I definitely don't blame you for making the move, but it's so sad that you felt that you had to. Though I made a similar decision myself. I run a TH-cam channel where I regularly talk about how mixed-use walkable cities are better places to live. And they are. But not in America. This is a problem I often have trying to communicate this topic with some Americans. Because most of them have either never been outside of the US, or have never been anywhere except touristy places outside of the US, so their only exposure to cities is American cities. And most American cities are awful. American public transit is either non-existent, or chronically underfunded. Urban environments are left to decay instead of building on that wealth. And all of the money is poured into building more car-dependent suburbs and exurbs that are fundamentally financially insolvent. But this isn't a problem with _cities,_ it's a problem with _American cities,_ because they're designed incorrectly. And then pile on all the systemic issues that are fairly unique to the US and you get, well, exactly what you showed in this video. You made the absolute correct decision for you, but the country cannot survive if everyone makes that same decision. The reason your rent is lower is because the location is more remote. But all of the infrastructure you enjoy, from the electricity to the beautiful roads with very little traffic, cost serious money to maintain. It is impossible to collect enough tax revenue to maintain all of that sprawling infrastructure by taxing low-cost low-density housing. Your neighbourhood is nice now, but in 30 years it will be crumbling and broken, and there won't be enough money to maintain it. And anybody with the means will move elsewhere. Suburbanites may read this, and not care at all. After all, they get a nice place to live that's nice and cheap (through direct and indirect subsidies). But for society as a whole, this is just going to lead to more bankruptcies and failure in American cities, and it will make today's problems even worse. Of course, I ultimately made the same decision, but instead of leaving the city, I left the country. I have lived in several US and Canadian cities, and while Canadian cities are _way_ better than American cities, they're still pretty bad. So since I didn't want to live in a soul-crushing sprawling suburb stuck in traffic in my car every day, we moved our family to the Netherlands. And it's awesome. I don't know what the solution is. If I did, I wouldn't have had to move out of the country. But it's really terrible that Americans can't experience the great urban environments that exist in the rest of the world.
But why do you think infrastructure is the government's domain? The government steals our money to pay private companies to build/fix those roads. And what do these cities produce economically? The only reason the New York municipal government has so much money is because it holds the most clout as the world's financial epicenter. Only 8% of the population works in finance and most of the people in that sector live outside the city. The rest are of these jobs are low pay service sector positions for small businesses that have the disadvantage of being so heavily regulated they have to run on razor thin margins. Even if said small business has a competent manger/owner like Louis that understands the benefits of not paying poverty wages the cost of living in the city will still drain most of your expendable income. The reason this city's government can tax so much is because the bloated CMBS market has caused office space to rent for well above market rates. It's a literal giant scam
You are quite active throughout youtube advocating for livable cities. However, what you fail to realize is that not everyone wants to live in a miserable concrete jungle.
@@Maryumaru you just proved my point, thank you. If you all you know about cities is "miserable concrete jungles", then you wouldn't want to live in one. But good cities aren't "concrete jungles". They're exactly the opposite. That's exactly the ignorance I was talking about above, and that is why I spend so much time educating people about _good_ cities, not American cities.
@@NotJustBikes No, I still think that it is you who doesn't get it. You keep talking about good cities, however none of them seem anything but a concrete jungle to me. Not even Amsterdam. Not everyone likes cities and doesn't matter what you do to them it wont change. There are just too many people living too close to each other and it is suffocating. I have been living in a city for a decade now and I am sick of it. I miss nature, I miss the green, the night sky and thanks to remote work I don't need anything from a city anymore.
One of the reasons I subscribed to your channel (beside you fighting the good fight for rights to repair) was your total honesty about how it was to live in NYC. Thanks Louis.
You click on other videos and it's quickly obvious that they really only had about 50 seconds worth of content but they stretched out the video to 10 minutes. I never feel that with Louis.
The biggest city i've ever been to was tokyo, and i took the train multiple places every day i was there for a week. their trains are lacking in a few areas, and you can tell when you're riding in something from the 80s, but they went where they said, they were on time, and there was not a speck of garbage anywhere. The air quality in the sardine packed subway cars at rush hour had better air quality than my office at the time. looking at a NY subway always makes me think of escape from NY.
I've always found that interesting; more peopole by far than american cities yet less trash, not as broken and better air... people are also MORE RESPECTUFL... I don't understand what the downfall is with American cities cause they all look like dystopian sardine factories...
@@Atsumari cleanliness is baked into their religion, Buddhism and Shintoism both stress the need for it. That's a value most are taught from a young age, and by this point it's instinct. This doesn't stop some litter from happening, but it does help with a lot of it
I moved from, "the city" to 45 minutes north of, "the city" a couple of years ago...from a 1/4 acre suburban lot, with surrounding neighbors, to 10 acres in, "the county". No neighbors on either side...just woods...a farm field across the street and wetland preserve behind. Bright stars at night and total silence beyond sand hill cranes and the wind. Complete and utter bliss.
The only problem I have with anything north of NYC is the wetland preserves themselves. the DEP came into Windham, NY, in the catskills, and started either buying up all the land they could around the river going through the middle of town, or acquiring it through eminent domain of anyone unwilling to sell at the egregiously low prices they were offering for the land. this happened a few years before Irene came through and flooded the area out, and it was a big hassle when all of that came through as well. They have cameras and such set up in random places to prevent trespassing, and anyone sharing a property line with them doing ANYTHING in terms of landscaping, paving, etc needs to, from my understanding, submit paperwork to the DEP to do a survey... it's quite the hassle. tl;dr it's great to move away from the city, but it's probably better to not move into a property bordering a "wetland preserve" especially if it was set up by the DEP to protect the oh-so-precious NYC water supply.
Hi Louis. We moved our entire business to a rural area in 2017. Our entire county is less than 30k people. While we love it, we do find a lot of people don't give a shit about garbage. There is a lot of litter - just the volume is not a big problem as so few people. I will say the cost of living and overhead for my business is great. We rent about 1000 square feet for $450 a month - with electricity included.
Pre-WW2 Streetcar mixed-use suburbs need to make a comeback. They’re a fantastic compromise between urban and modern suburban environments. Unfortunately they’ve effectively been zoned out of existence, and so old homes in streetcar suburbs are usually SUPER expensive due to high demand but zero new supply.
The zoning is a big problem. A developer bought the 80 acre sears property by me to build a cool mixed use development. The city council voted NO. Now we are getting another strip mall which was in accordance with the previous zoning. I could not be less excited.
The rot in America runs too deep for these neighborhoods to be anything but "have" or "have-not" zones. The midwestern cities are full of neighborhoods like these but most will never make a comeback... check out St Louis, Milwaukee, Omaha, Chicagoland, KC. The streetcar suburban neighborhoods are there but the jobs and community structure that go along with them have long since gone.
I think it differs with context - where you are seems relatively small, and I think that's where the car is ideal as a means of transit. The usual issue with car dependency is that it scales up very poorly, which is what has happened in the majority of large cities in the US/Canada where car dependency/suburban sprawl leads to huge amounts of traffic and long commuting times that could be significantly alleviated with decent public transit (LA being the most infamous example). Also I have a feeling NYC might have specific mismanagement and infrastructure issues that wouldn't be present in other urban areas (e.g. particularly cities in the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, etc.)
That only works in an upper-scale area. When I say upper-scale, I mean completely upper scale. The areas with garbage everywhere are in neighborhoods which have sections in the Village, Town or City which are upper scale and others lower. You can not try to gentrify an area changing the nature of that area, this just does not work. You have to work with the chaos instead of against it. Those people making Tiny Houses for the poor were working with the chaos. They weren't trying to pretend the problem did not exist. Then, the scrubs in power knew their funding they were going to waist on just giving the appearance of solving a problem was in jeopardy so they removed the Tiny Houses. Action proves intent.
"NYC specific" mismanagement The graft/corruption exists on a large scale in SF, LA, Oakland, Portland, Seattle. I would call it US big city specific. Because our grifting ngo's are systemically corrupt nationwide.
I mean, I agree with the criticism towards suburban sprawl, however, that criticisms is NOT geared towards people moving there. I REALLY do understand why people move away from junk infested cities. The criticism is more towards urban planning. The US probably has one of the most inefficient public transportation, cities and suburbia I have ever witnessed, and if I compare it to my own suburban experience in Sweden it's not even comparable, here, residential areas are isolated from traffic, tunnels and dedicated bicycle lanes shield us from engaging with dangerous traffic. Parks, playgrounds, meadows and natural forest are integrated into the planning. In my childhood we had grocery stores, video rentals, restaurants, schools, youth centers, a library, pharmacy, local medical care etc. etc. everything within walkable distance My parents never needed to worry about cars and dangerous crossings. We had a train station (high speed, 200km/h leaving every 30 minute), which would take us to the the city center of the third largest city in Sweden with a travel time of 15 minutes. So really, it's not the people's fault moving into suburban sprawls.... the problem is that there are no better available solution to combat unnecessary car dependency in the US. It's because the urban building codes cater towards car manufacturers' "profitable" urban vision rather than what is in the best interest of people. It's not a personal problem, it's an urban planning problem. Which should be criticized by everyone really. Even those living in suburban sprawls. If those areas were planned better, parents wouldn't need to drive their kids to schools, or drive them to activities or friends. The children would become much more independent, have better social lives and develop faster as a result. Every day grocery shopping for parents would be a matter of walking down a couple of streets (or ask your kids to do it). What about having a barbecue/picnic with a couple of neighbors in the open meadows or parks? This is possible if urban sprawls didn't look like they do in the US.
This comment should be higher up, any sane person isn't yelling at Louis (or anyone for that matter) for leaving city in its current state (or any massively dense city for that matter). City life isn't for everyone. Hell, I'm a city rat -- I'm getting tired of living in the city and the messiness involved. What people are yelling at -- and what I also despise -- are the cookie-cutter suburbs that have insanely oppressive zoning, annoying HOAs, ugly McMansions, terrible design, inaccessible community centers and overall "bleh" planning. Louis should take a look at Strong Towns, he would be surprised to see how much of the Right To Repair movement overlaps with building the strong American towns that *used* to exist (and some still do!) before inane political lobbying from GM and the likes. I think last I heard of Louis (from a recent livestream) he moved to somewhere in NH -- a New England state, close to where I live personally-- that is known for being pretty dang rural, but still has OLD classic American bustling, well-thought-out, and active city/town centers that don't wholly succumb to suburban sprawl (at least within city limits) and have all of what I just mentioned -- walkable streets, accessible community centers, mixed-use zoning, etc. Like other commenters have mentioned, it is a pretty disingenuous comparison to say that moving to NH is "suburban sprawl" but it is a common misconception that I do not blame Louis for. Putting the MTA in the middle-of-nowhere NH doesn't make sense -- most of us aren't saying it does. What we *are* saying is sprawl akin to that of Houston, Atlanta and LA *can* be avoided and improved upon by planning techniques that are tried and true and have been effective for ages.
@@dertythegrower that's true, I started to watch "Not just bikes". Canadian who moved to Amsterdam... I actually didn't know how bad the city planning was in the US before I went there on a business trip, while later reading up on the subject. And then just out of curiosity using goole maps and see what the places looked like. It really made me appreciate my own childhood and the city planning that had been made in the 60's and 70's in Sweden.
@@derekbarbosa Totally agree. "Strong Towns" is something everyone should watch... It's easy to stick your head into the ground and accept society the way it is. However, learning about society, understand what we did good, and what we did bad, is really what makes citizens informed. I think Louis is great, he empowers people to become politically engaged, and I really think the American people need that. Not sit at home and passively allow corporate greed lobby against what is in citizens best interests. Like you say, urban planning very much goes hand in hand with the corruption within right to repair.
@@derekbarbosa one of the things which I get a laugh out of is when people use the term "cookie-cutter" to refer to suburban architecture, or lack thereof, in a derogatory fashion. I get it because it's easy to look at a subdivision built by a developer and see identical buildings. I, however, will point out that cities are not much different. Have you been in an apartment building ever? How many nearly identical-looking 3- or 6-flats are there in any major urban area? HOAs? Those exist in condominiums as well. Restrictive land usage through local ordinances are everywhere in cities. Maybe it's just Chicago and the kinds of growth spurts it has had, but I don't see a functional difference.
I remember going to NYC years ago when I was in my teens and then several times while in high school and university. Everything was always ridiculously expensive, yet the quality never matched the price. What stood out was how old, dirty, and run down the buildings and infrastructure was and is now. Or how there were perpetual mounds of garbage every few streets. It just never made sense to me why anyone would put NYC on a pedestal as a desirable place to live. That feeling is despair when the wind blows on those empty streets at night, while an occasional smelly cab drives by, or that homeless person eyeing your backpack as you pass by. People actually want to live there?
@@lawlkings There is plenty of room in the USA for plenty of small towns. The problem is that gvt loves to build density and get more taxes. So once gvt gets a foothold they do all they can to stop people from going elsewhere. Instead of a state passing a law that says "No town can exceed 250,000 and towns must be separated by at least 5 miles of low density" they make it so it's very hard to have open space. They refuse to do the required zoning to stop it because the people with money own the land and they want den$ity. To make it work you need to put the laws and zoning in place before the major developments take place, you need to PLAN for low density... no one does, they only plan for high density. One of the most sought-after places to live in AZ is Paradise Valley, in the heart of the Phoenix Metro Area. They DID do the planning. They people who started it wanted it to be quality low-density single-family homes. NO commercial enterprises are allowed, no apartments are allowed, no more than two stories are allowed, no lots smaller than an acre are allowed. And everyone would like to live there, you can walk or bike on the streets, it's clean, nearly crime free, the taxes are plenty to keep it all up, they get no outside $upport. There's no city hall corruption, they have their own police, etc.
Don't take this the wrong way Louis, but I think this is one of the first videos I've seen where you don't have bags under your eyes. Looks like that fresh air is doing you some good! Congrats on escaping NYC!
Moved from the Bronx to Yonkers 30 years ago. Watched both cities crumble before me. Noise, crime, red light cameras, sirens, traffic, double parking and too many people. Moved to Dutchess County in 2017. NEVER EVER going back to the city. It’s quiet, clean, everyone waves hello and it’s not a liberal shithole.
I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city. From my experience, both sections are failing. I saw my hometown slowly fail as old shopping centers whithered and people move to even more expensive area. Their solution was more sprawl and more empty homes. At the same time living in the city has had better resource management, but they fail to maintain public transit and forgo investing in poorer neighborhoods so that they either rot or become gentrified. To me, the problem is wholly American. We stopped investing in infrastructure and our communities and it shows. Moving to a better neighborhood is only a temporary solution that most people can't afford. America is an underdeveloped nation for everyone except the few who can afford it. It doesn't matter if you live in the city, the suburbs, or rurally, something needs to change.
The issue nowadays can be largely pinned on the Cold War. We have entire generations raised under propaganda that we need to keep socialism out of the US, which is sad because a good blend of socialism and capitalism makes an economy strong (just look at Scandinavian countries).
@@kylekleveno3283 That's kind of his point. In fact, due to their extremely robust social safety nets, entrepreneurship, business ownership and self-employement are all significantly higher in Scandinavian nations. It's almost like not having your healthcare tied directly to your employment grants people a large degree of personal freedom.
@@erikhendrickson59 Ok, so let’s delete all of the american socialization we have already (social security, medicare, medicaid, WIC, etc) and implement things similar to what Norway does. This is instead of adding on to what we already have. Sound good? Because that’s the only way you will get libertarians like me to support such a thing. No additional government power, just reforms.
I was one who moved out of the city back in the early '90s and LOVED IT! I moved to a small town and was instantly happy with that decision. Unfortunately, after a divorce, I came back to the city to be near family and start all over again at the tail end of the '90s and deep down wished I didn't do that. Here I am 20 years later and I still yearn to get out of the city again. I do feel compelled to warn you though, living out where people are not so used to being stacked on top of each other, they will surprise you with how much they will want to be a part of your going ons. You will find it weird at first but they will actually start talking to you while you were minding your own business, and they will greet you with a smile, seemingly like they're up to something, BUT WAIT!!! If you give them a chance, you might actually find they are being sincere. They actually do just want to say 'Hello' and that smile is NOT as fake as you might think. Granted this will seem strange! But, they mean you no harm!!! 😀
Spot on Louis! I grew up in the suburbs/rural and now live in NYC. The novelty is entirely gone after a few years of living here, and I want out. And to those who say "just wait 30 years and those suburbs will be shit too" - I have, and they're not. They're just 30 years older but still beautiful and still look far nicer than the 2nd Ave subway stations only two months after opening.
Ive lived in rural areas my whole life, and I could never understand why people liked living in a dump like NYC. Every time I've been there, it's been such a hassle. What a depressing place.
It would be cool to live near by to visit from time to time for something specific, but 99% of the time I much prefer lawns large enough for most people to need a 60" mower desk.
Simple: People like different shit. Why do some people risk their lives to join the military? Why do some people go to medical school which is stressful? People aren’t cookie cutters. If everyone was similar and into the same thing, we would all be bland.
In small towns one big difference is that if you leave trash somewhere chances are people will quickly figure out who did it and point their finger at you. And you never want fingers pointed at you in small town. I just so happen to make a daily transition from my home on the edge of small town to the center of larger town where I work. Where I live I actually forgotten my car wide opened for two days and nobody even noticed. In the meantime in the center of larger town there is nonstop influx of homeless people, idiots, and other entities that just make life worse in every way. Not to mention the non-stop screaming of various sirens.
There are some terrible trashy people in small towns and rural areas. I noticed it especially in the south, people have no respect for nature and they leave beer bottles and cigarette butts everywhere. It's an attitude more than anything. The biggest reason to move anywhere is the people who live there, we're not all the same.
I would argue that having trash cans spread out will greatly reduce garbage thrown away. It's not like people throw stuff on the ground because they hate you or the city, but there's nowhere to throw it in a close distance. For example, we'd often see garbage thrown into our garden or some neighbour's before the local governing body finally listened to complaints and put a trash can nearby. The area is noticeably cleaner now.
@@gorkyd7912 Small to mid size towns can range from people respecting their city and keeping it as tidy as possible to people who give no shits and plastic bottles littered around containing either chewing tobacco spittle or piss.
Trust me it's true, after moving out of NYC to the midwest some 20 years, I had the same initial experience. Course now it seems normal, but every time I visit NYC, it reminds me that was the best choice I have ever made. :)
@ebtre zlef Yeah as a Georgian, obviously this guy missed the memo. There's a reason the largest state this side of the Mississippi rare comes upp in conversation.
Aye, I'm near that area also. Absolutely beautiful here. Even in downtown Chattanooga it's beautiful, no trash on the street or anything like the pics from NYC. Even in the worse parts of Chattanooga it's still not dirty, and I've worked in those areas for years.
As a photographer, images have an enormous effect on people. A well produced image conveys emotion. Surrounding yourself with depressing images will make you depressed. Surrounding yourself with beautiful and cheerful images makes you feel good. Walking/biking/driving streets lined with trash and filth, or surrounding yourself with scenes of homelessness, filth, crime and disrepair will make you feel like shit, especially when there's no escape. Having visited NYC regularly, point blank the people are assholes, and I'm pretty sure it's not their fault. People have a tendency to treat others how they feel. The city is a disaster. The amazing skyline is lipstick on a pig. It's sad to see that everything is surrounded by squalor. You'd be an asshole too if you were surrounded by that every day.
Are you from the Northeast? New Yorkers have never come across as rude to me but, I do know that Northern people's irritation with having their time wasted, wanting to get to the point and our just natural bluntness got me into al ot of trouble when I lived in Georgia.
I can really relate to this and it somehow fills me with deep joy, seeing you appreciating and embracing the nature. I grew up in a small town in Germany and studied in a big city. I lived in a very dirty neighbourhood with solid crime rates (but to be fair, from your stories its nothing to nyc). It was one of my happiest days when I finished studying and left that city with a van with all my stuff inside. I moved to a smaller and greener city which is now my home for seven years. It is exactly like you said. Waking up, walking around and living in a shitty place makes you an unhappy person. There is nothing more healing to your soul than going outside and walking, cycling or running around in nature and being between nice and sane people. I wish you the best in your new home.
