I was recently told by a member of a local city council that there are usually not many people showing up to the meetings or even speaking there. Therefore, if one person talks about a specific topic, there's usually not much attention. As soon as a second person advocates for the same idea, they start to listen. But if a third person brings up the same issue, council members get seriously anxious and afraid to loose votes and therefore will start to act. My point is, go to town hall meetings, you could be this second or third person! Or even better, bring a friend and be two persons :D
This is what a lot of people forget in the US. Advocacy groups are strong in DC and in NY as well as in media, but they sorely lack representation at the lowest levels of the bureaucracy.
For years in America, I told people that it only takes a few people to do real change at the local level. I could never convince any of them to go with me to town meetings.
As someone who has lived in Europe my whole life, that drive around the suburbs was genuinely shocking: It felt more like a G-mod map than a place where people live
As a US resident, I have to say you're right. I grew up on the east coast closer to urban areas which were more European style. However, here in California the suburban sprawl is almost legendary. Honestly, a lot of it does look like Gary's Mod! ✌️😸
I grew up in suburbia and I _hated_ the suburbs. For me, the suburbs meant cookie cutter houses, car dependency, and crappy big-box stores. Imagine my surprise the first time I went to an European suburb and ... it was really nice! Nice houses, big sidewalks, town centres with lots of cool shops within walking distance, and a tram line with frequent service into the city. It turns out there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "suburbs", the US and Canada just build them wrong.
US & Canada didn't "build them wrong", North America & Europe are both vastly different for a reason. Why can't people just accept that America can't be exactly like Europe?
@@ShroomsInLocker we can and will call them wrong because without a car (and very often with) they're bland, boring, painfully dull and annoyingly hard to move around.
I was in the US a year ago and wanted to get a COVID test in the nearest Walgreens to be allowed on my flight back home. It was about half a mile from my hotel so I just walked there (not that there was a public transit option). The lady on the Walgreens counter pointed to a drive-thru window that was one meter behind her and said that she is only allowed to administer COVID tests in the drive-thru. I was irritated but went round the building to the drive-thru on foot. She said I am not allowed to be in the drive-thru, if I am not in a car. She told me I should get an Uber to drive through the drive-thru. I didn´t have local internet service on my phone, so I spent two hours on a busy road trying to get a cab to drive me through a drive-thru 10 meters behind me. In the end I got a bike-rikshaw that had a street permit. It took 10 minutes and a call to the regional Walgreens manager to confirm if I am allowed to use the drive-thru in a bike-rikshaw with a street permit. In the end she handed me a cotton swab that I had to self-administer - something we could have done very easily in 10 seconds, just insided the Walgreens at the counter. Every bit of this story is true and it has been the very low point of my personal experience with the US.
Thats the most absurb story i have ever heard. I cant find the words. It is just unbelievable. They are so stupid. Im sorry you had to experience this. Im an European I would have gone crazy …
I live on the East Coast of America and I feel the same way. There really is no good public transportation here, especially where I live, and I've said for years that there aren't enough sidewalks, especially between communities and large shopping districts. I don't walk all that much because of the distance, but it would be nice to have the option to walk or at least have a decent public transportation option within the area. It's ridiculous.
I was a exchange student in the US and lived with my family in a small village in rural area. The school was 3 miles away in the middle of nowhere in fields. The school bus was leaving too early leaving me with no choice if I wanted to spend time in the library. Walking 3 miles home was not a big issue. Much bigger issue was to explain to all cars passing by that they don’t have to help me and that I am not a stranger if I simply walk home from the school myself. I was the only one :-(
When i visited my great aunt in Sparta, New Jersey. I wen't joggin in the side of a "highway" because there was no road for pedestrians. I lie you not that i got stopped 3 times in 10 minutes and they asked do i need a ride or am i "okay". It was really something new for me. Other thing was that we wen't to central where there was shoprite, wallmart and couple bigger retail stores and lots and LOTS of fast food joints. So me and my sister parked in front of one of these bigger stores and we decided to go try dunkin donuts which was very near, but there was simply no way to walk to it. so we crossed the lawn and some random dude with a pickup-track stopped us and asked wtf are we doing. I have traveled a lot but still this was the biggest cultural shock i have had. :D
Really? I walk 2.7 miles home from school and no cars stop by or ask me anything because children walking home is normal. Maybe not 2.7 miles, but there are still some children who walk a distance.
As a kid I never realized how much the planning and arrangement of Vienna benefitted my childhood development, in contrast to other cities. My childhood would've been much worse in quality, if I didn't have the ability to visit friends, go exploring or go play sports on my own. Had I grown up in America, anytime my mom wouldn't be free to drive me somewhere, I'd have missed out on a learning experience. Thx Vienna. :)
The main problem with this type of content on TH-cam is it gives an unbalanced perspective. Yes, much of the US is empty suburbs. But much of the US is also dense and accessible. I've moved 9 times within the US and never had a car, relying on walking and public transit instead. And it's been easy in the places I've lived. You can grow up in the US and go exploring, visit friends, and play sports on your own.
