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While I still lived in Germany, I never thought about how a city could be without/less cars. When I moved to Amsterdam, I realized how great city with little traffic can be...it's a complete game changer for living quality
@@LeLouisMax can't remember where I saw it on TH-cam, but there is this video about or at least touching on the how Utrecht was supposed to be changed to be a car centered city in the 70s
I was in Berlin a month ago and can easily admit that your traffic isn't that bad. Your streets are empty compared to the Balkans, where a four-lane boulevard isn't enough for a minor district. We have other transportation methods such as buses, subway... but almost no one uses them. People here have inherited this stupid way of relating the car with freedom.
@@gh-yf4go Can confirm that as a Bulgarian. There is that weird obsession with cars here. Studies showed that there are around 650 cars for every 1000 people, which is way higher than any other country in the EU. And oh boy, driving in the centre of the capital is hell, and god forbid you have to park somewhere. The only time when it is bearable is during holidays when everybody leaves the city (even the news said that during the easter holidays this year around 700, 000 cars left the city.).
I love when you talk urbanization and socialization. We always talk about how people are socializing less because of the internet but never think about urban planning
@Baxi Tabaxi Wow, that is an astonishing level of indoctrination. Problems directly created by private interests in your world are caused by the one thing that can apply a brake on this. I guess it was the same private interest groups that actually planted the idea in your head in the first place.
Even in village streets with limited traffic, governments come up with bs reasons to take space from people and give it to cars. Halving side walks and cutting down trees to "make cars go slower" is not going to work.
As someone who spent nearly every summer in Prague, this is very true. Almost all of his pics of old city centers turn highways are of Prague, and in my opinion, Prague is one of the most walkable cities Ive ever been to, mainly due to its absolutely amazing public transportation system. But they should and could easily create more superblocks, especially in the center of the city. The US is a joke in comparison. Many towns have no sidewalks at all. If you walk, there is a decent chance you could get pulled over by police.
@Akshay Sharma I was about to say that ! See the new scrappage policy ? The govt is incentivizing people to buy more cars and there's gonna be a long delay before we start freeing our cities.
@@davidwest6019 Excuse me, what? If there are no sidewalks, how are you suppoed to get from A to B without a car? Am I just an ignorant European or something?
Yep. Seriously considering a move to a more liveable city whenever I have the money. Its miserable to have the worst sidewalks ever right next to roads that are always maintained and touched up and made wider every year. And more and more buildings go down and are turned into parking spaces.
crazy how prager u preaches that taking away cars is taking away our freedom when in reality giving us cars made us more distanced and isolated and than ever before
very true, tho, I just want to mention the fact that on the countryside this is actually the case, if you don't have a car you can't get yourself anywhere Edit: When I say countryside I mean the countryside. I'm not supportive of PragerU because I said that you need a car to get anywhere on the Swedish countryside Don't start talking about OTHER places and saying that MOST of Europe has good bus and railway connections, I'm not talking about thoose I'm just dissapointed no one else is talking abou the countryside
@@gaffalstudios3617 yeah, but the traffic (where i live) is not that bad. but yeah, the nearest city could really use more spaces without cars (although during the pandemic an effort has been made to reclaim a lot of the central city square, and one road has been entirely closed for cars and now there are tables for the adjacent restaurants
@@gaffalstudios3617 That's why public transportation and good bicycle infrastructure is as important in rural areas as in urban ones. Even most people in relativly dense rural areas (i.e most of western Europe) could do fine in their daily lives without a car.
Yeah thats already happening, there are actually many cities in the US that are trying to do things like this, or at least take steps towards it, and that is exactly the response from an unfortunate number of people
At the risk of controversy, didn't the Soviet Union design it's cities with "superblocks", albeit with less . . . creative designs? Still, superblocks are much better than what we have now in the Western. Ideally, we could also build out public transit so that everyone is within a 7-10 minute walk and cars are unnecessary besides emergency services.
@@avirambhalla-levine1854 I was thinking the same thing. I live in a small town call Bath, PA. There's a railroad track next to my house that leads to Bethlehem. That line connects to a line that leads to Harrisburg in one direction and Newark / New York City in the other. If only someone would put a passenger train on those tracks, I could get to New York on foot.
When the lockdown first hit, and there were maybe 2 cars on the road, I was taken aback at how much space there actually was that was inaccesible due to car traffic. It looked like something out of the Walking Dead, and I honestly miss it. It was so liberating seeing the 4-5 lanes of empty space that was just there.
I remember that -- hardly any cars in the street for weeks. It was a great time to be in an urban area, even though a lot of people fled to the suburbs (and later returned; a lot of them got COVID out in the suburbs).
@@arnaudgarand7706, at the time it seemed like everyone was on a bicycle. There were more bikes in the street than there were cars, which was nice, because people usually ride bicycles on sidewalks, dodging pedestrians. (Riding bikes on the sidewalk is legal in my city because riding in the street here is insanely dangerous. They're just beginning to discover bike lanes.)
Agree, I cycled on the main duel carriageway road with many others, we were spread out and safe, leaving the pavements free and safe for families with children and dog walkers. It was weirdly wonderful, the peace and quiet was bliss, I heard the river, trees and birds singing for the first time ever in that area.
The movie "Cars" by Jorge Ohwell is a very good dystopian sci-fi film about a world in which cars have completely taken over society to the point where humans become irrelevant. Humans literally cease to exist because of how much society has become centered around cars. Walking spaces no longer exist in such a dystopia.
I remember that when I was a child, a highway expansion project swallowed up a portion of my neighborhood... As human beings we are not just banned from most public places but, what remains for us is being actively and purposely chipped away.
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term. Climate grief is haunting.
"Why don't you kids go and play outside like we used to in the old days?" It's not because of the technology and exciting things to do inside, it's because of the lack of public spaces and exciting things to do outside.
I hope you realize your parents didn't have playgrounds or exciting things to do lol, those are kind of recent, 90s+. And stuff like sports clubs etc. have been massively funded. There's so much more to do outside now then even when I was a kid. Technology plays a sinister role in this, it's too addictive
@@brotpros2306 yeah my mom is 60 and she said that they weren't allowed home from morning until dinner. The neighborhood would mostly use their imagination to play persistent games.
Yeah it’s very strange when people blame the internet, but in actuality it’s that fact that urban planning prevents people from socializing. As a kid the ONLY reason me and neighborhood kids could play is because we had a bigass culdesac. If the culdesac wasn’t there, there would be no safe space for kids to play, other than in each others homes, which I doubt any parents wanted to deal with the messes afterwards.
There is another reason. Were I live, nearly every one has a garden of his own, but kids are never there. they are shipped off to sports, piano lessons, grandparents more often than they are home. Its very hard to get my child to play with anyone, because there is no one home. And on the few days they are actually there, they have to do all the homework that didnt get done when they were off to their activities. So no playing with local kids either on those days....
I grew up in 90s and 00s, before the Internet became mainstream, living in Russia (urban hell with no playgrounds). We would climb garages and kick a dirty football in parking lots. Older teens would be sitting around in the "pod'ezd" (communal area of blocks) smoking and drinking. Basically find a way to socialize. But now I don't see or hear any kids shouting, running, screaming around, they seem to be stuck inside their home. so the Internet definitely played a very sinister role in this anti-socialization
@@loplopthebird1860 yes there are. the next playground is a slide that bores 3 year olds (because it is very short) and has a ramp up to that slide that is too steep for 2 year olds so they get frustrated from falling on it. It also has 2 benches for the moms and nothing else. the second closest has 2 swings. Every garden around here has 3 times the number of playing stuff that any playground has. The next playgrounds that are interesting for children age 2 and above are 30 minutes by bike, but you dont get to know your neighbourhood kids there. And yes, the school has a playground....which gets closed off at about 3 pm, as a measure to prevent accidents and vandalism, same with the daycare. If his (i guess suburban) neighbourhood is/was any like ours, there is no place for kids to be kids and just meet up and play safely. Even our streets are unsafe, because people with big-ass cars sometimes speed through the backstreets without any thought. And just 250-500m away, there is a very busy road, that even I cannot cross safely at times.
While I’m a fanatic car guy and I would drive everywhere If I had the chance, I support this movement. The benefits in human psychology and well-being in such venture vastly outweigh any transportation problems that might arise. The streets actually belong to pedestrians.
I would argue to limit where the cars can be in the cities while public transportation, taxis and services to be allowed. Hence, streets become alot smaller.
@@bogdanpostole7251 Exactly! Public transportation is so underdeveloped in many places. If it was properly established, the idea is that you wouldn’t need your car...
I am a car guy too, and that's why I support the ideas in this video. Car enthusiasts like driving, which means driving where is fun to do so, like on mountain roads or in the countryside (or a racetrack if you can afford it). Never heard of a petrolhead saying "oh yes, I love being stuck in traffic changing from 1st to 2nd gear with my sporty, super heavy clutch pedal" 😂
I live in Merica and i love experiencing the freedom of inhaling exhaust fumes and being unable to walk to the store or anywhere. I love almost being hit by a car walking to class at my uni!!!!
Adam "So what is the solution? How do we fix this?" Me: Oh boy trains it's gonna be trains Adam: "One word" Me: Choo choo motherfu- Adam: "Superblocks!" Me: ...You absolute magnificent bastard
Imagine if the majority of streets in your town or city were pedestrianised, it would be so nice! It would make walking to places nicer, it would make them less noisy, less polluted, safer, it would mean you could have outdoor dining and you could cycle everywhere. And the thing is once people realise that they can cycle and use public transport (and if those services are improved) the number of people on the road decreases naturally, so the remaining roads for cars aren't conjested
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term. Climate grief is haunting.
@@appleslover architectural conservatism is one of the few I can get behind, old building look soo much better than skyscrapers xD We just need to mix the old'ish style with new construction and isulation methods and we will get nice looking and functional cities
@@pieroguy in terms of morals new is somewhat better, in terms of infrastructure, it seems we lost the effectiveness of technology, instead just focused on advancements.
@@takeshikovach5165 yeah the thing is that with better technology even bad solutions can work somewhat wichh is why there is so many strage ideas like Elon's shit
@@Tounguepunchfartbox at least in my state, that’s fairly common in front of any business… or public service building. You know. The services… for the public…
@@destdest9858 I mean I grew up with all the US propaganda films like Top gun and all the great man films rambo etc. so until like 18ish I thought it was paradise and now its lowkey hell to live in especially with my lifestyle
In Morocco we are leaving our 1200 years old cities or as we call it "medina" with narrow streets to live in modern neighborhoods , the problem is that our ancestors understood that narrow streets are the only solution to find shade in strong sun light , but we ruined everything , now we have wide ugly sunny streets
I've been to Marrakesh in what feels like a century ago. I've been a kid of 5 or 6 back then. But I can remember how inhumanly hot it was on our way to the city and also in the city center - until we stepped into something I just remember as a labyrinth of stone and tapestries. I think it was a bazaar, but also with people living there and restaurants and everything in narrow, shadowy streets. And it was really cool, like almost chilly. And all the different smells and the lighting and overall atmosphere - it left a lasting impression on me.
I mean I'm sure your urbanists still understand that but their priorities have shifted. As the video says now instead of building with people in mind they do it for cars.
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term. Climate grief is haunting.
Just a thought: Close your eyes and think of 3 places in your home town that you like the most. Chances are 3/3 or at least 2/3 will have zero or very little active or static traffic around you.
and just thinking about this is ONLY the car problem.. id like he makes more open minding videos talking about more of the actual moral/ethical crisis happening in many aspects in life that beenfit the rich as always :/
@@user-im9zp4yp9x no one is deciding who gets to have cars, I don’t care. All I’m advocating for is making public transport much better, and change car culture. I just want walkable and social cities. Obviously if need a car you should get one, I’m not going to stop you
Now talking for real, EV robotaxis Will really help with this matter. Throw away all the ice cars junk, and stop owning Cars. Just rent them as we do with movies and Netflix.
@@tomich20 Or, you know, build some actual public transport? EVs still need roads, which are expensive, inefficient, and reduce the quality of living for city residents. A light rail system can transport more people for cheaper than a fleet of robotaxis. I'd rather my tax dollars go towards something that works well and improves my standard of living.
@@dinoco3672 I walk into someone by accident, we both still alive "ah sorry mate", A car hits a person, the driver is alive but the person is dead, a car hits another car, both drivers are dead. So Im all for public spaces as walking doesnt kill when compared to getting hit by a death machine
@@theirishempire4952 I can see a point for cars for going long distances. Most people's needs shouldn't be long distances, and the only reason so many things are so far away from where people work & live in modern developments is because of the car-centric design. I'd be fully on board with a future where travel by car was mostly restricted to rural & inter-city transportation, facilities for car storage/parking on-premises in urban & suburban spaces is heavily taxed (with exemptions based on certain necessary occupations like trades - or mobility-effecting diabilities which make non-motorised transport particularly prohibitive), non-utility vehicle sizes within city limits was strictly limited & heavy speed limits for any motorised traffic were imposed - excepting buses which would travel through via arterial roads. Where for occasions where car use is genuinely needed by non-owners, self-driving cars may be a solution as a way of literally delivering themselves to the user then returning themselves to a depot or on to the next customer- while freeing public space otherwise being taken up by everyone's personal motorbox.
Gotta love those urban heat islands, they absorb so much heat that they literally alter the weather. I live in a city, and it's almost always raining- but rarely in the actual city, usually a few miles downwind of it.
@@aidanharley243 no one said they dont, but try living without heat in the winter. And with the summer... destroy your house so it doesn't trap heat in it. Also city produce more heat due to the fact that we are warm blooded creatures. There naturally gonna be more heat in cities
@@Delt4_Cr4wfish It's albedo, ie how reflective a surface is. The heat is from the sun. On lighter surfaces, more sunlight is reflected off, on darker surfaces, more sunlight is absorbed. That's why black asphalt roads get really hot on a sunny day. In the countryside with plants (trees and grass), transpiration (water evaporation) plays a part in cooling everything down too. In cooler countries, the urban heat island effect does help make the temperature in cities more comfortable than the countryside.
"Imagine hearing that your dog got hit by a car, but upon running out to the street only finding a piece of well done steak" Jeez, that is so dark, yet I can't stop laughing!
