How Bad Planning is Destroying the Potential of Riga
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2024
- Half a century ago other European countries faced similar issues that Riga faces today. This video analyzes poor planning practices and offers potential solutions.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
3:04 The Soviet Occupation of Latvia
6:02 Cycle of Automobile Dependency
6:56 Transport planning in Riga
8:50 Case Study - Brasas bridge
11:29 More Bad examples
13:37 The Iron Curtain of Decision-Making
15:01 Alternatives to Driving
16:47 Consequences of Driving
17:30 Attitudes Towards Road Safety
19:26 Deterioration of the City and Suburbanization
22:16 Good Planning
25:03 Conclusion
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A car is often considered a status symbol in Latvia. Due to the underdevelopment of transit and cycling infrastructure, it reinforces the prevailing mentality of driving everywhere. Restrictions on driving are seen as an infringement on the freedom of travel. The only way to break the status quo is to provide high-quality transit and cycling infrastructure, give people a choice and not force them to drive.
Recognizing the Soviet occupation limited Latvian‘s “freedom” in many ways for decades, its understandable that they would hold onto something that gives them a *sense of freedom* they were missing. If they are still like they were in the 90’s, money talks louder than anything! I imagine that if money came in to redevelop many of buildings along these streets, IF the city would re prioritize non-car movements along them, you’d see some real progress.
As an American, I’d love to participate in this revitalization, but in a way that my foreign money & assistance would ensure that the local residents, especially those renting or without these resources, get to benefit from this influx of money, while making a fair return on our investment. If this seems even remotely of interest, LMK & we can connect. Many urbanism TH-camrs prefer to make videos about the problems & issues than to participate in the revitalization, so if this is you, no worries.
How ironic you blame soviets for bad infrastructure and only video from soviet era you found is with troley buss
Soviet era made too many mistakes in Rīga. Bridge wrongly built, Centeal station and area destroyed, River bankndestroyed, no transit routes, no highways outside Rig. Piblic transport is quite good, except no fast routes to suburba@@MrNeomidis
As a local citizen, I wanted to thank you for this video. High quality and data-driven. Paldies!
Absolutely wonderful and a very well educated video! You're bound to explode in the urbanist side of youtube and I can't wait for more people to see your work. People like you are bringing the us back together to fight for a great cause. Thank you.
This video maker completely missed point why people leave Riga.
Its the wanting to own a Car. to be free to travel around country etc. I moved out and almost everyone i work with. now we have our own homes with land
People dont want to live in a Pod eating bugs and being consumers who rent and spend everything on consumer goods and subscribtions. People understand that when they become 35+ years old.
All the recent Modern EUropean choices in last 10 months to ruin infrastructure with grand progressive leftist views accelerated the people moving out of Riga. No one wants to sit in traffic for hours just because some dumb politican decided to ruin half the streets with useless bicycle lines that no one uses 8 months out of 12.
Its quite funny how people like this dont grasp reality because they are inexperienced 20 year olds who smelled farts of some grand teachers in university and now think they know how to fix everything but they have zero life experience.
@@exalexal5003 I thought that everyone here will get smarter about cities and infrastructure after watching this excelent video. I was wrong.
@@gunitapiterane5473 the authors of this very dense video did not understand 2 very big differences in Riga - the large width of the Daugava and other situations in winter. The large width means that historically river crossings have been possible in far fewer places than in cities with narrow rivers/canals.
Now, in January 2024, we can assess the real possibilities for cycling.
I recommend watching NJB's video about winter cycling in Oulu th-cam.com/video/Uhx-26GfCBU/w-d-xo.htmlsi=amGxWAb19XdLJYxy
Thank you! You've mentioned almost all Riga problems I'm so angry about. We just have to stop making things worse to make them better. :(
At the very least Riga is finally trying to improve its public transport again.. In Vilnius we are still waiting for someone in the municipality office to realise that being stuffed into buses isn’t the way forward to drive ridership😅 Even while Vilnius is growing in population!
Half the trolley's are held together by beer and duck tape, or what feels like it and the infrastructure makes them take ages to get where you need them.
I would not describe public transporta of Rīga AS Bad. In fact, it is pretty good
Living in Riga, came from Texas. I come from massively car dependant place that makes Riga passible, though I know it still can be better. I can imagine this place with great walkable, cycling and public transportation infrastructure
Why would u move from texas to this god awful place? im from LV & I WISH i could move to texas
@@RandyOrlok Everywhere is crappy when you live there long enough.