My sister visited a friend in Houston last spring, he was living in the suburbs with his parents while earning 80k. While he was working at home she wanted to visit the city center. She was advices to take an Uber but she didn’t like the idea and the cost, so she chose the bus. Her friends parents were shocked, because the bus was only used by homeless, jobless or very poor people. She did it anyway and had great time as the busdriver was super nice and happy to have an out of the order customer. He told her where to exit and where to go from there. Public transport partially even exist at those spaces but nobody uses is for obvious reasons. After that experience my sister was super confident to not take the Joboffers she had in the US and decided to move back to Europe 😂😂
Yeah america is not a good place for jobs unless your fast tracting to a board member. We pay bare minimum and expect a 140 percent out of you for that. Also even with the low $15 wage you got boomers in their comfy ass jobs whining how thats too much money to give to the peasents. I bet you could actually live life alot better with europian wages since america is addicted to quartly profits at all costs.
@@thewhitewolf58 NYC is not a good example, public transportation there is old, filthy and full os drugheads. USA has no good examples of good public transportation.
Hahaha, I had a similar experience the first time I traveled to the US: people were shocked I took a bus from Philadelphia into Jersey. But I have to admit, once I crossed the state border the neighbourhoods became quite dodgy and the people on the bus more noisy hahahaha. Well it was a once in a lifetime experience!
it's incredibly uncanny valley to see the american suburb with no pavements. walking is such an integral part of living in europe, that i can't even imagine not walking to school or the bus stop or wherever.
1:43 The part about kids not walking to school or sports by themselves has an even bigger problem. If a parent was to allow their child to do that by themselves, cross roads, etc, there is a possibility in some US states that they could be investigated for child abuse. Repeat "offenders" could find their children being taken from them and placed in state foster care. This happened to the parents of my child's classmate in 2003. It just became a LOT safer all the way around for all of the parents after that to just drive your kids to school or sports.
@@Astro_Animator well sidewalks are somewhat common. on side roads almost never tho. on main roads the side walk tends to get very skinny and randomly just stop.
You could visit the new England area were I live many suburbs you can walk to your town school. Depending on what part of town you stay in though. That area on the video is a different area. In new England is not a flat area it has alot hills. Alot of the old architecture and homes are very European many of the older settlers wanted to bring the same style. Some areas are very expensive depending on what you can afford. Unfortunately not everyone can afford to buy a house.
As something from Europe I never fully understood the whole thing in American movies of ' there's nothing to do around here'. The way suburbs are portrayed in movies is different after all and I thought my suburb and theirs were comparable. In my suburb, there is an ancient roman burial mound 20 minutes away from me, fields, animals, little pounds, forest, a soccer field, river, old church and cemetary, horses
Grew up in a Belgian town. 15 minutes or less(mostly less, most of this is within 2 kilometers) by bike as a 12 year old got me, To school. One 4 lane road with 50km/hour limit to cross where cops will be waiting to help people cross during school hours. A sports center. Wall climbing, 4 football fields, athletics track, basket stuff, etc. Something we used all the damn time. Park, often used by scouts and such. Indoor swimming pool, again, something we used often during the summer months. Also the place we went for swimming in school. 2 separate tennis places. Mini-golf Skate park. Mountain bike place where you could jump and everything. My sport club, I played football locally from age 6 to 16. Clothing/entertainment stores were on the main road which is your stereotypical middle age market place mostly. 17th century church, pub from the 1800's, etc. Library Bowling ally And probably like 10+ supermarkets/restaurants/butcheries/bakeries, etc. so rather early on I could stay home alone for a few days(with the occasional check up of grandparents and such) and get my own food while going or coming from school and such. My normal route to school that was maybe 3 kilometers I passed like 3 supermarkets and 2 grocery stores. Growing up in an American suburb seems like a nightmare for somebody that basically grew up independent from a young age.
We do have a lot of villages with at least a small portion of "downtown" (old town with walkable infrastructure) here in the Chicago suburbs. Also very fortunate to have decently viable commuter rail (if you're lucky enough to be within walking distance of that train station... most drive to park at it).
Yeah I'm sure the people in those movies (which always precisely portrays reality) having such complaints would be very entertained by a roman burial mound or fields...
@@Londronable "Growing up in an American suburb seems like a nightmare for somebody that basically grew up independent from a young age." Quick survey for Europeans. The American movie 'Dazed and Confused' is: a) unbelievable. Nobody would really do that and the police would stop it if they did. b) Nostalgic fun. Boys will be boys. Am I right? c) Horrifying. It reminds me of an abusive social system that I put up with as a child.
My family recently moved from Australia to California and my dad was very shocked when his car broke down and told his friend he was going to take the trains. He replied with only poor people take the train and that he's going to get stabbed or something. Its not only the zoning laws and building layout that needs to be changed but also people's mindset.
