parking, lockers, and showers.
The first city that I thought of when starting this video was the #1 city on your list! The downtown has built A LOT of 5-8 story residential buildings and even more are on the way. It’s been the most pro-nimby city in the bay, but many cities are poised to follow suit in the next decade as you commented about because they have upzoned their urban areas around their transit stations: Emeryville, Berkeley, Millbrae, South San Francisco.
Suburbs, and more specifically the Single Family home planning style, is like a Swiss army knife of housing. They can do things that rural and urban environments can do, but they're terrible at all of them
As someone who used to bike commute through Santa Clara on those stroads, it is not a particularly safe (or enjoyable) ride.
Since you're headed to SLO next month, some great things to do/see: Thursday night farmers market downtown, Poly Canyon architectural village (Cal Poly architect student projects you can walk through), take a trip to Los Osos and hit up Sylvester's for burgers and fried mushrooms, Hearst Castle tour if you have time, Avila Beach, and finally Firestones for a tri-tip sandwich and seasoned fries, expensive but totally worth it.
I would have thought of Evanston Illinois or Arlington Virginia being mentioned. If Canada were mentioned, Mississauga, Ontario would have blown it out of the ballpark (which would be worthy of a separate video, if it has not been done already).
Yeah lmao more people live in Mississauga than live in most US core cities
Vancouver WA is an interesting case: their downtown is rapidly densifying and just improving in general while the rest of the city is incredibly sprawled and strip mall dominated.
I wish the state would pass laws to encourage (or force) density. I live in Bremerton and all we’re getting is still just car oriented development, and the occasional bike lane.
I feel like some Canadian suburbs are practically citirs due to transit connections like Peel Region’s Brampton and Mississauga that connects to Toronto and will have their own LRT system soon or Surrey and Burnaby, with the Skytrain and Rapidbus connection. Though practically they are cities with the population and growing high density development around urban areas and transit stations.
I'm curious what the data looks like for Canadian "suburbs". Metrotown and Brentwood in Burnaby, BC are essentially two separate downtowns in a "surburb" that rival a lot of American city downtowns in terms of density and walkability.
New legislation from the BC government regarding increased density around rapid transit stops will only increase this phenomenon.
I'm from Mississauga and very surprised by the transformations of the various neighborhoods in the city. My old stomping grounds of Cooksville, Port Credit, Lakeview, and the City Centre look much more lively and urbanized.
Mississauga used to be a suburb, but now its officially a city and almost 1.5 million residents. (like how the City of Toronto and City of Hamilton are cities)
@@amouryf Mississauga is not 1.5 million, I think you’re talking about Peel Region. Cause Brampton is like almost 700k that means Mississauga is at least 700k the.
@@TheRandCrews Mississauga is about to reach 1.5 million
Thank you for my daily dose of urbanity sanity.
Biking in silicon valley means you have nothing left to live for
One reason there are so many SF peninsula cities on this list is that they are all rail suburbs originating around Caltrain stations. Unlike most suburban cities that removed the rail systems that initiated their development, the peninsula has kept its rail service and is now growing the service. The peninsula rail line (Caltrain) is 160 years old this week, I believe the oldest rail service in the west. Most of the peninsula cities listed have very nice walkable (15 minute city) downtowns build around these rail stations rather than the massive parking lots surrounding most BART stations. The peninsula is an example of the potential former trolley suburbs in LA could be if the trolleys were never removed.
Everyone knows there are still massive housing issues in the Bay Area. Caltrain is almost complete with its electrification. Combined with the new schedules with increased, faster service, the beautiful new electric Stadler trains will bring frequent rail service. This high quality transit combined with state housing requirements will further urbanize and densify cites around these train station centered downtowns to help alleviate the housing shortage and allow growth without car dependency.
When I saw the title, I thought of Bellevue, WA. Full of skyscrapers, it looks like an extension of Seattle, only with fewer panhandlers.
In Canada: Mississauga, Vaughan, Surrey, Burnaby… and so many more…
6:06 being hyper pedantic, but the routing on this map is wrong. The pienza cul de sac has an opening which reduces the estimated distance from .6 to .38 miles. Still incredibly inefficient because the other two are closed, but much less than the one shown.