Liels paldies! Love from Latvia, hope that one day our society will be able to break away from the baggage left by the occupation times...
Net
Hope one day Latvia can stop blaming all their problems on occupation times.
@@yts4106 Same. Unfortunately, Soviet-era thinking still infests a lot in this country, like a cancer.
As a guy living in Riga, I can confirm that our infrastructure is very bad. The only great thing is the Rail Baltica project but nothing else. Riga city council needs more young people.
It is a military project
Thank you for the video! I have contacts in DM's with the current Rīga vicemayor who is a very open to the public guy and I sent this video to him, he will 100% see this video, thank you alot for the video and I hope he forwards this video to the right authorities to see their bad planning! New subcriber to you sir!
Very high-quality video with a lot of good points being made! Keep up the good work👍
I never realized how similar Soviet and American city planning were. Was that just normal in the late 20th century?
Yes. Cars seemed like a perfect mode of transportation back then. Not just there, but almost everywhere.
@@ilgmars60kadrosEven in the Netherlands and Amsterdam!
Thanks! This video perfectly explains all my frustrations that I have about Riga.
Videos like these should be taken serioud by the city. The city has a lot of problems, one of them - not looking for an example of foreign countries where the green and futurus planning is priority. Great video!
You should make a video about Latvia's roads, for example the so called highways has 2 lanes instead of 4 which makes the highway more safe.
There are a lot for the institutions to finally listen and take needed action.
The highway to Estonia has two and a half lanes. I was seriously scared driving there.
Very interesting.
I have lived in S.E. Asia over the last 15 years. I often say "Once you buy a car, you will never go back to bus, tram, motorbike or bicycle. Cars are the devil. Best wishes from Bangkok.
Really appreciate the work that you have put, especially all the archival footage - thank you! Riga is indeed still suffering from mistakes of the past, however, it is inexcusable that those mistakes are being repeated today. Changes are incremental and unfortunately the majority of the public is so used to car-centric planning that there is a great deal of pushback toward any proposals to reduce the flow of motor traffic. I really hope that Riga can turn the trend around, because it really is a fantastic city!
Riga has so much potential for huge city planning mistakes, I am sure current city council will use every opportunity to make them.
Just one more lane bro
Good video. Saddly this situation is not uniqe to Riga alone, but in all around Latvia. Many documents and plans are ignored or not observed intentionally. Also many construction business are involved in stealing money and construction materials.
I loved this deep dive into a place with which I am unfamiliar! I learned a lot and it gave me some great ideas for improving my own car-dependent city! Thanks for this!
Paldies! Sanāca ļoti labi un kvalitatīvi!
Great content! 🔝👍🏻
Great to see fantastic infrastructure examples from my city of Groningen the Netherlands. Groningen is the happiest city of the Netherlands and the 3rd of Europe according the EU report about cities with the best quality of life.
Groningen is indeed a great place to live. Check out my previous video where I cover road and street design using the city as an example
Riga has one of the most expensive parking in the world in comparison to income, which has lead to reduced economic activity. I think it was a mistake, because no alternative for personal transport was created. Public transport won't work for everyone and a lot of people hate it for being dirty, cold, no seats for everyone. In a country with minus 0 to 20 Celsius degrees nine months in a year, alternatives must be close to perfect. Heated bike lanes everywhere are the only solution, really.
One thing I gotta say, I love the effort you put into this video and when pronouncing Latvian words didn't feel like nails on a chaulk board as it usually does when someone other than a Latvian trIes to say them. And also, it reinforced some believes about how things operated back in my home country and as well I learned some new stuff about it, mainly that we produced Fords in the day :D
But that said, there are a lot of issues with wanting Latvia to develop Riga like the Netherlands does with their towns and cities. FIrst most it's the attitudes of people and people much themselves, there is a lot of "soviet era stuborness" to be found and trying to make these people go a completely different way that is used to them is nigh impossible, and two, generally, people want to be out of the cities, often mentioned that Latvians are people of the country side and want to be away from the dense city sprawl, and with how depressed most people are, most won't want to be told where they have to live if they want to work in Riga.
Woow! Your video is amazing! A clear, educated look on Latvian reality. Living inside it, its often easy to forget that there are other different perspectives.
Keep making videos, man! =)
Lielisks video! Paldies!
Telling former Soviet countries to make desirable urban planning infrastructure compared to our Dutch infrastructure is a heavy task and it will come with a lot of resistance.