As someone who grew up in Suburbia, and eventually lived in an urban environment for a few years. I can hands down say that I would rather live in Suburban sprawl now after the events of the summer of 2020 decided to cement my over all opinion. I found urban centers to be filled with the least understanding and tolerant people I have ever met(And this is coming from someone who is not conservative and grew up in a die hard loyal Conservative suburb). The amount of hateful and close minded people I met in my time around Denver's downtown core was pretty jarring from what I had heard about the people there and how I was made to believe that diverse and vibrant urban areas are the best place to be. Not to mention how many drug addicts were around there(Which werent really a problem at any point). Ive also been to many other cities and been in their urban core neighborhoods, and I keep running into the same hateful and intolerant psychos time and time again. A well as any urban area being either sketchy af to where I question my own safety or expensive as hell to live unless you make nearly 6 figures or more. To me.. Urban centers have a very tainted image about what kind of people they are reserved for and who inhabits them, and I am definitely not they type of person who belongs. Urban places in my opinion are a legit hell. A hell that I have seen twist a few people who move to them from suburbs. After having lived in both, I have come to appreciate living in suburban sprawl or Suburban hell as some urbanist call it. Was it always the prettiest? No.. But I made a lot of good friends growing up in suburbia during the 2000s and had lots of good memories of riding bikes and going to the parks around my town. As well as me and my friends riding our bikes to our towns fall festival each october and being there most the day. Our town was always quiet, we could be out at night without being supervised and was over all a nice place to live. Do I think it Suburbia could be designed way better than it is? Absolutely. But I will never say that urban living is better for living and being happy and fulfilled. At least here in America. If only there was a way to combine the 2 and make a good mixture of the 2 that made everyone happy and didnt cater to only the wealthy.
I had the same experience as you. Grew up in suburbia, now have been living in the downtown core of a major city for a couple of years, and planning to move back out within a year. The town I grew up in are surrounded by forests and I really enjoyed the nature and quietness. I also miss the aspect that the most dangerous things that I would see on the street are racoons and occasionally a couple of black bears, instead of screaming people running around with beer bottles or needles in their hands.
I live in a Suburban area, and I wish it was becoming more conservative. All I see from areas run by lefties is crime, mental illness, and a mismanagement of tax funds and state power. I don't understand why anyone would vote for that. I hate being told what to do though.
I hear ya, Louis. I had similar experiences living in Queens. I used to have to take the train from my job in Manhattan back home to Ozone Park. The things I saw happening in front of me on the subway were horrible. One night I came home and got physically ill. I moved to Astoria. I lived there for 15 years and had my daughter. One hot summer day I was pushing my daughter in her stroller when I got to a major shopping intersection. There, on the corner was a homeless person, taking up the bench for himself. He had defecated all over it, took the street corner trash can, lit a huge fire in it and as people walked past him, he held up his middle finger and yelled "F*ck You, F*ck You". After putting up with the city for so many years, that was the last straw. I didn't want to raise my daughter in that environment, so I, too moved to New England.
The idea that you had to make your stuff look worse to deter theft is so wild to me. Like holy shit, I really take not having to do that for granted. Glad you escaped.
@@dertythegrower I do the same thing. I just looked over at my door to see if I did it again, been trying to break that habit for inside doors. Yes, yes I did.
@@chaos.corner I knew someone who used to leave his (shitbox) car unlocked, glove box open, so you could see there's nothing worth stealing inside. Saves the crooks breaking a window.
I grew up in a town in Abbotsford, BC, Canada. Whenever I went to Vancouver (which is known as a beautiful city) I was repulsed by the standards that people have to accept. Friends of mine moved to be closer for "Things to do" but the cost to my happiness would have been too high to follow them. I then moved to a town with less than 5000 people in rural Alberta and that was even better. (though I do miss the mountains that I used to hike in.) I have a way better standard of living than I would have if I lived in a city. And freedom.
City-dwellers literally don't understand the concept of freedom until they get out of the city. How could they? It's something they've literally never directly experienced.
Nailed it, Lou. When I was in my early 20s and just wanted to party, NYC and its “energy” were the only place in the world I could tolerate. Early 30s I now value peace, quiet, community and nature, and NYC is completely intolerable. The government is a product you “buy” with your taxes, and nobody gets worse value (IMO) than NYC.
I left my hometown (Washington Height, Manhattan, NYC) when I was 18 in 1973. It was like a weight being taken off my shoulders. I was reborn, the world was my oyster. Flash forward almost 50 years, I find myself still happy and relatively healthy. No debts, no rat race, living honestly- not just surviving. Retired for the moment and easing into the autumn of my days in northeastern Spain. I would change not an iota of my life. My only yearning is for this wonderful time on earth never to cease. Louis, you are on the right path. Savor it. Breathe it in. You are one of the chosen lucky souls.
Louis, I've been watching you on and off for a few years. I'm glad to see you took the leap and moved yourself to a place that's better for your mental health. I live outside of town myself, in an older house.. but I have some property, trees, views, and I love my drive to work. I could absolutely live an easier life and make more money in a more populated area, but I've found a niche here in the mountains, I make a decent living for myself, and serve a population that needs my services. Sometimes simpler is better, in my opinion. I'm happy for you finding some solitude in a nice space. You'll go far, keep it up.
Louis Rossman gives an opinion that I may not see in the planning field, which is something I appreciate hearing. While many people I have talked to want to be able to live in a dense, urban area. They are appalled by the lack of cleanliness and good public transit (both of which many American cities need to work on). Public transit in places like Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Prague are known to be efficient and clean. All the while being cheaper ticket wise, and maintenance wise. By American standards, the mentioned European cities also look like freakin' utopias, in terms of their cleanliness. It isn't that Americans don't want to live in urbanized areas, it's that American cities have issues and nothing seems to be done about it. My trip to Europe showed me that dense areas can be nice and clean, when people actually care about their environments. Anytime I took public transit in Europe, I never felt inconvenienced by it. Amsterdam's metro was frequent and on-time. Ultimately these cities showed me that it isn't density that makes American cities bad, it is more of a systemic issue. While I may have skimmed over many more issues that go hand-in-hand, this is a TH-cam comment, not a thesis. Someone like Louis gives a good view into what people actually think about these issues. While the politicians think they know what's good, it's the people who they need to listen to.
@@timkishelov9489 Google says a one day pass can be gotten for bus and train fare in Amsterdam for €8.50($9.60 as of writing) . A day pass in Washington DC for the metro is $13...
I spent a few days in a city in Germany, I've also been to New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Miami, Atlanta . . . Germany was an eye-opener in how things could be!
Great topic Louis. I lived in downtown Denver for two years. The bike commuting was great along with the full mix of social commerce but there was constant noise, activity, sirens, parking hassles, trash, homelessness, high rent, that crushes your soul a little more each month. Two years later I bought and moved into a house in the suburbs 10 miles from downtown. Better, lived there for 7 years and dodged aggressive HOAs, became an early morning vampire to avoid commute traffic, and suffered through too many neighbors' late night backyard parties. When covid transformed both of our jobs to WFH it was sign towards the future. An Opportunity. A new order. We sold our home in the suburbs and moved into the Rocky Mountains on 2 acres. The wife & I are here for the long haul. Yes it's a 30 minute drive to the grocery store and a solid 60 minutes to downtown Denver that I drive once a week but the scenery view, tranquility, simpleness at home in a rural setting is the better life I was seeking. Thought I liked living in the city until I got a taste of suburban living but now living rural in the mountains I can't go back to either of the past two!
@@MrDoneboy Ohhhhhhhh, dang, sorry to here that that. Would like to recommend Not Just Bikes and is video about Houston or Scott Dailey's response video: ”Response to Not Just Bikes: Why I Hate Houston” which is 4 mins, very short
The whole price structure for urban vs suburban is backwards to me. I would have thought it would be much more efficient so more cost effective for urban, that you would tolerate the tin can to save money. Nope, that's not how it works. Why would I want to pay more to live crammed together in a sardine can. People argue about private transport vs public mass transit but at the end of the day, private transport is far more preferable and the cost becomes a nonissue when you consider how much more inexpensive suburban housing is. You save so much money that you have private transport and left over funds for other things.
And with the added availability of remote work now, the appeal of living in a densely packed urban metropolis goes away even further. Not to mention, most suburbs are within reasonable driving distance of an urban center anyway. So I can enjoy my $125,000 house in the suburbs and I can drive to and pay to park in the city an awful lot of times before living in the city would start to look even remotely cost effective.
The issue is that supply isn't meeting demand so prices are going up everywhere(even in suburbs). We aren't getting out of this housing crisis by making density illegal.
That's where I've always stood as well. Right now I have an 1800sq ft home with a yard that costs about $1400/month to own. I'm in a city with easy access to services, schools, pubic transit, groceries, etc. I could move into an apartment in a denser part of the city (that isn't any closer to schools, groceries, etc) with less than half the living space and no yard for... $1400+/month. I just don't see any gain for giving up so much. I lose privacy, space, ownership, an investment, and stability for... unpredictable rent increases and the ability to move without much planning.
Not to state the obvious greed of building a hundred-year-old train track system that costs billions to create that cannot be used now due to the Chinese bioweapon!
Well done for getting out with most of your sanity… I used to live in Nottingham in England, surrounded by criminality and dirty streets. Then I moved to Germany and purposefully chose to live more rural with a small commute similar to yours. My mental health and happiness have gone up ten fold and I am much happier. I think you put up with it because you feel like there are no other options, however believe there are always options. Thanks for the great content and I wish you peace and happiness in your new home. Greets from Germany ☺️👍😎
I just had enough of England and the Negative vibe that i experienced. I wanted to try something new and decided i needed a change. I played tours in Germany when studying music. I fell in love with the scenery and the fact that streets are clean and things work. It‘s not perfect and you get the same stuff and problems wherever you go. Just i learnt German, got my dream job and met my beautiful wife. Plus German restaurants and beer are better in my opinion ☺️
@@GSA_Drums The cities are better here too. NYC is just a weird nightmare. Maybe those crappy habits there is passed down from generation to generation, like in a big ghetto, and the only solution is moving out? Or maybe they just need the Olympic Games to go there...
Comparing suburban sprawl to a tiny community of 1000 people in the middle of nowhere seems disingenuous. Rural communities are great, throwing up acres and acres of badly constructed cookie cutter McMansions on the outskirts of metro areas is absolutely not. If you have mixed use zoning with recreation and businesses available in your area, you don't live in suburban sprawl.
Basically my point. Small town communities are wonderful. Suburbs are mindlessly boring. I technically live in a suburb of Seattle. But within 10 minutes drive of my house, and maybe a 45 minute walk, I have a nice town center with gorgeous parks, a beach, high quality restaurants, and a few decent coffee shops. My only complaint as a younger person is that it's next to impossible to meet people. The suburbs adjacent to mine are a totally different story. If you want to go anywhere, there are two main roads you are almost guaranteed to need to use. The roads are *always* piled with traffic. Realistically it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere, and besides the one mall in the county, the only other places to go are strip malls. I am happy living in my suburb because it has a small town community. I think mine barely counts as suburban sprawl. When people think about suburban sprawl, they are thinking about the other communities I am describing.
If everyone who wanted to move away from filth-infested big cities moved to small towns and rural areas, they wouldn't be small towns or rural areas anymore. Suburbia is the more practical result of that desire to have your own place on your own lot, in a generally safe community. Now, you may not like it, and that's fine. No one forces you to live there. But neither do I want to be told where or how I should live by armchair urban planners.
The contention of urbanist types is not "sprawl is evil and should be banned, everyone should want to live in NYC." The contention is that sprawl should not be very heavily subsidized and indeed mandated in 95+% of American cities. Density should allowed. Roads should be shared by many different types of transit. That's literally all. Low density is very nice, we all agree it has tons of benefits. The point is that people who enjoy those benefits *should pay for them* rather than imposing those huge costs on everyone else.
We pay our property taxes and our road assessments. We don't pay for the huge costs of inefficient nearby big cities, and I'd bet that's what's irking you.
You do realize that urbanites are paying for massive infrastructure for farming and agricultural products to get to your cities, right? Like the farms need places to grow, need farm workers and farmhands, and you have other types of suburbs that use and utilize resources, both natural and whatnot, are along those same paths and the roads that you complain about having to subsidize are generally far cheaper to maintain and resurface than your inner-city streets. not to mention the roads are traveled on by smaller vehicles which do almost nothing to them in terms of wear and tear vs a semi-truck, which allows them to be cheaper. Then there's the environmental cost of the roads themselves, which are almost 99% recycled from previous roads. And as far as paying peoples fair share, I don't want to subsidize your politics either, stop bullying me with your urban policies for my rural living. You guys get your glorious dense utopia and i'll take my trees, thank you.
@@SSJRapter I think the focus here is suburban living, not rural. The thing with suburban living is the fact that a very large number of people who live in a suburb, tend to have employment in the nearby city. Every day there's a mass of traffic going into the city and then back out again. So it's kind of necessary to create these wide highways which are inherently more expensive to build and maintain. It also doesn't help that Americans favor bigger vehicles, i.e. SUVs, crossovers, and pickup trucks and that ends up resulting in more wear of roads. The sad thing is the suburbs themselves, despite having smaller roads end up not being able to afford maintaining them over time. I live on the limits between a suburb and rural in Texas, but the suburb is fairly new in terms of growth so all the roads are nice and clean. But there's some other suburbs up north that are much older, and their roads are backbreaking to drive on. Rural roads end up the same way but over a longer period of time because their roads are less traveled.
Luis, so glad that you're enjoying the move. I grew up in a small town in Western MA., and have lived in cities and several other states. Nothing like being near or in the woods with a short drive to shop for all your needs. Just a month ago I moved to a small town in CT,. and work for the states IT Division. Nothing like having space and quietness to unwind at home. Enjoy your new home!
I grew up in a big city, playing between the parked cars and smelling the pollution. I always looked down at those peasants that didn't live in a bustling town. The older I got, the more I was depressed by that big city living. Crowds, rudeness, expensive life, dirty streets, heating issues in winter... all added drop by drop. Until I decided that I don't need to live that way anymore, I rather drive a car for an hour but actually spend my free time somewhere that doesn't break my mind. Now, with this pandemic, I work from home, drive less than I ever dreamt of, and live in a nice place.
The problems were't city life as much as North-American cities are just like America: Out to make a quick buck while providing its citizens the barest of minimums with their tax dollars.
It’s really unfortunate that people don’t take better care of public spaces. Imagine how much better the world would be if people just learned how to use a trash can…
Japan and Singapore are famous for those, it's just people in the US are not socially homogeneous enough to care. That being said, that also may not be a price willing to be paid by US citizens. Hence it should be at a municipal level that people care about parks, not federally. That way you don't impose on others.
the best solution is to introduce more public trashcans. sure, you can use a gas station trashcan (that's how i clean my car out lol) but gas stations get busy sometimes. It'd be cool to have a public trashcan at every strip mall (if this exists in your city, you'd be surprised to know it's not very common)
@@daybreakgray3452 Might not be the best idea actually. They tried that in Japan and the littering actually went up, mainly due to "the other guy will pick it up". They actually *reduced* the amount of trash cans and upped the fines for littering so that people carried their trash more.
I have always lived outside of the suburban sprawl and only visit the downtown metro areas when I absolutely have to- and I admire the sheer will it requires to stay in such a place, not to even mention the economy of it all. So happy you have found what the rest of us enjoy! I cannot imagine how your business would takeoff if you relocated it to a suburban area over a metropolitan area. Love your channel- don't stop posting.
I wouldn’t consider town of 1000 to be sprawl, that’s pretty rural :) nothing wrong with suburbs as long as that’s what people want vs how in the us we make it illegal to build anything else
Even if suburban neighborhoods are able to financially sustain themselves, there are still two issues with sprawl in the US that affect everyone: 1) high carbon emissions 2) too many suburban cars driving into city centers Both can be solved by with better land use management and transit, but I have my doubts those changes will come anytime soon.
Reminds me of how I felt when I was living in Philadelphia after moving from New York almost 13 years ago. Like you said, it's depressing. I'm glad you took a stand and are now in a much more cozier, calm and more fulfilling place now. Hope it'll add years to your life that NY took away.
Blame the politics, not the type of area (city/suburb/rural). There are some pretty awful suburbs, and some pretty great cities. When ideologues and/or corruption overtake pragmatic/logical/fair government, the results are bad no matter where you are.
yeah, it seems like his complaints were more about NYC specifically and not cities in general. the issues he mentioned are not present in a lot of European and Asian cities. The US simply lacks good zoning policy or good allocation of funds for nice cities. and yeah, there are tons of terrible suburbs that I've seen, and honestly I'd take living in an American city over a suburb any day, but that's my preference and I understand if the average person wouldn't want to deal with that. for me, being around people and being within walking distance to shops is more valuable than the downsides.
Sounds like my conclusion of Downtown Denver. It was exclusively for the wealthy, or young people who would sacrifice a good quality of life to live paycheck to paycheck. All so they could live in a trendy area and feel special. But the most common thing I found there, was that the people who lived downtown were some of the LEAST tolerant people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting and were borderline psychotic when faced with an opinion they didnt agree with. This has been a common theme in most other urban cores of cities I have been too. All accept for Nashvilles downtown area. They are still very much a conservative urban area, despite it being far more progressive than the surrounding suburbs. I kind of like it tbh. Though it is an area that you have to have money to live unless you room with others like all the rest.
@@Ferrichrome Okay, see I've been seeing this recurring trend of "European cities good, American cities bad". I call bullshit. I've seen pictures of London, I've seen pictures of Paris, I've seen pictures of Glasgow. I would sooner commit suicide than live in most of the most popular and populous European cities. They keep bringing up "well planned European cities" like that's the norm and not a handful of them which were basically leveled and rebuilt during WWII and that's the *only* reason they're sorta decent. Comparing population density to population density, most of Europe barely has it better and some of Europe actually has it outright worse. To say nothing of the European particulars like "Can't develop this spot, it's a 'historic landmark' What? Restore it? Ludicrous. Make it useful? Don't be preposterous! We'll just shittily retrofit it with the modern tech that completely ruins the architecture we're allegedly preserving while giving an inferior experience even to American apartments." And lest we forget the apartment tower that burned down with people inside in Britain. "Okay, but that's just Britain and they're not *really* European, the racist, backwards islander fish-people subhuman Brexiteers." Okay, who is? Oh? Just Germany? And only Germany? And only very very specific parts of Germany? Oh? The Benelux counts too because the EU headquarters is in Brussels and the Netherlands because it looks good on a post card? And Switzerland because of their banking system? It just smacks of bullshit. Most of your cities are just as old and shit as when they were first built to be a Roman whorehouse 2000 years ago and the worst of your cities are just as bad as NYC. Venice is a monument to unsustainability and lack of planning, Rome is a museum that accidentally let people live in it, Barcelona was described to me as "the ashtray of Europe". The problem is not just a lack of central planning, nor is it purely a matter of the transit situation, nor is it a matter of corruption ( which Europe has just as well as we do ), nor is it an overdependency on cars. There's certain problems endemic to cities as an entire institution that can be mitigated and quite well but at great cost and very often just aren't at all. There's precious few cities I'd even want to visit, much less live in. Could America do more to mitigate urban rot and suburban sprawl? Certainly. But I'm not going to let Europeans just pretend that they've got these problems under control. No, not even the Scandinavians. I talk to a Swede regularly and his life is quite difficult due to being stranded between the cities and unable to make enough money to be independent, get a vehicle, or even move to a city. And his life in the cities wasn't great to begin with, such that his parents thought to move out of them in the first place. And that's not even to get started on Asian cities. Japan is the only one I know of that does cities well. Perhaps Singapore if you can deal with the legal restrictiveness, high costs, and uncomfortable climate living in Singapore. Where else in Asia are we talking about exactly? Certainly not mainland China. Definitely not India. Not Russia. Neither Indonesia, nor the Philippines. Where are these magical "good Asian cities"? Oh? Just Japan? Whoopsie. Oh but wait the South Korean Cultural Department wishes to inform me that Seoul is a good place to live too, y'know. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't SK's subway doors still have the ability to cut people in half if they don't get all the way inside the cabin in time?
I commute daily into deep loop Chicago for University, from the suburbs. I haven't been this depressed ever. The amount of anger, trash, drug use, mental illness, gun violence everywhere, the list goes on. I have friends who LIKE living here, and refuse to take our nice campus busses so they can ride the L, which is a spitting image of NY subway. When I ride the L it's an extra layer of depression as you are smothered standing up and can't even turn around, it's like a livestock truck, and smells worse than one. All while angry drug dealers hop the cars and get angry when no one buys the stuff. My most most happy part of the day is back at main campus when I get into my little Civic, and get outta the grid. Especially in the warm seasons i love rolling my windows down in the suburbs and enjoying warm breezy air with 70s 80s light music
As someone that mostly grew up in the northwest burbs I have zero interest in ever having an address in Cook that doesn’t say Chicago, IL on it. Just different viewpoints - if you want to believe the loop is just full of trash and gun violence you’re going to no matter what is actually occurring there. Don’t be surprised when others enjoy it here.