Adam something radicalizing me against cars in favor of walkable cities with good public transit has been such a pleasant surprise. Great for my character arc!
*cough cough* the Netherlands is amazing for livable cities. Walking, Bicycles plus public transport are all you need if the infrastructure is there. If I need carry an object bigger than I or my bike can carry over the distance. I rent a vehicle fit for the job (which can be electric as it is ideal for short distances). Disabled people are able to use this infrastructure almost as well as abled bodied with modified trikes and mopeds (I hope to be electric soon)
Yeah definitely, but it wasnt until the late 1970's that people started protesting the many child deaths caused by motorvehicles. Eventually this resulted in an overhaul of Dutch car culture, in favour of encouraging bike usage through preferential urban design for them. *Edit: grammar
@@nwickstead Totally agree, I use an electric bike as part of my work daily and the accommodation for bikes (in Amsterdam and the Netherlands) is amazing. I think my job in another country would be comparatively more dangerous and slower given that the same space isn't provided for bikes and pedestrians.
Roman officials ran over people in the streets in chariots & horses, so this custom is as old as time. Of course, at that time, 99.9% had to walk. A bit different when in the US, nearly 70% of adults own a car. This will take a major generational shift, and one caused by necessity not public demand (because, as shown, corporations make the laws). Say, gasoline/electricity prices 20x what they are today.
Growing up in Sweden the commonness of "Jaywalking" laws is surprising to me. Even in Finland, it's illegal to cross a street except for pedestrian crossings, or against red light. While in Sweden, if a car hits a pedestrian in an urban street, it's generally the cars fault. Superblocks are cool, but really only works in grid-layouts. But other solutions has also gone on in suburbs, where you usually can't drive through the small roads.
Even i as a car enthusiast wholeheartedly agree. Trying to drive in cities is already slow annoying and finding good parking is a pain in the ass. These changes make getting around easier, living more enjoyable, and its better for the environment. Im on board.
Same, I'm not a car enthusiast, but I do use a car regularly go to the countryside where my parents live, because there is essentially no public transport. I tried to go to places in the city by car and it's almost always a hindrance unless I'm hauling furniture. S-Bahn and U-Bahn are much faster
Cars as a low-priority option of many, or leisure or utility vehicles are fine. It's not reasonable to get rid of every piece of motorway or parking spot, or really ban every car. I like the idea that the goal should be city efficiency and reducing traffic to only those who 'need to drive' or use a car for the occasion journey; by doing what has been proven to work study by study.
That’s why motorists in Europe envy our auto centric infrastructure. Finding parking is a hassle? *laughs in American* we never have a problem with that. There is parking at our destination over 95% of the time. Convenience at its finest.
Living in Stuttgart i really felt this and can confirm: everything he said is true, center Stuttgart is hell, Degerloch is awesome in comparison but worse than all other cities in Germany. Generally can't recommend Stuttgart.
I drove through Stuttgart city centre once. Never again. It's far more enjoyable to go by city train and subway. The shopping street Königsstraße is also a small window what a car-less Stuttgart could look like and it's crowded like hell for a reason.
In Italy we have a lot of those "superblocks". They are called ZTL, "Zona a traffico limitato" or limited traffic zone. It's quite strange to hear this superblocks as a new invention since i lived with ZTL all my life and basically they serve the same purpose. Honestly, i think you would love how Modena treated traffic. Also we are the greenest city in Italy!
Yeah this is the first time I hear the term ''superblock" aswell here in the rest of Spain we have plenty of cities with zonas de tráfico limitado and like you said not so new
@@Lululolalali indeed, maybe is not so common in other parts of Europe. Also love the fact that we found another case where Italian and Spanish sound similar ahahah It always amazes me
It's definetely not a new concept, Barcelona is just a really good current example of a city going through that change in the current time, that can be used as reference for other cities wanting to implement that
Well that's because it's not much of an issue. You always have a choice to move away into the countryside. However because most people today don't want to live a minimalistic lifestyle like their ancestors (who had all the space to themselves) and want to chase career and money, they go to the big city, which results in ant-house skyscrapers and roads. Kind of unrelated, but I am left leaning but sometimes I hate how commies like Adam twist everything into some evil plan by the corporations, instead of realising people make their own choices... I like his videos but jeez he is so biased
@@brotpros2306 Corporations (= the people whose interests (wealth, social status) are tied to the performance of corporations) have interests too. Sometimes those interests clash with the interests of normal people. When this happens, corporations (= the people whose interests (wealth, social status) are tied to the performance of corporations) act in their own interest rather than the interests of normal people. Power drives change, and corporations (= the people whose interests (wealth, social status) are tied to the performance of corporations) have power. Normal people with normal interests do not. This is why millions have died as a result of tabacco industry lobbying efforts, why cities are car-dominated, and why you think you're being reasonable when you call Adam a 'commie'. Who does opposing communism benefit exactly? You or multinational CEOs?
Another outrageous thing is how many of the old European (market) squares have been turned into parking lots. It's so much space, right in the middle of cities where it's most needed, that could be made into great public spaces. But we decided to give those places to cars instead. The one thing that gives me hope is that the larger cities are giving these squares back to the people, but the smaller towns still have a very long way to go...
The city of Montpellier has totally forbidden consumer cars from entering the inner city, replacing them with quiet trams instead. The result is an insane gain on room to expand café’s, restaurants, activities etc… Aside from super block, the development of public transports and banning of cars is a huge help to make better cities for people
@@reet7060 even the most walkable cities in the US are an embarrassment compared to the vast majority of cities in Europe (even with their own problems)
9:26 glad you mentioned that superblocks reduce loneliness. We're currently in a loneliness epidemic, and loneliness is among the worst things for people's mental health. Chronic loneliness is as negative for your health as smoking or obesity is. And given that mental health disorders have skyrocketed in recent decades, it makes no sense why we aren't trying to combat it with simple but effective measures like closing some residential streets to limit through traffic and giving road space back to the public.
I am doubtful that blocking off city streets to make, essentially, *walled-off apartment complexes* is going to solve any loneliness problem: In USA, malls, amusement parks, stadiums, and various shopping districts are where people congregate the most to for socialization. But when covid hit: *Everything in the world changed* -more people are interested in working from home -fewer people are going outside to shop for their various necessities and luxuries -Public transports experienced and are still are witnessing reduced volumes -Social media was no longer a luxurious past time and now a vital necessity This the new normal, so be it..
@@MainMite06 I mean, the evidence is literally provided to you in the video that superblocks reduce loneliness. What you *think* doesn't contradict reality Malls, amusement parks, stadiums, etc, do not promote socialization. They designate a tiny percentage of the total urban area to socialization (which you can only participate in if you have money to spend), while keeping the other 95% of a city blocked off. Additionally, people must inevitably drive in frustrating traffic anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour to these places (if you don't have a car or can't drive then tough shit I guess), which heavily cuts into people's available free time. And people have to walk to these places anyway, sometimes long distances, once they park. Contrast this with superblocks and other pedestrianized areas where the socialization area is right outside people's homes, and nearly 100% of public space is for socialization. Shops where socialization happens are spread throughout these areas rather than condensed into one small space, meaning people have way more options to choose from, avoiding effective monopolies, and can find one within a short walk, giving people more free time. As a personal anecdote, a restaurant 2 blocks from my apartment is a shorter walk than the walk through the parking lot of the city mall, and the former is much more enjoyable for me. Economic activity is boosted in these areas too, because they are simply more efficient. A single pedestrianized street often holds just as many if not more shops than entire malls, plus housing and office space above them. Not hard to imagine how this is better at reducing loneliness than your idea of "socialization" There's too many more benefits to pedestrianizing streets and negatives of car culture to list in a TH-cam comment, especially since you're probably just going to dismiss everything I've written anyway.
This fucking video hits me straight into my soul. It's like everything I have been silently grumbling and sometimes loudly bemoaning about for the last decade
dont get me wrong I like driving, but if youve ever been to a modern city which prioritises cars over pedestrians it is pretty depressing, haveing huge multiple lane roads and maby a grey polluted river running through. Ive been to Barcelona and superblocks seem like a good idea, but I dont think all cars should be banned fron citys just drasticly reduced and people to be discoraged from driveing in citys.
Funny story: That intersection that you showed in Stuttgart was redesigned and rebuilt a couple years ago. It was even worse before, as the old traffic light system was so insanely stupid and complicated that this intersection alone was the cause of traffic jams throughout the city, while taking up even more space than it does now. Of course the redesign was financed only because it'd increase throughput, but at least I can cross the street there now once the pedestrian light turns green once every 20 minutes.
You can cross the street whenever there's no oncoming traffic, that green light stupidity is a very german thing that no one understands lol i've seen people literally in the middle of the night on a road with literally no cars refusing to cross the road just because it wasn't green. That's when the german attitude towards norms and rules becomes ridiculous and makes the entire population seem stupid.
@@liquidsnake6879 That intersection is the B14 and B27 crossing. There is literally no time of day where there is no traffic there. It's one of the busiest roads of the city, and if you even attempt to walk across when the lights not green I guarantee you, you won't make it to the other side. But thank you for your valuable input about your view of a nations attitude towards traffic regulations. I'll be sure to keep it in mind.
@@27suf Sure, but what exactly is the downside of that? Is the city surrounded by these intersections or is there only a few? I really don't recall having any issues as a pedestrian whatsoever in stuggi other than the city being huge and it taking forever to get places on foot though it pales in comparison to Berlin in that regard lol But i mean most roads i crossed just fine, within a minute at most (and i was doing the german thing of waiting for green regardless of traffic as i was a foreigner and didn't want to disrespect your norms lol) and i don't understand why this is a problem exactly, furthermore the sidewalks were huge, you can literally fit 5 guys walking side by side in many of them something that in my native Portugal you wouldn't lol ESPECIALLY on the old sidewalks which are tiny. There's always been roads and traffic, it's not like people were just hanging out in the middle of the roads in the middle ages since in the days of horses the roads were literally covered in dirt, grime and horse dung that would wreck your clothing, hardly somewhere you'd want to spend your time lol.
@@liquidsnake6879 When the hell were you in Stuttgart? 1955? We have the B10, 14, 27 running literally through the city center and the 295 running along as well. Sure you can walk everywhere if you're literally on the main shopping mile, but if you want to go to anything further than the Calwer or Eberhardstraße you literally have to cross either 6 lanes on one side or 10 on the other. Its a narrow corridor of 5 streets that are comfortable to walk on. There are virtually no places in Stuttgart center where you can just sit down and relax, because it'll either be right next to a busy road, or you'll have to cross a busy road and go into some narrow road (with the exception of the few public parks there are, but there aren't many and they're always overcrowded). There's more parking space than public space in the city center, and that's really all you need to know about Stuttgart.
Im glad we have "Fußgängerzonen" here in Germany. Zones were only pedestrians and bikes can go through. Every single car is forbidden there and only emergency services can drive through. Its really great to hang out with friends because you are totally safe from cars and can spread out on a relatively big area.
Anytime there is any proposal to exclude cars from someplace in the US people respond like the urban planners are sacrificing babies to Satan. About twenty years ago, Portland, Oregon--yes, Portland Oregon--wanted to build a street-level light rail line that would have excluded cars from a 1 km stretch of two low-traffic avenues in downtown, thus requiring cars to drive as much as 100m out of their way to the next low-traffic avenue. Obviously this was unacceptable to anyone who thinks they are entitled to drive wherever they damn well please, so the planners ended up snaking the light rail back and forth between the two transit lanes and preserved a car traffic lane. This cost three times as much and took twice as long to build, but at least no motorists were inconvenienced by having to spend 15 seconds driving to the next avenue.
I love them too, but I think there's *way* too few in downtown areas here in Germany! Most cities don't have one where they should have one, and when they do, most of the time Fußgängerzonen have been built solely as a more comfortable space to do some expensive shopping in. Whenever I see a Fußgängerzone, in a central place in a large city, that actually feels like a place to socialize and spend non-consumerist time in, it's like I found a hidden gem.
@@gooblepls3985 Thats because most of those zones used to be the shopping street of the town - and it was considerd too dangerous to let cars in. It's a bit hen-egg but you got it the wrong way. Fußgängerzonen have not been build for shopping, they were created because there was a big crowd of people shopping. That it today is also a shopping street (albeit with the same boring chains everywhere) or a solemn, empty place, is the result of urbanisation of shops, not the Fußgängerzone.
Man I'm so glad I discovered Adam Something and Second Thought, despite the occasional doomerism with climate change, they give me hope that people are in fact thinking of ways on how to transition into a better living world.
I buy into the notion that realism leads to pessimism due to the state of our world. Those of us who can peek back behind the curtain see just how F*cked the system really is, and it kinda leads to a state of "well... shit.". The fact that Adam Something and Second Thought have a following does in fact lead to a glimmer of hope. But unless they quickly stop being seen as radical and go hella viral, I've lost hope for real change. The powers that be have done an excellent job of manipulating people. The blind argue that we're the sheep when they're ignorant to the fact that they've been fed purple drink since birth.
The belief that the world will end in your lifetime is a common coping mechanism for the fear of death. If the world is completely destroyed then you didn't miss anything. Ultimately this is just another form of climate change denial: before they denied the problem, now they deny the solution.
@@alexanderdvanbalderen9803 Yeah, for me that's what doomerism is at it's core. It's living in a reality so depressing, that doom is all you're left with. That's my definition of course, but it still stands. But part of the doom is that it feels like shit isn't being done, shit is being done but it's not radical, nor fast, nor substantial enough to make a difference. But it is something at the very least.
@@PlatinumAltaria There is some element of that, for me it's not that the world will end. I'm too deep in the sociological sauce to know that shit won't end fast, it's gonna be a relatively slow and depressing decline with tons of violence. It's just that knowing over 80% of us aren't going to have a decent future for complicated socioeconomic and climate change related reasons is just too depressing. Like none of us asked to be here, and not really can we escape this rather dismal future. Unless you're Jeff Bezos.
If you like the infrastructure/city-planning aspect of this channel, I'd suggest checking out Not Just Bikes, he makes really good videos on similar topics too.