But eventually i hope Latvia get its act together and make more dense desirable places for its people.
Thank you for the wise words. We have pretty decent public intercity and city transport network, but those with better paid jobs often have arbitrary locations of work too complicated to reach and thus banally incentified to use cars. Not only this lazy, costly (if time-saving) mentality is a burden on Riga, the city simply was not designed for so many cars in Soviet times, never mind the old town in medieval period. Now it's a really high and painfully slow task to redesign it. Especially without nevessary experience and progressive, open human-oriented mindset, leading to expensive mistakes like the Southern "golden" bridge. Note, the rest of our cities are not as plagued by cars and pollution, Riga is the scariest place to drive or ride here.
Other problems are ex.g. an order of magnitude smaller budget (just a guess, having stayed in Amsterdam and Roterdam), just recently curbed systematic corruption in city council, nepotism and.. Main thing, a similar progressive humanist mindset that i've seen among the Dutch institutions. Sometimes i feel the project planners should be thought organic city design and even things like feng-shui, as we have some brilliant architects, but often ugly outcomes. If this doesn't work, where possible should just copy you))
Riga is doing well compared to Tallinn where cycling lanes were built unseperated by the roads, they are narrow and some of them are in the middle of the road in viaducts, you will probably get injured cycling these red cycle lanes😵💫
Great video. I'm British and never been to Riga, although I have visited other Eastern European countries (Ukraine and Slovenia). Riga looks like it has huge potential to be amazing but seems like they're unfortunately making mistakes they don't need to make. I do agree that making streets for people again would be a great move, however I feel like there's more to the problem than just that. There has to be economic factors involved, and I suspect the planning/zoning system probably also needs reform to. The most worrying thing in your video is not the lack of bike lanes, but those new suburban developments and retail parks that look like they could be in the U.S.A. Latvia...PLEASE don't do this! It'll be VERY hard to fix that. Much harder than retrofitting bike lanes in.
I fully agree with all the points made, particularly the observation about people from Soviet-era neighborhoods not even considering moving to the city center. When I was searching for a new place some years ago, I never once thought, "The city center is the best option!", even though technically in my line of work... it should be? 🙃
Great video mate
This is a very informative video and will educate many.
Leaving Riga - does it account for the reduced population in the entire nation and the emigration of minorities to neighboring countries, you mentioned it later but not in the intro. People moving outside of Riga is also largely because of cost. There was an infamous case of a supermarket employee having to sleep in a stairwell of a nearby building due to unaffordable rent.
The facades of buildings not being repaired is not something that can be attributed to traffic. There is a common demographic pattern of poor elderly people living in such houses who are too burdened financially to be able to afford renovation. Lack of investment is true, but again, with the high costs of Riga, it's an additional factor.
Don't skip the war, there are still war torn buildings to this day. A huge amount of capital also fled the country to the west, including USA, Germany, Sweden and the UK.
The historical videos are well found and relevant, and the changes during the occupation left a lot to be desired. Meanwhile, cobblestone roads, while historical, are often a nightmare to walk, ride a bicycle on or drive on. Something that we don't and shouldn't see the same way as people from the past - gasoline/petrol was absurdly cheap back then.
A large problem with cycling is the risk of death due to the driving culture.
Brasa bridge should be cancelled.
As for the public transport, let's add some detail as to why people choose not to use it. First of all, the poor design began also in the Soviet era, with many of the bus stops being fairly inconvenient or just far from their actual destinations. (If you feel like they are not bad, try a better city where the buses are where you actually need them.) Next, until a few years ago with timed tickets, the prices encouraged you to only ride a single bus/tram/trolleybus, which for most people meant that going "slightly to the right" either meant a) walking for 10+ minutes or b) paying double. On top of these two factors, most of the routes go from X to the center of the city. Meaning that if you need to go to the district next to you, you are probably going to go to center and then come back.
Then there is the culture of public buses, with drunks, loudness and excessive amount of people during busy times. Multiply that by the amount of old buses and trams and you get an experience most people chose to evade. Not just people living in a private home in a sprawl, but people living in a high rise building at the edge of the city. So why not buy new transportation? If you did that, you might just run into the biggest theft scandal. Which leads to the problem of corruption, that is mentioned in the video. However, with the unplanned haphazard transition to a capitalist economy with the influence of criminal organizations and foreign governments, it is surprising that any progress has been made at all.