Based take on the Sega Dreamcast. It just came out a year too early. If it had DVD capabilities it wouldn't have been beat out by the PS2. The game library was phenomenal with several games that punched way above the weight class of that generation of consoles. It pushed the envelope in every way it could. The VMU with mini games, keyboard and mouse support, a web browser, online gaming, broadband capabilities in the time of dialup being the most common internet connection, etc. I still have mine. The OG controllers still have no drift issues current gen controllers get because it had hall effect sticks back in '99.
I used to live not so far from Lynwood CA. And yes it is dense and everyone drives and everyone takes public transportation. It is just that dense. Along with its other surrounding cities South Gate, Huntington park, Bell and so forth.
Fun Fact: Weird Al Yankovich was born and raised in Lynwood. lol
In general, walkability is good among NJ Cities along the Hudson river on the other side of Manhattan
I suspect Hoboken and Jersey City only didn't make this list because they were already very urbanist, and therefore had less room for improvement.
I grew up in Mount Vernon NY and interesting to see on this list. Mount Vernon has had a long troubled history of crime and systemic oppression. It has slowly been getting better the past decade. Much of the souhthern Westchester area is becoming less and less suburb and more their own urban centers, Mt Vernon, New Rochelle and Yonkers. Although Mount Vernon has always been an extension of the Bronx in many traits. Most people from Mount Vernon work jobs in The Bronx and Manhattan if not in MV itself. Most are lower middle class citizens working typical jobs to that wealth range but there is still.high unemployment concentrated in the more impovershed south end.
as a resident from Irvine, it has definitely become more city like in the past 5 years, but there is the takeover of teslas going on
Finally someone that understands the travesty of discontinuing the Dreamcast!!! I will follow this man to ends of the Earth!!!
Re: Mount Vernon: all busses are free of charge in the summers and two weeks around Christmas and New Years which has "dramatically increased ridership". Also the new mayor of Mount Vernon has restored the faith of many people in the city, more trust in public systems generally.
I grew up around St. Cloud and I've definitely seen some progress, but fairly recently they clear cut a park forest in order to build a costco so idk... They even tore out the $1 million skate park that was there so that they could big a slightly larger parking lot and rebuilt a new skatepark across the street. Wasteful destruction encouraged by the city.
Most of St Cloud's growth is still suburban style greenfield conversion at its municipal fringes, because that's all most of the city can imagine as "new housing".
This is CityNerds most nonsensical list he has ever put out.
The suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth
Everey heard of Fairfax County,, VA? It's been getting urbanized for the past 40 years, ever since the DC Metro arrived. Arlington County (next door), the smallest county in the US, has been completely urbanized for even longer.
Sega Dreamcast! I agree, that was such an amazing console... Miss that one a lot.
Car prices, including for used cars, are way up post COVID. Some folks are getting priced out of cars as well, much is likely showing up in some of the numbers.
as a clevelander my guess for parma is that it's an inner-ring suburb and all the richer people who can afford multiple cars are moving out? a little anecdotal but in the same period the poverty rate in parma went from 8% to 11%, and that + the huge drop in car commuting from wfh probably explains a huge amount of it
Tyson, VA, Reston, VA and Alexandria, VA all have potential. With Hi rises being built and planned over there since there's too many development restrictions in Alrlington and DC.
DC region invented the urban suburb.....CityNerd really missed the mark on this list. He must have just been throwing a darts at a dartboard....
Agree! Not including the DMV is a big miss here
8:42 I've been lobbying my local government that neighbors Union City, to connect bike lanes to theirs for years. Weehawken is probably the NIMBYest town in Hudson County, though, so nothing good ever gets done here.
Being from mountain view, it definitely is a place that feels less suburb, more city, but only in some parts. It DOES have good bicycle infrastructure, especially north of downtown, but it still has a lot of work to do, especially on el camino
re: Lynwood, CA. I'm guessing the increase in car ownership is due to demographics of the area. It's a working class, heavily immigrant and Latino area. This particular demographic has seen large growth in car ownership rates over the past decade or so as incomes have risen and more people are able to afford a car.
Actually, it's a great segue into a topic I'd really be interested in seeing a video on: there's some research that shows that car ownership for poor and working class people dramatically improves livelihoods (give it a Google and you can probably dig your way into the primary sources). This is probably more due to lackluster public transit alternatives, but I'd love to hear your take on what seems to be a fundamental tension in the urbanist community: making cars plentiful for more people makes a big improvement in individuals' lives, especially where public transit isn't getting enough support; but further incentivizing car use among the primary users of public transit could accelerate a demise of public transit.