@@namram9021 exactly some like it somedon't. My best friend loves the night life. I tend to be the observant kind and I pay attention to smaller things
@@namram9021 As someone who grew up in Southside Chicago, there are things to love and hate. It's an acquired taste, and I never really enjoyed the taste growing up. Far too much give for little take. At the very least I can find comfort in the suburbs. Or at least I could before they started gentrifying the city.
I live in a rural town of a bit less than 3,000 people. Years ago my ex-girlfriend's family would come to visit from our state capital. You would think these people had been abandoned on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific; every time they came here it was nothing but complaining and "I don't know how you can live with these hillbillies!". It was extremely irritating because when they weren't complaining about everything they were treating the people in my community like we were some kind of zoo animals to gawk at and make fun of and acted as though living in a higher density area somehow automatically made you higher class. My town is actually one of the more built up ones in the area with plenty of convenience stores and gas stations with a full on supermarket and farmer's market, in contrast to most the other towns that surrounded us with populations in the 100s. I could only imagine how they would react to a road going through nothing but woods for fifty miles in every direction. That was my first experience with actual city people and it negatively colored my view of urban areas for the rest of my teenage years as I never wanted to live somewhere that could produce so many entitled and rude people. I have since grown up and realized that not everyone is like that and there are good aspects and bad aspects of everything. After having been to actual cities I've found that most people there have little to no idea how comfortable life can actually be out here.
As someone who grew up in a rural area, you can keep that trash. Once I left and discovered just how ignorant people are from there, the lack of culture, lack of any business beyond the same chains over and over, and the awful fucking sameness of every rural shithole I'll never go back.
Yeah my family on both sides were of the same mentality. It's only until recently the penny has dropped and more and more of my extended family are moving out of the inner city here in London. Just about half of my cousins now live outside of london and have managed to buy property which they would not have been able to do if they had stayed in london. They realise that actually living in the suburbs or in the country side is actually nice. I just laugh lol
I recently moved from a suburban sprawl to a dense city with good public transportation (both in the US). I definitely appreciate everything you said about how nice and self-determined a suburban area is, but I also appreciate having interesting events and people around me and quick delivery services. Everyone wants the best of both worlds, but you have to ask yourself what you individually value more. At this point, I value making connections and experiencing new things, but later on, I might decide to go back to a simpler backwoods area where deliveries take over a week.
You'll soon find that most of these events and people you so desperately want contact with are ultimately not as great as you are romaticising them to be.
@@dukewellington7050 - It's hard to meet anyone, or attend interesting events, while living and working in a low-density area, but I decided that I do want these things to be accessible, rather than making a whole trip out of them every single time. We'll see where my preferred balance lies, of course.
@@dukewellington7050 you can let people experience life for themselves yknow. Some people are better acclimated to live in a city happily. It’s not a crime to possibly enjoy living there.
the pandemic has, in my view just brought to surface how stupid big urban agglomeration is. As a programmer working remotely nobody can persuade me to live in city again. Internet speeds have gone up from 10-15 years ago, there is no reason to go to an office and commute for many professions. Thanks Louis, you are 100% correct.
Similar situation, currently buying a house where the expected maintenance costs including taxes and everything will be lower then the monthly rent I currently pay. Ant that does not even take into account the savings from better insulation and the more efficient heating and AC. Oh also no one is living above me anymore. Currently feeling to good to be true.
Nowadays anyone doing office work could easily work remotely. The only folks who can't leave are the ones who have to be there physical for retail, manufacturing, maintenance, restaurants, etc.
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece Watch out for Home Owners associations and other scummy contracts you might have to deal with. (like the bank giving you a mortgage) Hidden fees and costs exist everywhere.
I really wish there was a middle ground between NYC level density and car dependant sprawl, but unfortunately in North America it doesn't really exist. As a life long New Yorker, I really enjoy how clean suburbia is. That being said, having to drive 30 minutes round trip to buy a single carton of milk is one of the most infuriating things in the world.
You should check out the suburbs of Tokyo. Outside the urban core, the density is actually relatively low. Yet neighborhoods are still walkable and transit access to the city center is easy and relatively inexpensive. Density is comparable to Los Angeles urban area. Most people see pictures of Tokyo and think that it's all like the high density center. But most of "Tokyo" that houses the majority of its 30M population is around ~2500 persons per square km density (lower when you exclude the dense core). For reference Los Angeles (city) is 3300, Metro is 1000, and Urban is 2400. Perspective is important.
@@haphazard1342 don't get me wrong, I know places like I'm describing exist, they're just extremely rare in North America. But unfortunately, I'm barely in a position where I'm able move to a different country, let alone continent. That being said, I've only been once but I loved Tokyo. You're right about the density. Tokyo has a fantastic super dense urban core, but it also has quiet pleasant residential areas. And those residential areas seemed walkable and well connected to public transit.
@@haphazard1342 You have to be careful with averages since they very much depend on how much areas on the fringe is included. If you include more empty land around the city your average goes down. You can easily look up the densities of various parts of Tokyo on Wikipedia. The suburban parts are mostly over 5,000, with a large more central area that is over 10,000.
@@mmars4032 sometimes they are, sometimes they're more than 30 min. In NYC there is always food within walking distance. Also more to my point, you clearly mean 5 minutes by car. By the time I was 9 or 10 my parents would regularly send me to the store to get an ingredient here or there, and when I had my own money I'd go and buy myself something. Be honest, would you feel comfortable sending your (to young to drive) child to the gas station on their own? And if not, what us your plan for giving your children independence when you will have to drive them literally everywhere they go for the first ~16 year of their life?
I realised this when I was 20, worked a few years while living at my parents place and bought a cheap old house in the middle of nowhere. My living costs are ridiculously low, the environment is stunning, the people around me in the tiny village are so nice I don't even bother locking my front door... I'm 25 and I don't regret my choice. I never want to live in a city again.
I guess this is one of those areas where familiarity breeds contempt. After living in the suburbs for 20 years, I ache to move some place where I can do something as utterly reasonable as walk to a store. Everything you say here is totally valid (as I've seen myself on visits to NYC) but suburbs designed around cars instead of people aren't free of pain points either. Honestly, I just wish there wasn't such a black and white choice between the two in this country.
For sure. I'm a bike guy in a very nice but car dependent place. I feel some small changes in design and attitude could make everything even better. We've already got a lot of the things that make a place nice (no crime, no litter, no pollution, plentiful parks and nature, nice people, good beer, low cost of living)
Try a smaller city or a very large town like I did then. Its clean No rail but you can get anywhere by walking, bike or car. I have/had a 15 minute comute by car or 45 minute walk. I can walk to a store in 15 minutes. Find your happy middle and go there.
Josh, people living ontop of one another like a kennel is one of NYCs major problems. Cars aren't a bug it's a feature and really an advantage to any point you can bring up.
I watched a video from ADVChina the other day that was about how billionaires in China don't really have it all that much better than anyone else, because they still have to live in China. Their apartments might be nicer but they're still in the same poorly built buildings, breathing the same smog and soot filled air, shopping in the same overcrowded markets, eating the same dangerously polluted food, and seeing the same trashed and destroyed environment as anyone else. Your description of NYC reminds me of that to a somewhat lesser degree. It's something I've seen in Portland, Oregon any time I have to go to that city as well. I really can't imagine wanting to live in a place like that.
I have friends and family that live near Portland Oregon and whenever I visit them we stop by Portland to check it out. It never ceases to amaze me how people can tolerate living in a shit hole like that city. It doesn’t matter if it’s a poor neighborhood, a rich neighborhood, shopping center or business district. All of them are covered in literal piles of garbage and homeless encampments as far as the eye can see. I will never understand how people can walk and drive past that everyday and think it’s just normal.
You have a point regarding C-Milk's vids and the CCP, but the people in NYC have (somewhat of a choice) in who they want running the place? With the Han in the CCP, not so much unless they attacks Taiwan, fails, and this destabilizes the part's hold? In NYC, the populace seems to like the crime, or finds it convenient to not view it as a problem, because of their own ideology. In this, NYC voters are not so unlike China. My take.
In mid 2020 my family and I moved out of a blue city, onto a 10 acre spread on a river. We could not be happier. The small town we live by is full of friendly people, and the schools are great. It was the best choice we've ever made.
I have always heard that NYC is one of the great world cities. After visiting it and places like London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Boston, Denver, LA, and Chicago left me scratching my head as to how NYC could even compare. NYC Subways were gross and depressing--even more so when compared to London's Underground. Most of the other American cities were far cleaner than NYC. But all pretty much failed with respect to public transit when compared to the European cities.
when compared to public transit in Europe or Asia is totally falls apart but it's some of the best public transit in America, which tells you all you need to know.
@@clobberelladoesntreadcomme9920 Yeah, I felt that Chicago's trains were better than NYC's. At least with respect to how clean the stations / trains are. But with Chicago there are vast chunks of the city not served by them, or horrible schedules that negate their use.
Essentially nyc was one of the first cities to have great modern public transportation.... in the 1930s, ever since then it's been getting more and more degraded and outdated.
@@jeremiahblake3949 I'd like to hear someone put a number on what we SHOULD have been spending annually for the past 100 years to maintain that state of the art standard we had in 1930, (relatively speaking). It seems incomprehensible at this point, that it will catch up with London, Paris, Tokyo etc. You didn't used to have to be a "commie" to point these things out. Didn't even Regan say, "the bridges we fail to repair today, we will have to rebuild tomorrow"?
So many truths in this video! As a former NYC resident born and raised, I completely agree with what Louis is saying and thank you Louis for bringing these truths to the masses! 👍🏼👍🏼
Great video. I lived in a suburb of los Angeles for about 24 years before moving back to Illinois. Even in the suburbs, the fast pace of everything kept me at a level of anxiety where I couldn't think straight or function normally. Where I lived was filling up with trash and catching on fire every year and somehow getting more expensive. I live in one of the suburbs furthest from Chicago now before being in the middle of nowhere. It's beautiful here, much slower paced and I've never been this calm in my life. I totally understand why you made the move and am glad you're seeing the benefits of it too. I know I'm not acknowledging the core issue you mentioned of urban sprawl, but at the end of the day your mental health is every bit as important as your physical health
I appreciate all the points here. I think I am like a lot of NYC residents - I wanted to come here to be involved in a bustling metropolis and despite it's current awful state, the appeal of living in quiet isolated woodland is simply not there. What to do.
And there's nothing wrong with that. In 2008 when I wanted to start my business, or 2007 when I wanted to be a fly on the wall at the best recording studio in the world, that just was not happening in Custer South Dakota. No way, no how. People want different things at different stages in their life. I wish you the best of luck getting out of New York City what you are looking to get out of it during this stage of your life! I really mean that!
@@rossmanngroup wait?? you are from custer??? i'd get it most of the smaller towns pretty much are shrinking, most people if still staying in the state are mostly gravitating toward sioux falls and rapid city will say the housing market is well so crazy right now that between the new longer mortgages/super low interest rates/ and i would say people able to take money out of their 401k basically a house bought at 230k last year is now worth 330k around the sioux falls area .... that isn't normal
Do what other new yorkers do. Move south or midwest to the smaller cities. You still have city life while not having the bigger city problems. Here in NC northerners all seem to move to Cary.
I actually found the opposite when moving to a more rural area. In terms of jobs I mean. Where I live the major city is about 20 or more minutes away by freeway, depending on traffic. I came here for work and have found lots of work because it's a place building up. What I find from my friends back on the coast is that they view rural areas as podunk and backwater. Which is more of a bias then an assessment. They're stereotyping people they haven't met and start making excuses for why they're bad, which I seems to be more politics then actually thinking it through.
Since 1970 the population of NYC has barely grown 5%. During those last 50 years there has been tons of new construction. So how is there this huge housing shortage? Because there is enormous amounts of warehousing: things being kept vacant on purpose to create an artificial shortage which drives up prices. NYC needs a "use it or lose it" policy regarding Real Estate.
7:50 a little late to the party, but I'd choose the subway (or any public transportation) over a single line road where you have to drive, out of safety concerns. Such roads have a much higher chance of head-on collisions, and these are usually fatal. So doing it everyday is like playing russian roulette with cars. But, also, the time I don't spend driving is time reading something or playing on my phone.
my goal for the next 5 years is to bust my ass and save enough money so that i can escape Canada (Toronto), start a tech startup in the US and eventually get it to the point where I can sell it off and retire to someplace more quiet and less congested. idk if its because ive been stuck where im at in life the last few years but i think i need the change. between the high costs and shitty people, i just want a little space where i can be my own king and be left alone.
@@crakkbone you must have seen my post before i added the toronto part so i apologize lol. but yeah, toronto blows, especially this time of year and the lockdowns are not helping. ive made jokes about how its like a shittier version of New York but with less rats and narrower streets. at least when you are paying the price of NY you had wayyy more options for entertaining yourself.
I really dont suggest you move down the US but if you really think its a good idea then you should look more into which city it is that you are moving into. Most cities in the united states have god awful public transit. Go on Not Just Bikes youtube channel, he used to live in Toronto and pointed out all the things wrong with their transit
It’s so nice to see you relaxed and happy. The place you’ve moved to seems like a great fit for you, and now you’ve been lucky enough to experience city and ‘rural’ life. Even if your needs change in future at least you know what both sides of the coin look like now. Perhaps you’ll find a middle ground, perhaps you’ll return to the city, or perhaps you’ll go buy a log cabin in the middle of nowhere - but the main thing is you’re actually trying which is pretty brave! Some people never leave the place they grew up in!
I totally agree with you in 99% of the issues. It’s like watching videos with me speaking. It proves there are more people like us out there. Keep up the great work. We truly appreciate it. Congrats on your move and a better 2022. Peace.
Grew up on the outskirts of a small city. Big city folk are turning it into a suburb, so now I've had to move further into rural due to higher cost of living, and watching all the horse pastures paved over with million dollar houses with no yard. I prefer the rural, always have. And if commuting 2 hours for work is "progress", I don't want it
That kind if thing is exactly why cities need reform. You're always gonna have some sprawl but allowing denser development within cities reduces how many Go out and turn farmers land Into mcmansions. Of course if you're not a farmer, or worked to support them somehow yourself, you were just a previous wave of this trend and there were farmers before complaining about y'all
What you just described makes sense to a single person without kids. Once you add kids to the equation then it doesn't really work. I have tried that already. Four biggest problems is how easy it is to get something. If you have a lot of kids, they consume A LOT of food. One kid eats per day as much as I eat in three days. This means that grocery runs turn from once a week type of thing to three times a week type of thing. And that's with me having two giant fridges to store food in. Next is how easy it is to get to a hospital. When you have a pretty bad medical emergency, and with active kids that run around that is likely, then you need to be able to get to hospital quickly. Thankfully I have a field medic license and training, so I managed that somewhat. But seriously if you have a child screaming because they burned themselves, or broke a bone, or blood is flying out because artery was cut, then the fact that nearest medical help is 50+ minutes away is bad. Try driving to a hospital for an hour while a child is screaming on top of their lungs and their arm looks very very unnatural. Third one is how easy it is to get to home hardware store. If a kid gets launched through the wall and ends up breaking the drywall and damaging some pipes. Or if a kid completely screws up plumbing, or electrical, or furnace in the middle of the winter, or AC during summer, then you need to be able to make multiple runs to home hardware within one day because you do not know what you are doing and see horrors of something fucked up previous owners did. If you can't fix it in short time then the plumbing remains off, meaning no one gets any water, and the toilets get a lot of use when there are lots of kids in the house. So any house damages which do happen frequently, need to be fixed as quickly as possible. And last one is proximity to things for kids. Each child will have a hobby. And some hobbies will be actual things requiring child to be physically present somewhere. Thus having to drive each one to their destination means that your whole evening gets wasted driving kids back and forth. Do not get me wrong, I love living far away from a city. But god damn it, the amount of time I spend in the car is probably more than I would spend in the subway have I remained in the city. I actually spend more time in car than at home. And the video you showed of you driving through a beautiful scenery is great when there is silence, you are not rushing against the clock and no one is asking you every five seconds are we there yet. So yeah, I love being far from city, but both in the city and outside of the city our society isn't really made for having families.
And Louis himself kinda admitted it. At 13, he thought the subways were the best thing ever because of the independence it gave him, the same independence most kids won't have until they're 16-18, by which point, they're no longer kids. Urban planning in the US is seriously screwed. Can't have a family in the suburbs else the kids will drive you insane. Can't have a family in the city else the rent will drive you insane. The ideal suburb in the US would have options that let children be reasonably independent and safe. Said suburbs basically don't exist at any remotely reasonable price points.
Louis, if nothing else you are well thought out and through. Really appreciate your views even when they don't effect me or relate to my situation. You're a smart guy no doubt and appreciate your efforts and your channel. Thank you.
You can really see the difference in Louis. His mood has visibly improved. I'm glad he made this change, it's clear it was something important for him to experience. I just wonder how longer is the driving commute, compared to the 40 minutes subway ride. Also the last portion of the drive, dealing with all the city traffic, must be quite stressful.
There’s a lot of middle ground between NYC and sprawl. I live in a really pleasant area with mostly 3-4 story apartment buildings interspersed with single family homes and some rowhouses and like 1 16-17 story condo tower. It’s a really nice mix that has something for almost everybody, but sadly it’s illegal to build a neighborhood like mine in 90%+ of US residential land thanks to insane zoning regulations
"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?" E.M. Forster You couldn't pay me enough to live in the city. Pissed stained train -- no thanks!
I used to live in the exurbs with my parents. I don't have a driver's license, so I really hated it. Right now I live in a suburb near the college I go to. This, I feel, is pretty nice. There is green space that where I can walk and I can bike to get any groceries I need. Rent is about 700$/mo for a large room in a shared house (before utilities). One problem that many US cities have is that the are constricted. Suburbs outside the city bounds will protest any development, regardless of the level of intensity (so no townhouses/attached units). This has resulted in tall buildings, high prices, and the loss of green space in urban areas.
I definitely feel like I am on the other side of the spectrum a bit. I've been in Michigan my whole life and have always wanted something more. Overtime though I have come to really appreciate the things we do have, like currently I live 15 minutes away from Lake Michigan and can easily take a drive down there, watch the waves and just relax. But I've always wanted to live somewhere that I don't have to drive literally everywhere to do every task. I do love driving I really do, but I don't want it to be my only mode of getting around. I want driving to be something I enjoy doing, not forced to do. I visited NYC in April for the first time in 7 year and used to the train to get around and while I did love it, I can easily see living there for 30+ years, how most of the trains are underground can take a toll on the mind. That's why I'm very thankful the Chicago's "L" all above ground (besides the Red and Blue line in the Loop that are underground) so when I visit Chicago I can take the train and have awesome views of the city around me. I also think America just needs more options in terms of urban planning. Its either super dense cities like NYC, Chicago, SF or car dependent suburbia. There is no middle ground like there is in Europe where you can have a small/medium size town that is easy to traverse by other than car. I do hope someday our country will have more options for people who do and don't want to drive, because while technically lots of places do have at least bus service, most of them aren't that great and could use lots of work and is considered that only poor people use them which in my eyes is just wrong. This is by far the longest TH-cam comment I have ever written and for anyone that has read the whole thing I appreciate it and also sorry to take up this much of your time, but this topic is very personal to me as I am still figuring out where I want to be in life. TL;DR I just want America to have more options when it comes to development/urban planning.
I feel like rust belt cities are a great middle ground! I live in Milwaukee and love how it's laid out. Very accessible as someone without a car and not too dense. I can afford to live a 12 minute walk down to the beach on Lake Michigan. Worst part of it is just the damn winter, but I'm sure you know that!
@@MeghanStark Yes I know how brutal the winters can get. We've been getting snow storms the past 2 days but such is life haha. But I definitely agree that cities in the rust belt are a pretty good middle ground. Cost of living is cheap because no one wants to move over here because of the winters and some rural areas, at least in Michigan, can be pretty run down.