Finally, if we talk about inter-city level travel (since Riga is expensive), the amount of inconvenience has for a long time been an indication of complete lack of understanding of modern people's needs. Connecting between different modes of transportation has been a joke. The least inconvenient maybe was the train station which has somewhat close access to buses but even that's generous. Next, the intercity buses stop a good quarter mile away from the rest of the transportation. It's almost like people coming from other cities are supposed to just sightsee and not get to a destination *unless they use a car and skip all of that*. Near the airport, the bus stop was conveniently placed at a place that didn't even have pavement connecting it to the airport. As for the connection between buses and ferry the answer is simply "no".
Factoring in the demographics and poor state of alternatives, I can't say that there was any other way. It is the symptom not the pure cause. Of course with better education and understanding, people could have averted many of these issues and probably made every one of these pain points a little less bad, resulting in a cumulative effect. So to me, this is more of an advertisement of what we could have if we solve the underlying social issues.
One part that I didn't see was about the current developments and changes. There are good parts, but I will highlight the poor ones as it's the theme: walking in the area around the markets and the new train station has been a farce. The many roadworks have crippled all forms of traffic. On top of that, the reduced speed limits, parking spaces and drivability has decreased accessibility since it is not matched by a qualitative alternative.
Having spent time in more places around the world I will say though that the absolute focus on 'bicycles' is a bit of a cosplay. It seems like Europeans are 'too good' for mopeds, since if you look at the traffic density, they are basically the same as bicycles while having several benefits that allow them to be used as well as cars, such as long range, higher speed and low noise. And I am talking about electric mopeds, ones that do not even require lithium batteries. Given the high costs of quality bicycles, you might even have a cheaper electric moped as an option.
I am considering if I need to make a video about the context of cars and alternatives in Latvia, the politics and geopolitics of it.
What's wrong with Brasa bridge? Sure it took half a decade but the end result is good imo.
Thank you for the very detailed analysis.
Hearing this in English in the style of other urbanist channels makes it somehow more dramatic.
Watching NJB comment on American suburbia is great but hearing about your own city just hits differently.
Like I've always known it's bad... but the way you captured these deteriorating urban environments makes it appear even worse. I love it :D
Love it, do Vilnius PLS! These are great videos to share with friends to kickstart conversations about these topics.
Tallinn, Estonia next please!!!
We have the same problems although we have bicycle infrastructure and better PT.
But still... our mayor drives each day 7-9km to work although there is a perfectly working BRT.
Great and realistic content.
Nice video.👍
There is one, ONE! Good bit of cycling infrastructure and it's not even useful for commuting, only for leisure
As a recent bike owner, I can say that bike infrostructure is not the best, but its livable. Still.. I would not want to drive on the road because often sides have debri and holes and driving in the middle in my eyes is suicide seeing how some people drive and my still lacking expierience. Planning is bit weird you might have bike lanes randomly ending into nothingness but many pavements and sides are at least slanted down without step next to them, so it do assist biking. In past years I am seeing more bikes around so at least trend is going up. One big advantage is also public transport what is quite good for my personal needs, but I am sure there are many things to improve.
There indeed is potential here, its sad to see so many abandoned buildings and places in bad shape only going worse. Hope some things do improve, I am personally also living in soviet time 'hruscovka', but despite their age and appearance, I still see them as quite appealing, mostly because of loads of space near the buildings, what at least in my particular case is still mostly filled with trees and grass and not parking lots.
Solid video agree with basically all of it
Interesting video. I visited Riga this summer and despite I mostly visited the inner city, I immediately detected the city was very car orientated. My hotel was near a place with driving schools, and there was lots of activity with students learning to drive a car in this area. The potential to place living areas, houses cafés and so near the river is so huge as I did not see a lot of activity on the river after the ferry terminals and the low bridges. In other livable cities the area near the river has a lot of value, but this was mostly empty in Riga, or at least part of the side on the northern side had a highway next to it. It will be interesting to see if Rail Baltica will change something in Riga and may turn things around. If one is smart, invest in plot of lands near the river and see this land increase its value in one or two decades if Riga makes a turnaround in its city planning.
Agree. At least they made a nice walk/bike path along the river to the island with the TV tower. Which is incredible but rarely promoted
Interesting video. I wish you'd do one about Tallinn as well.
dude such a great video srsly.
I was born and grew up poor in Riga, we couldn't afford a car, always walked or used public transport, my mother got her forst car ages 43 i think
Holly shit this was good, insta sub!