I remember watching old WW2 films of V day and a bunch of British people were PACKED in the street and I was thinking "Wouldn't this fuck up traffic?" Now I know the road was meant for that blob of people and NOT traffic.
In WW2 petrol was severely rationed for ordinary people and most working people lived close to their work, close enough to walk. Most men were at the front just finished fighting. Traffic as we know it today did not exist in most western European countries until the late 1950's. I am 63 yrs old, I was luck enough to learn to drive when traffic was only a small problem and speeds were low. My father was even luckier, not needing to do a test and learning from his older brother as he went along in a matter of days. No need for tests or supervising drivers back then.
Growing up in Sicily I always enjoyed going to my Nonna's house. It was an ancient terrace street where the residents would sit and chat on the street on their kitchen chairs by the front door. It looks so strange as cars drive past, it never occurred to me this was culturally instilled before cars.
In North America, there needs to be a significant change in zoning laws before concepts like superblocks can become a thing. Because every type of envionment is not zoned for mixed use, but single use for a specific type of purpose, there wouldn't be any benefit to a walkable superblock. However, once mixed residential and business areas are more prominent, superblocks could promote more walkability and would provide a lot of value for a community.
The benefit to a walkable superblock in a purely residential area would be a nicer environment to live in and hang out with friends in, and a walkable superblock in a purely working area would also be good for people on their breaks because they'd have a more pleasant environment to chill in and an easier time getting to a lunch place if they were getting a greggs or something, right?
You wouldn't put a business in a superblock anyway because people would bitch and moan about trucks idling and unloading goods at 4:30am in the morning.
@@joewilson3575 that are indeed some of the benefits. But allowing more mixed use zoning does allow for more people to not move around in moving tin cans since things like small shops/ supermarkets and cafe's are also somewhat intermixed with the surrounding blocks, creating a small centre of smal(ler) scale commercial activity where people naturally congregate and interact besides the purely neighbourhood plaza's. It does not necessitate that every block has a shop/cafe (and the like) but that developping such smaller centres of activity is possible, which lowers the need for those big superstores with mega parking lots that everyone in a 10 mile radius has to drive to. You can think of it as fragmentation of commercial centers away from the outside of the city. Ofcourse, for these places to be viable for the owner, it is probably mosly useful for common ammenities like a supermarket, grocer, butcher etc. and possibly things like a hair dresser, florist and some place to eat out/ take-away.
@@ausaskar But you know it's a thing everywhere else? I mean I live in a condo and we have a small shop in the building and I never heard anybody complaining about the trucks. Very often I see these trucks during the day so it doesn't necessarily happens at 4:30 am.
@@zephyros256 Oh absolutely great idea, I love the idea of decentealising shops and bringing back village and town high streets, I just meant we should get to work on these carless blocks right and not wait for the zoning laws to change and the business and housing areas to all intermingle. Of course we'll want the mixed zoning, but don't need to wait on it.
@@DiogoBatista27 Retrotopia is the idea that the past was somehow a utopia, where everything was better. It's the basis of the conservative movement, but mostly just ahistorical bullshit
@@Anna-vz3jd I tend to prefer a mixed perspective. Somethings were better then but many other things are better now. Our goal should be to study and recognize what worked from each period of time and implement the most effective measures in the most relevant areas.
I still remember being told to "go out to play in the street"... I now live in a cul-de-sac and my neighbors child can't play in the street because drivers will speed through to the parking garage at the end of the street.
@@pangiokuhli512 It's true. I was struggling with a project at work the other day, so on my break, I went out and built a light rail system. Came back in from break, and the project was much easier.
Because roads are surrounded by buildings, and buildings have people in them, and those people may be negatively affected by a large crowd standing outside their homes or businesses.
Also the fact alot of the cities are built around this. So it will take Alot to change and be highly disruptionive. It would need to be a phased thing.
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term. Climate grief is haunting.
On a similiar note: In Germany in the 70s a couple of Sundays were designated as days were no regular traffic was allowed (firefighters, ambulances etc. excluded, of course), and I remember when learning about it that the pictures looked so fascinating because they seemed somewhat alien or like something from a movie. Besides there being fewer cars 50-40 years ago, it was also interesting to see how people just up and went to carry tables and chairs from their homes and gardens on the street to have essentially a garden party but on the streets.
It might be important to note that this happened during the oil crisis iirc, and once things went back to normal these no-traffic sundays were abolished.
Tokyo has that for some neighbourhoods / blocks, aside from their street design basically working like "superblocks" (super narrow streets between larger roads, so nobody sane will cut through those). It's not a perfect city by any means but coupled with its efficient public transportation system it really gets some stuff right.
Ever since i was a kid and looked at a street, i'd feel this itch to just stay there, not because i want to get hit by a car, but because there's such a big and open space that i will never be able to freely stand on. It's kinda like inverse claustrophobia
I am a citizen of Stuttgart and I am SO FUCKING GLAD you put my home town in here. There is also a special name in Stuttgart for these more exclusive houses around the edges on the hills: "Halbhöhenlage". It is hard to translate but they are a clear distinction between the rich and the poorer people. I was born here and live here all my life but as I grow older I get more and more frustrated by the ever-increasing traffic, SUV flood and the lack of proper biking lanes. They built the fucking Interstate right through the city - you showed it in your video - which shows that they just don't give a fuck about a livable city.
"They built the fucking Interstate right through the city" YES! I have always considered this to be normal to have an interstate through a city because I live in Montreal and thats just how things are in North America. It's crazy to think how much of an impact a highway has when it cuts through a city!
I've been watching a lot of Not Just Bikes' videos on TH-cam recently and he talks a lot about how city design in North America and the world could be improved. He focuses on Amsterdam and their solutions for a livable city that isn't all concrete and car driven. I think you might enjoy it! He has a different take on the solutions for car centric city design but I think both have merit and can be used depending on the place
Fr tho he should be the mayor of all NA cities and his critisicm (I think of it as critisicm) is really useful and opened my eyes to this sort of thing.
I live in Mumbai, India which has the worst traffic you could imagine. We never take our car in town cuz it's very bad, we just use the public transport which is very good the local trains connect almost anywhere we want to go, even if not you could get off at the closest station and pick up a bus. We only take the car sometimes if you want to buy like a lot of groceries or something.
Nothing fills me with rage more than a city center full of people walking and enjoying their afternoon and suddenly you get that one car that awkwardly forces it’s way through and makes everyone get out of the way
I have to admit, I don't even dislike urban motorisation. But I'm also Dutch, so our urban motorisation maybe somewhat limited. We do have car-free zones as well as areas where the street is considered the property of the public, where cars are guests.
I have been to the Netherlands many times and believe me when I say it: no one has better, human-first infrastructure than the Netherlands. I live in Athens, which is probably the most car centric city in the EU. Come visit to see what a nightmare it is to live here, whether you're a pedestrian, driver or, like me, a semi-suicidal cyclist
It rages me that my generation grew up without learning the importance of creating livable places. We all fell into the typical modern goals of technology (mostly influenced by iron-man and sci-fi in general) and medicine when fields like urban planning and civil engineering are critical to quality of life.
I kind of disagree... There's so many environmental and civil engineers nowadays, it's the most "mainstream" engineering degree and as a result it's kind of over-saturated. 90%+ of graduates in this field will probably be doing glorified admin work. I remember climate talk and ozone holes from the 90s, social ads to turn off the light and water everywhere, this generation from their childhood has been very climate conscious
@@brotpros2306 i see where you're coming from. Civil engineering is kinda mainstream but some of the syllabus is outdated and not "climate conscious". It's true that younger generations are becoming aware of the environment but i see most of them focus on slightly irrelevant scopes that do not tackle the root of the problem.
I think that depends on the politics and education system where you live. I learned a lot about this in High School, we even got a project to pick an existing city and redesign it. I am 45, so this was probably around 1990.
What's infuriating is that we were having these same conversations--albeit at a lower level of sophistication--at least 30 goddamn years ago, and none of it trickled upwards to anyone with any real authority. Well, not in the United States. There clearly was some action in parts of Europe, as evidenced by the whole superblock experiment, and the entire Netherlands. Not all, but many, Millennials like me learned about these issues and moved to cities precisely because they were more livable, more walkable, more environmentally sustainable and so on... and all that's happened is the cost of living in these cities has gone up. Because no one will build any more of this kind of living environment, at least not in the United States. Not only that, the cities that do exist continue, largely, to disintegrate as useful infrastructure like subways and light rail are neglected, while politicians and "philanthropists" throw money at more car- and suburb-centric horseshit like Tesla. We're going to die off as a species having been told exactly what was going to happen and how to avoid it. It's enough to drive you insane.
Rural folks and suburbanites: How dare you build this small train line through our land, you don't get to decide what to do with our turf! Also rural folk and suburbanites: bulldoze your public spaces, demolish your houses, rip up your train lines in your cities! We want free parking on your city and you are violating our freedoms if you say no!
The most insane thing is, when anybody proposes to let streets be used by people and cyclists again, without the fear of fucking dying, motorists go insane. They think it's literally fascism or some shit
@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 it's not unique to USA. If you go to Twitter and read comments under posts of Barcelona's mayor, people are literally calling her extremely rude, Catalan words for "destroying their city". It's complete insanity.
@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 I live in finland and people here are exaclty the same. They call anybody who proposes a bike lane being added somewhere literally a fascist, communist or whatever the buzzword of the week is. It's sheer insanity
I love how your tackling urban motorists with this. You don't need cars in cities, cars are great for people living in rural or isolated areas. Not so u can avoid metros
Good Question: *Do you remember when MTA closed the L-train tunnel in 2015, and how it caused a number of people to either lose their jobs, or move out of NYC, because certain people couldnt bother to use the longer trip by bus?*
@@MainMite06 The longer trip to work means a longer trip back from work, leaving much less free time for someone who's working compared to the train. I think the all or nothing mentality is justified here.
@@deadcaliph6414 *But all that would've happened was that you are going to be starting later for work and entering later to home.* -Would it really be all that necessary to leave NYC entirely, because the public transport was slight slower?
"You have to love pedestrians. Pedestrians make up the greater part of humanity. The best part, no less. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built the cities, raised skyscrapers, laid sewage and water lines, paved the streets and lit them with electric lights. It was they who spread civilization throughout the world, invented movable type, thought up gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade and established that soybeans can be used to prepare 114 tasty, nutritious dishes. And when everything was ready, when our home planet had taken on a comparatively comfortable form, the drivers appeared. We should note that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But drivers somehow instantly forgot about that. They started running over the peaceful, intelligent pedestrians. They took over the streets the pedestrians had created. The pavement doubled in width, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco pouch, and pedestrians had to start pressing themselves against the walls of buildings in fear. Pedestrians in the big city lead a martyr’s life. A kind of transportation ghetto has been created for them. They are only permitted to cross the streets at pedestrian crossings, that is, in precisely those places where traffic is the heaviest and where it is easiest to sever the hair by which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs." Written in 1931
@@MainMite06 Sao Paolo might have, but São Paulo is an urban nightmare in basically every sense of the world. Think Brasil's version of Detroit (except a little bit better, from what I've seen in pictures).
Man, and that's just developed nations, where even as choked as your streets can get there's still some semblance of order. Urban streets are even more nightmarish in developing nations like where roadways can be extremely inconsistent, very densely packed, and enforcement of traffic rules are a lot more lax, meaning more chaotic traffic flow.
Here in American cities we likely aren't going to do anything about our car-centric design of cities anytime soon. But that doesn't mean steps can't be made to improve things. For starters, we should insist on having more bike lanes, more mixed zone development so that future construction is improved, proper walking paths and parks, and so on. Eventually we should transition to things like "Superblocks" as well, but we also need to improve mass transit enormously at the same time. The problem with the current U.S. status quo of cars is that we cannot get rid of cars without making other options viable, and cities aren't designed around that. It will take many decades and a lot of concerted effort to get to a point where fewer people feel like they need to use a car for everything.
There's no detriment to car owners to make inner-city residential suburbs more dense, as long as the existing highway corridors remain. Getting redundant cars off the road from city people who don't really need them creates less congestion for people from outer suburbs who do need them.
Same here lol Tbh i think it's really bad the idea EVERYONE NEEDS a daily car (ahem ahem usa) and ignoring all the other kinds of transportation that are far more efficient both in fuel consumption and time. Imagine using a car to go to work, it taking 15mins or something and then your car is just taking space parked for like 8hrs straight to be driven for another 15mins Nothing wrong with liking them tho, the problem is that only like 10% of car owners have their cars for non-urban usage (off-road, track etc)
I mean, no car enthusiast in their right mind likes driving in an urban setting. On a twisty backroad? Sure. On a track? Definitely. But inside a densely built up city? I think most of us would rather take Public Transport or just walk.
I am also car enthusiast ( i have 4 cars) but i cant stand cities that center is not only pedestrian ..why would i need to drive in center off city?All centers off cities should be just for pedestrians
Whenever I say we can't all have a car people start calling me leftist crazy person and ask what's next? Banning all the meat? Going to the store with foodstamps? I'm really tired of the rich middle class thinking everybody could and should try to achieve their standard of living with one car per person and the right not to have speed limits... It's come to a point where I'd like to just give up on this planet and start over on a new one. But unfortunately, we've only found one planet to support life so far...
Yeah, I hate how the standard of living nowadays is "everyone or every family owns a car". I hate cars. I know how to drive them and I hate doing so. I never wanted to own a car, but my decision is not usually seen as preference, but as laziness. "Oh so you always depend on public transport?" I hate this shit
@Kate The Goat It's not even that I hate cars or driving... It's just that I realize that we can't all have this luxury. The more people have their own car the more trouble it brings. I think private car ownership should be illegal. Of course, there are services that need to have their own vehicles, like firefighters, ambulances,... but even they could do their job a lot more efficiently if the streets weren't filled with people who think they're just as important. But you're absolutely right about the reactions. I've heard "So, you're completely dependent on public transport?" so many times... But the answer is generally "Yes! And for most things in life this is completely fine!" And if you want to be more flexible, get a bike. And that's not a e-bike btw because those still suck; not quite as much as cars, but still... There are more finite resources used to build them for any large fraction of the population to have one. That's also why electric cars don't solve all the problems. If every car was electric we would still need to destroy parts of our planet to build them and very soon we'll run out of those materials too. What then? When is the point we realize that our standard of driving is not sustainable? When will we figure out that public transport isn't an inconvenience but should be the norm? But other than you and other followers of this channel I'm generally talking to walls with this...