@@MeghanStark The east side is nice but much of the rest of the city is kinda ehh, moreso the further you go inland; depending on where in the city you are going without a car could be either perfectly feasible or near impossible. Also unrelated but I think we met last summer while I was out riding, small world 🤨
I was born and lived in a fairy densely populated city in the UK my entire life, and when I was younger, I was adamant that I would always live in a city. Upon looking to buy my first house with my girlfriend last year, we found the prices were insanely high, commuting within the city was horrible as it had the same type of problems (but nowhere near the magnitude) of NYC with awful car traffic and poorly funded public transport infrastructure. At the end of last year, we managed to find and move into a house in a more rural area where we can walk our dog, work remotely, and just have nicer, less crowded surroundings. Everyone has their preferences and I understand not everyone has the option to stage an exodus from a major city/city centre, but since moving, there’s been literally no downsides for us personally changing to a more suburban location. Glad you’re enjoying your new home Louis 🤙
I don't really think anyone is going to fault you for that. Those are entirely fair and I share lots of those thoughts. It's a pretty American-specific thing in equating anywhere you can walk/bike with dirty cities. It's not entirely false, because most American cities were gutted in the last century and get a massive amount of problems dumped on them. There are problems with places where your mode of transportation is 100% forced upon you. You can't walk your dog without being hit by a car, or bike to the store, you must drive and pay all the fees of car ownership. You essentially have no choice in most of the US, which on top of being financially and environmentally unsustainable, is just generally unhealthy and doesn't at all promote an active lifestyle for the majority of people. In America, being able to walk or bike is inherently fixed with living in an urban area, because unlike in Europe those are the only places where that's possible. That is essentially the beef in all of these coments.
Good to see your experiencing what its like to be able to have some personal space and a place to actually enjoy! I live in a "Small town" that has absolutely blown up the past 6-7 years, Place was great before then but now traffic is absurd, addicts are everywhere and can be seen every day while your driving and they tend to steal things. Crime has skyrocketed, Armed robberies happen several times a month now, And also a couple times a month, Someone commits homicide. Its blown me away, I moved out of town to a larger city where you had higher populated areas AND areas such as the area you showed in your video, With decent infrastructure and great roads to drive on and loved it. Now, The small town I grew up and was raised in has become a total cesspool.. Californians are all over now, The housing market is ruined here too, Less people are working than ever, There are less high paying jobs than ever, Yet traffic is at least 3-4x worse than what it was less than a decade ago with Zero infrastructure improvements, Only half assed solutions that have ended up making things worse. Tourists love the place for the Scenery but dont see the issues here or enough of them and end up moving here blindly. Ive talked to people living in some of the worst areas for crime who say they feel comfortable leaving their doors unlocked and live in a great area. The expression on this individuals face after telling them how the area is, is always just heartbreaking. I dont know what exactly what I want to do, But I know I cant stay here, And I know that my State in general is becoming just as bad as the town I grew up in. It drives me nuts. Politicians local and at the State level are completely disconnected from Reality and live in a Dream-Land. I mean ffs, The worst drug ridden area and where those types of individuals tend be out in public out here, is around and behind a Safeway that is literally right across the road from our Courthouse and it took them YEARS to even try and do something. And I really haven't seen results, So. Whatever was done wasn't enough. Just more solutions that look good on paper like most of em.
Last I checked in the US you were free to chose the path you want in life. Someone berated you for choosing to live outside one of America's shitty large cities? What! Ignore or tell them in no uncertain terms to GTFO. I've lived in NYC and I don't miss it one bit. I thank my stars that I wasn't living anywhere near a large city when the pandemic hit.
I went to college in NYC and lived in a tiny apartment in the village. It was expensive even then, and supermarkets were nearly non-existent. Even then (1970's) when out walking at night, if I could, I'd walk in the center of the roadway to make sure someone didn't pop out of a stairway and mug me. Saw lots of crazy people who walked in circles talking to themselves. Now I live near a city, but in a small town, a suburb of the city. Everything is nearby, and now that I'm older, I don't care if their aren't shows, events happening every night. Own a small house, taxes are relativity low, and nice neighbors on your typical suburban street.
@Vince I, "Last I checked in the US you were free to chose the path you want in life." For a lot of people, especially the so called "progressives" who live in cities, this the problem. If they can't force Louis, they will shame him.
We just moved from UES to Florida. For all the reasons you mention, and we are realizing the same benefit. Cheers to a happier, less anxiety ridden life 👍🏽
European perspective here. I grew up in the suburbs, well, a village 10km outside the city with just about 200 people living there. My parents still live there. It was great as a kid growing up, because there was so much to do outside, to explore, do stupid stunts and that completely unsupervised (or so we thought). However, the downside was going to parties took considerably planning and/or funds or commitment (cycling was possible after all). Now i live in the only larger city in my country, 3,5 million inhabitants. And of course it has its downsides, but it also has its upsides. Going to the store is a 5 minute stroll down the street, or a 10 minute delivery time with Gorilla or Flink, or just a walk to the other side of the street where there is a farmer markets twice a week surrounding the church in the middle of that plaza. Public transport really works and is apparently not quite as miserable as in NYC, especially since many trains run over ground at least part of the way. It is mostly clean here and since i live in a traffic reduced area (cobble street, on street parking, speed bumps, speed limit 5 kph) it is really quiet as well. Still, i do still ponder moving outside the city at some point, closer to my place of work (which moved to the suburbs last year) and more rural to have more open space around me. Sadly the opening of my place of work (an airport) and the new Tesla factory have really driven up prices a lot in that area, so moving even farther afield would be necessary which then increases my commute a lot more.
As a person who's lived my life in the western part of the U.S., sometimes in big cities and sometimes in smaller towns, this was an eye opener for me. I honestly never knew that you have New Yorkers thinking that living in what they call "urban sprawl" but what folks out here just consider "elbow room" is a sin. I've lived in several states and cities, and have lived in a small town in Kansas for many years now and it's worlds better than Denver or Phoenix or any of the other large cities I've lived in. People are friendly and you live with a modicum of human dignity as opposed to stacked on top of each other like rats. My town is clean, rent on a nice house is maybe a fifth of the price you were quoting for a studio apartment and crime is practically non-existent. Our wallets aren't hoovered clean by taxes, and the cost of living isn't insane. Your description of the public transportation system frankly floored me. Start on a train, get transferred to a shuttle, go back to a train... it wouldn't be tolerated here. Of course I do have to contend with the "urban sprawl" and "depending on a car"... why just yesterday, I had to get into my car, drive a mile to the grocery store and back again....the whole trip including doing my grocery shopping took almost an entire hour! Crazy stuff! Another foreign concept to us out here that you mention is making your stuff look crappy to keep it from being stolen. Unreal... I drive by my neighbors' houses all the time who have left their garage doors open and there's no real concern. We don't have porch pirates, or vandalism, or theft of anything that's not nailed down. You don't have to worry about being shoved in front of a moving car or assaulted by a random stranger. This isn't a rich neighborhood by any means, it's just populated with decent people. I think you're right though, some of these people born and raised in these environments simply don't know that life can be better. They've been brainwashed into thinking that this is the only decent way of life and that "flyover country" is full of poor idiots that are too stupid to renounce their freedoms and live under the thumb of the politicians in the big cities. Maybe we need to get something like Flash Drives For Freedom going in these cities to expose the propaganda and let them know there IS a better life out there.
That rent might be a lot cheaper, but I'm betting the jobs don't pay nearly as well, or there aren't that many well-paying jobs for common folk. That's been my experience. At one point in my life I lived in the Berkshires (Pittsfield), and I have to say that in general it's a pretty clean area, and it certainly has beauty all around. But the jobs were terrible, rent was fantastic, life was slower.
@@atlantic_love - Obviously the pay is proportionally lower, but so is the cost of housing and living. But more importantly, there's less stress, comfortable commute in my car with free parking everywhere, and nice people saving my sanity and aging prematurely. This has been my experience after moving out of NYC to the midwest some 20 years ago, best choice I ever made. ;)
@Steven and Kristy actually, interestingly enough, if you analyze the argument of "jobs in flyover country don't pay as well as places like NY, LA, etc." You quickly learn that it's a very poor argument. Yes, for professional, high-end jobs, the pay is generally lower. But for the larger majority of people living off of less skilled jobs, the pay is very similar. And those are the people being crushed by the higher costs of living that have this misconception that other locations don't pay as well.
Go read the comment by the TH-camr NotJustBikes who Louis Rossman pinned. And go watch some videos on his channel where he explains good vs bad infrastructure. You're right that your neighborhood is better than New York. However, low density is not sustainable in the long run due to the fact that it costs too much to maintain low density infrastructure. You're gonna say "well city infrastructure already sucks" but that's not a problem due to high density, that's a problem due to poor design and bad politicians. American cities do tend to suck, but NotJuskBikes' point is that many cities around the world are designed well and don't have the problems that American cities suffer from. For example, New York is indeed dangerous and dirty, but so are many low density sprawl areas. Alabama is full of bad low density sprawl. And there are cities such as Amsterdam that are designed to be calming and clean, thus having the same effect as the low density area that you say is the best. There are high density area such as Amsterdam which feel as good as a low density area like rural Kansas, while having the additional benefit of less car accidents due to not being car-dependent (good public transport, good biking, etc, aka opposite of New York's crappy systems). I'm a car enthusiast, yet I admit that car-dependency is dangerous.
@@tchen2905 The issue is you simply can't redesign an established city to be bike friendly. Secondly if you're in a rural area 2 lane highways are usually covered by state and county taxes. Not city/town. It's also easier to make rural areas more bike friendly due to the fact that you don't have as much competing infrastructure to redesign.
I remember when I first found this channel, I commented to GTFO of NYC. This was the only time Louis ever replied to me-- so I remember it well. I am so happy this has finally happened and I wish you the best. 😅😅😅
The land value of urban areas is insanely high. That's why it is so expensive. As far as cost effective to live in urban areas, it isn't. The ratio of wage to living costs is unfavorable, except for the most highly paid individuals (think top paying white collar work).
@@crazyelf1 It's not so much the lack of high paying jobs as it is that there just aren't jobs at all in rural areas. but the new reality that allows work from home will mean people will be able to enjoy city wages and rural lifestyle. That's a win-win in my book. and those people will pump money into the rural economy creating more service jobs. I expect in the next twenty years you're going to see many city cores gutted by the flight of wealth creators.
The metro system in Lisbon is very beautiful to commute in. All the stations were desinged by different architects and some of them are real eye candy. I like taking the metro here. It's never too crowded and it's a good ride. I couldn't imagine myself crammed in a metro like São Paulo or NYC. It's really depressing indeed.
I have not been on a NYC, subway since March of 2020, I only go to the office in Lower Manhattan, one day a week and I take car service to work, and on my return trip the NYC ferry to 90th because there are no stops between 90th Street and Sound View. If there was a ferry stop closer to my apartment, that would be my mode of travel, I have been using the NYC subway system for close to 50 years, and it certainly takes a toll on your mental health. Thanks for your insight Louis, keep up the good work young man 😊
As a software devleoper, and this is going to be a hot take, but covid changed my life for the better because I wasn't spending 2hours each day commuting to/from work because I now get to work from home saving both money and more importantly time.
I believe you can make an argument that mass transit is better than cars for the environment. However, I think it's nuts that people think having the ability to leave whenever you want and go wherever you want to go is seen as a negative. I can literally get in my car and drive to the Grand Canyon right now. The government decides where you can go, and when you go there if you're dependent on mass transit.
I always used to wonder how city people would do their family grocery shopping without a car to load the stuff into. These days I hear that the average person has only like 3 days worth of food in their apartment. Now I get it.
I think a good compromise would be something like middle housing and floor level businesses but unfortunately, due to urban planning in America and here in Canada, they've made this illegal... Which is ridiculous. Because something like this could be a good alternative to urban sprawl that would reduce car dependency and not force people to live in a massive city
Simply because in urban cities, you can't. Because you and everyone else is driving, you need to plan your trip times around other drivers, and find a spot in the day that no one else is driving the direction you want to. Traffic in urban spaces is sometimes so bad that walking to places is faster. Parking is expensive and nearly impossible to find. I voluntarily use a park and ride to commute to school via train/bus, and while I hate the connection, if the train reached my neighborhood, I would greatly prefer it. If I want to head downtown after classes, it's just a few minutes in a train rather than sitting in my car at a different traffic light every block. Car built infrastructure disincentivizes you to be around other people or get outside. If your local library, or coffee shop, or park is a few minutes walk, you are much more likely to want to go somewhere than having to get in your car, drive for 15-20 minutes, find a parking spot, and then have to do it all over again when you want to go home. Cars are great for transport to sparsely populated areas, or for last mile trips like visiting someones house. But for just casually going around town, or commuting to a densely populated area? Absolutely miserable.
@@speedbird1598 I used to work in NYC. You've made some great points that I agree with, especially the difficulty of moving around in a densely populate down town area with a car and the expense of keeping one. However, I don't feel that was what his video is about. The context was about NOT living in a densely populated downtown area. There are a ton of arguments about the validity of humans living packed together like sardines in a tin can; it's not a one sided argument. My point was, a lot of the anti car statements are just anti-car statements, no context is added. Also, I live in a sub-urban area, have a car, and yet still walk to the nearest park(there are about 10-15 in my city alone) about four times a week. Whenever I visit a major urban center I always get the feeling people don't realize how much the area has influenced their mindset on what is possible.
I'll miss your bike ride video tours but I'm glad for your mental health! I'm preparing to move to a small town in the middle of nowhere soon, can't wait.
Noise, the noise dude, the incredibly noisiness of the cities... day AND night. Cars, buses, business, people talking, screaming, moving things around... every single day, every single night. And even when at home, the neighbors, the street, everything gets inside as noise. Noise is harmful, it is poison. And most people don't even notice.
I’ve lived in suburban Texas all my life and couldn’t imagine living in a big American city like New York or Los Angeles every single day of my life. Even visiting these places is stressful because I’m always worried if someone is going to break into my car or steal my stuff. Oh and LA traffic is a fucking nightmare, like holy shit there’s no good methods of transportation there.
Whatever happened to walking, riding a bicycle, riding a horse, or driving a car? Why bother with public transit when the nearest grocery store is 30 miles from your ranch? Some of us are lucky not to live in an urban environment, although a short 30 minute drive away from civilization...
I'm 40+ now and still dream weekly of the stress of public transport in the big city back in my teens. I drive a car for over 20 years now, never used public transport since and also moved out of the city to a small village next to the woods. It surely left a mark and any small stress in the waking day triggers those dreams the following night, dropping me back into the rush hours of the 90's.
This is so interesting, thanks for sharing Louis. I was raised in rural Minnesota and North Dakota and have spent enough time in large cities from Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago to New York, Seoul, and Shanghai to know that I love urban living but not in the mega cities. When it is still possible to escape the city with a 30-minute drive or less, and the residents of the city haven’t lost their appreciation for nature, I prefer the city. We are a one-car family, I commute by bike or bus year-round, and this is how I like it. I am super excited to see how you have escaped hell for something you love.
I grew up in the suburbs, single family homes in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, before my parents landed in the outskirts of Jackson, MS where they have now been for 43 years. I have since moved to a genuinely rural area, surrounded by acreage and corn/hay fields. Everyone is helpful. Crime is virtually nonexistent. I don't understand why anyone would want to live in a city. Or even a townhouse or apartment, where you share a wall or walls with fellow residents who may prefer loud noises at odd hours, or have a big dog or kids who run and jump on the floor above me. It's quiet here. The air is clean. We are close to everything we need regarding stores and doctors/hospitals, with Johns Hopkins an hour south and Hershey Medical center a similar distance north.
I never really liked driving everywhere, and loved the idea of one day living in a city with public transport. Then I moved to a place where I had to wait an hour on average to make a bus that's supposed to arrive every 20 minutes. In retrospect, driving isn't too bad.
I feel you Louis! I lived in Manhattan for 9 years, I was excited to move there, but very quickly found out it is not the dream I once thought it was. Very expensive, dirty, full of attitude, (I can't say I blame anyone for having because of the conditions and treatment received by people of position and or power), it turned out to be ok for awhile, but I knew I couldn't stay during the last 2 years I was there. The charm of NYC was fun, but it felt like I was dating the dirty neighbor girl. I left and moved to Penn. and from there have advanced myself to much better living, and although it isn't suburban, it is a far cry better than I had it in NYC. I still love NYC for many reasons, but I can't bring myself to call it home anymore, it's just not conducive to good living unless you are blessed with false hope and deep pockets.
Louis I started watching you while you were showing board repair. I noticed your personality, being a New Yorker I could feel the vibe. Ive enjoyed the recent vlog videos. I need to get off the island. The amount of money is insane. Working in the city is rediculous, tickets for everything. It's literally so difficult to make money in the city, I have to pad for tickets, parking.. Rediculous
I agree that urban mismanagement it bad. Especially in the biggest cities. But sprawl cannot be the answer. The '"missing middle" density in America, is really what we need. This is what Europe does and they have less issues than the us
I definitely don't blame you for making the move, but it's so sad that you felt that you had to. Though I made a similar decision myself.
I run a TH-cam channel where I regularly talk about how mixed-use walkable cities are better places to live. And they are. But not in America.
This is a problem I often have trying to communicate this topic with some Americans. Because most of them have either never been outside of the US, or have never been anywhere except touristy places outside of the US, so their only exposure to cities is American cities. And most American cities are awful.
American public transit is either non-existent, or chronically underfunded. Urban environments are left to decay instead of building on that wealth. And all of the money is poured into building more car-dependent suburbs and exurbs that are fundamentally financially insolvent.
But this isn't a problem with _cities,_ it's a problem with _American cities,_ because they're designed incorrectly. And then pile on all the systemic issues that are fairly unique to the US and you get, well, exactly what you showed in this video.
You made the absolute correct decision for you, but the country cannot survive if everyone makes that same decision. The reason your rent is lower is because the location is more remote. But all of the infrastructure you enjoy, from the electricity to the beautiful roads with very little traffic, cost serious money to maintain. It is impossible to collect enough tax revenue to maintain all of that sprawling infrastructure by taxing low-cost low-density housing. Your neighbourhood is nice now, but in 30 years it will be crumbling and broken, and there won't be enough money to maintain it. And anybody with the means will move elsewhere.
Suburbanites may read this, and not care at all. After all, they get a nice place to live that's nice and cheap (through direct and indirect subsidies). But for society as a whole, this is just going to lead to more bankruptcies and failure in American cities, and it will make today's problems even worse.
Of course, I ultimately made the same decision, but instead of leaving the city, I left the country. I have lived in several US and Canadian cities, and while Canadian cities are _way_ better than American cities, they're still pretty bad. So since I didn't want to live in a soul-crushing sprawling suburb stuck in traffic in my car every day, we moved our family to the Netherlands. And it's awesome.
I don't know what the solution is. If I did, I wouldn't have had to move out of the country. But it's really terrible that Americans can't experience the great urban environments that exist in the rest of the world.
But why do you think infrastructure is the government's domain? The government steals our money to pay private companies to build/fix those roads. And what do these cities produce economically? The only reason the New York municipal government has so much money is because it holds the most clout as the world's financial epicenter. Only 8% of the population works in finance and most of the people in that sector live outside the city. The rest are of these jobs are low pay service sector positions for small businesses that have the disadvantage of being so heavily regulated they have to run on razor thin margins. Even if said small business has a competent manger/owner like Louis that understands the benefits of not paying poverty wages the cost of living in the city will still drain most of your expendable income. The reason this city's government can tax so much is because the bloated CMBS market has caused office space to rent for well above market rates. It's a literal giant scam
Sources;
th-cam.com/channels/APlkRGvp4_JnsIyOJmpgDg.html
th-cam.com/video/pVVzsn0Zw20/w-d-xo.html
You are quite active throughout youtube advocating for livable cities. However, what you fail to realize is that not everyone wants to live in a miserable concrete jungle.
@@Maryumaru you just proved my point, thank you. If you all you know about cities is "miserable concrete jungles", then you wouldn't want to live in one. But good cities aren't "concrete jungles". They're exactly the opposite.
That's exactly the ignorance I was talking about above, and that is why I spend so much time educating people about _good_ cities, not American cities.
@@NotJustBikes No, I still think that it is you who doesn't get it. You keep talking about good cities, however none of them seem anything but a concrete jungle to me. Not even Amsterdam. Not everyone likes cities and doesn't matter what you do to them it wont change. There are just too many people living too close to each other and it is suffocating.
I have been living in a city for a decade now and I am sick of it. I miss nature, I miss the green, the night sky and thanks to remote work I don't need anything from a city anymore.
This man sounds 1000x times more calm sitting in front of that window than any other video of his I've watched over the last several years.
I also noticed. It's like the city makes the mood :-)
What if a content Louis stops making us content? o_O
Get him riled up, quick!
Similar issue I had living in a city. Even subconsciously, it's like you are always feeling like you are being poked.
In his older videos he always seemed like his store was on fire 😂
@@BronzedTube It's the high density living. Felt the same way after a while when I lived in a high rise.
One of the reasons I subscribed to your channel (beside you fighting the good fight for rights to repair) was your total honesty about how it was to live in NYC. Thanks Louis.
You click on other videos and it's quickly obvious that they really only had about 50 seconds worth of content but they stretched out the video to 10 minutes. I never feel that with Louis.