“Usually white” had me rolling
Hey richardson got a shoutout!
Yeah richardson and frisco have both exoanded a lot.
Richardson has UT Dallas which is also growing
Plus the new line from the airport is gonna open soonish so itll probably continue growing.
The vibe is not wholly office parks squished against a small mainstreet, but there is a lot like that. Theres a surprising number of bike lanes
I was wondering if you could look at the city Macon, Ga. With a lot of new building, major highway “improvements” tons of urban blight and the possibility of Georgia’s first national park there is a lot to look at. Also, how cities of similar size comparison. Thanks for your city planning nerdism it makes understanding city planning palatable.
The only complication with this video is that Macon existed as a town before Atlanta, and it is at least an hour outside of a county considered part of the metro. What is curious with Macon is how the Warner Robins area has almost matched Macon in population almost like a twin city small metro.
@@davidmatheny1993 absolutely about WR. However, WR lacks the "downtown" that Macon has currently. WR is grappling with this idea now, I do not think they will be very successful with creating such a space. WR would not exist without the small Air Force base there. WR is all suburban sprawl from the gates of the AFB outwards.
@@Ekib-Niatnuom Yeah WR has a weird setup. It just kinda kept spreading south and west from the small area at the end of Watson Blvd. that was the downtown of WR. Bonaire, Centerville and Kathleen were their own towns but are now being enveloped by building for WR. The spread is to where it already connects with Perry without being able to tell you left a city.
Tempe, AZ has become a lot more urban in the last decade! There’s even a brand new car free community
that fence to school pun is crazy 😂😂😂
You hit the nail on the head when talking about tech office parks. Google's campus is intentionally quasiwalkable because Sergey Brin wanted it that way - he wanted it laid out like a college campus so that employees would always feel like they were still learning. There's plenty of inter- / intra-campus shuttles, bikes (GBikes) for getting around campus, and wide sidewalks.
Sunnyvale is converting their sterile office park into a huge, 3.5 sq km mixed-use development straddling multiple VTA light rail stops. Look up their 300+ page Moffett Park Specific Plan, it's exciting!
Redwood City's small downtown is somewhat walkable and is fun to stroll around. They've pedestrianized a street lined with shops and restaurants not too far from the Caltrain station. All trains stop at Redwood City, and being a baby bullet stop means you're an equidistant 35 minutes (soon to be under 30 minutes with electrification) from either San Francisco or San Jose.
When I started the video, I immediately thought of Redwood City. It has had such a noticeable boom in development and has been less impacted by Nimbyism than a lot of its nearby counterparts. I grew up in a different suburb further up the peninsula and have referred to Redwood City as a model for what our downtown should try to emulate.
I would add Mesa, AZ if there was a top 20 list. Valley metro light rail connects downtown Mesa to downtown Phoenix and the airport, with direct bus connections to the valley’s core as well. High-density housing springing up all along the light rail there. Arizona is getting it together.
Don’t forget Tempe, though it was an honorable mention in the college town video
Off the wall suggestion but could you look at smaller cities? Stand-alone cities in the 100-300k range that aren't directly connected to a larger metro area, such as Dayton, Ohio or Madison, Wisconsin.
I live in Dallas near Richardson and I agree that this general area is densifying. There’s so many new developments under construction right now and I think that’s going to improve walkability and density. I can’t wait till you visit DFW.
Genuinely surprised Lakewood Ohio didn't make this list. It is a pre automotive suburb, landlocked so no freeway ripping through it, a BRT Lite system running from Downtown Cleveland through here, dense housing that mirrors the housing found in the dense West side neighborhoods in Cleveland and they discourage parking (it's limited anyway) with paid meters throughout the city. The school district doesn't even have school buses.
I'm from Santa Clara! They're building a lot of mixed use development near my parent's neighborhood to replace vacant office buildings and it's so exciting.
Oh hey, you mentioned the CityLine area in Richardson! I actually live pretty close by and know people who live there -- yeah, it's pretty cool to see.
The issue that I have with transit in Silicon Valley particularly in Mountain View and Sunnyvale is the surrounding land use around the VTA Light Rail stations. Most of those areas are sprawling office parks, strip malls, and gigantic lots (parking or undeveloped lands) which believe it or not is one of the main reasons why the system itself has poor ridership.