@@witerabid i mean you don't have to hate cars or driving to decide not to drive, it just should be a free choice whether or not you have an emotional reason to not drive, and it shouldn't be seen as a personal failure to decide not to drive
@@katethegoat7507 I think it should be seen as a personal failure if you decide you need a car, but I'm pretty extreme even among leftists, I guess. 😅 Like I said, public transport or bikes should be the norm for distances you don't want to walk, not the "weird outlier". Of course, that also means that the infrastructure needs to make it possible for people to get by without a car which can be difficult depending on where you live. And as long as people consider the car to be their personal freedom, it's not gonna change.
As a guy who does not own a car and is essentially trapped in the city I live in for the foreseeable future, this video hits me. I cannot access the other 75% of the city I live in without the use of an automobile because of the interstate running through it. It can take me 5 minutes to cross the busy road I have to cross to get to work/local markets. The crazy part is there are no crosswalks in this city except the newest parts which I cannot even get to without a vehicle anyways.
*Where do you live that crosswalks arent commonplace?* My city,Tampa Florida, has made leaps and bounds to add manually operated crosswalk lights that stop the traffic on the stroads
@@MainMite06 Murfreesboro, Tennessee most of the main roads in the city are older and lack sidewalks and crosswalks. The other newer side of the city has them but I cant go over there anyways without a ride anyhow
@@Aatell764 that sucks bro Hopefully people in your city eventually come around to the idea of a pedestrian centered city, or at least make some effort to reclaim the streets
This reminds me of the stark difference between the childhoods of people in my home country Indonesia and where I live now UK. While superblocks, or anything of the sort doesn't exist in Indonesia, most people don't own cars, instead people own motorbikes, which means that old narrow roads don't need to be rebuilt for cars. This means that kids can play literally anywhere in a neighbourhood safely. Adventure is massive part of childhood in Indonesia (and I'd wager most of the developing world) and its sad that in the developed world 90%~ of the space that could be used by children to play, develop and learn is unavailable. I think this is why in a lot of developed countries talking to strangers is abnormal and people are generally less happy, social, physically unaware (scared of things that don't kill you, generally more accidental deaths like drowning, US wildfire) despite being better educated than the developing world. Hopefully politicians in developing countries learn from the mistakes of developed countries and conserve what's great about their countries and fix what needs to be fixed. (Although this doesn't seem like it's possible for Indonesia because of rampant corruption, being worse than the US in terms of fake news and celebrity worship, and also Arab worship and cosplay becoming more prevalent amongst some Muslims in the country).
There are also many city areas in the Philippines where the paved streets, while done by the government for faster car mobility and access, are still considered to be for the people in the minds of the neighborhoods that live within despite the law. Children still play about, adults congregate, and some even use it for local businesses like selling food. Cars are often treated as guests in these parts of the road (most often the narrow ones with households surrounding it instead of business buildings) and drivers are mentally ready to be considerate with the people that use these roads daily. The danger that this might get eradicated eventually is when car population increasingly overtakes the city, causing more traffic and road congestion, which causes widening road projects to spruce up and take these roads over. As a person who don't own a car and regularly walks from place to place, only uses the common public transportation available as a choice rather than a necessity, I don't want to see the day where I no longer have the option to walk in many roads I love safely.
Unfortunately many developing countries decided to have a fetish for American road design instead of Dutch road design. Look at China for example. In many of their cities bicycles used to be the main form of transit about 2-3 decades ago. Now many cities have banned bikes for "esthetic reasons" in favor of cars.
@@user-cs9qc6ny3d ah sorry I don't speak Georgian. I used Georgian for my username cos I thought the alphabet looked sick. Now TH-cam won't let me change it back lol.
0:15 those streets actually look surprisingly pleasant with their wide sidewalks, single lane, and wide parking stripes compared to the no parking stripes and 3-5 lanes of toronto with the bare minimum width sidewalks that have eroded into sloping unsettlingly into the street
Me and my friends recently started using cycles. Hope our generation could understand the beneficial impact on our lifestyle, health and metal health. I feel lot better than sitting inside a cramped car
Never heard of the superblocks concept before. In Germany they usually convert one or two streets or a single plaza for pedestrians. That's really not thought far enough, I see now. A connected block with several streets that are mainly for pedestrians sounds awesome.
In my experience, Germany is also a bad place to start such ideas. Germans are extremely resistant and hostile to any change when it comes to their cars, sometimes even more so than Americans.
Especially with a small grocery store and a cafe somewhere in the middle :) Imagine leisurely walking down to your local cafe for your morning coffee, have a chat with a realtive about how your hobby project is going and some family gossip. Followed by grocery shopping and on the way back a conversation with your neighbour the chef about how to prepare a dish best on the way back. Later that day you walk to the local chess table (maybe in the cafe, maybe in a small park) for a game of chess with one of your friends, while some kids are playing basketball and other kids are making chalk drawings on the street. All this with the sound of traffic barely heard since that's all 1-2 blocks over. You see people walking around enjoying the sun, or just relaxing with a book.
I my home town people have been fighting over pedestrian-only streets for years. The fact that some people firmly believe car access to Every Single Corner of the centre is the only way to make it more vibrant and livable, and will boost sales in the stores and boutiques down the streets is truly bizarre to me. There's even a street that looks like it was designed for only pedestrians but out of pressure was made into a car street. Mind you, the street was already closed for years when it was renovated and people got around with their cars just fine. They even hold markets on the square that is a part of the street, and don't close the access for cars even then! How pleasant and vibrant indeed.
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I suppose more space for cars less human means less chance of viruses...
Also you know any car manufacturers that paid for all this
Hey Adam, could you also do a video on Nuclear Power plants?
Hello hope your doing well
I can‘t believe that i can just agree to all of your videos
While I still lived in Germany, I never thought about how a city could be without/less cars. When I moved to Amsterdam, I realized how great city with little traffic can be...it's a complete game changer for living quality
Utrecht is an even better example of that
@@LeLouisMax can't remember where I saw it on TH-cam, but there is this video about or at least touching on the how Utrecht was supposed to be changed to be a car centered city in the 70s
I was in Berlin a month ago and can easily admit that your traffic isn't that bad. Your streets are empty compared to the Balkans, where a four-lane boulevard isn't enough for a minor district. We have other transportation methods such as buses, subway... but almost no one uses them. People here have inherited this stupid way of relating the car with freedom.
@@gh-yf4go it’s sad
@@gh-yf4go Can confirm that as a Bulgarian. There is that weird obsession with cars here. Studies showed that there are around 650 cars for every 1000 people, which is way higher than any other country in the EU. And oh boy, driving in the centre of the capital is hell, and god forbid you have to park somewhere. The only time when it is bearable is during holidays when everybody leaves the city (even the news said that during the easter holidays this year around 700, 000 cars left the city.).
I love when you talk urbanization and socialization. We always talk about how people are socializing less because of the internet but never think about urban planning
"Non-places" by Marc Augé comes to mind.
@Baxi Tabaxi Wow, that is an astonishing level of indoctrination. Problems directly created by private interests in your world are caused by the one thing that can apply a brake on this. I guess it was the same private interest groups that actually planted the idea in your head in the first place.
So interesting no politician ever mentions this! It's all about facebook and nothing about environment.
Even in village streets with limited traffic, governments come up with bs reasons to take space from people and give it to cars. Halving side walks and cutting down trees to "make cars go slower" is not going to work.
@Baxi Tabaxi it's crazy that you think runaway car production is "leftist control"
Adam, showing pictures of European roads: “These streets are awful!”
Me, an American: “You ain’t seen nothing yet, partner.”
As someone who spent nearly every summer in Prague, this is very true. Almost all of his pics of old city centers turn highways are of Prague, and in my opinion, Prague is one of the most walkable cities Ive ever been to, mainly due to its absolutely amazing public transportation system. But they should and could easily create more superblocks, especially in the center of the city.
The US is a joke in comparison. Many towns have no sidewalks at all. If you walk, there is a decent chance you could get pulled over by police.
@Akshay Sharma I was about to say that ! See the new scrappage policy ? The govt is incentivizing people to buy more cars and there's gonna be a long delay before we start freeing our cities.
@@davidwest6019 Excuse me, what? If there are no sidewalks, how are you suppoed to get from A to B without a car? Am I just an ignorant European or something?
@@Sina-dv1eg you aren't
@@Sina-dv1eg The only way in most places is by car. You aren't ignorant, it's just the way the US is.
It's sad that Adam's examples of how bad streets have become are 1000% better than what we have in the majority of America.
True. My town doesn't even have a safe sidewalk.
at this point the majority of america is out of the picture for serious proposals like these.
Yep. Seriously considering a move to a more liveable city whenever I have the money. Its miserable to have the worst sidewalks ever right next to roads that are always maintained and touched up and made wider every year. And more and more buildings go down and are turned into parking spaces.
crazy how prager u preaches that taking away cars is taking away our freedom when in reality giving us cars made us more distanced and isolated and than ever before
Just look up where Prager U get's their funding and a lot of their views will make sense.
very true, tho, I just want to mention the fact that on the countryside this is actually the case, if you don't have a car you can't get yourself anywhere
Edit: When I say countryside I mean the countryside. I'm not supportive of PragerU because I said that you need a car to get anywhere on the Swedish countryside
Don't start talking about OTHER places and saying that MOST of Europe has good bus and railway connections, I'm not talking about thoose I'm just dissapointed no one else is talking abou the countryside
@@gaffalstudios3617 yeah, but the traffic (where i live) is not that bad. but yeah, the nearest city could really use more spaces without cars (although during the pandemic an effort has been made to reclaim a lot of the central city square, and one road has been entirely closed for cars and now there are tables for the adjacent restaurants
PragerU would say the asteroid that’s going to impact earth is a soros-funded liberal hoax.
@@gaffalstudios3617 That's why public transportation and good bicycle infrastructure is as important in rural areas as in urban ones.
Even most people in relativly dense rural areas (i.e most of western Europe) could do fine in their daily lives without a car.
I'd like to see more of these, but Americans would likely call it "an attack on our freedom" or "one step closer to communism."
Meanwhile after interacting with guys from USSR : atleast you have drinking water
Yeah thats already happening, there are actually many cities in the US that are trying to do things like this, or at least take steps towards it, and that is exactly the response from an unfortunate number of people
Diy took our jirbs. Saying no to cars is political suicide in Murica
At the risk of controversy, didn't the Soviet Union design it's cities with "superblocks", albeit with less . . . creative designs? Still, superblocks are much better than what we have now in the Western. Ideally, we could also build out public transit so that everyone is within a 7-10 minute walk and cars are unnecessary besides emergency services.
@@avirambhalla-levine1854 I was thinking the same thing. I live in a small town call Bath, PA. There's a railroad track next to my house that leads to Bethlehem. That line connects to a line that leads to Harrisburg in one direction and Newark / New York City in the other. If only someone would put a passenger train on those tracks, I could get to New York on foot.
When the lockdown first hit, and there were maybe 2 cars on the road, I was taken aback at how much space there actually was that was inaccesible due to car traffic. It looked like something out of the Walking Dead, and I honestly miss it. It was so liberating seeing the 4-5 lanes of empty space that was just there.
I remember that -- hardly any cars in the street for weeks. It was a great time to be in an urban area, even though a lot of people fled to the suburbs (and later returned; a lot of them got COVID out in the suburbs).
If you have any reason to drive really late you can get the same experience.
YES! Cycling was so great at the beginning of Covid.
@@arnaudgarand7706, at the time it seemed like everyone was on a bicycle. There were more bikes in the street than there were cars, which was nice, because people usually ride bicycles on sidewalks, dodging pedestrians. (Riding bikes on the sidewalk is legal in my city because riding in the street here is insanely dangerous. They're just beginning to discover bike lanes.)
Agree, I cycled on the main duel carriageway road with many others, we were spread out and safe, leaving the pavements free and safe for families with children and dog walkers. It was weirdly wonderful, the peace and quiet was bliss, I heard the river, trees and birds singing for the first time ever in that area.
“It’s a type of insanity that we all go used to over the years and never stopped to consider it’s implications”
Oh, so it’s like everything then
The best and worst thing about humans is that we can get used to pretty much anything.
You've just defined CULTURE
based
@@loplopthebird1860 culture and tradition is important
its implications not it's
The movie "Cars" by Jorge Ohwell is a very good dystopian sci-fi film about a world in which cars have completely taken over society to the point where humans become irrelevant. Humans literally cease to exist because of how much society has become centered around cars. Walking spaces no longer exist in such a dystopia.
Ok you mean that cartoon right? I thought you are being serious for a good minute😅
@@moh19931000 Lmao I did not catch on at all, until reading your comment 🤣 Makes “Jorge Ohwell” make more sense lol..
jorge ohwell sounds like the discount george orwell
Just a quick question: How do the cars reproduce?
@@RetroDragonfly They are manufactured in a factory
"You, as a human being, are banned from using most public places unless you purchase a motor-vehicle. Let that sink in..."
next episode you as a human being are banned from buying anything because rent prices
And when you are allowed to share the road you're busy dodging death on wheels half the time.
I remember that when I was a child, a highway expansion project swallowed up a portion of my neighborhood... As human beings we are not just banned from most public places but, what remains for us is being actively and purposely chipped away.
Man, what does that sink need now?
@@browsingfloor62 those parts with no sidewalks are always the rockiest. I always feel like imma step wrong and stumble into the road.
You're such a blessing for TH-cam. I've never even batted an eye on how cars "belong" on streets.
Lol funny how the algorithm works, i've been getting videos like this for years. Glad this idea is finally picking up steam.
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term.
Climate grief is haunting.
@Nat20 Damage I should change it to "hello, Zuko here"
@Nat20 Damage also, how tf is this related to my comment? What is the purpose of your comment? An argument? 1/10 incomplete
"Why don't you kids go and play outside like we used to in the old days?"