I like him for his honesty. He takes his thoughts and puts them in a simple manner. He doesn't bullshit you.
Not total honesty but to each their own.
@@Ryfael why do u say that?
@@Ryfael - Well like everything else in life, it's subjective, but he's pretty close to the truth.
The biggest city i've ever been to was tokyo, and i took the train multiple places every day i was there for a week. their trains are lacking in a few areas, and you can tell when you're riding in something from the 80s, but they went where they said, they were on time, and there was not a speck of garbage anywhere. The air quality in the sardine packed subway cars at rush hour had better air quality than my office at the time. looking at a NY subway always makes me think of escape from NY.
I've always found that interesting; more peopole by far than american cities yet less trash, not as broken and better air... people are also MORE RESPECTUFL... I don't understand what the downfall is with American cities cause they all look like dystopian sardine factories...
The Japanese have an inherent and eternal discipline that surpasses modern day Americans.
Because there is no 'wokeness' in Japan!
A new 'Escape from New York' movie would have a really low special effects budget; All you have to do is show up and record!
@@Atsumari cleanliness is baked into their religion, Buddhism and Shintoism both stress the need for it. That's a value most are taught from a young age, and by this point it's instinct. This doesn't stop some litter from happening, but it does help with a lot of it
I moved from, "the city" to 45 minutes north of, "the city" a couple of years ago...from a 1/4 acre suburban lot, with surrounding neighbors, to 10 acres in, "the county". No neighbors on either side...just woods...a farm field across the street and wetland preserve behind. Bright stars at night and total silence beyond sand hill cranes and the wind. Complete and utter bliss.
The only problem I have with anything north of NYC is the wetland preserves themselves. the DEP came into Windham, NY, in the catskills, and started either buying up all the land they could around the river going through the middle of town, or acquiring it through eminent domain of anyone unwilling to sell at the egregiously low prices they were offering for the land. this happened a few years before Irene came through and flooded the area out, and it was a big hassle when all of that came through as well. They have cameras and such set up in random places to prevent trespassing, and anyone sharing a property line with them doing ANYTHING in terms of landscaping, paving, etc needs to, from my understanding, submit paperwork to the DEP to do a survey... it's quite the hassle.
tl;dr it's great to move away from the city, but it's probably better to not move into a property bordering a "wetland preserve" especially if it was set up by the DEP to protect the oh-so-precious NYC water supply.
I want what you have, except maybe living near or on a mountain would make for some nice scenery.
I did the same, and with the same results. Yep! and a fraction of the price!
Do you have a well? Or are you connected to some type of city water infrastructure
@@SudosFTW basically, you are saying to stay as far away from NYC as possible.
Hi Louis. We moved our entire business to a rural area in 2017. Our entire county is less than 30k people. While we love it, we do find a lot of people don't give a shit about garbage. There is a lot of litter - just the volume is not a big problem as so few people. I will say the cost of living and overhead for my business is great. We rent about 1000 square feet for $450 a month - with electricity included.
Pre-WW2 Streetcar mixed-use suburbs need to make a comeback. They’re a fantastic compromise between urban and modern suburban environments.
Unfortunately they’ve effectively been zoned out of existence, and so old homes in streetcar suburbs are usually SUPER expensive due to high demand but zero new supply.
Man I love streetcars. They're so cute and when streetcar rails are built and planned well, they can help you get around very effectively.
The zoning is a big problem. A developer bought the 80 acre sears property by me to build a cool mixed use development. The city council voted NO. Now we are getting another strip mall which was in accordance with the previous zoning. I could not be less excited.
The rot in America runs too deep for these neighborhoods to be anything but "have" or "have-not" zones. The midwestern cities are full of neighborhoods like these but most will never make a comeback... check out St Louis, Milwaukee, Omaha, Chicagoland, KC. The streetcar suburban neighborhoods are there but the jobs and community structure that go along with them have long since gone.
I dislike tram suburbs because they are too loud, the point of suburbs are to be quite places to live, away from the loudness of the city
@cada 99 and cars aren’t? gtfo
I think it differs with context - where you are seems relatively small, and I think that's where the car is ideal as a means of transit. The usual issue with car dependency is that it scales up very poorly, which is what has happened in the majority of large cities in the US/Canada where car dependency/suburban sprawl leads to huge amounts of traffic and long commuting times that could be significantly alleviated with decent public transit (LA being the most infamous example). Also I have a feeling NYC might have specific mismanagement and infrastructure issues that wouldn't be present in other urban areas (e.g. particularly cities in the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, etc.)
All of these problems are solved with remote work. So your whole comment is basically null
@@dukewellington7050 in car dependency, people have to drive for everything. The people will be driving whether the have a commute or not
That only works in an upper-scale area. When I say upper-scale, I mean completely upper scale. The areas with garbage everywhere are in neighborhoods which have sections in the Village, Town or City which are upper scale and others lower. You can not try to gentrify an area changing the nature of that area, this just does not work. You have to work with the chaos instead of against it. Those people making Tiny Houses for the poor were working with the chaos. They weren't trying to pretend the problem did not exist. Then, the scrubs in power knew their funding they were going to waist on just giving the appearance of solving a problem was in jeopardy so they removed the Tiny Houses. Action proves intent.
@@EricSmith-dx1ll if they dont commute, they arent driving as much..
"NYC specific" mismanagement
The graft/corruption exists on a large scale in SF, LA, Oakland, Portland, Seattle. I would call it US big city specific. Because our grifting ngo's are systemically corrupt nationwide.
It made my day to find out that you've actually, finally, escaped NYC. I'm so happy for you Louis. I wish you all the best.
I mean, I agree with the criticism towards suburban sprawl, however, that criticisms is NOT geared towards people moving there. I REALLY do understand why people move away from junk infested cities. The criticism is more towards urban planning. The US probably has one of the most inefficient public transportation, cities and suburbia I have ever witnessed, and if I compare it to my own suburban experience in Sweden it's not even comparable, here, residential areas are isolated from traffic, tunnels and dedicated bicycle lanes shield us from engaging with dangerous traffic. Parks, playgrounds, meadows and natural forest are integrated into the planning. In my childhood we had grocery stores, video rentals, restaurants, schools, youth centers, a library, pharmacy, local medical care etc. etc. everything within walkable distance My parents never needed to worry about cars and dangerous crossings. We had a train station (high speed, 200km/h leaving every 30 minute), which would take us to the the city center of the third largest city in Sweden with a travel time of 15 minutes.
So really, it's not the people's fault moving into suburban sprawls.... the problem is that there are no better available solution to combat unnecessary car dependency in the US. It's because the urban building codes cater towards car manufacturers' "profitable" urban vision rather than what is in the best interest of people. It's not a personal problem, it's an urban planning problem. Which should be criticized by everyone really. Even those living in suburban sprawls. If those areas were planned better, parents wouldn't need to drive their kids to schools, or drive them to activities or friends. The children would become much more independent, have better social lives and develop faster as a result. Every day grocery shopping for parents would be a matter of walking down a couple of streets (or ask your kids to do it). What about having a barbecue/picnic with a couple of neighbors in the open meadows or parks? This is possible if urban sprawls didn't look like they do in the US.
This comment should be higher up, any sane person isn't yelling at Louis (or anyone for that matter) for leaving city in its current state (or any massively dense city for that matter). City life isn't for everyone. Hell, I'm a city rat -- I'm getting tired of living in the city and the messiness involved.
What people are yelling at -- and what I also despise -- are the cookie-cutter suburbs that have insanely oppressive zoning, annoying HOAs, ugly McMansions, terrible design, inaccessible community centers and overall "bleh" planning.
Louis should take a look at Strong Towns, he would be surprised to see how much of the Right To Repair movement overlaps with building the strong American towns that *used* to exist (and some still do!) before inane political lobbying from GM and the likes.
I think last I heard of Louis (from a recent livestream) he moved to somewhere in NH -- a New England state, close to where I live personally-- that is known for being pretty dang rural, but still has OLD classic American bustling, well-thought-out, and active city/town centers that don't wholly succumb to suburban sprawl (at least within city limits) and have all of what I just mentioned -- walkable streets, accessible community centers, mixed-use zoning, etc. Like other commenters have mentioned, it is a pretty disingenuous comparison to say that moving to NH is "suburban sprawl" but it is a common misconception that I do not blame Louis for.
Putting the MTA in the middle-of-nowhere NH doesn't make sense -- most of us aren't saying it does. What we *are* saying is sprawl akin to that of Houston, Atlanta and LA *can* be avoided and improved upon by planning techniques that are tried and true and have been effective for ages.
@@dertythegrower that's true, I started to watch "Not just bikes". Canadian who moved to Amsterdam... I actually didn't know how bad the city planning was in the US before I went there on a business trip, while later reading up on the subject. And then just out of curiosity using goole maps and see what the places looked like. It really made me appreciate my own childhood and the city planning that had been made in the 60's and 70's in Sweden.
@@derekbarbosa Totally agree. "Strong Towns" is something everyone should watch... It's easy to stick your head into the ground and accept society the way it is. However, learning about society, understand what we did good, and what we did bad, is really what makes citizens informed. I think Louis is great, he empowers people to become politically engaged, and I really think the American people need that. Not sit at home and passively allow corporate greed lobby against what is in citizens best interests. Like you say, urban planning very much goes hand in hand with the corruption within right to repair.
@@derekbarbosa one of the things which I get a laugh out of is when people use the term "cookie-cutter" to refer to suburban architecture, or lack thereof, in a derogatory fashion. I get it because it's easy to look at a subdivision built by a developer and see identical buildings. I, however, will point out that cities are not much different. Have you been in an apartment building ever? How many nearly identical-looking 3- or 6-flats are there in any major urban area? HOAs? Those exist in condominiums as well. Restrictive land usage through local ordinances are everywhere in cities. Maybe it's just Chicago and the kinds of growth spurts it has had, but I don't see a functional difference.
all in all, it's Robert Moses' fault
I remember going to NYC years ago when I was in my teens and then several times while in high school and university. Everything was always ridiculously expensive, yet the quality never matched the price. What stood out was how old, dirty, and run down the buildings and infrastructure was and is now. Or how there were perpetual mounds of garbage every few streets. It just never made sense to me why anyone would put NYC on a pedestal as a desirable place to live. That feeling is despair when the wind blows on those empty streets at night, while an occasional smelly cab drives by, or that homeless person eyeing your backpack as you pass by. People actually want to live there?
@badinstinctsTH-cam
NYC needs to crash hard before it can get better. Recessions are very good at weeding out the bad companies
@badinstinctsTH-cam Lol, if everyone moved to small towns then that small town becomes a city.
Glamorization in books, movies, and songs, maybe?
The trash is due to there being no alleys for sanitation pickup. So it goes out on the street for pickup
@@lawlkings There is plenty of room in the USA for plenty of small towns. The problem is that gvt loves to build density and get more taxes. So once gvt gets a foothold they do all they can to stop people from going elsewhere. Instead of a state passing a law that says "No town can exceed 250,000 and towns must be separated by at least 5 miles of low density" they make it so it's very hard to have open space. They refuse to do the required zoning to stop it because the people with money own the land and they want den$ity. To make it work you need to put the laws and zoning in place before the major developments take place, you need to PLAN for low density... no one does, they only plan for high density. One of the most sought-after places to live in AZ is Paradise Valley, in the heart of the Phoenix Metro Area. They DID do the planning. They people who started it wanted it to be quality low-density single-family homes. NO commercial enterprises are allowed, no apartments are allowed, no more than two stories are allowed, no lots smaller than an acre are allowed. And everyone would like to live there, you can walk or bike on the streets, it's clean, nearly crime free, the taxes are plenty to keep it all up, they get no outside $upport. There's no city hall corruption, they have their own police, etc.
Don't take this the wrong way Louis, but I think this is one of the first videos I've seen where you don't have bags under your eyes. Looks like that fresh air is doing you some good! Congrats on escaping NYC!
he still does but they're nowhere near as bad
Moved from the Bronx to Yonkers 30 years ago. Watched both cities crumble before me. Noise, crime, red light cameras, sirens, traffic, double parking and too many people. Moved to Dutchess County in 2017. NEVER EVER going back to the city. It’s quiet, clean, everyone waves hello and it’s not a liberal shithole.
I grew up in the suburbs and now live in the city. From my experience, both sections are failing. I saw my hometown slowly fail as old shopping centers whithered and people move to even more expensive area. Their solution was more sprawl and more empty homes. At the same time living in the city has had better resource management, but they fail to maintain public transit and forgo investing in poorer neighborhoods so that they either rot or become gentrified. To me, the problem is wholly American. We stopped investing in infrastructure and our communities and it shows. Moving to a better neighborhood is only a temporary solution that most people can't afford. America is an underdeveloped nation for everyone except the few who can afford it. It doesn't matter if you live in the city, the suburbs, or rurally, something needs to change.
The issue nowadays can be largely pinned on the Cold War. We have entire generations raised under propaganda that we need to keep socialism out of the US, which is sad because a good blend of socialism and capitalism makes an economy strong (just look at Scandinavian countries).
@@wta1518 the Scandinavian countries are economically much more capitalist than the United States is. Social services aren’t inherently socialist.
@@kylekleveno3283 Social services are absolutely part of socialism.
@@kylekleveno3283 That's kind of his point. In fact, due to their extremely robust social safety nets, entrepreneurship, business ownership and self-employement are all significantly higher in Scandinavian nations.
It's almost like not having your healthcare tied directly to your employment grants people a large degree of personal freedom.
@@erikhendrickson59 Ok, so let’s delete all of the american socialization we have already (social security, medicare, medicaid, WIC, etc) and implement things similar to what Norway does. This is instead of adding on to what we already have.
Sound good? Because that’s the only way you will get libertarians like me to support such a thing. No additional government power, just reforms.
I was one who moved out of the city back in the early '90s and LOVED IT! I moved to a small town and was instantly happy with that decision. Unfortunately, after a divorce, I came back to the city to be near family and start all over again at the tail end of the '90s and deep down wished I didn't do that. Here I am 20 years later and I still yearn to get out of the city again. I do feel compelled to warn you though, living out where people are not so used to being stacked on top of each other, they will surprise you with how much they will want to be a part of your going ons. You will find it weird at first but they will actually start talking to you while you were minding your own business, and they will greet you with a smile, seemingly like they're up to something, BUT WAIT!!! If you give them a chance, you might actually find they are being sincere. They actually do just want to say 'Hello' and that smile is NOT as fake as you might think. Granted this will seem strange! But, they mean you no harm!!! 😀
Spot on Louis! I grew up in the suburbs/rural and now live in NYC. The novelty is entirely gone after a few years of living here, and I want out. And to those who say "just wait 30 years and those suburbs will be shit too" - I have, and they're not. They're just 30 years older but still beautiful and still look far nicer than the 2nd Ave subway stations only two months after opening.
Ive lived in rural areas my whole life, and I could never understand why people liked living in a dump like NYC. Every time I've been there, it's been such a hassle. What a depressing place.
It would be cool to live near by to visit from time to time for something specific, but 99% of the time I much prefer lawns large enough for most people to need a 60" mower desk.
Simple: People like different shit.
Why do some people risk their lives to join the military? Why do some people go to medical school which is stressful? People aren’t cookie cutters. If everyone was similar and into the same thing, we would all be bland.
@CaptainMcShotgun I would like to walk across the street to the store, rather than having to drive 30 minutes. Pretty simple really.
@@lawlkings Wait, people actually like living like packed sardines in overpriced flats? xD
it depends on your ambitions
In small towns one big difference is that if you leave trash somewhere chances are people will quickly figure out who did it and point their finger at you. And you never want fingers pointed at you in small town. I just so happen to make a daily transition from my home on the edge of small town to the center of larger town where I work. Where I live I actually forgotten my car wide opened for two days and nobody even noticed. In the meantime in the center of larger town there is nonstop influx of homeless people, idiots, and other entities that just make life worse in every way. Not to mention the non-stop screaming of various sirens.
There are some terrible trashy people in small towns and rural areas. I noticed it especially in the south, people have no respect for nature and they leave beer bottles and cigarette butts everywhere. It's an attitude more than anything. The biggest reason to move anywhere is the people who live there, we're not all the same.
I would argue that having trash cans spread out will greatly reduce garbage thrown away. It's not like people throw stuff on the ground because they hate you or the city, but there's nowhere to throw it in a close distance.
For example, we'd often see garbage thrown into our garden or some neighbour's before the local governing body finally listened to complaints and put a trash can nearby. The area is noticeably cleaner now.
@@gorkyd7912 Small to mid size towns can range from people respecting their city and keeping it as tidy as possible to people who give no shits and plastic bottles littered around containing either chewing tobacco spittle or piss.
As someone who has spent their life in the North Georgia mountains, it feels odd to hear someone discover the kind of place I've always called home.
Trust me it's true, after moving out of NYC to the midwest some 20 years, I had the same initial experience. Course now it seems normal, but every time I visit NYC, it reminds me that was the best choice I have ever made. :)
@ebtre zlef Yeah as a Georgian, obviously this guy missed the memo. There's a reason the largest state this side of the Mississippi rare comes upp in conversation.
I just think to myself, now you get it.
Tallulah the goat
Aye, I'm near that area also. Absolutely beautiful here. Even in downtown Chattanooga it's beautiful, no trash on the street or anything like the pics from NYC. Even in the worse parts of Chattanooga it's still not dirty, and I've worked in those areas for years.
As a photographer, images have an enormous effect on people. A well produced image conveys emotion. Surrounding yourself with depressing images will make you depressed. Surrounding yourself with beautiful and cheerful images makes you feel good.
Walking/biking/driving streets lined with trash and filth, or surrounding yourself with scenes of homelessness, filth, crime and disrepair will make you feel like shit, especially when there's no escape.
Having visited NYC regularly, point blank the people are assholes, and I'm pretty sure it's not their fault. People have a tendency to treat others how they feel. The city is a disaster. The amazing skyline is lipstick on a pig. It's sad to see that everything is surrounded by squalor. You'd be an asshole too if you were surrounded by that every day.
Are you from the Northeast? New Yorkers have never come across as rude to me but, I do know that Northern people's irritation with having their time wasted, wanting to get to the point and our just natural bluntness got me into al ot of trouble when I lived in Georgia.
I was reading My Time in America by G.K. Chesterton. So much there.
the tall buildings block the sky and sun...don't need to be a genius to see why that would make the people who live there miserable
Agreed
I can really relate to this and it somehow fills me with deep joy, seeing you appreciating and embracing the nature. I grew up in a small town in Germany and studied in a big city. I lived in a very dirty neighbourhood with solid crime rates (but to be fair, from your stories its nothing to nyc). It was one of my happiest days when I finished studying and left that city with a van with all my stuff inside. I moved to a smaller and greener city which is now my home for seven years.
It is exactly like you said. Waking up, walking around and living in a shitty place makes you an unhappy person. There is nothing more healing to your soul than going outside and walking, cycling or running around in nature and being between nice and sane people. I wish you the best in your new home.
As someone who grew up in Suburbia, and eventually lived in an urban environment for a few years. I can hands down say that I would rather live in Suburban sprawl now after the events of the summer of 2020 decided to cement my over all opinion. I found urban centers to be filled with the least understanding and tolerant people I have ever met(And this is coming from someone who is not conservative and grew up in a die hard loyal Conservative suburb). The amount of hateful and close minded people I met in my time around Denver's downtown core was pretty jarring from what I had heard about the people there and how I was made to believe that diverse and vibrant urban areas are the best place to be. Not to mention how many drug addicts were around there(Which werent really a problem at any point).
Ive also been to many other cities and been in their urban core neighborhoods, and I keep running into the same hateful and intolerant psychos time and time again. A well as any urban area being either sketchy af to where I question my own safety or expensive as hell to live unless you make nearly 6 figures or more. To me.. Urban centers have a very tainted image about what kind of people they are reserved for and who inhabits them, and I am definitely not they type of person who belongs. Urban places in my opinion are a legit hell. A hell that I have seen twist a few people who move to them from suburbs.
After having lived in both, I have come to appreciate living in suburban sprawl or Suburban hell as some urbanist call it. Was it always the prettiest? No.. But I made a lot of good friends growing up in suburbia during the 2000s and had lots of good memories of riding bikes and going to the parks around my town. As well as me and my friends riding our bikes to our towns fall festival each october and being there most the day. Our town was always quiet, we could be out at night without being supervised and was over all a nice place to live. Do I think it Suburbia could be designed way better than it is? Absolutely. But I will never say that urban living is better for living and being happy and fulfilled. At least here in America.
If only there was a way to combine the 2 and make a good mixture of the 2 that made everyone happy and didnt cater to only the wealthy.