Cary, NC could be an interesting one to look at! They’re densifying downtown and adding new bus connectivity!
MTV's biggest employer also runs its own bus service and fleet. Having lived there and taken these buses, it's very much a viable well used alternative
its only city-like if there is public transit
Great Description of Mount Vernon
I went to uni in irvine & its such a strange city. It feels completely fabricated & isolated, its so “nice” & new & clean, but it feels so soul-less
I wonder what a list of suburbs/small cities where walking, biking, and transit are all up would look like, since a lot of these have transit down instead of up
Funny to see Scottsdale make the list. I just came back from a trip to Scottsdale/Phoenix, and we stayed near "Fashion Square" (can only be said half-laughing as you did.) I've never experienced a place to hostile to anyone outside a car, but we could see some density being built and there is a walkable artsy downtown, though still infested with cars. It's not really livable though as we didn't see a single grocery or anything a person might actually need if they wanted to get basic needs in the area without a car.
I spent my second decade growing up in Santa Clara after my mom's tech job moved from Oakland to the newly-dubbed Silicon Valley; we moved onto Pruneridge Avenue just in time to see the last of the orchards bulldozed to make way for an R1 subdivision. It was the epitome of car-dependent sprawling suburban hell, and I could not wait to escape.
The Vallco Fashion Park was built two years after we moved there and it was the nearest thing to a "downtown" we had. I fervently hope that it can finally be redeveloped into an urban, mixed-use, walkable, bikeable & transit-connected oasis; damn the NIMBYs (which _are_ the problem in Cupertino).
You'll see some comments regarding mountain view and Sunnyvale that talk about the prioritization and El camino real. You can probably say the same or worse about Stevens creek etc in Cupertino, and Cupertino's not even on the train line.
There's a small "oasis" in the main street Cupertino or whatever it's called with some apartment complexes and surrounded by older apple offices, but it still has loads of parking surrounding a coffee shop in the middle
Nerd, can you elaborate on your thoughts on working from home and its effect on cities and towns?
+1 on this. I know I certainly have mixed feelings on the topic.
Thanks, Mr. Nerd!
Great list.. I'm curious if Bellevue WA would end up on this list after it's finally connected to Link light rail
No matter what is within a short distance, it's way too hot to walk much of anywhere in Scottsdale or anywhere in the Phoenix area.
In Washington, Everett, Bellevue and Tacoma feel like they fit your list because while they are technically part of the Seattle metro, many people commute to these cities and it feels more urban that the rest of the "suburbs"
It’s funny. I have family that moved from Santa Clara to Mt Vernon for work a few years back. Something that’s missed about Mt Vernon, is that the Northern portion of it gets more suburban but its also very close to Downtown Bronxville which has a pretty nice (albeit small) urban fabric and a train station right in the middle. So you kinda get a double dose of density even if it isn’t technically isolated to just Mt Vernon.
Funny how the TH-cam algorithm doesn't understand sarcasm even if you add "(sarcasm)" in the comment
Irvine's been building tons of housing as of late. Just a block over from my place a bunch of offices were demolished for apartments and some empty lots got luxury apartments built on them. Seems like there is a lot more housing, but I have noticed that one of the recent developments stopped being worked on last year.
Shout out to Jersey City. We’re trying, it’s slow, but steady progress.
Jersey City trying? JC has been and will always be a core city for the NY/NJ metro area. It's always been a walkable city with great mass transit from buses to the Path trains.
I will die before i ever live in a suburb again. Having grown up in a burb near the twin cities its a total culture shock when i go back home
Get back to me when you have children.
I think the Bay Area (and really South Bay/Peninsula) phenomena is a nice storm of the cities finally realizing they need to shove as much density in as possible, building apartment/housing blocks that are centrally located near their rail infrastructure or other major thouroughfares (which I hope eventually create BRT or other commuter options), and the crazy swings in demographic towards tech workers (it's very different than even 20 years ago) allowing households to maybe consider fewer cars if they are able to live nearish to their campus and coordinate work from home around each other.