It's not because of the technology and exciting things to do inside, it's because of the lack of public spaces and exciting things to do outside.
I hope you realize your parents didn't have playgrounds or exciting things to do lol, those are kind of recent, 90s+. And stuff like sports clubs etc. have been massively funded. There's so much more to do outside now then even when I was a kid. Technology plays a sinister role in this, it's too addictive
@@brotpros2306 yeah my mom is 60 and she said that they weren't allowed home from morning until dinner. The neighborhood would mostly use their imagination to play persistent games.
In those «good ol'days», kids rarely play: They used to go to work to help their poor families
@@loplopthebird1860 In the good old days, kids were monkes
@@debilman9065 In the good ol days, kids were cool velociraptors
Yeah it’s very strange when people blame the internet, but in actuality it’s that fact that urban planning prevents people from socializing. As a kid the ONLY reason me and neighborhood kids could play is because we had a bigass culdesac. If the culdesac wasn’t there, there would be no safe space for kids to play, other than in each others homes, which I doubt any parents wanted to deal with the messes afterwards.
There is another reason. Were I live, nearly every one has a garden of his own, but kids are never there. they are shipped off to sports, piano lessons, grandparents more often than they are home. Its very hard to get my child to play with anyone, because there is no one home. And on the few days they are actually there, they have to do all the homework that didnt get done when they were off to their activities. So no playing with local kids either on those days....
I grew up in 90s and 00s, before the Internet became mainstream, living in Russia (urban hell with no playgrounds). We would climb garages and kick a dirty football in parking lots. Older teens would be sitting around in the "pod'ezd" (communal area of blocks) smoking and drinking. Basically find a way to socialize. But now I don't see or hear any kids shouting, running, screaming around, they seem to be stuck inside their home. so the Internet definitely played a very sinister role in this anti-socialization
Aren't there schools and their playgrounds?
Aren't there parks?
@@loplopthebird1860 Its hard for a kid to get transportation to a park.
@@loplopthebird1860 yes there are. the next playground is a slide that bores 3 year olds (because it is very short) and has a ramp up to that slide that is too steep for 2 year olds so they get frustrated from falling on it. It also has 2 benches for the moms and nothing else. the second closest has 2 swings. Every garden around here has 3 times the number of playing stuff that any playground has. The next playgrounds that are interesting for children age 2 and above are 30 minutes by bike, but you dont get to know your neighbourhood kids there. And yes, the school has a playground....which gets closed off at about 3 pm, as a measure to prevent accidents and vandalism, same with the daycare. If his (i guess suburban) neighbourhood is/was any like ours, there is no place for kids to be kids and just meet up and play safely. Even our streets are unsafe, because people with big-ass cars sometimes speed through the backstreets without any thought. And just 250-500m away, there is a very busy road, that even I cannot cross safely at times.
funny how as a child i got excited when i learned about rockets and space, but now I'm excited over peaceful and quite public spaces
While I’m a fanatic car guy and I would drive everywhere If I had the chance, I support this movement. The benefits in human psychology and well-being in such venture vastly outweigh any transportation problems that might arise. The streets actually belong to pedestrians.
Same I love driving, but as car guys we have to realise the downsides of the car.
I would argue to limit where the cars can be in the cities while public transportation, taxis and services to be allowed. Hence, streets become alot smaller.
@@bogdanpostole7251 Exactly! Public transportation is so underdeveloped in many places. If it was properly established, the idea is that you wouldn’t need your car...
Not always even mental. Ambulances and other emergency services can get stuck in traffic, leading to losing precious time.
I am a car guy too, and that's why I support the ideas in this video. Car enthusiasts like driving, which means driving where is fun to do so, like on mountain roads or in the countryside (or a racetrack if you can afford it). Never heard of a petrolhead saying "oh yes, I love being stuck in traffic changing from 1st to 2nd gear with my sporty, super heavy clutch pedal" 😂
I live in Merica and i love experiencing the freedom of inhaling exhaust fumes and being unable to walk to the store or anywhere. I love almost being hit by a car walking to class at my uni!!!!
No matter how technologically advanced we get, deep inside we are still monke and we need big pillars to hide behind and safe monke forests.
RETURN!!!!!!!!!
Return to Simpler times primates
revolt against the modern world, kings
technology is no match for human biology
We are just Monkeys living in a Concrete Jungle
Adam "So what is the solution? How do we fix this?"
Me: Oh boy trains it's gonna be trains
Adam: "One word"
Me: Choo choo motherfu-
Adam: "Superblocks!"
Me: ...You absolute magnificent bastard
This gives me factorio vibes, oh right yeah cityblocks..
european federation with superblocks and trains as way of transport. i mean it seems nice
Don't you mean 'Big Chungus Pods?'
I nearly spit out my coffee lmao
You had me at choo-choo
Take my like
I've never even considered that roads take away social spaces, but now that I've seen this, it seems really messed up
Imagine if the majority of streets in your town or city were pedestrianised, it would be so nice! It would make walking to places nicer, it would make them less noisy, less polluted, safer, it would mean you could have outdoor dining and you could cycle everywhere. And the thing is once people realise that they can cycle and use public transport (and if those services are improved) the number of people on the road decreases naturally, so the remaining roads for cars aren't conjested
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term.
Climate grief is haunting.
@@appleslover architectural conservatism is one of the few I can get behind, old building look soo much better than skyscrapers xD
We just need to mix the old'ish style with new construction and isulation methods and we will get nice looking and functional cities
@@pieroguy in terms of morals new is somewhat better, in terms of infrastructure, it seems we lost the effectiveness of technology, instead just focused on advancements.
@@takeshikovach5165 yeah the thing is that with better technology even bad solutions can work somewhat wichh is why there is so many strage ideas like Elon's shit
Finally realised why the red square looked so aesthetic, there's no roads.
You cant even hang out on the sidewalk anymore in certain areas. Cops will ticket you for loitering.
In the US? Where is this happening? Tf
@@Tounguepunchfartbox at least in my state, that’s fairly common in front of any business… or public service building. You know. The services… for the public…
@@AabluedragonAH US is such a shitshow wtf
@@50733Blabla1337 always was
@@destdest9858 I mean I grew up with all the US propaganda films like Top gun and all the great man films rambo etc. so until like 18ish I thought it was paradise and now its lowkey hell to live in especially with my lifestyle
In Morocco we are leaving our 1200 years old cities or as we call it "medina" with narrow streets to live in modern neighborhoods , the problem is that our ancestors understood that narrow streets are the only solution to find shade in strong sun light , but we ruined everything , now we have wide ugly sunny streets
I've been to Marrakesh in what feels like a century ago. I've been a kid of 5 or 6 back then. But I can remember how inhumanly hot it was on our way to the city and also in the city center - until we stepped into something I just remember as a labyrinth of stone and tapestries. I think it was a bazaar, but also with people living there and restaurants and everything in narrow, shadowy streets. And it was really cool, like almost chilly. And all the different smells and the lighting and overall atmosphere - it left a lasting impression on me.
I mean I'm sure your urbanists still understand that but their priorities have shifted. As the video says now instead of building with people in mind they do it for cars.
@@BombaJead true
Have been to Morocco a few times, the medina's are great, if we could get a 21st century implementation it would be so sweet.
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term.
Climate grief is haunting.
I leave a comment for the algorithm as usual.
I'm never disappointed with Adam Something's videos.
ENGAGEMENT
That Adams Something is really something
Yup
his quality of content is sublime! just starting to worry if i should start preparing for the climate catastrophe like those apocalypse preps xD
replying for the algorithm
Just a thought:
Close your eyes and think of 3 places in your home town that you like the most.
Chances are 3/3 or at least 2/3 will have zero or very little active or static traffic around you.
To be honest, places that have less traffic (and of course less pedestrians) here are usually smaller streets so they dont really feel safe
@@svp5thechad408 less trafic does noy mean less people.
All 3 are just My House...
Weirdly enough, I thought of my neighborhood. Maybe because, altough there's a lot of cars, most of them are just parked.
The solution always is high speed rails
Your name sounds like you're a mentat, you're probably right
@Fax nice
Yes, A High speed rail in the middle of every street :D
@@geography_czek5699 Yes we wouldn’t have to walk then
Kind of.reminds me of that Simpsons characters
Truly dystopian, never even thought about it. Crazy how much space we lost to cars.
and just thinking about this is ONLY the car problem.. id like he makes more open minding videos talking about more of the actual moral/ethical crisis happening in many aspects in life that beenfit the rich as always :/
@@user-im9zp4yp9x bald assertion, dumb take
@@user-im9zp4yp9x some cars are needed, but when you live in a dense urban city a car shouldn’t be necessary
@@user-im9zp4yp9x no one is deciding who gets to have cars, I don’t care. All I’m advocating for is making public transport much better, and change car culture. I just want walkable and social cities. Obviously if need a car you should get one, I’m not going to stop you
@@user-im9zp4yp9x Don't use evil Amazon. Try again.
I thought you were going to say that the Solution was underground hyperloops.
Now talking for real, EV robotaxis Will really help with this matter. Throw away all the ice cars junk, and stop owning Cars. Just rent them as we do with movies and Netflix.
@@tomich20 Or, you know, build some actual public transport? EVs still need roads, which are expensive, inefficient, and reduce the quality of living for city residents. A light rail system can transport more people for cheaper than a fleet of robotaxis. I'd rather my tax dollars go towards something that works well and improves my standard of living.
@@areadenial2343 well, im sorry but if you are american its more likely your tax money is going to crazy projects like a underloop
Hahaha, good joke 😉
No, no PODS are the future! :D
Amsterdam changed this.
It went from clogged with cars to a bike city.
And it’s freaking awesome. I lived there for a while and loved it.
To bad no one can afford to live there but the rich and people willing to live in a 300sqft commieblock
@@longshlong111 Same thing in NYC, rent for a bedroom-sized apartment can cost ~$3000 USD!
I would love to live in Amsterdam. Did you move from the US?
@@MainMite06 new York city, and cities in general are a overpriced scam
Eww cyclists
“Their cars were being portrayed as murderous death machines, which they pretty much were at this point” They still are lol
They safer now :)
@@dinoco3672 Still a death machine.
@@dinoco3672 I walk into someone by accident, we both still alive "ah sorry mate", A car hits a person, the driver is alive but the person is dead, a car hits another car, both drivers are dead. So Im all for public spaces as walking doesnt kill when compared to getting hit by a death machine
I mean he never said it was no longer a murderous death machine.
@@theirishempire4952 I can see a point for cars for going long distances. Most people's needs shouldn't be long distances, and the only reason so many things are so far away from where people work & live in modern developments is because of the car-centric design.
I'd be fully on board with a future where travel by car was mostly restricted to rural & inter-city transportation, facilities for car storage/parking on-premises in urban & suburban spaces is heavily taxed (with exemptions based on certain necessary occupations like trades - or mobility-effecting diabilities which make non-motorised transport particularly prohibitive), non-utility vehicle sizes within city limits was strictly limited & heavy speed limits for any motorised traffic were imposed - excepting buses which would travel through via arterial roads. Where for occasions where car use is genuinely needed by non-owners, self-driving cars may be a solution as a way of literally delivering themselves to the user then returning themselves to a depot or on to the next customer- while freeing public space otherwise being taken up by everyone's personal motorbox.
Gotta love those urban heat islands, they absorb so much heat that they literally alter the weather. I live in a city, and it's almost always raining- but rarely in the actual city, usually a few miles downwind of it.
I don't see how anyone can deny human influence on the planet when things like that are happening.
@MJ lmao just go out to the desert
@@aidanharley243 no one said they dont, but try living without heat in the winter. And with the summer... destroy your house so it doesn't trap heat in it. Also city produce more heat due to the fact that we are warm blooded creatures. There naturally gonna be more heat in cities
@@Delt4_Cr4wfish Are you arguing that the body temperature of a city's inhabitants is a primary cause for a city's rise in temperature?
@@Delt4_Cr4wfish It's albedo, ie how reflective a surface is. The heat is from the sun. On lighter surfaces, more sunlight is reflected off, on darker surfaces, more sunlight is absorbed. That's why black asphalt roads get really hot on a sunny day. In the countryside with plants (trees and grass), transpiration (water evaporation) plays a part in cooling everything down too.
In cooler countries, the urban heat island effect does help make the temperature in cities more comfortable than the countryside.
"Imagine hearing that your dog got hit by a car, but upon running out to the street only finding a piece of well done steak"
Jeez, that is so dark, yet I can't stop laughing!
But it tasted like chicken
Adam something radicalizing me against cars in favor of walkable cities with good public transit has been such a pleasant surprise. Great for my character arc!
*cough cough* the Netherlands is amazing for livable cities. Walking, Bicycles plus public transport are all you need if the infrastructure is there. If I need carry an object bigger than I or my bike can carry over the distance. I rent a vehicle fit for the job (which can be electric as it is ideal for short distances).
Disabled people are able to use this infrastructure almost as well as abled bodied with modified trikes and mopeds (I hope to be electric soon)
With racing history some how
Yeah definitely, but it wasnt until the late 1970's that people started protesting the many child deaths caused by motorvehicles. Eventually this resulted in an overhaul of Dutch car culture, in favour of encouraging bike usage through preferential urban design for them.
*Edit: grammar
@@TheRetardle the redesign of the major Dutch cities has been amazing, Amsterdam, and many old Dutch cities would suck if they didn't change
@@nwickstead Totally agree, I use an electric bike as part of my work daily and the accommodation for bikes (in Amsterdam and the Netherlands) is amazing. I think my job in another country would be comparatively more dangerous and slower given that the same space isn't provided for bikes and pedestrians.
@@TheRetardle I literally moved to NL from UK due to Brexit plus the thousand fold reduction in death from cycling between countries.
He's back, our light in the black, striding forth to do battle once more with our hydrocarbon-guzzling overlord.
there is god damn traffic on the sidewalks now because all the sapce is owned by cars
funny how traffic laws started as "the poor people are starting to annoy our customers, so we ought to show them their place
Roman officials ran over people in the streets in chariots & horses, so this custom is as old as time. Of course, at that time, 99.9% had to walk. A bit different when in the US, nearly 70% of adults own a car.