I had the same experience as you. Grew up in suburbia, now have been living in the downtown core of a major city for a couple of years, and planning to move back out within a year.
The town I grew up in are surrounded by forests and I really enjoyed the nature and quietness. I also miss the aspect that the most dangerous things that I would see on the street are racoons and occasionally a couple of black bears, instead of screaming people running around with beer bottles or needles in their hands.
I live in a Suburban area, and I wish it was becoming more conservative. All I see from areas run by lefties is crime, mental illness, and a mismanagement of tax funds and state power. I don't understand why anyone would vote for that. I hate being told what to do though.
I hear ya, Louis. I had similar experiences living in Queens. I used to have to take the train from my job in Manhattan back home to Ozone Park. The things I saw happening in front of me on the subway were horrible. One night I came home and got physically ill. I moved to Astoria. I lived there for 15 years and had my daughter. One hot summer day I was pushing my daughter in her stroller when I got to a major shopping intersection. There, on the corner was a homeless person, taking up the bench for himself. He had defecated all over it, took the street corner trash can, lit a huge fire in it and as people walked past him, he held up his middle finger and yelled "F*ck You, F*ck You". After putting up with the city for so many years, that was the last straw. I didn't want to raise my daughter in that environment, so I, too moved to New England.
@@ShaferHart Probably, he was known as a serial defecator.
@@Fanta.... he has returned to monke
The idea that you had to make your stuff look worse to deter theft is so wild to me. Like holy shit, I really take not having to do that for granted. Glad you escaped.
@@dertythegrower Word is in some places, people are leaving their cars unlocked and trunks open now because the locks don't stop them anymore.
@@dertythegrower I do the same thing. I just looked over at my door to see if I did it again, been trying to break that habit for inside doors. Yes, yes I did.
@@dertythegrower I'd still lock my stuff up in a good neighborhood anyways. I like the security and it doesn't cost me anything, a win win.
@@chaos.corner I knew someone who used to leave his (shitbox) car unlocked, glove box open, so you could see there's nothing worth stealing inside. Saves the crooks breaking a window.
@@chrism2279 Some places, they'll break your windows just for being a smartarse, sadly.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft
I grew up in a town in Abbotsford, BC, Canada. Whenever I went to Vancouver (which is known as a beautiful city) I was repulsed by the standards that people have to accept. Friends of mine moved to be closer for "Things to do" but the cost to my happiness would have been too high to follow them. I then moved to a town with less than 5000 people in rural Alberta and that was even better. (though I do miss the mountains that I used to hike in.) I have a way better standard of living than I would have if I lived in a city.
And freedom.
And Alberta's taxes are allot less than BC too.
Vancouver is paradise compared to NYC
I went to Vancouver in 2018. The nature in the surrounding area is amazing, but that city is disgusting.
City-dwellers literally don't understand the concept of freedom until they get out of the city. How could they? It's something they've literally never directly experienced.
Nailed it, Lou.
When I was in my early 20s and just wanted to party, NYC and its “energy” were the only place in the world I could tolerate.
Early 30s I now value peace, quiet, community and nature, and NYC is completely intolerable.
The government is a product you “buy” with your taxes, and nobody gets worse value (IMO) than NYC.
I left my hometown (Washington Height, Manhattan, NYC) when I was 18 in 1973. It was like a weight being taken off my shoulders. I was reborn, the world was my oyster. Flash forward almost 50 years, I find myself still happy and relatively healthy. No debts, no rat race, living honestly- not just surviving. Retired for the moment and easing into the autumn of my days in northeastern Spain. I would change not an iota of my life. My only yearning is for this wonderful time on earth never to cease. Louis, you are on the right path. Savor it. Breathe it in. You are one of the chosen lucky souls.
Louis, I've been watching you on and off for a few years. I'm glad to see you took the leap and moved yourself to a place that's better for your mental health. I live outside of town myself, in an older house.. but I have some property, trees, views, and I love my drive to work. I could absolutely live an easier life and make more money in a more populated area, but I've found a niche here in the mountains, I make a decent living for myself, and serve a population that needs my services. Sometimes simpler is better, in my opinion. I'm happy for you finding some solitude in a nice space. You'll go far, keep it up.
Louis Rossman gives an opinion that I may not see in the planning field, which is something I appreciate hearing. While many people I have talked to want to be able to live in a dense, urban area. They are appalled by the lack of cleanliness and good public transit (both of which many American cities need to work on). Public transit in places like Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Prague are known to be efficient and clean. All the while being cheaper ticket wise, and maintenance wise. By American standards, the mentioned European cities also look like freakin' utopias, in terms of their cleanliness. It isn't that Americans don't want to live in urbanized areas, it's that American cities have issues and nothing seems to be done about it.
My trip to Europe showed me that dense areas can be nice and clean, when people actually care about their environments. Anytime I took public transit in Europe, I never felt inconvenienced by it. Amsterdam's metro was frequent and on-time. Ultimately these cities showed me that it isn't density that makes American cities bad, it is more of a systemic issue. While I may have skimmed over many more issues that go hand-in-hand, this is a TH-cam comment, not a thesis. Someone like Louis gives a good view into what people actually think about these issues. While the politicians think they know what's good, it's the people who they need to listen to.
Ride in Amsterdam's trams is expensive. Ten years ago, I paid close to 5 euro for a ride.
@@timkishelov9489 Google says a one day pass can be gotten for bus and train fare in Amsterdam for €8.50($9.60 as of writing) . A day pass in Washington DC for the metro is $13...
@@kylewelch691 I paid 4.80 Euro for a ride in tram in Amsterdam about 10 years ago. Prices could've changed though.
I spent a few days in a city in Germany, I've also been to New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Houston, Miami, Atlanta . . . Germany was an eye-opener in how things could be!
Great topic Louis.
I lived in downtown Denver for two years. The bike commuting was great along with the full mix of social commerce but there was constant noise, activity, sirens, parking hassles, trash, homelessness, high rent, that crushes your soul a little more each month. Two years later I bought and moved into a house in the suburbs 10 miles from downtown. Better, lived there for 7 years and dodged aggressive HOAs, became an early morning vampire to avoid commute traffic, and suffered through too many neighbors' late night backyard parties.
When covid transformed both of our jobs to WFH it was sign towards the future. An Opportunity. A new order. We sold our home in the suburbs and moved into the Rocky Mountains on 2 acres. The wife & I are here for the long haul. Yes it's a 30 minute drive to the grocery store and a solid 60 minutes to downtown Denver that I drive once a week but the scenery view, tranquility, simpleness at home in a rural setting is the better life I was seeking. Thought I liked living in the city until I got a taste of suburban living but now living rural in the mountains I can't go back to either of the past two!
The Rockies are gorgeous. Glad you found peace there!
Best decision you ever made. Just make sure the place you buy has a huge lab.
Hi Dave. I lived in a rural area growing up, until the big city we fled swallowed us up!
@@MrDoneboy Wait, just to clarify; you're saying the city expanded and swallowed your rural area up and you had to flee? That sucks :(
@@Joe--
Houston, Texas!
@@MrDoneboy Ohhhhhhhh, dang, sorry to here that that. Would like to recommend Not Just Bikes and is video about Houston or Scott Dailey's response video: ”Response to Not Just Bikes: Why I Hate Houston” which is 4 mins, very short
"lab" as in "labrador" or as in "laboratory"?
The whole price structure for urban vs suburban is backwards to me. I would have thought it would be much more efficient so more cost effective for urban, that you would tolerate the tin can to save money. Nope, that's not how it works. Why would I want to pay more to live crammed together in a sardine can. People argue about private transport vs public mass transit but at the end of the day, private transport is far more preferable and the cost becomes a nonissue when you consider how much more inexpensive suburban housing is. You save so much money that you have private transport and left over funds for other things.
And with the added availability of remote work now, the appeal of living in a densely packed urban metropolis goes away even further.
Not to mention, most suburbs are within reasonable driving distance of an urban center anyway. So I can enjoy my $125,000 house in the suburbs and I can drive to and pay to park in the city an awful lot of times before living in the city would start to look even remotely cost effective.
The issue is that supply isn't meeting demand so prices are going up everywhere(even in suburbs). We aren't getting out of this housing crisis by making density illegal.
That's where I've always stood as well. Right now I have an 1800sq ft home with a yard that costs about $1400/month to own. I'm in a city with easy access to services, schools, pubic transit, groceries, etc.
I could move into an apartment in a denser part of the city (that isn't any closer to schools, groceries, etc) with less than half the living space and no yard for... $1400+/month.
I just don't see any gain for giving up so much. I lose privacy, space, ownership, an investment, and stability for... unpredictable rent increases and the ability to move without much planning.
Not to state the obvious greed of building a hundred-year-old train track system that costs billions to create that cannot be used now due to the Chinese bioweapon!
It’s because sprawl and expansion is subsidised by government.
Well done for getting out with most of your sanity… I used to live in Nottingham in England, surrounded by criminality and dirty streets. Then I moved to Germany and purposefully chose to live more rural with a small commute similar to yours. My mental health and happiness have gone up ten fold and I am much happier. I think you put up with it because you feel like there are no other options, however believe there are always options. Thanks for the great content and I wish you peace and happiness in your new home. Greets from Germany ☺️👍😎
Why did you go to Germany instead of just moving to a rural area in the UK? I’m not from Europe, so I don’t know if there’s an obvious answer to this
why would you move to germany for that? the uk is much less densly populated than Germany.
I just had enough of England and the Negative vibe that i experienced. I wanted to try something new and decided i needed a change. I played tours in Germany when studying music. I fell in love with the scenery and the fact that streets are clean and things work. It‘s not perfect and you get the same stuff and problems wherever you go. Just i learnt German, got my dream job and met my beautiful wife. Plus German restaurants and beer are better in my opinion ☺️
@@Keckegenkai not where i am and i don‘t think that’s true. Germany is 1.5 times the size of the uk and has only 14.4 million more people.
@@GSA_Drums The cities are better here too. NYC is just a weird nightmare. Maybe those crappy habits there is passed down from generation to generation, like in a big ghetto, and the only solution is moving out? Or maybe they just need the Olympic Games to go there...
Comparing suburban sprawl to a tiny community of 1000 people in the middle of nowhere seems disingenuous. Rural communities are great, throwing up acres and acres of badly constructed cookie cutter McMansions on the outskirts of metro areas is absolutely not. If you have mixed use zoning with recreation and businesses available in your area, you don't live in suburban sprawl.
Basically my point. Small town communities are wonderful. Suburbs are mindlessly boring. I technically live in a suburb of Seattle. But within 10 minutes drive of my house, and maybe a 45 minute walk, I have a nice town center with gorgeous parks, a beach, high quality restaurants, and a few decent coffee shops. My only complaint as a younger person is that it's next to impossible to meet people. The suburbs adjacent to mine are a totally different story. If you want to go anywhere, there are two main roads you are almost guaranteed to need to use. The roads are *always* piled with traffic. Realistically it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere, and besides the one mall in the county, the only other places to go are strip malls.
I am happy living in my suburb because it has a small town community. I think mine barely counts as suburban sprawl. When people think about suburban sprawl, they are thinking about the other communities I am describing.
Even if it's 25k suburban, it's still looks like 1000. It's spread out. So his argument stands.
If everyone who wanted to move away from filth-infested big cities moved to small towns and rural areas, they wouldn't be small towns or rural areas anymore. Suburbia is the more practical result of that desire to have your own place on your own lot, in a generally safe community. Now, you may not like it, and that's fine. No one forces you to live there. But neither do I want to be told where or how I should live by armchair urban planners.
The contention of urbanist types is not "sprawl is evil and should be banned, everyone should want to live in NYC."
The contention is that sprawl should not be very heavily subsidized and indeed mandated in 95+% of American cities. Density should allowed. Roads should be shared by many different types of transit. That's literally all.
Low density is very nice, we all agree it has tons of benefits. The point is that people who enjoy those benefits *should pay for them* rather than imposing those huge costs on everyone else.
We pay our property taxes and our road assessments. We don't pay for the huge costs of inefficient nearby big cities, and I'd bet that's what's irking you.
You do realize that urbanites are paying for massive infrastructure for farming and agricultural products to get to your cities, right? Like the farms need places to grow, need farm workers and farmhands, and you have other types of suburbs that use and utilize resources, both natural and whatnot, are along those same paths and the roads that you complain about having to subsidize are generally far cheaper to maintain and resurface than your inner-city streets.
not to mention the roads are traveled on by smaller vehicles which do almost nothing to them in terms of wear and tear vs a semi-truck, which allows them to be cheaper. Then there's the environmental cost of the roads themselves, which are almost 99% recycled from previous roads.
And as far as paying peoples fair share, I don't want to subsidize your politics either, stop bullying me with your urban policies for my rural living. You guys get your glorious dense utopia and i'll take my trees, thank you.
@@joesterling4299 The taxes that drivers pay do not entirely pay for the roads they use, the gov subsidizes it a lot.
@@joesterling4299 It's 100% the opposite, but thanks for playing!
th-cam.com/video/VVUeqxXwCA0/w-d-xo.html
@@SSJRapter I think the focus here is suburban living, not rural. The thing with suburban living is the fact that a very large number of people who live in a suburb, tend to have employment in the nearby city. Every day there's a mass of traffic going into the city and then back out again. So it's kind of necessary to create these wide highways which are inherently more expensive to build and maintain. It also doesn't help that Americans favor bigger vehicles, i.e. SUVs, crossovers, and pickup trucks and that ends up resulting in more wear of roads.
The sad thing is the suburbs themselves, despite having smaller roads end up not being able to afford maintaining them over time. I live on the limits between a suburb and rural in Texas, but the suburb is fairly new in terms of growth so all the roads are nice and clean. But there's some other suburbs up north that are much older, and their roads are backbreaking to drive on.
Rural roads end up the same way but over a longer period of time because their roads are less traveled.
Luis, so glad that you're enjoying the move. I grew up in a small town in Western MA., and have lived in cities and several other states. Nothing like being near or in the woods with a short drive to shop for all your needs. Just a month ago I moved to a small town in CT,. and work for the states IT Division. Nothing like having space and quietness to unwind at home. Enjoy your new home!
I grew up in a big city, playing between the parked cars and smelling the pollution. I always looked down at those peasants that didn't live in a bustling town.
The older I got, the more I was depressed by that big city living. Crowds, rudeness, expensive life, dirty streets, heating issues in winter... all added drop by drop. Until I decided that I don't need to live that way anymore, I rather drive a car for an hour but actually spend my free time somewhere that doesn't break my mind. Now, with this pandemic, I work from home, drive less than I ever dreamt of, and live in a nice place.
Do not forget to exercise.
The problems were't city life as much as North-American cities are just like America: Out to make a quick buck while providing its citizens the barest of minimums with their tax dollars.
It’s really unfortunate that people don’t take better care of public spaces. Imagine how much better the world would be if people just learned how to use a trash can…
Japan and Singapore are famous for those, it's just people in the US are not socially homogeneous enough to care. That being said, that also may not be a price willing to be paid by US citizens.
Hence it should be at a municipal level that people care about parks, not federally. That way you don't impose on others.
the best solution is to introduce more public trashcans. sure, you can use a gas station trashcan (that's how i clean my car out lol) but gas stations get busy sometimes. It'd be cool to have a public trashcan at every strip mall (if this exists in your city, you'd be surprised to know it's not very common)
I agree, but you can see that station is not been restored in the last 50 years and the homeless center is in shambles.
Because this is the land the free. Don't thread on me
@@daybreakgray3452 Might not be the best idea actually. They tried that in Japan and the littering actually went up, mainly due to "the other guy will pick it up". They actually *reduced* the amount of trash cans and upped the fines for littering so that people carried their trash more.
I have always lived outside of the suburban sprawl and only visit the downtown metro areas when I absolutely have to- and I admire the sheer will it requires to stay in such a place, not to even mention the economy of it all.
So happy you have found what the rest of us enjoy! I cannot imagine how your business would takeoff if you relocated it to a suburban area over a metropolitan area.
Love your channel- don't stop posting.
I wouldn’t consider town of 1000 to be sprawl, that’s pretty rural :) nothing wrong with suburbs as long as that’s what people want vs how in the us we make it illegal to build anything else
Well said.
I wouldn't consider 1000 people to be a town. Maybe village or hamlet... Or just country side in general.
@@_Ekaros yep, a village at best. Nothing wrong with that, I come from a village of 2500.
Even if suburban neighborhoods are able to financially sustain themselves, there are still two issues with sprawl in the US that affect everyone:
1) high carbon emissions
2) too many suburban cars driving into city centers
Both can be solved by with better land use management and transit, but I have my doubts those changes will come anytime soon.
In Utah whether the place has 1000 people of 100,000 people it's called a city.
Reminds me of how I felt when I was living in Philadelphia after moving from New York almost 13 years ago.
Like you said, it's depressing. I'm glad you took a stand and are now in a much more cozier, calm and more fulfilling place now.
Hope it'll add years to your life that NY took away.
I think high population density is bad for human mental health. We need more medium size cities.
Blame the politics, not the type of area (city/suburb/rural). There are some pretty awful suburbs, and some pretty great cities.
When ideologues and/or corruption overtake pragmatic/logical/fair government, the results are bad no matter where you are.
And vice-versa.
yeah, it seems like his complaints were more about NYC specifically and not cities in general. the issues he mentioned are not present in a lot of European and Asian cities. The US simply lacks good zoning policy or good allocation of funds for nice cities. and yeah, there are tons of terrible suburbs that I've seen, and honestly I'd take living in an American city over a suburb any day, but that's my preference and I understand if the average person wouldn't want to deal with that. for me, being around people and being within walking distance to shops is more valuable than the downsides.
Sounds like my conclusion of Downtown Denver. It was exclusively for the wealthy, or young people who would sacrifice a good quality of life to live paycheck to paycheck. All so they could live in a trendy area and feel special. But the most common thing I found there, was that the people who lived downtown were some of the LEAST tolerant people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting and were borderline psychotic when faced with an opinion they didnt agree with.
This has been a common theme in most other urban cores of cities I have been too. All accept for Nashvilles downtown area. They are still very much a conservative urban area, despite it being far more progressive than the surrounding suburbs. I kind of like it tbh. Though it is an area that you have to have money to live unless you room with others like all the rest.
@@Ferrichrome Okay, see I've been seeing this recurring trend of "European cities good, American cities bad". I call bullshit. I've seen pictures of London, I've seen pictures of Paris, I've seen pictures of Glasgow. I would sooner commit suicide than live in most of the most popular and populous European cities. They keep bringing up "well planned European cities" like that's the norm and not a handful of them which were basically leveled and rebuilt during WWII and that's the *only* reason they're sorta decent. Comparing population density to population density, most of Europe barely has it better and some of Europe actually has it outright worse. To say nothing of the European particulars like "Can't develop this spot, it's a 'historic landmark' What? Restore it? Ludicrous. Make it useful? Don't be preposterous! We'll just shittily retrofit it with the modern tech that completely ruins the architecture we're allegedly preserving while giving an inferior experience even to American apartments." And lest we forget the apartment tower that burned down with people inside in Britain. "Okay, but that's just Britain and they're not *really* European, the racist, backwards islander fish-people subhuman Brexiteers." Okay, who is? Oh? Just Germany? And only Germany? And only very very specific parts of Germany? Oh? The Benelux counts too because the EU headquarters is in Brussels and the Netherlands because it looks good on a post card? And Switzerland because of their banking system? It just smacks of bullshit. Most of your cities are just as old and shit as when they were first built to be a Roman whorehouse 2000 years ago and the worst of your cities are just as bad as NYC. Venice is a monument to unsustainability and lack of planning, Rome is a museum that accidentally let people live in it, Barcelona was described to me as "the ashtray of Europe". The problem is not just a lack of central planning, nor is it purely a matter of the transit situation, nor is it a matter of corruption ( which Europe has just as well as we do ), nor is it an overdependency on cars. There's certain problems endemic to cities as an entire institution that can be mitigated and quite well but at great cost and very often just aren't at all. There's precious few cities I'd even want to visit, much less live in. Could America do more to mitigate urban rot and suburban sprawl? Certainly. But I'm not going to let Europeans just pretend that they've got these problems under control. No, not even the Scandinavians. I talk to a Swede regularly and his life is quite difficult due to being stranded between the cities and unable to make enough money to be independent, get a vehicle, or even move to a city. And his life in the cities wasn't great to begin with, such that his parents thought to move out of them in the first place. And that's not even to get started on Asian cities. Japan is the only one I know of that does cities well. Perhaps Singapore if you can deal with the legal restrictiveness, high costs, and uncomfortable climate living in Singapore. Where else in Asia are we talking about exactly? Certainly not mainland China. Definitely not India. Not Russia. Neither Indonesia, nor the Philippines. Where are these magical "good Asian cities"? Oh? Just Japan? Whoopsie. Oh but wait the South Korean Cultural Department wishes to inform me that Seoul is a good place to live too, y'know. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't SK's subway doors still have the ability to cut people in half if they don't get all the way inside the cabin in time?
