Is North American Urbanism Actually Hopeless?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มี.ค. 2024
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For some, North America might seem hopeless, with its auto oriented cities and cities of extremes. Let’s talk about the unfair ways we often compare North America to the rest of the world, and why cities around the world have lots of learning to do from one another.
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Appreciate an urbanism channel that isn’t all doomerism, it’s nice to pull back and get a little more context.
Excellent video. I think ”North America” works OK as a generalization to start the conversation but any serious attempt at understanding what's going on needs to take into account the vast variation that exists here too. I’ve been running some numbers on traffic safety and Miami-Dade County has a full
People also like to ignore the fact that on a per capita basis North America has more cargo tonnage transported by ship or rail then Europe while Europe is the one with more tonnage per capita with trucking and has more truckers per capita then North America but this isn't a daily part of our visible lives so it goes ignored.
I think a big source of a lot of "doomerism" about north american urbanism is that there is a lot of demand for less car-dependant living, but there isn't nearly enough supply. This results in absurdly high costs in desirable, car-lite neighbourhoods which make them inaccessible to the often younger and less well off individuals who want that style of living. A lot of people just don't have the resources, be it time, money, or age to live somewhere good in north america or wait for the place they live in to improve.
My city, Salt Lake City, is announcing a lot of new housing and transit expansions and i caught myself saying "oh i wished i lived in the future". It's actually exciting to live in the present to bring in that future.
Urbanism succeeds when enough people want it. Historically, at least during most of the 20th century, North America didn't want it. Now sentiments are swinging back.
I really wish urbanists started to look more into the urbanization of Latin America as many of their cities were also developed in the age of car and have been able to create great projects with sometimes fractions of the cost we have in the States and Canada. I mean a city like Bogota, that is car centric, is trying its best to implement cycling everywhere and has been called the Amsterdam of Latin America. I feel we should look more into places with similar history rather than cities developed in the Middle Ages or Classical times.
Comparing stroads to graffiti and no service on Sundays is... really fucking wild.
Never thought I’d hear an urbanist say “NA is too big and spread out” when urbanism focuses on travel within our cities. Nobody commutes from Toronto to Calgary
I feel like north american urbanism is way too focused on a half-empty correcting the suburbs approach rather than a building on what's there half full approach, of course turning the burbs into Amsterdam is impossible, but making east coast cities into urban utopias really wouldn't take that much relatively.
Chiming in here to mention that if someone like RMTransit would attend council meetings with his community and turn it into a youtube video, many more people would know its possible and would do the same.
Thank you for this. Those who reduce all of North America into one singular entity is actively harmful and misleading, as well as the fact that urbanism always seems to be US/CA vs. western Europe while the rest of the world is being left out of the equation (like Latin America as you said). While of course, North American transit systems are by no means perfect, they're still doing something and addressing the needs of its citizens and that's the point! East Side Access/Grand Central Madison in NYC for example, as long as it took and as overbudget as it was, the project helps so many people who live and work on the east side of Manhattan, and it's about time that this crucial connection exists. Things are getting better, and it's very obvious that there are many people focused on making NA's built environment get better too. It's not happening overnight, we have to remember the classic phrase that Rome wasn't built in a day!
I think people tend to overrate how the age of cities outside of America reflect on their building. I say that because a big city 300 years ago would be a small to medium city these days. And while the historic center of most European and Asian cities can easily be millenia old, those historic centers are a small fraction of the area of the total city and most of the area of the city was built at the same time American cities were being built. I always get impressed when I look at maps of modern big cities like London or Paris 300 years ago, and see how the countryside was just arround the corner in all maps
The problem that I have with people in North America (United States in particular). Is people's wilful blindness to the problems that plague our cities. Until recently i was one of those people you would see driving into a congested city in my overpriced, overrated 5,000 lbs pick up truck while complaining about the same traffic that i was contributing to.
take: there would be a lot less negative urbanism from americans and canadians if it was more affordable to move to the nearest city for those who live in the suburbs but really don't want to. the complaint is born from that dissatisfaction and incongruity in life circumstance and not so much the objective level of urbanism in wherever they happen to live
1:57
A lot of people in LA that say public transportation is terrible, frankly, never use it. I wanted to take my friend to DTLA to have a couple drinks without having to pay for Uber or having a designated driver. We took the bus, Metro, Angel flight, and ended up at the US Bank tower. Then we took the public transit back to West Hollywood to eat at Norms. It was honestly pretty good.
2:52
Watching a Chinese travel youtuber, the walkable urbanism in many Chinese cities seems nicer than I’d realised. More than just subways to study.
Well democratically its definitely hopeless. The number of people who think 15 minute cities are tyranny is insane. Its not gonna happen cuz people hate good things here.