This will take a major generational shift, and one caused by necessity not public demand (because, as shown, corporations make the laws). Say, gasoline/electricity prices 20x what they are today.
@@davidwest6019 dont worry, peak oil is comming soon
Growing up in Sweden the commonness of "Jaywalking" laws is surprising to me. Even in Finland, it's illegal to cross a street except for pedestrian crossings, or against red light. While in Sweden, if a car hits a pedestrian in an urban street, it's generally the cars fault.
Superblocks are cool, but really only works in grid-layouts. But other solutions has also gone on in suburbs, where you usually can't drive through the small roads.
Even i as a car enthusiast wholeheartedly agree. Trying to drive in cities is already slow annoying and finding good parking is a pain in the ass. These changes make getting around easier, living more enjoyable, and its better for the environment. Im on board.
Same, I'm not a car enthusiast, but I do use a car regularly go to the countryside where my parents live, because there is essentially no public transport. I tried to go to places in the city by car and it's almost always a hindrance unless I'm hauling furniture. S-Bahn and U-Bahn are much faster
Cars as a low-priority option of many, or leisure or utility vehicles are fine. It's not reasonable to get rid of every piece of motorway or parking spot, or really ban every car. I like the idea that the goal should be city efficiency and reducing traffic to only those who 'need to drive' or use a car for the occasion journey; by doing what has been proven to work study by study.
That’s why motorists in Europe envy our auto centric infrastructure. Finding parking is a hassle? *laughs in American* we never have a problem with that. There is parking at our destination over 95% of the time. Convenience at its finest.
@dog only ems really need cars in cities and ideally those vehicles would be around golf cart size
I love cars but think they belong on a race track, not in in cities
Teacher: you cant smell pictures
Adam: *shows picture of Prague´s main train station and magistrala*
I still remember the smell when I was there on vacation
Timestamp?
Just try not to remember the smell of the Parisian Metro
@@iainrickwood2623 1:19
Funny because living here I don't even remember what the smell is. Must be a case of living so long that you get used to it :D
"All you had to do was build the damn train, CJ?"
Big Adam 202X or something...
Living in Stuttgart i really felt this and can confirm: everything he said is true, center Stuttgart is hell, Degerloch is awesome in comparison but worse than all other cities in Germany. Generally can't recommend Stuttgart.
I drove through Stuttgart city centre once. Never again.
It's far more enjoyable to go by city train and subway. The shopping street Königsstraße is also a small window what a car-less Stuttgart could look like and it's crowded like hell for a reason.
I think size wise Leipzig and Stuttgart are comparable. But the difference in living quality is just completely astonishing
worst thing in Stuttgart are the schwäbisch people , and not the urban planning
In Italy we have a lot of those "superblocks". They are called ZTL, "Zona a traffico limitato" or limited traffic zone. It's quite strange to hear this superblocks as a new invention since i lived with ZTL all my life and basically they serve the same purpose.
Honestly, i think you would love how Modena treated traffic. Also we are the greenest city in Italy!
Yeah this is the first time I hear the term ''superblock" aswell here in the rest of Spain we have plenty of cities with zonas de tráfico limitado and like you said not so new
@@Lululolalali indeed, maybe is not so common in other parts of Europe. Also love the fact that we found another case where Italian and Spanish sound similar ahahah
It always amazes me
It's definetely not a new concept, Barcelona is just a really good current example of a city going through that change in the current time, that can be used as reference for other cities wanting to implement that
@@AdrianVisan fair enough
I think giving it a flashy name like SuperBlocks helps make it more attractive to people, unlike "limited traffic zone" which sounds less appealing
The fact that I've never even thought about this, proves this videos point.
Well now its going to bother you constantly so I hope you enjoyed ignorance
It only proves you are narrow minded lol
Well that's because it's not much of an issue. You always have a choice to move away into the countryside. However because most people today don't want to live a minimalistic lifestyle like their ancestors (who had all the space to themselves) and want to chase career and money, they go to the big city, which results in ant-house skyscrapers and roads. Kind of unrelated, but I am left leaning but sometimes I hate how commies like Adam twist everything into some evil plan by the corporations, instead of realising people make their own choices... I like his videos but jeez he is so biased
@@brotpros2306 You keep using the word "commies" all throughout this comment section. I don't think that word means what you think it means, buddy
@@brotpros2306 Corporations (= the people whose interests (wealth, social status) are tied to the performance of corporations) have interests too. Sometimes those interests clash with the interests of normal people. When this happens, corporations (= the people whose interests (wealth, social status) are tied to the performance of corporations) act in their own interest rather than the interests of normal people. Power drives change, and corporations (= the people whose interests (wealth, social status) are tied to the performance of corporations) have power. Normal people with normal interests do not. This is why millions have died as a result of tabacco industry lobbying efforts, why cities are car-dominated, and why you think you're being reasonable when you call Adam a 'commie'. Who does opposing communism benefit exactly? You or multinational CEOs?
Another outrageous thing is how many of the old European (market) squares have been turned into parking lots. It's so much space, right in the middle of cities where it's most needed, that could be made into great public spaces. But we decided to give those places to cars instead.
The one thing that gives me hope is that the larger cities are giving these squares back to the people, but the smaller towns still have a very long way to go...
You should see some comparisons of Delft in the Netherlands, they turned it into a parking lot and then rebuilt it to be primarily for pedestrians.
The city of Montpellier has totally forbidden consumer cars from entering the inner city, replacing them with quiet trams instead. The result is an insane gain on room to expand café’s, restaurants, activities etc…
Aside from super block, the development of public transports and banning of cars is a huge help to make better cities for people
I want that when I am walking in nature. In certain places in Iceland.
@@Skoopyghost well, I remember Iceland to be calm and beautiful, but very dependent on the car to move around in the countryside
@@albanrobert3139 In Reykjavík. You have to own a car, but Icelanders protest like the French. It could be worse.
I'd say, where I live, there's about 40% sidewalk and 60% street.
It’s 90% street, 10% road in America’s capital.
@@reet7060 even the most walkable cities in the US are an embarrassment compared to the vast majority of cities in Europe (even with their own problems)
@@reet7060
99.9% street LOL
my city has a few pedestrian streets here and there, but some places dont even have sidewalks, you walk hugging the wall so the cars dont run you over
9:26 glad you mentioned that superblocks reduce loneliness.
We're currently in a loneliness epidemic, and loneliness is among the worst things for people's mental health. Chronic loneliness is as negative for your health as smoking or obesity is. And given that mental health disorders have skyrocketed in recent decades, it makes no sense why we aren't trying to combat it with simple but effective measures like closing some residential streets to limit through traffic and giving road space back to the public.
I am doubtful that blocking off city streets to make, essentially, *walled-off apartment complexes* is going to solve any loneliness problem:
In USA, malls, amusement parks, stadiums, and various shopping districts are where people congregate the most to for socialization.
But when covid hit:
*Everything in the world changed*
-more people are interested in working from home
-fewer people are going outside to shop for their various necessities and luxuries
-Public transports experienced and are still are witnessing reduced volumes
-Social media was no longer a luxurious past time and now a vital necessity
This the new normal, so be it..
@@MainMite06 I mean, the evidence is literally provided to you in the video that superblocks reduce loneliness. What you *think* doesn't contradict reality
Malls, amusement parks, stadiums, etc, do not promote socialization. They designate a tiny percentage of the total urban area to socialization (which you can only participate in if you have money to spend), while keeping the other 95% of a city blocked off. Additionally, people must inevitably drive in frustrating traffic anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour to these places (if you don't have a car or can't drive then tough shit I guess), which heavily cuts into people's available free time. And people have to walk to these places anyway, sometimes long distances, once they park.
Contrast this with superblocks and other pedestrianized areas where the socialization area is right outside people's homes, and nearly 100% of public space is for socialization. Shops where socialization happens are spread throughout these areas rather than condensed into one small space, meaning people have way more options to choose from, avoiding effective monopolies, and can find one within a short walk, giving people more free time. As a personal anecdote, a restaurant 2 blocks from my apartment is a shorter walk than the walk through the parking lot of the city mall, and the former is much more enjoyable for me. Economic activity is boosted in these areas too, because they are simply more efficient. A single pedestrianized street often holds just as many if not more shops than entire malls, plus housing and office space above them. Not hard to imagine how this is better at reducing loneliness than your idea of "socialization"
There's too many more benefits to pedestrianizing streets and negatives of car culture to list in a TH-cam comment, especially since you're probably just going to dismiss everything I've written anyway.
@@MainMite06 It's telling that all of the socialising places you mention are businesses.
@@moosesandmeese969 it is rather oafish to ignore the fact that such attachment to technology is responsible for these problems
@@jgw9990 money money money
This fucking video hits me straight into my soul. It's like everything I have been silently grumbling and sometimes loudly bemoaning about for the last decade
dont get me wrong I like driving, but if youve ever been to a modern city which prioritises cars over pedestrians it is pretty depressing, haveing huge multiple lane roads and maby a grey polluted river running through. Ive been to Barcelona and superblocks seem like a good idea, but I dont think all cars should be banned fron citys just drasticly reduced and people to be discoraged from driveing in citys.
""just drasticly reduced and people to be discoraged from driveing in citys.""
Thats the entire point.
Funny story: That intersection that you showed in Stuttgart was redesigned and rebuilt a couple years ago. It was even worse before, as the old traffic light system was so insanely stupid and complicated that this intersection alone was the cause of traffic jams throughout the city, while taking up even more space than it does now. Of course the redesign was financed only because it'd increase throughput, but at least I can cross the street there now once the pedestrian light turns green once every 20 minutes.
You can cross the street whenever there's no oncoming traffic, that green light stupidity is a very german thing that no one understands lol i've seen people literally in the middle of the night on a road with literally no cars refusing to cross the road just because it wasn't green.
That's when the german attitude towards norms and rules becomes ridiculous and makes the entire population seem stupid.
@@liquidsnake6879We do it because a child might see and copy us without knowing why you crossed the road. Worst case, you wait a minute or two
@@liquidsnake6879 That intersection is the B14 and B27 crossing. There is literally no time of day where there is no traffic there. It's one of the busiest roads of the city, and if you even attempt to walk across when the lights not green I guarantee you, you won't make it to the other side.
But thank you for your valuable input about your view of a nations attitude towards traffic regulations. I'll be sure to keep it in mind.
@@27suf Sure, but what exactly is the downside of that? Is the city surrounded by these intersections or is there only a few? I really don't recall having any issues as a pedestrian whatsoever in stuggi other than the city being huge and it taking forever to get places on foot though it pales in comparison to Berlin in that regard lol
But i mean most roads i crossed just fine, within a minute at most (and i was doing the german thing of waiting for green regardless of traffic as i was a foreigner and didn't want to disrespect your norms lol) and i don't understand why this is a problem exactly, furthermore the sidewalks were huge, you can literally fit 5 guys walking side by side in many of them something that in my native Portugal you wouldn't lol ESPECIALLY on the old sidewalks which are tiny.
There's always been roads and traffic, it's not like people were just hanging out in the middle of the roads in the middle ages since in the days of horses the roads were literally covered in dirt, grime and horse dung that would wreck your clothing, hardly somewhere you'd want to spend your time lol.
@@liquidsnake6879 When the hell were you in Stuttgart? 1955? We have the B10, 14, 27 running literally through the city center and the 295 running along as well. Sure you can walk everywhere if you're literally on the main shopping mile, but if you want to go to anything further than the Calwer or Eberhardstraße you literally have to cross either 6 lanes on one side or 10 on the other. Its a narrow corridor of 5 streets that are comfortable to walk on.
There are virtually no places in Stuttgart center where you can just sit down and relax, because it'll either be right next to a busy road, or you'll have to cross a busy road and go into some narrow road (with the exception of the few public parks there are, but there aren't many and they're always overcrowded). There's more parking space than public space in the city center, and that's really all you need to know about Stuttgart.
Jon Arbuckle's "1994" is a book everyone needs to read
Do you mean 1984?
I understood Arbuckels instead of Orvicle's.
Heard someone actually call it “1986” one time.
🤌🤌🤌
Jennifer lawrence's "2017", a true all time classic
Orville Redenbacher's Corn Farm explains it all
The real urban planning was the high speed rails we made along the way
I love the layers to this pun
Im glad we have "Fußgängerzonen" here in Germany. Zones were only pedestrians and bikes can go through. Every single car is forbidden there and only emergency services can drive through. Its really great to hang out with friends because you are totally safe from cars and can spread out on a relatively big area.
That sounds like a freaking DREAM. My favorite thing is to walk around and grab lunch with friends. I wish we had that here in the US
Wow! You Germans are so Dutch!
Anytime there is any proposal to exclude cars from someplace in the US people respond like the urban planners are sacrificing babies to Satan. About twenty years ago, Portland, Oregon--yes, Portland Oregon--wanted to build a street-level light rail line that would have excluded cars from a 1 km stretch of two low-traffic avenues in downtown, thus requiring cars to drive as much as 100m out of their way to the next low-traffic avenue.
Obviously this was unacceptable to anyone who thinks they are entitled to drive wherever they damn well please, so the planners ended up snaking the light rail back and forth between the two transit lanes and preserved a car traffic lane. This cost three times as much and took twice as long to build, but at least no motorists were inconvenienced by having to spend 15 seconds driving to the next avenue.
I love them too, but I think there's *way* too few in downtown areas here in Germany! Most cities don't have one where they should have one, and when they do, most of the time Fußgängerzonen have been built solely as a more comfortable space to do some expensive shopping in. Whenever I see a Fußgängerzone, in a central place in a large city, that actually feels like a place to socialize and spend non-consumerist time in, it's like I found a hidden gem.
@@gooblepls3985 Thats because most of those zones used to be the shopping street of the town - and it was considerd too dangerous to let cars in. It's a bit hen-egg but you got it the wrong way. Fußgängerzonen have not been build for shopping, they were created because there was a big crowd of people shopping.
That it today is also a shopping street (albeit with the same boring chains everywhere) or a solemn, empty place, is the result of urbanisation of shops, not the Fußgängerzone.
Man I'm so glad I discovered Adam Something and Second Thought, despite the occasional doomerism with climate change, they give me hope that people are in fact thinking of ways on how to transition into a better living world.