I commute daily into deep loop Chicago for University, from the suburbs. I haven't been this depressed ever. The amount of anger, trash, drug use, mental illness, gun violence everywhere, the list goes on. I have friends who LIKE living here, and refuse to take our nice campus busses so they can ride the L, which is a spitting image of NY subway. When I ride the L it's an extra layer of depression as you are smothered standing up and can't even turn around, it's like a livestock truck, and smells worse than one. All while angry drug dealers hop the cars and get angry when no one buys the stuff. My most most happy part of the day is back at main campus when I get into my little Civic, and get outta the grid. Especially in the warm seasons i love rolling my windows down in the suburbs and enjoying warm breezy air with 70s 80s light music
As someone that mostly grew up in the northwest burbs I have zero interest in ever having an address in Cook that doesn’t say Chicago, IL on it. Just different viewpoints - if you want to believe the loop is just full of trash and gun violence you’re going to no matter what is actually occurring there. Don’t be surprised when others enjoy it here.
@@namram9021 exactly some like it somedon't. My best friend loves the night life. I tend to be the observant kind and I pay attention to smaller things
@@namram9021 As someone who grew up in Southside Chicago, there are things to love and hate. It's an acquired taste, and I never really enjoyed the taste growing up. Far too much give for little take. At the very least I can find comfort in the suburbs. Or at least I could before they started gentrifying the city.
Of the 2 most important choices I have made in my life, leaving NYC was the best one I ever made. I have never regretted that decision.
I live in a rural town of a bit less than 3,000 people. Years ago my ex-girlfriend's family would come to visit from our state capital. You would think these people had been abandoned on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific; every time they came here it was nothing but complaining and "I don't know how you can live with these hillbillies!". It was extremely irritating because when they weren't complaining about everything they were treating the people in my community like we were some kind of zoo animals to gawk at and make fun of and acted as though living in a higher density area somehow automatically made you higher class. My town is actually one of the more built up ones in the area with plenty of convenience stores and gas stations with a full on supermarket and farmer's market, in contrast to most the other towns that surrounded us with populations in the 100s. I could only imagine how they would react to a road going through nothing but woods for fifty miles in every direction. That was my first experience with actual city people and it negatively colored my view of urban areas for the rest of my teenage years as I never wanted to live somewhere that could produce so many entitled and rude people.
I have since grown up and realized that not everyone is like that and there are good aspects and bad aspects of everything. After having been to actual cities I've found that most people there have little to no idea how comfortable life can actually be out here.
Shh don't tell them let them stay
As someone who grew up in a rural area, you can keep that trash.
Once I left and discovered just how ignorant people are from there, the lack of culture, lack of any business beyond the same chains over and over, and the awful fucking sameness of every rural shithole I'll never go back.
Yeah my family on both sides were of the same mentality. It's only until recently the penny has dropped and more and more of my extended family are moving out of the inner city here in London. Just about half of my cousins now live outside of london and have managed to buy property which they would not have been able to do if they had stayed in london. They realise that actually living in the suburbs or in the country side is actually nice. I just laugh lol
@@jaytee9 If your comment is anything to go by then I'm not missing out on much "culture".
@@Killerduck0213 enjoy your Walmarts and Applebee's.
I recently moved from a suburban sprawl to a dense city with good public transportation (both in the US). I definitely appreciate everything you said about how nice and self-determined a suburban area is, but I also appreciate having interesting events and people around me and quick delivery services. Everyone wants the best of both worlds, but you have to ask yourself what you individually value more. At this point, I value making connections and experiencing new things, but later on, I might decide to go back to a simpler backwoods area where deliveries take over a week.
You'll soon find that most of these events and people you so desperately want contact with are ultimately not as great as you are romaticising them to be.
@@dukewellington7050 - It's hard to meet anyone, or attend interesting events, while living and working in a low-density area, but I decided that I do want these things to be accessible, rather than making a whole trip out of them every single time. We'll see where my preferred balance lies, of course.
@@dukewellington7050 you can let people experience life for themselves yknow. Some people are better acclimated to live in a city happily. It’s not a crime to possibly enjoy living there.
You can’t meet interesting people out in rural America? lol
There's all those events and connections and suburban and rural areas too, you just aren't sharing your walls with as many neighbors which is nice
the pandemic has, in my view just brought to surface how stupid big urban agglomeration is. As a programmer working remotely nobody can persuade me to live in city again. Internet speeds have gone up from 10-15 years ago, there is no reason to go to an office and commute for many professions. Thanks Louis, you are 100% correct.
Similar situation, currently buying a house where the expected maintenance costs including taxes and everything will be lower then the monthly rent I currently pay. Ant that does not even take into account the savings from better insulation and the more efficient heating and AC. Oh also no one is living above me anymore. Currently feeling to good to be true.
Nowadays anyone doing office work could easily work remotely. The only folks who can't leave are the ones who have to be there physical for retail, manufacturing, maintenance, restaurants, etc.
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece Watch out for Home Owners associations and other scummy contracts you might have to deal with. (like the bank giving you a mortgage) Hidden fees and costs exist everywhere.
Especially as rents in the areas that are "near work" are always skyrocketing and pushing out anyone who lives there.
I really wish there was a middle ground between NYC level density and car dependant sprawl, but unfortunately in North America it doesn't really exist. As a life long New Yorker, I really enjoy how clean suburbia is. That being said, having to drive 30 minutes round trip to buy a single carton of milk is one of the most infuriating things in the world.
You should check out the suburbs of Tokyo. Outside the urban core, the density is actually relatively low. Yet neighborhoods are still walkable and transit access to the city center is easy and relatively inexpensive. Density is comparable to Los Angeles urban area.
Most people see pictures of Tokyo and think that it's all like the high density center. But most of "Tokyo" that houses the majority of its 30M population is around ~2500 persons per square km density (lower when you exclude the dense core). For reference Los Angeles (city) is 3300, Metro is 1000, and Urban is 2400.
Perspective is important.
@@haphazard1342 don't get me wrong, I know places like I'm describing exist, they're just extremely rare in North America. But unfortunately, I'm barely in a position where I'm able move to a different country, let alone continent.
That being said, I've only been once but I loved Tokyo. You're right about the density. Tokyo has a fantastic super dense urban core, but it also has quiet pleasant residential areas. And those residential areas seemed walkable and well connected to public transit.
You must never get out of NY as gas stations, 7-11's as well as many local stores are less than 5 minutes away!
@@haphazard1342 You have to be careful with averages since they very much depend on how much areas on the fringe is included. If you include more empty land around the city your average goes down. You can easily look up the densities of various parts of Tokyo on Wikipedia. The suburban parts are mostly over 5,000, with a large more central area that is over 10,000.
@@mmars4032 sometimes they are, sometimes they're more than 30 min. In NYC there is always food within walking distance.
Also more to my point, you clearly mean 5 minutes by car. By the time I was 9 or 10 my parents would regularly send me to the store to get an ingredient here or there, and when I had my own money I'd go and buy myself something. Be honest, would you feel comfortable sending your (to young to drive) child to the gas station on their own? And if not, what us your plan for giving your children independence when you will have to drive them literally everywhere they go for the first ~16 year of their life?
I realised this when I was 20, worked a few years while living at my parents place and bought a cheap old house in the middle of nowhere. My living costs are ridiculously low, the environment is stunning, the people around me in the tiny village are so nice I don't even bother locking my front door...
I'm 25 and I don't regret my choice. I never want to live in a city again.
Right on. Good for you Louis!
I guess this is one of those areas where familiarity breeds contempt. After living in the suburbs for 20 years, I ache to move some place where I can do something as utterly reasonable as walk to a store. Everything you say here is totally valid (as I've seen myself on visits to NYC) but suburbs designed around cars instead of people aren't free of pain points either. Honestly, I just wish there wasn't such a black and white choice between the two in this country.
For sure. I'm a bike guy in a very nice but car dependent place. I feel some small changes in design and attitude could make everything even better. We've already got a lot of the things that make a place nice (no crime, no litter, no pollution, plentiful parks and nature, nice people, good beer, low cost of living)
@@jayteegamble a lot of this just comes down to urban planning, a lot of urban planners are just fucking stupid
Try a smaller city or a very large town like I did then. Its clean No rail but you can get anywhere by walking, bike or car. I have/had a 15 minute comute by car or 45 minute walk. I can walk to a store in 15 minutes. Find your happy middle and go there.
Move to a smaller town.
Josh, people living ontop of one another like a kennel is one of NYCs major problems. Cars aren't a bug it's a feature and really an advantage to any point you can bring up.
I watched a video from ADVChina the other day that was about how billionaires in China don't really have it all that much better than anyone else, because they still have to live in China. Their apartments might be nicer but they're still in the same poorly built buildings, breathing the same smog and soot filled air, shopping in the same overcrowded markets, eating the same dangerously polluted food, and seeing the same trashed and destroyed environment as anyone else.
Your description of NYC reminds me of that to a somewhat lesser degree. It's something I've seen in Portland, Oregon any time I have to go to that city as well. I really can't imagine wanting to live in a place like that.
I have friends and family that live near Portland Oregon and whenever I visit them we stop by Portland to check it out. It never ceases to amaze me how people can tolerate living in a shit hole like that city. It doesn’t matter if it’s a poor neighborhood, a rich neighborhood, shopping center or business district. All of them are covered in literal piles of garbage and homeless encampments as far as the eye can see. I will never understand how people can walk and drive past that everyday and think it’s just normal.
You have a point regarding C-Milk's vids and the CCP, but the people in NYC have (somewhat of a choice) in who they want running the place? With the Han in the CCP, not so much unless they attacks Taiwan, fails, and this destabilizes the part's hold? In NYC, the populace seems to like the crime, or finds it convenient to not view it as a problem, because of their own ideology. In this, NYC voters are not so unlike China. My take.
In mid 2020 my family and I moved out of a blue city, onto a 10 acre spread on a river. We could not be happier. The small town we live by is full of friendly people, and the schools are great. It was the best choice we've ever made.
No you must live in a pod & eat bugs so that we can save the environment, you don't deserve such luxuries you commoner - every globalist elite
I have always heard that NYC is one of the great world cities. After visiting it and places like London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Boston, Denver, LA, and Chicago left me scratching my head as to how NYC could even compare. NYC Subways were gross and depressing--even more so when compared to London's Underground. Most of the other American cities were far cleaner than NYC. But all pretty much failed with respect to public transit when compared to the European cities.
when compared to public transit in Europe or Asia is totally falls apart but it's some of the best public transit in America, which tells you all you need to know.
@@pepperonipete7566 NY city took a dump after 1960's, it got somewhat better under Guliani.
@@clobberelladoesntreadcomme9920 Yeah, I felt that Chicago's trains were better than NYC's. At least with respect to how clean the stations / trains are. But with Chicago there are vast chunks of the city not served by them, or horrible schedules that negate their use.
Essentially nyc was one of the first cities to have great modern public transportation.... in the 1930s, ever since then it's been getting more and more degraded and outdated.
@@jeremiahblake3949 I'd like to hear someone put a number on what we SHOULD have been spending annually for the past 100 years to maintain that state of the art standard we had in 1930, (relatively speaking). It seems incomprehensible at this point, that it will catch up with London, Paris, Tokyo etc. You didn't used to have to be a "commie" to point these things out. Didn't even Regan say, "the bridges we fail to repair today, we will have to rebuild tomorrow"?
So many truths in this video! As a former NYC resident born and raised, I completely agree with what Louis is saying and thank you Louis for bringing these truths to the masses! 👍🏼👍🏼
Great video. I lived in a suburb of los Angeles for about 24 years before moving back to Illinois. Even in the suburbs, the fast pace of everything kept me at a level of anxiety where I couldn't think straight or function normally. Where I lived was filling up with trash and catching on fire every year and somehow getting more expensive. I live in one of the suburbs furthest from Chicago now before being in the middle of nowhere. It's beautiful here, much slower paced and I've never been this calm in my life. I totally understand why you made the move and am glad you're seeing the benefits of it too. I know I'm not acknowledging the core issue you mentioned of urban sprawl, but at the end of the day your mental health is every bit as important as your physical health
Based and rural-pilled. I've been encouraging you to do this for years, and am so happy for you!
I appreciate all the points here. I think I am like a lot of NYC residents - I wanted to come here to be involved in a bustling metropolis and despite it's current awful state, the appeal of living in quiet isolated woodland is simply not there. What to do.
And there's nothing wrong with that. In 2008 when I wanted to start my business, or 2007 when I wanted to be a fly on the wall at the best recording studio in the world, that just was not happening in Custer South Dakota. No way, no how. People want different things at different stages in their life. I wish you the best of luck getting out of New York City what you are looking to get out of it during this stage of your life! I really mean that!
LR sees the light! Best video yet. Enjoy the beautiful planet we live on.
@@rossmanngroup wait?? you are from custer??? i'd get it most of the smaller towns pretty much are shrinking, most people if still staying in the state are mostly gravitating toward sioux falls and rapid city
will say the housing market is well so crazy right now that between the new longer mortgages/super low interest rates/ and i would say people able to take money out of their 401k
basically a house bought at 230k last year is now worth 330k around the sioux falls area .... that isn't normal
@@wnxdafriz For now. Going to hurt bad when the bubble pops.
Do what other new yorkers do. Move south or midwest to the smaller cities. You still have city life while not having the bigger city problems. Here in NC northerners all seem to move to Cary.
You’ll never regret moving. I left in 2004 to sunny south Florida and I am raising my children in a great environment!
I actually found the opposite when moving to a more rural area. In terms of jobs I mean. Where I live the major city is about 20 or more minutes away by freeway, depending on traffic. I came here for work and have found lots of work because it's a place building up. What I find from my friends back on the coast is that they view rural areas as podunk and backwater. Which is more of a bias then an assessment. They're stereotyping people they haven't met and start making excuses for why they're bad, which I seems to be more politics then actually thinking it through.
Since 1970 the population of NYC has barely grown 5%. During those last 50 years there has been tons of new construction. So how is there this huge housing shortage? Because there is enormous amounts of warehousing: things being kept vacant on purpose to create an artificial shortage which drives up prices. NYC needs a "use it or lose it" policy regarding Real Estate.
napalm would probably be faster and have better results.
@@sigma6656 and improve the smell
7:50 a little late to the party, but I'd choose the subway (or any public transportation) over a single line road where you have to drive, out of safety concerns. Such roads have a much higher chance of head-on collisions, and these are usually fatal. So doing it everyday is like playing russian roulette with cars. But, also, the time I don't spend driving is time reading something or playing on my phone.
my goal for the next 5 years is to bust my ass and save enough money so that i can escape Canada (Toronto), start a tech startup in the US and eventually get it to the point where I can sell it off and retire to someplace more quiet and less congested.
idk if its because ive been stuck where im at in life the last few years but i think i need the change. between the high costs and shitty people, i just want a little space where i can be my own king and be left alone.
@@crakkbone he said Toronto......
@@crakkbone you must have seen my post before i added the toronto part so i apologize lol. but yeah, toronto blows, especially this time of year and the lockdowns are not helping. ive made jokes about how its like a shittier version of New York but with less rats and narrower streets. at least when you are paying the price of NY you had wayyy more options for entertaining yourself.
I really dont suggest you move down the US but if you really think its a good idea then you should look more into which city it is that you are moving into. Most cities in the united states have god awful public transit. Go on Not Just Bikes youtube channel, he used to live in Toronto and pointed out all the things wrong with their transit
It’s so nice to see you relaxed and happy. The place you’ve moved to seems like a great fit for you, and now you’ve been lucky enough to experience city and ‘rural’ life. Even if your needs change in future at least you know what both sides of the coin look like now. Perhaps you’ll find a middle ground, perhaps you’ll return to the city, or perhaps you’ll go buy a log cabin in the middle of nowhere - but the main thing is you’re actually trying which is pretty brave! Some people never leave the place they grew up in!
Did he move to Jersey?
I don't understand how some people don't leave the place they grew up in, especially when they live in an expensive area.
I totally agree with you in 99% of the issues. It’s like watching videos with me speaking. It proves there are more people like us out there. Keep up the great work. We truly appreciate it. Congrats on your move and a better 2022. Peace.
Grew up on the outskirts of a small city. Big city folk are turning it into a suburb, so now I've had to move further into rural due to higher cost of living, and watching all the horse pastures paved over with million dollar houses with no yard.
I prefer the rural, always have. And if commuting 2 hours for work is "progress", I don't want it
That kind if thing is exactly why cities need reform. You're always gonna have some sprawl but allowing denser development within cities reduces how many Go out and turn farmers land Into mcmansions.
Of course if you're not a farmer, or worked to support them somehow yourself, you were just a previous wave of this trend and there were farmers before complaining about y'all
What you just described makes sense to a single person without kids. Once you add kids to the equation then it doesn't really work. I have tried that already. Four biggest problems is how easy it is to get something.
If you have a lot of kids, they consume A LOT of food. One kid eats per day as much as I eat in three days. This means that grocery runs turn from once a week type of thing to three times a week type of thing. And that's with me having two giant fridges to store food in.
Next is how easy it is to get to a hospital. When you have a pretty bad medical emergency, and with active kids that run around that is likely, then you need to be able to get to hospital quickly. Thankfully I have a field medic license and training, so I managed that somewhat. But seriously if you have a child screaming because they burned themselves, or broke a bone, or blood is flying out because artery was cut, then the fact that nearest medical help is 50+ minutes away is bad. Try driving to a hospital for an hour while a child is screaming on top of their lungs and their arm looks very very unnatural.
Third one is how easy it is to get to home hardware store. If a kid gets launched through the wall and ends up breaking the drywall and damaging some pipes. Or if a kid completely screws up plumbing, or electrical, or furnace in the middle of the winter, or AC during summer, then you need to be able to make multiple runs to home hardware within one day because you do not know what you are doing and see horrors of something fucked up previous owners did. If you can't fix it in short time then the plumbing remains off, meaning no one gets any water, and the toilets get a lot of use when there are lots of kids in the house. So any house damages which do happen frequently, need to be fixed as quickly as possible.
And last one is proximity to things for kids. Each child will have a hobby. And some hobbies will be actual things requiring child to be physically present somewhere. Thus having to drive each one to their destination means that your whole evening gets wasted driving kids back and forth.
Do not get me wrong, I love living far away from a city. But god damn it, the amount of time I spend in the car is probably more than I would spend in the subway have I remained in the city. I actually spend more time in car than at home. And the video you showed of you driving through a beautiful scenery is great when there is silence, you are not rushing against the clock and no one is asking you every five seconds are we there yet.
So yeah, I love being far from city, but both in the city and outside of the city our society isn't really made for having families.
And Louis himself kinda admitted it. At 13, he thought the subways were the best thing ever because of the independence it gave him, the same independence most kids won't have until they're 16-18, by which point, they're no longer kids. Urban planning in the US is seriously screwed. Can't have a family in the suburbs else the kids will drive you insane. Can't have a family in the city else the rent will drive you insane.
The ideal suburb in the US would have options that let children be reasonably independent and safe. Said suburbs basically don't exist at any remotely reasonable price points.
Louis, if nothing else you are well thought out and through. Really appreciate your views even when they don't effect me or relate to my situation. You're a smart guy no doubt and appreciate your efforts and your channel. Thank you.
You can really see the difference in Louis. His mood has visibly improved. I'm glad he made this change, it's clear it was something important for him to experience.
I just wonder how longer is the driving commute, compared to the 40 minutes subway ride. Also the last portion of the drive, dealing with all the city traffic, must be quite stressful.
There’s a lot of middle ground between NYC and sprawl. I live in a really pleasant area with mostly 3-4 story apartment buildings interspersed with single family homes and some rowhouses and like 1 16-17 story condo tower. It’s a really nice mix that has something for almost everybody, but sadly it’s illegal to build a neighborhood like mine in 90%+ of US residential land thanks to insane zoning regulations
Care to share what town it is?
My favorite part is that he’s setting himself up to never be able to complain about where he lives again.
"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?" E.M. Forster
You couldn't pay me enough to live in the city. Pissed stained train -- no thanks!
I used to live in the exurbs with my parents. I don't have a driver's license, so I really hated it. Right now I live in a suburb near the college I go to. This, I feel, is pretty nice. There is green space that where I can walk and I can bike to get any groceries I need. Rent is about 700$/mo for a large room in a shared house (before utilities).