Castro Street in Mountain View which you showed has actually been one of the leaders in the building / land use trend. About 20 years ago it was a ghost town after 5pm on a week night and there was not a ton of housing around without getting into the single family neighborhoods. Today it is thriving. Tons of amazing food, bars, some shops, and other small businesses. Lots of infill housing (town homes and some apartment buildings nearby). Located right on the train line and they've also put in some protected bike lanes. During COVID they also completely blocked off large portions of the main strip and allowed seating to expand into the street, which they maintained at least into late 2022 (I'd hope it's still like that).
I'm a transplant out of the area so don't visit often but it's been a pleasant surprise when I do go back. And Sunnyvale to the south of them is similar - that whole downtown core was a decaying carcas of a mall when I grew up there. Now it's a vibrant hive of housing / shoping / restaurants and a few big box stores and grocers. Again, right on CalTrain.
I'd be interested to see a version of this list with more focus on a suburb's neighborhoods. For example, Vancouver WA, which was in the intro. The neighborhoods around Downtown have urbanized well, like the Waterfront and Esther Short, but the majority of the land area still looks and feels car-dependent, so it'd miss a list like this. I don't know how feasible this idea is, but I feel it would make for an interesting video
Yea, I was kind of surprised to see vancouver not on this list. It's no portland, but it's slowly heading more that way. If only they could actually operate with oregon and get the max across the I-5 instead of being so stupid about it.
Most are pretty sad.
Some to consider.
Murray, UT
Maplewood, NJ
Kenmore, NY
Des Plaines, IL
Very interesting data & breakdown, as always!
I've been wondering recently about regional differences in attitudes and approaches towards urbanism and transit across bio-regions/climate-regions. Like, I can see differences at the state level in the data, and there are some trends among regional groupings of states, but I have a hard time pulling anything meaningful out of it just because that's not how the data is organized, but maybe there's a way to organize it such that we could get some interesting perspectives on broader regional differences in how the population views and practices urbanism.
I love how the red star under Chicago at the chart at the beginning has six points XD
As a Yonkers resident, I’m happy to see Mount Vernon getting some recognition.
Surprised Richardson got on this list. Cityline has done a LOT for boosting DART ridership in that area, in fact, aside from Parker Road, it's the busiest station on the northern half of the Red Line. Those apartments and office towers weren't there when DART came through in 2002, now look at it!
Hilarious to see Parma on here. Big suburb of Cleveland, but it hasn't gotten any new urbanist developments or infrastructure and it has a way worse urban form than the central city and some of the other big inner ring suburbs (Lakewood and Cleveland Heights). I don't think anything has changed in Parma for the better, so I'm curious what could land it on this list.
I would say Parma is getting poorer, so this drives up the number of low car households. In Cleveland, car-free is a sign of poverty. Parma is most likely capturing people gentrified out of Cleveland proper on the near west side.
@@kc0hmah good analysis, I bet you are exactly right
I wonder if Apple would hire you to do some urban work with them to improve the life of their employees on and off campus. I love your mindset and expertise and I can't help be curious what it would look like if you were using Apple watch data like steps per day or the activity app which tracks lots of data on bike riding.
As a Clevelander, I’m surprised to see Parma instead of Lakewood, although I think of Lakewood as less ‘becoming’ urbanized than having been so for generations. Someone else mentioned the much older median age in Parma, and now I’m wondering how median age would reflect on some of the other lists on this channel where it’s not an otherwise determining factor.
I live in Scottsdale. Huge portion of those changes are due to a lot of dense developments in Old Town, Airpark/Kierland and then South Scottsdale. I used to live right outside of Old Town and it’s very walkable with everything you need within a 20 minute walk. There were a lot of times that I only used my car for my commute M-F and could do everything else without.
10:31 Disgusting affront to urban fabric? Maybe, but those little round parking lots they've managed to jam into the middle of the huge on-ramps are just so gosh darn cute. Really ensuring they're getting the most from their transit adjacent space there, in true LA style.
I'm 4km from Melbourne's CBD, my street is nothing but 20-50 storey towers, and there's two tram lines and three train lines within 5 mins walk
The suburban city of Surrey in Metro Vancouver, is expected to outgrow the city of Vancouver BC. The expansion of the light rapid transit system is facilitating this somewhat.
I can’t believe that the suburbs of Denver such as Westminster, Thornton, Lakewood, Arvada and Centennial have over 100,000 residents each. Aurora which is 10-15 miles east of Denver has nearly 400,000 residents.