You should make a video about the good projects of riga aswell! So that I'm able to send this video to the vicemayor again to let them know which projects are taking the right approach! ❤
Excellent video. Could you make a similar video on Vilnius? I would be more than glad to help with footage and research.
Vilnius has far better planning practices than Riga, especially the new cycling infrastructure. If anything, it would be a video about how Vilnius is a great example for Riga to follow!
@@streetscaping Would love to see video about Vilnius!
Cik forši ieraudzīt šāda veida video arī par Rīgu, necerēju :)
Bet jo tālāk skatos, jo bēdīgāk paliek :D
They've poured new concrete on the A7 near my familiy's home near the border of Riga and it has actually increased the commute time to the city by like 15 minutes cause you can't turn in towards the city without doing a giant loop.
Amazing video! Your channel is way too underrated.
Excellent video essay and as I couldn’t agree more. I think all of the criticism can be applied to my hometown Tallinn as well
Tallinn, like Vilnius, has better planning practices than Riga. If anything, there are examples that Riga should learn from Tallinn!
Well it certainly doesn’t feel this way. Tallinn, much like Riga, is governed by party that can stay in power purely thanks to Russian minority votes. So the city government is dominated by people who are often corrupt, carbrained, soviet-minded or just plain incompetent. High status in the party gets you a more important position, even when you are totally unqualified (Andrei Novikov comes to mind). They are never held accountable for their actions and their power is uncontested, so there is no incentive to change anything. Bike paths in the city centre are a travesty, public transportation network is barely staying relevant and needs update badly, pedestrian infrastructure is not cleaned of snow and so on. There are small improvements, but improvements are only made when they don’t impact car traffic. @@streetscaping
Totally agree about the air pollution: a growth both of volume of cars and share of diesel cars makes it disgusting to walk along even a one lane street.
I need a second version of this video in Latvian
Latvian subtitles will be added soon
@@streetscaping That's great thank you!
Loti labs video, patika!
Wanted to add: the pricing is also just not so great. There's no inner zone for the city and the minimum fare makes public transport prices comparable to some much larger cities.
We need to send this video to the mayor
Really nice video!
Once lived in Riga and moved out. It is a very unpleasant city overall.
In Latvia, no one adopts the new patterns from Western Europe, and they continue to wallow in such nightmares. 11:55
Latvia has ordered 30 sets of regional trains from Skoda, and in each of these trains, with 400 seats each, there is NO SPACES FOR TRANSPORTING BIKES AT ALL! The situation will eventually force us to get space for bicycles on these trains, but this will require a new amount of millions of euros.
In this way, financial resources are wasted on things that shouldn't happen, instead of being used for further progress.
The city smells like a Volkswagen and it takes only 1/3 - 1/2 the time to use public transport than to walk, at which point it's often faster to ride a scooter through crowded sidewalks.
What an amazing video! Liked and already subscribed!
I can confirm everything that you mention, except that my confirmation is from Ukraine.
Now I agree with some of your points, but an excuse not to have buses is just bad, cause they are 14x better than cars and the new buses that are used the most are H2 powered so they don't make any emissions. I live next to a road that had about 30 old preserved trees cut down just for a bike lane that no one uses. In my opinion, the biggest problem with the bridge up north is that there are almost no one going to drive. Don't always focus on the negatives. With the public transport again, if we used public transport more and none of those people that don't buy tickets did buy the tickets then maybe, cause they use the tickets bought to make buses more frequent or not.
But you aren't thinking about the traffic that could be solved by a bridge north of Riga.
While I appreciate the nuanced take, don't you think the biggest contributor to people leaving Riga after 1990 was the same as people leaving Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in general? 1 - many muscovites moved to russia after the collapse of USSR, 2 - borders opened, so people flooded to Western Europe and the US.
It's not like Latvia's population grew in that period and only poorly designed Riga declined.
Yes, I did mention that repatriation and emigration to other countries were prevalent during the 90s. That being said, the argument about poorly planned Riga being the reason for the population decline is more applicable to the 21st century.
@@streetscaping Thanks for the response. Well in the 21st century at least 200k Latvians left after joining the EU in '04, so it is difficult for a city to grow when the country loses 10% of its population.
This situation is interesting though, as Vilnius is having the exact same issues with transportation. Suburbia is sprawling, and yet the city itself is also increasing in population.
I thought with Riga the growth would be even larger than Vilnius because there are no other larger industrial centers in Latvia. The country essentially has one city.