One problem that many US cities have is that the are constricted. Suburbs outside the city bounds will protest any development, regardless of the level of intensity (so no townhouses/attached units). This has resulted in tall buildings, high prices, and the loss of green space in urban areas.
Tall buildings only help it really but you are right that lacking middle density like the "half houses" rossman dislikes is part of the issue.
Did that move 12 years ago. Never looked back!
I definitely feel like I am on the other side of the spectrum a bit. I've been in Michigan my whole life and have always wanted something more. Overtime though I have come to really appreciate the things we do have, like currently I live 15 minutes away from Lake Michigan and can easily take a drive down there, watch the waves and just relax. But I've always wanted to live somewhere that I don't have to drive literally everywhere to do every task. I do love driving I really do, but I don't want it to be my only mode of getting around. I want driving to be something I enjoy doing, not forced to do. I visited NYC in April for the first time in 7 year and used to the train to get around and while I did love it, I can easily see living there for 30+ years, how most of the trains are underground can take a toll on the mind. That's why I'm very thankful the Chicago's "L" all above ground (besides the Red and Blue line in the Loop that are underground) so when I visit Chicago I can take the train and have awesome views of the city around me. I also think America just needs more options in terms of urban planning. Its either super dense cities like NYC, Chicago, SF or car dependent suburbia. There is no middle ground like there is in Europe where you can have a small/medium size town that is easy to traverse by other than car. I do hope someday our country will have more options for people who do and don't want to drive, because while technically lots of places do have at least bus service, most of them aren't that great and could use lots of work and is considered that only poor people use them which in my eyes is just wrong. This is by far the longest TH-cam comment I have ever written and for anyone that has read the whole thing I appreciate it and also sorry to take up this much of your time, but this topic is very personal to me as I am still figuring out where I want to be in life.
TL;DR I just want America to have more options when it comes to development/urban planning.
I feel like rust belt cities are a great middle ground! I live in Milwaukee and love how it's laid out. Very accessible as someone without a car and not too dense. I can afford to live a 12 minute walk down to the beach on Lake Michigan. Worst part of it is just the damn winter, but I'm sure you know that!
@@MeghanStark Yes I know how brutal the winters can get. We've been getting snow storms the past 2 days but such is life haha. But I definitely agree that cities in the rust belt are a pretty good middle ground. Cost of living is cheap because no one wants to move over here because of the winters and some rural areas, at least in Michigan, can be pretty run down.
@@MeghanStark The east side is nice but much of the rest of the city is kinda ehh, moreso the further you go inland; depending on where in the city you are going without a car could be either perfectly feasible or near impossible. Also unrelated but I think we met last summer while I was out riding, small world 🤨
I was born and lived in a fairy densely populated city in the UK my entire life, and when I was younger, I was adamant that I would always live in a city.
Upon looking to buy my first house with my girlfriend last year, we found the prices were insanely high, commuting within the city was horrible as it had the same type of problems (but nowhere near the magnitude) of NYC with awful car traffic and poorly funded public transport infrastructure.
At the end of last year, we managed to find and move into a house in a more rural area where we can walk our dog, work remotely, and just have nicer, less crowded surroundings.
Everyone has their preferences and I understand not everyone has the option to stage an exodus from a major city/city centre, but since moving, there’s been literally no downsides for us personally changing to a more suburban location.
Glad you’re enjoying your new home Louis 🤙
What place you move to?
I don't really think anyone is going to fault you for that. Those are entirely fair and I share lots of those thoughts. It's a pretty American-specific thing in equating anywhere you can walk/bike with dirty cities. It's not entirely false, because most American cities were gutted in the last century and get a massive amount of problems dumped on them.
There are problems with places where your mode of transportation is 100% forced upon you. You can't walk your dog without being hit by a car, or bike to the store, you must drive and pay all the fees of car ownership. You essentially have no choice in most of the US, which on top of being financially and environmentally unsustainable, is just generally unhealthy and doesn't at all promote an active lifestyle for the majority of people. In America, being able to walk or bike is inherently fixed with living in an urban area, because unlike in Europe those are the only places where that's possible. That is essentially the beef in all of these coments.
Good to see your experiencing what its like to be able to have some personal space and a place to actually enjoy!
I live in a "Small town" that has absolutely blown up the past 6-7 years, Place was great before then but now traffic is absurd, addicts are everywhere and can be seen every day while your driving and they tend to steal things. Crime has skyrocketed, Armed robberies happen several times a month now, And also a couple times a month, Someone commits homicide.
Its blown me away, I moved out of town to a larger city where you had higher populated areas AND areas such as the area you showed in your video, With decent infrastructure and great roads to drive on and loved it. Now, The small town I grew up and was raised in has become a total cesspool.. Californians are all over now, The housing market is ruined here too, Less people are working than ever, There are less high paying jobs than ever, Yet traffic is at least 3-4x worse than what it was less than a decade ago with Zero infrastructure improvements, Only half assed solutions that have ended up making things worse.
Tourists love the place for the Scenery but dont see the issues here or enough of them and end up moving here blindly. Ive talked to people living in some of the worst areas for crime who say they feel comfortable leaving their doors unlocked and live in a great area. The expression on this individuals face after telling them how the area is, is always just heartbreaking.
I dont know what exactly what I want to do, But I know I cant stay here, And I know that my State in general is becoming just as bad as the town I grew up in. It drives me nuts. Politicians local and at the State level are completely disconnected from Reality and live in a Dream-Land.
I mean ffs, The worst drug ridden area and where those types of individuals tend be out in public out here, is around and behind a Safeway that is literally right across the road from our Courthouse and it took them YEARS to even try and do something. And I really haven't seen results, So. Whatever was done wasn't enough. Just more solutions that look good on paper like most of em.
Last I checked in the US you were free to chose the path you want in life. Someone berated you for choosing to live outside one of America's shitty large cities? What! Ignore or tell them in no uncertain terms to GTFO. I've lived in NYC and I don't miss it one bit. I thank my stars that I wasn't living anywhere near a large city when the pandemic hit.
Amen. Belligerence against suburban living is one of the unpleasant new experiences this God-forsaken century has wrought so far.
I went to college in NYC and lived in a tiny apartment in the village. It was expensive even then, and supermarkets were nearly non-existent. Even then (1970's) when out walking at night, if I could, I'd walk in the center of the roadway to make sure someone didn't pop out of a stairway and mug me. Saw lots of crazy people who walked in circles talking to themselves. Now I live near a city, but in a small town, a suburb of the city. Everything is nearby, and now that I'm older, I don't care if their aren't shows, events happening every night. Own a small house, taxes are relativity low, and nice neighbors on your typical suburban street.
@@joesterling4299 pursuit of happiness. There are so many that would like to see that gone. And I'm not even an American.
" pandemic hit", try Chinese bioweapon as the best use of a war weapon!
@Vince I, "Last I checked in the US you were free to chose the path you want in life." For a lot of people, especially the so called "progressives" who live in cities, this the problem. If they can't force Louis, they will shame him.
We just moved from UES to Florida. For all the reasons you mention, and we are realizing the same benefit. Cheers to a happier, less anxiety ridden life 👍🏽
I moved south west from Calif 8,000 miles 18 years ago no regrets. Happy to see you happy.
European perspective here. I grew up in the suburbs, well, a village 10km outside the city with just about 200 people living there. My parents still live there. It was great as a kid growing up, because there was so much to do outside, to explore, do stupid stunts and that completely unsupervised (or so we thought). However, the downside was going to parties took considerably planning and/or funds or commitment (cycling was possible after all).
Now i live in the only larger city in my country, 3,5 million inhabitants. And of course it has its downsides, but it also has its upsides. Going to the store is a 5 minute stroll down the street, or a 10 minute delivery time with Gorilla or Flink, or just a walk to the other side of the street where there is a farmer markets twice a week surrounding the church in the middle of that plaza. Public transport really works and is apparently not quite as miserable as in NYC, especially since many trains run over ground at least part of the way. It is mostly clean here and since i live in a traffic reduced area (cobble street, on street parking, speed bumps, speed limit 5 kph) it is really quiet as well. Still, i do still ponder moving outside the city at some point, closer to my place of work (which moved to the suburbs last year) and more rural to have more open space around me. Sadly the opening of my place of work (an airport) and the new Tesla factory have really driven up prices a lot in that area, so moving even farther afield would be necessary which then increases my commute a lot more.
How much diversity is in your city? Not nearly as much as NYC. That will make all the difference.
As a person who's lived my life in the western part of the U.S., sometimes in big cities and sometimes in smaller towns, this was an eye opener for me. I honestly never knew that you have New Yorkers thinking that living in what they call "urban sprawl" but what folks out here just consider "elbow room" is a sin.
I've lived in several states and cities, and have lived in a small town in Kansas for many years now and it's worlds better than Denver or Phoenix or any of the other large cities I've lived in. People are friendly and you live with a modicum of human dignity as opposed to stacked on top of each other like rats. My town is clean, rent on a nice house is maybe a fifth of the price you were quoting for a studio apartment and crime is practically non-existent. Our wallets aren't hoovered clean by taxes, and the cost of living isn't insane.
Your description of the public transportation system frankly floored me. Start on a train, get transferred to a shuttle, go back to a train... it wouldn't be tolerated here. Of course I do have to contend with the "urban sprawl" and "depending on a car"... why just yesterday, I had to get into my car, drive a mile to the grocery store and back again....the whole trip including doing my grocery shopping took almost an entire hour! Crazy stuff!
Another foreign concept to us out here that you mention is making your stuff look crappy to keep it from being stolen. Unreal... I drive by my neighbors' houses all the time who have left their garage doors open and there's no real concern. We don't have porch pirates, or vandalism, or theft of anything that's not nailed down. You don't have to worry about being shoved in front of a moving car or assaulted by a random stranger. This isn't a rich neighborhood by any means, it's just populated with decent people.
I think you're right though, some of these people born and raised in these environments simply don't know that life can be better. They've been brainwashed into thinking that this is the only decent way of life and that "flyover country" is full of poor idiots that are too stupid to renounce their freedoms and live under the thumb of the politicians in the big cities. Maybe we need to get something like Flash Drives For Freedom going in these cities to expose the propaganda and let them know there IS a better life out there.
That rent might be a lot cheaper, but I'm betting the jobs don't pay nearly as well, or there aren't that many well-paying jobs for common folk. That's been my experience. At one point in my life I lived in the Berkshires (Pittsfield), and I have to say that in general it's a pretty clean area, and it certainly has beauty all around. But the jobs were terrible, rent was fantastic, life was slower.
@@atlantic_love - Obviously the pay is proportionally lower, but so is the cost of housing and living. But more importantly, there's less stress, comfortable commute in my car with free parking everywhere, and nice people saving my sanity and aging prematurely. This has been my experience after moving out of NYC to the midwest some 20 years ago, best choice I ever made. ;)
@Steven and Kristy actually, interestingly enough, if you analyze the argument of "jobs in flyover country don't pay as well as places like NY, LA, etc." You quickly learn that it's a very poor argument.
Yes, for professional, high-end jobs, the pay is generally lower. But for the larger majority of people living off of less skilled jobs, the pay is very similar. And those are the people being crushed by the higher costs of living that have this misconception that other locations don't pay as well.
Go read the comment by the TH-camr NotJustBikes who Louis Rossman pinned. And go watch some videos on his channel where he explains good vs bad infrastructure.
You're right that your neighborhood is better than New York. However, low density is not sustainable in the long run due to the fact that it costs too much to maintain low density infrastructure. You're gonna say "well city infrastructure already sucks" but that's not a problem due to high density, that's a problem due to poor design and bad politicians. American cities do tend to suck, but NotJuskBikes' point is that many cities around the world are designed well and don't have the problems that American cities suffer from.
For example, New York is indeed dangerous and dirty, but so are many low density sprawl areas. Alabama is full of bad low density sprawl. And there are cities such as Amsterdam that are designed to be calming and clean, thus having the same effect as the low density area that you say is the best. There are high density area such as Amsterdam which feel as good as a low density area like rural Kansas, while having the additional benefit of less car accidents due to not being car-dependent (good public transport, good biking, etc, aka opposite of New York's crappy systems). I'm a car enthusiast, yet I admit that car-dependency is dangerous.
@@tchen2905 The issue is you simply can't redesign an established city to be bike friendly. Secondly if you're in a rural area 2 lane highways are usually covered by state and county taxes. Not city/town.
It's also easier to make rural areas more bike friendly due to the fact that you don't have as much competing infrastructure to redesign.
I remember when I first found this channel, I commented to GTFO of NYC. This was the only time Louis ever replied to me-- so I remember it well. I am so happy this has finally happened and I wish you the best. 😅😅😅
If urban living is so efficient and cost effective why does it cost so much more to live in the city than the rural areas.
The land value of urban areas is insanely high. That's why it is so expensive.
As far as cost effective to live in urban areas, it isn't. The ratio of wage to living costs is unfavorable, except for the most highly paid individuals (think top paying white collar work).
@@crazyelf1
It's not so much the lack of high paying jobs as it is that there just aren't jobs at all in rural areas. but the new reality that allows work from home will mean people will be able to enjoy city wages and rural lifestyle. That's a win-win in my book. and those people will pump money into the rural economy creating more service jobs. I expect in the next twenty years you're going to see many city cores gutted by the flight of wealth creators.
The metro system in Lisbon is very beautiful to commute in. All the stations were desinged by different architects and some of them are real eye candy.
I like taking the metro here. It's never too crowded and it's a good ride.
I couldn't imagine myself crammed in a metro like São Paulo or NYC. It's really depressing indeed.
I have not been on a NYC, subway since March of 2020, I only go to the office in Lower Manhattan, one day a week and I take car service to work, and on my return trip the NYC ferry to 90th because there are no stops between 90th Street and Sound View. If there was a ferry stop closer to my apartment, that would be my mode of travel, I have been using the NYC subway system for close to 50 years, and it certainly takes a toll on your mental health. Thanks for your insight Louis, keep up the good work young man 😊
As a software devleoper, and this is going to be a hot take, but covid changed my life for the better because I wasn't spending 2hours each day commuting to/from work because I now get to work from home saving both money and more importantly time.
Yeah, lots of people do not want to go back to the office and lose an extra 2 hours a day + the expenses associated with that.
I believe you can make an argument that mass transit is better than cars for the environment. However, I think it's nuts that people think having the ability to leave whenever you want and go wherever you want to go is seen as a negative. I can literally get in my car and drive to the Grand Canyon right now. The government decides where you can go, and when you go there if you're dependent on mass transit.
I always used to wonder how city people would do their family grocery shopping without a car to load the stuff into. These days I hear that the average person has only like 3 days worth of food in their apartment. Now I get it.
true
I think a good compromise would be something like middle housing and floor level businesses but unfortunately, due to urban planning in America and here in Canada, they've made this illegal... Which is ridiculous. Because something like this could be a good alternative to urban sprawl that would reduce car dependency and not force people to live in a massive city
Simply because in urban cities, you can't. Because you and everyone else is driving, you need to plan your trip times around other drivers, and find a spot in the day that no one else is driving the direction you want to. Traffic in urban spaces is sometimes so bad that walking to places is faster. Parking is expensive and nearly impossible to find. I voluntarily use a park and ride to commute to school via train/bus, and while I hate the connection, if the train reached my neighborhood, I would greatly prefer it. If I want to head downtown after classes, it's just a few minutes in a train rather than sitting in my car at a different traffic light every block.
Car built infrastructure disincentivizes you to be around other people or get outside. If your local library, or coffee shop, or park is a few minutes walk, you are much more likely to want to go somewhere than having to get in your car, drive for 15-20 minutes, find a parking spot, and then have to do it all over again when you want to go home. Cars are great for transport to sparsely populated areas, or for last mile trips like visiting someones house. But for just casually going around town, or commuting to a densely populated area? Absolutely miserable.
@@speedbird1598 I used to work in NYC. You've made some great points that I agree with, especially the difficulty of moving around in a densely populate down town area with a car and the expense of keeping one. However, I don't feel that was what his video is about. The context was about NOT living in a densely populated downtown area. There are a ton of arguments about the validity of humans living packed together like sardines in a tin can; it's not a one sided argument. My point was, a lot of the anti car statements are just anti-car statements, no context is added. Also, I live in a sub-urban area, have a car, and yet still walk to the nearest park(there are about 10-15 in my city alone) about four times a week. Whenever I visit a major urban center I always get the feeling people don't realize how much the area has influenced their mindset on what is possible.
I'll miss your bike ride video tours but I'm glad for your mental health! I'm preparing to move to a small town in the middle of nowhere soon, can't wait.
Noise, the noise dude, the incredibly noisiness of the cities... day AND night. Cars, buses, business, people talking, screaming, moving things around... every single day, every single night. And even when at home, the neighbors, the street, everything gets inside as noise.
Noise is harmful, it is poison. And most people don't even notice.
I’ve lived in suburban Texas all my life and couldn’t imagine living in a big American city like New York or Los Angeles every single day of my life. Even visiting these places is stressful because I’m always worried if someone is going to break into my car or steal my stuff. Oh and LA traffic is a fucking nightmare, like holy shit there’s no good methods of transportation there.
Whatever happened to walking, riding a bicycle, riding a horse, or driving a car? Why bother with public transit when the nearest grocery store is 30 miles from your ranch? Some of us are lucky not to live in an urban environment, although a short 30 minute drive away from civilization...
I'm 40+ now and still dream weekly of the stress of public transport in the big city back in my teens. I drive a car for over 20 years now, never used public transport since and also moved out of the city to a small village next to the woods. It surely left a mark and any small stress in the waking day triggers those dreams the following night, dropping me back into the rush hours of the 90's.
Do they bring back feelings of nostalgia and joy, or more emotions of trauma?
@@FAKETV96 pure stress. I wouldn't call it trauma.
Hope you are having a great day too Louis!
idk who you are buy have a good day too Eric. positive energy all around.
@@maserati4000 have a good day too my friend, take care :)
This is so interesting, thanks for sharing Louis. I was raised in rural Minnesota and North Dakota and have spent enough time in large cities from Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago to New York, Seoul, and Shanghai to know that I love urban living but not in the mega cities. When it is still possible to escape the city with a 30-minute drive or less, and the residents of the city haven’t lost their appreciation for nature, I prefer the city.
We are a one-car family, I commute by bike or bus year-round, and this is how I like it. I am super excited to see how you have escaped hell for something you love.
I grew up in the suburbs, single family homes in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, before my parents landed in the outskirts of Jackson, MS where they have now been for 43 years. I have since moved to a genuinely rural area, surrounded by acreage and corn/hay fields. Everyone is helpful. Crime is virtually nonexistent. I don't understand why anyone would want to live in a city. Or even a townhouse or apartment, where you share a wall or walls with fellow residents who may prefer loud noises at odd hours, or have a big dog or kids who run and jump on the floor above me. It's quiet here. The air is clean. We are close to everything we need regarding stores and doctors/hospitals, with Johns Hopkins an hour south and Hershey Medical center a similar distance north.
I never really liked driving everywhere, and loved the idea of one day living in a city with public transport. Then I moved to a place where I had to wait an hour on average to make a bus that's supposed to arrive every 20 minutes. In retrospect, driving isn't too bad.
I feel you Louis! I lived in Manhattan for 9 years, I was excited to move there, but very quickly found out it is not the dream I once thought it was. Very expensive, dirty, full of attitude, (I can't say I blame anyone for having because of the conditions and treatment received by people of position and or power), it turned out to be ok for awhile, but I knew I couldn't stay during the last 2 years I was there. The charm of NYC was fun, but it felt like I was dating the dirty neighbor girl. I left and moved to Penn. and from there have advanced myself to much better living, and although it isn't suburban, it is a far cry better than I had it in NYC. I still love NYC for many reasons, but I can't bring myself to call it home anymore, it's just not conducive to good living unless you are blessed with false hope and deep pockets.
Louis I started watching you while you were showing board repair. I noticed your personality, being a New Yorker I could feel the vibe. Ive enjoyed the recent vlog videos. I need to get off the island. The amount of money is insane. Working in the city is rediculous, tickets for everything. It's literally so difficult to make money in the city, I have to pad for tickets, parking.. Rediculous
I agree that urban mismanagement it bad. Especially in the biggest cities. But sprawl cannot be the answer. The '"missing middle" density in America, is really what we need. This is what Europe does and they have less issues than the us
I live in a small town near Moscow and i have nearly all big city infrastructure avalible while having next to no big city drawbacks.
Europe does not have less issues, they just are less honest about the issues they have and less willing to talk about them publicly