I buy into the notion that realism leads to pessimism due to the state of our world. Those of us who can peek back behind the curtain see just how F*cked the system really is, and it kinda leads to a state of "well... shit.". The fact that Adam Something and Second Thought have a following does in fact lead to a glimmer of hope. But unless they quickly stop being seen as radical and go hella viral, I've lost hope for real change. The powers that be have done an excellent job of manipulating people. The blind argue that we're the sheep when they're ignorant to the fact that they've been fed purple drink since birth.
The belief that the world will end in your lifetime is a common coping mechanism for the fear of death. If the world is completely destroyed then you didn't miss anything. Ultimately this is just another form of climate change denial: before they denied the problem, now they deny the solution.
@@alexanderdvanbalderen9803 Yeah, for me that's what doomerism is at it's core. It's living in a reality so depressing, that doom is all you're left with. That's my definition of course, but it still stands. But part of the doom is that it feels like shit isn't being done, shit is being done but it's not radical, nor fast, nor substantial enough to make a difference. But it is something at the very least.
@@PlatinumAltaria There is some element of that, for me it's not that the world will end. I'm too deep in the sociological sauce to know that shit won't end fast, it's gonna be a relatively slow and depressing decline with tons of violence. It's just that knowing over 80% of us aren't going to have a decent future for complicated socioeconomic and climate change related reasons is just too depressing. Like none of us asked to be here, and not really can we escape this rather dismal future. Unless you're Jeff Bezos.
If you like the infrastructure/city-planning aspect of this channel, I'd suggest checking out Not Just Bikes, he makes really good videos on similar topics too.
I remember watching old WW2 films of V day and a bunch of British people were PACKED in the street and I was thinking "Wouldn't this fuck up traffic?" Now I know the road was meant for that blob of people and NOT traffic.
In WW2 petrol was severely rationed for ordinary people and most working people lived close to their work, close enough to walk. Most men were at the front just finished fighting. Traffic as we know it today did not exist in most western European countries until the late 1950's.
I am 63 yrs old, I was luck enough to learn to drive when traffic was only a small problem and speeds were low. My father was even luckier, not needing to do a test and learning from his older brother as he went along in a matter of days. No need for tests or supervising drivers back then.
As someone who lives very close to barcelona in a city laid out similarly this fills me with pride
Can you tell a little bit about experiencing it first-hand?
Hey how is it going through Barcelona with the new superblock system? Does it create congestion on other part of the street?
Growing up in Sicily I always enjoyed going to my Nonna's house. It was an ancient terrace street where the residents would sit and chat on the street on their kitchen chairs by the front door. It looks so strange as cars drive past, it never occurred to me this was culturally instilled before cars.
In North America, there needs to be a significant change in zoning laws before concepts like superblocks can become a thing. Because every type of envionment is not zoned for mixed use, but single use for a specific type of purpose, there wouldn't be any benefit to a walkable superblock. However, once mixed residential and business areas are more prominent, superblocks could promote more walkability and would provide a lot of value for a community.
The benefit to a walkable superblock in a purely residential area would be a nicer environment to live in and hang out with friends in, and a walkable superblock in a purely working area would also be good for people on their breaks because they'd have a more pleasant environment to chill in and an easier time getting to a lunch place if they were getting a greggs or something, right?
You wouldn't put a business in a superblock anyway because people would bitch and moan about trucks idling and unloading goods at 4:30am in the morning.
@@joewilson3575 that are indeed some of the benefits. But allowing more mixed use zoning does allow for more people to not move around in moving tin cans since things like small shops/ supermarkets and cafe's are also somewhat intermixed with the surrounding blocks, creating a small centre of smal(ler) scale commercial activity where people naturally congregate and interact besides the purely neighbourhood plaza's.
It does not necessitate that every block has a shop/cafe (and the like) but that developping such smaller centres of activity is possible, which lowers the need for those big superstores with mega parking lots that everyone in a 10 mile radius has to drive to. You can think of it as fragmentation of commercial centers away from the outside of the city. Ofcourse, for these places to be viable for the owner, it is probably mosly useful for common ammenities like a supermarket, grocer, butcher etc. and possibly things like a hair dresser, florist and some place to eat out/ take-away.
@@ausaskar But you know it's a thing everywhere else? I mean I live in a condo and we have a small shop in the building and I never heard anybody complaining about the trucks. Very often I see these trucks during the day so it doesn't necessarily happens at 4:30 am.
@@zephyros256 Oh absolutely great idea, I love the idea of decentealising shops and bringing back village and town high streets, I just meant we should get to work on these carless blocks right and not wait for the zoning laws to change and the business and housing areas to all intermingle. Of course we'll want the mixed zoning, but don't need to wait on it.
In America: Walmart looking to make its' aisles driveable so you don't have to get off the car while buying diet coke.
For the first time ever, I associated myself with the whole "Retrotopia" shit, when he talked about streets being social spaces
What is that?
@@DiogoBatista27 Retrotopia is the idea that the past was somehow a utopia, where everything was better. It's the basis of the conservative movement, but mostly just ahistorical bullshit
@@Anna-vz3jd at least we won’t have to deal with horse poop this time
@@Anna-vz3jd I tend to prefer a mixed perspective. Somethings were better then but many other things are better now. Our goal should be to study and recognize what worked from each period of time and implement the most effective measures in the most relevant areas.
@@ninjashot37 that's impossible, its not beneficial for corporations
I still remember being told to "go out to play in the street"...
I now live in a cul-de-sac and my neighbors child can't play in the street because drivers will speed through to the parking garage at the end of the street.
8:26 rare Adam moment where 'Just build a damn train' isn't the solution
It's still a part of the solution
it is always the solution to any conceivable problem actually
@@pangiokuhli512 It's true. I was struggling with a project at work the other day, so on my break, I went out and built a light rail system. Came back in from break, and the project was much easier.
The internet is the new street.
More depressing, less human, colder.
Same as with urban planning, social media sites can be built positively! It just takes a conscious evaluation of psychology lol.
And don't forget outright hostile.
Nah... even new pedestrian streets look the same...
@@aleksapetrovic6519 At least internet can't kill you... directly
(Come to Brazil, pls)
Not to mention how many cities have laws against "loitering" 🙄
Because roads are surrounded by buildings, and buildings have people in them, and those people may be negatively affected by a large crowd standing outside their homes or businesses.
@@PlatinumAltaria I'm not a business owner but I feel like a large crowd outside my business would be ideal?
@@UptightGnome Generally you're gonna want people to come inside or go away.
@@PlatinumAltaria why, as a business owner, would you want people to go away?
@@Piterdeveirs333 If they aren't shopping, they're taking up space... do you come from another dimension?
I find it fascinating how over the pandemic, restaurants moving to outside seating has made streets much more pleasant places to be in.
America won’t do this en masse because of one reason: Lobby.
*Laughts in "my country hate companies so much than we can do this tipe of things without private interferience"*
Also the fact alot of the cities are built around this. So it will take Alot to change and be highly disruptionive. It would need to be a phased thing.
@@mrtrolly4184 Argentina
As a german i feel you
Time and time again we're proven that our traditional way of life is the best, everything changed when the fire nat- sorry, everything changed in the 20th century, we forgot how our ancestors lived and have been living for thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good things that came with the industrial Revolution, especially in the field of medicine, but more destructive things were discovered too like nuclear weapons and fossil fuels addiction, which is now literally destroying the planet. There old architecture styles and urban plannings from different cultures didn't come out nowhere, they were gradually done to be suitable for their environment, but now we're being alienated from our environments, we no longer care because we don't see any changing results in the short term.
Climate grief is haunting.
On a similiar note: In Germany in the 70s a couple of Sundays were designated as days were no regular traffic was allowed (firefighters, ambulances etc. excluded, of course), and I remember when learning about it that the pictures looked so fascinating because they seemed somewhat alien or like something from a movie. Besides there being fewer cars 50-40 years ago, it was also interesting to see how people just up and went to carry tables and chairs from their homes and gardens on the street to have essentially a garden party but on the streets.
Which of the Germanies?
@@jakobvanklinken Definitely in the FRG, western Germany, but it's possible that happened in the GDR, eastern Germany, too.
It might be important to note that this happened during the oil crisis iirc, and once things went back to normal these no-traffic sundays were abolished.
Tokyo has that for some neighbourhoods / blocks, aside from their street design basically working like "superblocks" (super narrow streets between larger roads, so nobody sane will cut through those). It's not a perfect city by any means but coupled with its efficient public transportation system it really gets some stuff right.
@@TheHeavyshadow I don't think Eastern Germany had anything like that. First of all there were less cars.
Must admit that I have never really thought about this, but now it seems so obvious!
Ever since i was a kid and looked at a street, i'd feel this itch to just stay there, not because i want to get hit by a car, but because there's such a big and open space that i will never be able to freely stand on. It's kinda like inverse claustrophobia
claustrophilia?
@@barrackobama2216 honestly i don't really know what i meant by that
I am a citizen of Stuttgart and I am SO FUCKING GLAD you put my home town in here.
There is also a special name in Stuttgart for these more exclusive houses around the edges on the hills: "Halbhöhenlage". It is hard to translate but they are a clear distinction between the rich and the poorer people.
I was born here and live here all my life but as I grow older I get more and more frustrated by the ever-increasing traffic, SUV flood and the lack of proper biking lanes.
They built the fucking Interstate right through the city - you showed it in your video - which shows that they just don't give a fuck about a livable city.
*Rich people(Stuttgart auto industry) dont care about your feelings if you keep paying their income*
duhhh
"They built the fucking Interstate right through the city" YES! I have always considered this to be normal to have an interstate through a city because I live in Montreal and thats just how things are in North America. It's crazy to think how much of an impact a highway has when it cuts through a city!
@@MainMite06 I don't pay them anything because I don't even have a driver's license.
@@ts9749 yeah it is a very anachronistic way of urban planning.
@CatandBonez So, how will you afford the rent or mortgage on those houses if those *same wealthy people ran the jobs that you work for?*
I've been watching a lot of Not Just Bikes' videos on TH-cam recently and he talks a lot about how city design in North America and the world could be improved. He focuses on Amsterdam and their solutions for a livable city that isn't all concrete and car driven. I think you might enjoy it! He has a different take on the solutions for car centric city design but I think both have merit and can be used depending on the place
Not just bikes is pog.
@@grassytramtracks he's pog.
Fr tho he should be the mayor of all NA cities and his critisicm (I think of it as critisicm) is really useful and opened my eyes to this sort of thing.
You got through a whole video on reclaiming urban planning for humans (not cars) without mentioning trains or trams…
Are you feeling ok?
Horse, & cattle Buggies: *Did i not exist for 2000+ years?*
I live in Mumbai, India which has the worst traffic you could imagine. We never take our car in town cuz it's very bad, we just use the public transport which is very good the local trains connect almost anywhere we want to go, even if not you could get off at the closest station and pick up a bus. We only take the car sometimes if you want to buy like a lot of groceries or something.
Nothing fills me with rage more than a city center full of people walking and enjoying their afternoon and suddenly you get that one car that awkwardly forces it’s way through and makes everyone get out of the way
I have to admit, I don't even dislike urban motorisation. But I'm also Dutch, so our urban motorisation maybe somewhat limited. We do have car-free zones as well as areas where the street is considered the property of the public, where cars are guests.
I have been to the Netherlands many times and believe me when I say it: no one has better, human-first infrastructure than the Netherlands. I live in Athens, which is probably the most car centric city in the EU. Come visit to see what a nightmare it is to live here, whether you're a pedestrian, driver or, like me, a semi-suicidal cyclist
The Dutch urban planning is, in my opinion, the best in the world.
@@yourex-wife4259 They absolutely do, and I'm pretty sure this can be proven empirically
Have you been to New York?
"I must admit that I don't have a problem with mountains", said the dutch.
It rages me that my generation grew up without learning the importance of creating livable places. We all fell into the typical modern goals of technology (mostly influenced by iron-man and sci-fi in general) and medicine when fields like urban planning and civil engineering are critical to quality of life.
I kind of disagree... There's so many environmental and civil engineers nowadays, it's the most "mainstream" engineering degree and as a result it's kind of over-saturated. 90%+ of graduates in this field will probably be doing glorified admin work. I remember climate talk and ozone holes from the 90s, social ads to turn off the light and water everywhere, this generation from their childhood has been very climate conscious
@@brotpros2306 i see where you're coming from. Civil engineering is kinda mainstream but some of the syllabus is outdated and not "climate conscious". It's true that younger generations are becoming aware of the environment but i see most of them focus on slightly irrelevant scopes that do not tackle the root of the problem.
I think that depends on the politics and education system where you live.
I learned a lot about this in High School, we even got a project to pick an existing city and redesign it.
I am 45, so this was probably around 1990.
What's infuriating is that we were having these same conversations--albeit at a lower level of sophistication--at least 30 goddamn years ago, and none of it trickled upwards to anyone with any real authority. Well, not in the United States. There clearly was some action in parts of Europe, as evidenced by the whole superblock experiment, and the entire Netherlands.
Not all, but many, Millennials like me learned about these issues and moved to cities precisely because they were more livable, more walkable, more environmentally sustainable and so on... and all that's happened is the cost of living in these cities has gone up. Because no one will build any more of this kind of living environment, at least not in the United States. Not only that, the cities that do exist continue, largely, to disintegrate as useful infrastructure like subways and light rail are neglected, while politicians and "philanthropists" throw money at more car- and suburb-centric horseshit like Tesla.
We're going to die off as a species having been told exactly what was going to happen and how to avoid it. It's enough to drive you insane.
@@DanielEShrdlu It's not that no one wants to build these areas; it's that the zoning laws in most of the US specifically ban them from being made.
Rural folks and suburbanites: How dare you build this small train line through our land, you don't get to decide what to do with our turf!
Also rural folk and suburbanites: bulldoze your public spaces, demolish your houses, rip up your train lines in your cities! We want free parking on your city and you are violating our freedoms if you say no!