At least I've never had my bike stolen after 10 years in Riga. Even thieves don't value bikes here 😂
w video. i wonder tho why riga is first being analyzed. i guess worst planning
Oh a video about Latvia. Expectations: happy, Realisation: sad, and depressed.
Utainie sapisa visu
reupload?
Yes!
Nezinu vai reupload manis dēļ. Bet malači -- izlaboja decade uz century. 👍
Riga is very sad city. I live in and every day see this BS.
You missed the point that there are no people in Latvia and that beautiful dystopia you are proposing is not livable either. it is a place where everything is expensive and everything is paid.
to make place really livable you have to make more abandoned places where children can play people could have picnic or otherwise spend time outside without being harassed and controlled in any way.
starting off with some statistics lying. leaving the city? More like leaving the country itself. you could make an argument for anything that way.
we will never see anything good in Riga !!!!
Nice video, but your forgetting that people usually don't tend to cycle in winter, you cant really compare Latvia where snow is common sight in winter with Amsterdam where snow is tragedy. So why make expensive dedicated infrastructure when its going to stay unused 1/4 of year? And don't get me started about helmets.
I recommend watching NJB's video about winter cycling in Oulu th-cam.com/video/Uhx-26GfCBU/w-d-xo.htmlsi=amGxWAb19XdLJYxy
@@streetscaping Yes picking city way up north with at least twice as much snow is going to teach Latvians how to cycle in winter and in snow.
People won't cycle in summer either if there's not a proper cycling infrastructure. Check Oulu for example where people cycle at even -25 degrees
People do cycle during winter. They would cycle more if there were a safe space to do it.
Norway, Sweden, Finland has snow too, yet cycling doesn't stop because of it.
Cycling in the winter is properly unfeasible a month maybe two months out of the year. We really don't get that much snow
After 30 years still blaming soviets. After 70 more years they will still keep blaming soviets
If something has been stinking in your apartment for 50 years, do you think that when you open the windows, the smell will disappear like a snap of a finger?
Grūti šo uztvert nopietni, ja jau sākumā sāk ar maldinošiem faktiem. Latvijā iedzīvotāju skaits no 1990 gada arī ir samazinājies par 30%, līdz ar to relatīvi pret kopējo iedzīvotāju skaitu Rīgas iedzīvotāju skaits ir stabils.
Un tas attaisno izšķērdēt naudu nekvalitatīvos projektos tikai tāpēc, ka politiķi dēļ savas stulbās karjeras un siltās vietiņas baidās pieņemt drosmīgus lēmumus?
Kopumā nevajadzētu pieiet ar lielu vērību šim video, tur daudzas lietas ir baltiem diegiem šūtas.
Aicinu Jums iepazīties ar Rīgas pilsētas velosatiksmes attīstības koncepciju 2015.-2030. gadam sadaļu 3.2 Rīga šodien
Velo infrastruktūras izveide, protams, ir forši, taču tā neatrisinās problēmas. Paskatieties pa logu, un sapratīsiet, kādēļ.
Arī pieminētā Rail Baltica no Acones, Preču-2 un Vagonu parka līdz centram baigās masas neatvedīs, jo tur tādas vienkārši nedzīvo.
Te būtu jāraugās metro virzienā, tā ir jēdzīga alternatīva transporta aizvākšanai no virszemes jebkuros laikapstākļos.
Papildus visam jābūt mazāk saudzīgiem pret kultūrvēsturiskā mantojuma saglabāšanu - jaunas piecstāvenes perifērijas pļavā ir nopietns konkurents veco māju atjaunošanai tieši izmaksu ziņā.
While I agree that we have a room to grow, I have to disagree to a degree.
I live in this city and I can vouch that things are improving at a crazy rate, so while politicians in every country are incompetent to a degree, things are going the right way.
Overall it seems like an opinion piece and not research. Random, out-of-context facts, mixed with in-context facts, to send a premeditated message that bikes are good, and cars are bad.
I still dont get why suburbs are painted in a bad light.
Suburbs usually mean more cars and more cars mean more issues
Suburbs are an American idea that had long been looked down upon by the upper echelons of the cultural Left. They don't like cars, glorify European lifestyles (fine, within limits), dislike the conformity of the suburbs, and believing they themselves are better or correct, would like to ration gas, electricity, and certain foods in order to achieve climate goals. Really, it's a class war. Climate, a certain take on urbanism, and a diverse society have nothing to do with it.
5% truth 5% maybe 90% pilseta cilvēkiem bullshit