"If u hate hierarchy or dying from heat stroke"🤣
The most insane thing is, when anybody proposes to let streets be used by people and cyclists again, without the fear of fucking dying, motorists go insane. They think it's literally fascism or some shit
The American right to independence has been mistaken as the right to being toxic and ignorant.
Also the propaganda of the cold War backfiring.
@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 it's not unique to USA. If you go to Twitter and read comments under posts of Barcelona's mayor, people are literally calling her extremely rude, Catalan words for "destroying their city". It's complete insanity.
@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 I live in finland and people here are exaclty the same. They call anybody who proposes a bike lane being added somewhere literally a fascist, communist or whatever the buzzword of the week is. It's sheer insanity
Who said that?! Get outta here!... 🤣
If we are getting rid of cars, please get rid of cyclists too
I love how your tackling urban motorists with this. You don't need cars in cities, cars are great for people living in rural or isolated areas. Not so u can avoid metros
Good Question: *Do you remember when MTA closed the L-train tunnel in 2015, and how it caused a number of people to either lose their jobs, or move out of NYC, because certain people couldnt bother to use the longer trip by bus?*
@@MainMite06 The longer trip to work means a longer trip back from work, leaving much less free time for someone who's working compared to the train. I think the all or nothing mentality is justified here.
@@deadcaliph6414 agreed, people need good public transport options
@@deadcaliph6414 *But all that would've happened was that you are going to be starting later for work and entering later to home.*
-Would it really be all that necessary to leave NYC entirely, because the public transport was slight slower?
"You have to love pedestrians. Pedestrians make up the greater part of humanity. The best part, no less. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built the cities, raised skyscrapers, laid sewage and water lines, paved the streets and lit them with electric lights. It was they who spread civilization throughout the world, invented movable type, thought up gunpowder, flung bridges across rivers, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, introduced the safety razor, abolished the slave trade and established that soybeans can be used to prepare 114 tasty, nutritious dishes.
And when everything was ready, when our home planet had taken on a comparatively comfortable form, the drivers appeared.
We should note that the automobile was also invented by pedestrians. But drivers somehow instantly forgot about that. They started running over the peaceful, intelligent pedestrians. They took over the streets the pedestrians had created. The pavement doubled in width, the sidewalks narrowed to the size of a tobacco pouch, and pedestrians had to start pressing themselves against the walls of buildings in fear.
Pedestrians in the big city lead a martyr’s life. A kind of transportation ghetto has been created for them. They are only permitted to cross the streets at pedestrian crossings, that is, in precisely those places where traffic is the heaviest and where it is easiest to sever the hair by which a pedestrian’s life usually hangs."
Written in 1931
Hey mate, can I please have the source of this?
@@hatin494 "The Little Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov
It's even worse in cities like Sao Paulo, we have almost no public spaces + badly maintained sidewalks.
*Doesnt Sao Paolo have calm suburbs with minimal car traffic?*
@@MainMite06 Sao Paolo might have, but São Paulo is an urban nightmare in basically every sense of the world. Think Brasil's version of Detroit (except a little bit better, from what I've seen in pictures).
Brazil is a joke, how did you manage to screw up the Amazon so badly? Vote your politicians out, pretty please.
@@hennadiimadan6993 America is a joke, how did you manage to screw up Afghanistan so badly? Vote your politicians out, pretty please.
For someone who hates the idea of moving into a city, a superblock sounds like a pleasant alternative.
Man, and that's just developed nations, where even as choked as your streets can get there's still some semblance of order. Urban streets are even more nightmarish in developing nations like where roadways can be extremely inconsistent, very densely packed, and enforcement of traffic rules are a lot more lax, meaning more chaotic traffic flow.
*Cairo, Egypt in a nutshell*
Good luck making these in Jakarta or Mumbai lol. Third world cities is an entirely different ballgame
Here in American cities we likely aren't going to do anything about our car-centric design of cities anytime soon.
But that doesn't mean steps can't be made to improve things.
For starters, we should insist on having more bike lanes, more mixed zone development so that future construction is improved, proper walking paths and parks, and so on.
Eventually we should transition to things like "Superblocks" as well, but we also need to improve mass transit enormously at the same time.
The problem with the current U.S. status quo of cars is that we cannot get rid of cars without making other options viable, and cities aren't designed around that.
It will take many decades and a lot of concerted effort to get to a point where fewer people feel like they need to use a car for everything.
I never thought of it like that before. Being banned from walking on half the city. Seems dystopian now
I’ve gotten a couple of tickets in American cities for jaywalking. Despite the traffic being so slow the cars went under 5 minutes.
It's really funny watching these videos while also being a car enthusiast, while at the same time agreeing with everything you say.
There's no detriment to car owners to make inner-city residential suburbs more dense, as long as the existing highway corridors remain. Getting redundant cars off the road from city people who don't really need them creates less congestion for people from outer suburbs who do need them.
Same here lol
Tbh i think it's really bad the idea EVERYONE NEEDS a daily car (ahem ahem usa) and ignoring all the other kinds of transportation that are far more efficient both in fuel consumption and time. Imagine using a car to go to work, it taking 15mins or something and then your car is just taking space parked for like 8hrs straight to be driven for another 15mins
Nothing wrong with liking them tho, the problem is that only like 10% of car owners have their cars for non-urban usage (off-road, track etc)
I mean, no car enthusiast in their right mind likes driving in an urban setting.
On a twisty backroad? Sure. On a track? Definitely. But inside a densely built up city? I think most of us would rather take Public Transport or just walk.
I am also car enthusiast ( i have 4 cars) but i cant stand cities that center is not only pedestrian ..why would i need to drive in center off city?All centers off cities should be just for pedestrians
@@ausaskar I’ll remain skeptical nevertheless
In fear that it will harm my personal self best interests in some way somehow
Whenever I say we can't all have a car people start calling me leftist crazy person and ask what's next? Banning all the meat? Going to the store with foodstamps?
I'm really tired of the rich middle class thinking everybody could and should try to achieve their standard of living with one car per person and the right not to have speed limits...
It's come to a point where I'd like to just give up on this planet and start over on a new one. But unfortunately, we've only found one planet to support life so far...
Yeah, I hate how the standard of living nowadays is "everyone or every family owns a car". I hate cars. I know how to drive them and I hate doing so. I never wanted to own a car, but my decision is not usually seen as preference, but as laziness. "Oh so you always depend on public transport?" I hate this shit
@Kate The Goat It's not even that I hate cars or driving... It's just that I realize that we can't all have this luxury. The more people have their own car the more trouble it brings. I think private car ownership should be illegal. Of course, there are services that need to have their own vehicles, like firefighters, ambulances,... but even they could do their job a lot more efficiently if the streets weren't filled with people who think they're just as important.
But you're absolutely right about the reactions. I've heard "So, you're completely dependent on public transport?" so many times... But the answer is generally "Yes! And for most things in life this is completely fine!" And if you want to be more flexible, get a bike. And that's not a e-bike btw because those still suck; not quite as much as cars, but still... There are more finite resources used to build them for any large fraction of the population to have one. That's also why electric cars don't solve all the problems. If every car was electric we would still need to destroy parts of our planet to build them and very soon we'll run out of those materials too. What then? When is the point we realize that our standard of driving is not sustainable? When will we figure out that public transport isn't an inconvenience but should be the norm? But other than you and other followers of this channel I'm generally talking to walls with this...
@@witerabid i mean you don't have to hate cars or driving to decide not to drive, it just should be a free choice whether or not you have an emotional reason to not drive, and it shouldn't be seen as a personal failure to decide not to drive
@@katethegoat7507 I think it should be seen as a personal failure if you decide you need a car, but I'm pretty extreme even among leftists, I guess. 😅 Like I said, public transport or bikes should be the norm for distances you don't want to walk, not the "weird outlier". Of course, that also means that the infrastructure needs to make it possible for people to get by without a car which can be difficult depending on where you live. And as long as people consider the car to be their personal freedom, it's not gonna change.
@@witerabid What extreme? Communists have always advocated for mass public transport over cars.
As someone who’s never lived in a city this looks like a dystopia
One additional reason people don't like to hang out in public anymore: there are no public restrooms left!
@Pen Guin Hope this changes some day.
For the love of god, give me a place to piss
Public restroom = the street corner. At least according to the smell when I walk around the city center
Too much sexual activity and shooting up H was the cause for removal. That and finding cleaners willing to risk getting aidsy.
Thank you for not being corporate washed! For a guy in his 20s like me, this is really fresh air
Inadvertently shilling for Europe's overpriced housing is quite literally being a corporate shill
@@longshlong111 literally doing the opposite you trog
As an American, I only wish we had streets as nice as the one shown at 0:07
As a guy who does not own a car and is essentially trapped in the city I live in for the foreseeable future, this video hits me. I cannot access the other 75% of the city I live in without the use of an automobile because of the interstate running through it. It can take me 5 minutes to cross the busy road I have to cross to get to work/local markets. The crazy part is there are no crosswalks in this city except the newest parts which I cannot even get to without a vehicle anyways.
*Where do you live that crosswalks arent commonplace?*
My city,Tampa Florida, has made leaps and bounds to add manually operated crosswalk lights that stop the traffic on the stroads
@@MainMite06 Murfreesboro, Tennessee most of the main roads in the city are older and lack sidewalks and crosswalks. The other newer side of the city has them but I cant go over there anyways without a ride anyhow
@@Aatell764 that sucks bro
Hopefully people in your city eventually come around to the idea of a pedestrian centered city, or at least make some effort to reclaim the streets
Narrow streets with lots of shade would not necessarily be alleys, but a better image would be one with lots of trees, I think.
Best question:
*Why must any pedestrian street be deliberately narrow in the first place?*
-Narrow areas are terrible for socializing
@MainMite06 it’s for hot places
@@juancappadocio6311 You mean like, *Casablanca,Morocco* , where most of the buildings are deliberately tall to make shade over the streets below?
This reminds me of the stark difference between the childhoods of people in my home country Indonesia and where I live now UK.
While superblocks, or anything of the sort doesn't exist in Indonesia, most people don't own cars, instead people own motorbikes, which means that old narrow roads don't need to be rebuilt for cars. This means that kids can play literally anywhere in a neighbourhood safely. Adventure is massive part of childhood in Indonesia (and I'd wager most of the developing world) and its sad that in the developed world 90%~ of the space that could be used by children to play, develop and learn is unavailable.
I think this is why in a lot of developed countries talking to strangers is abnormal and people are generally less happy, social, physically unaware (scared of things that don't kill you, generally more accidental deaths like drowning, US wildfire) despite being better educated than the developing world.
Hopefully politicians in developing countries learn from the mistakes of developed countries and conserve what's great about their countries and fix what needs to be fixed.
(Although this doesn't seem like it's possible for Indonesia because of rampant corruption, being worse than the US in terms of fake news and celebrity worship, and also Arab worship and cosplay becoming more prevalent amongst some Muslims in the country).
There are also many city areas in the Philippines where the paved streets, while done by the government for faster car mobility and access, are still considered to be for the people in the minds of the neighborhoods that live within despite the law. Children still play about, adults congregate, and some even use it for local businesses like selling food. Cars are often treated as guests in these parts of the road (most often the narrow ones with households surrounding it instead of business buildings) and drivers are mentally ready to be considerate with the people that use these roads daily.
The danger that this might get eradicated eventually is when car population increasingly overtakes the city, causing more traffic and road congestion, which causes widening road projects to spruce up and take these roads over.
As a person who don't own a car and regularly walks from place to place, only uses the common public transportation available as a choice rather than a necessity, I don't want to see the day where I no longer have the option to walk in many roads I love safely.
This is a really good point
შენ არ ხარ ქართველი?
Unfortunately many developing countries decided to have a fetish for American road design instead of Dutch road design. Look at China for example. In many of their cities bicycles used to be the main form of transit about 2-3 decades ago. Now many cities have banned bikes for "esthetic reasons" in favor of cars.
@@user-cs9qc6ny3d ah sorry I don't speak Georgian. I used Georgian for my username cos I thought the alphabet looked sick. Now TH-cam won't let me change it back lol.
0:15 those streets actually look surprisingly pleasant with their wide sidewalks, single lane, and wide parking stripes compared to the no parking stripes and 3-5 lanes of toronto with the bare minimum width sidewalks that have eroded into sloping unsettlingly into the street
The bar is set undeniably low for NA
They look like 50% of parking spaces should be removed immediately. Then put some green and traffic calming there.
@famitory I guess you also follow Not Just Bikes on YT, a channel by a London, Canada expat living in the Netherlands. Highly recommended.
Me and my friends recently started using cycles. Hope our generation could understand the beneficial impact on our lifestyle, health and metal health. I feel lot better than sitting inside a cramped car
Never heard of the superblocks concept before. In Germany they usually convert one or two streets or a single plaza for pedestrians. That's really not thought far enough, I see now. A connected block with several streets that are mainly for pedestrians sounds awesome.
In my experience, Germany is also a bad place to start such ideas. Germans are extremely resistant and hostile to any change when it comes to their cars, sometimes even more so than Americans.
@@eier5472 Na they are just resistant to change period. Literally any change for better or worse
Especially with a small grocery store and a cafe somewhere in the middle :)
Imagine leisurely walking down to your local cafe for your morning coffee, have a chat with a realtive about how your hobby project is going and some family gossip. Followed by grocery shopping and on the way back a conversation with your neighbour the chef about how to prepare a dish best on the way back. Later that day you walk to the local chess table (maybe in the cafe, maybe in a small park) for a game of chess with one of your friends, while some kids are playing basketball and other kids are making chalk drawings on the street. All this with the sound of traffic barely heard since that's all 1-2 blocks over. You see people walking around enjoying the sun, or just relaxing with a book.
"john arbuckles 1994 to shame"
*internal screaming intesifies*
I my home town people have been fighting over pedestrian-only streets for years. The fact that some people firmly believe car access to Every Single Corner of the centre is the only way to make it more vibrant and livable, and will boost sales in the stores and boutiques down the streets is truly bizarre to me.
There's even a street that looks like it was designed for only pedestrians but out of pressure was made into a car street. Mind you, the street was already closed for years when it was renovated and people got around with their cars just fine. They even hold markets on the square that is a part of the street, and don't close the access for cars even then! How pleasant and vibrant indeed.