It’s not like australia has amazing planning or PT either, Sydney itself is a fascinating example of urban planning hierarchy. The super rich get roads and no PT (so the poors don’t visit), the upper middle class gets nice European style neighborhoods with excellent PT, and the poors get terrible road gridlock and bad PT.
@@wkcia here in San Diego CA we have the same kind of hierarchy. No one questions why we spend millions on landscaping the 6 lane road medians in the north part of the city but still can't even pave some of the roads in the urban core.
The idea that even as a 15 year old in America you’d have to get your parents to drive you everywhere if you wanna do anything because you can’t yet would suck so much-
err.. no. You get your driver's license at sixteen and get a car for birthday. Driver's ed is a class in school, like math and physics. And the test is easy enough to guarantee you're passing
@@AxelHoeschen That's best case scenario, drivers ed in a lot of states isn't in school and requires at least $800+ to drop on it, depending on if your parents have that money or have multiple kids its less likely, and if you decide not to driver's ed you'll have to wait an extra two years to get your license in the first place
@@AxelHoeschen And your parents teach you how to drive and this is the reason why Americans are such bad drivers compared to people in Europe. In Europe licensed driving teachers teach people how to drive, so they are better drivers.
I'm from Canada and in my mid 20s I was studying in Europe (Czech Republic). I then decided if I want to go back or stay. One of the deciding factors was the amount of time I spend driving places. In Canada, I'd spend an hour going anywhere (another hour going back), and always had to drive. In Europe, I could walk most places and be there in 10-15 minutes. Plus I could always have a beer with friends anywhere, since I was walking, and also not get fat. Just by doing the math, I realized that by staying in Europe I'd spend a lot more time living and a lot less time driving. And I'm still here 🙂
European here who has been to US. You have given some good points, however my guess is that you live in Prague. Now you are in your 20s, but you will be in your 30s sooner or later and you will probably have a family. Try living in a small oldtown apartment with 2-3 kids. As the school infrastructure is most post-soviet countries are ridiculous you will need a car, no bus will come to take your 1st grade child to school, unless you can afford a private taxi. You will have to take them to school and probably take them back, with all the traffic you will spend more than 1 hour doing that. Most likely you will not have private parking in your oldtownish European place, it will be pain in the butt to find one every time you come back. Now you will not have your backyard either so you will have to take your children out much more. Now what is left for you is to find a house in the new suburbs of Prague. At this point your daily commute will probably become longer than in Canada as the cities are well planned there, while here they are old and chaotic. Soon you will understand that a big backyard, cul-de-sac lifestyle and tons of parking is much easier than all this EU suburb mess :) Personally I love the US way, however I really like Scandinavian cities too, they are very well thought out.
@@tomasgedrimas5475 I just have one question for you (as everything you described wasn't even a problem for me as a child, in the 90s when i lived in Moscow, in a village near Krivoj Rog, and a tiny medieval village in the very center of the Black Forest in Germany): Why would you need a parking space to bring your kid to school or to pick it up? You just stop your car in front of the school, kick your kid out in front its friends and keep driving. And when you pick your kid up, you also just stop in front of the school where the kids who wait for their parents usually hang around and take it in and keep driving. It takes not even 2 minutes for each and parents do that all the time.
@@olgahein4384 You got it wrong. The main point was not a parking place near school, it was the parking place near your apartment when you come back. Especially when a lot of people work from home now it happens so that you leave your children at daycare/school and come back home. This child picking from school makes huge traffic, especially in the terribly planned soviet neighbourhoods. Sometimes you can spend 10-15 minutes looking for a place to park, Frank highlighted that he used to drive a lot so now he saves time. I am not really into agreeing with that.
@@tomasgedrimas5475 Living in most European cities you don’t need a parking space. In the suburbs, parking lots are generally available, and so is public transport. In my part of Europe parents taking their kids to school and home again isn’t looked upon favourably, by the way. It increases traffic and pollution, besides, parents bringing their children endanger other children.
@@olgahein4384 in cities most schools ask parents to park further away from the main entrance because it gets crowdy around school end time. So simple. Well, if you live in a small town in Europe, most people still use cars, especially if they want to Pick up their small children from school, and they arrive to the school usually at the same time. In the Warsaw Pact- communism times - 35 years before it was easy. Less cars, less parking rules, people were happy with a Soviet Lada. (Which is not even Russian, instead Italian sell).
Living a year in Europe (Budapest to be specific) has made me appreciate how important a well developed infrastructure that gives you quick, accessible and comfortable public transit is.
If only America's cities weren't thousands of years old then our urban planning would surely be better. It's not like every major US city was built from the ground up in the last 200 years. Oh wait.....
@@HelloThere-xx1ct there are plenty of videos out there highlighting that before the car us cities were much like European ones. US cities were a choice not an inevitability. If anything Europe had more excuse to do so rapidly redeveloping/expanding after the ravages of WW2 destroyed many of their cities. The Netherlands had car focused development like the US until they decided to focus on bike infrastructure and are just 20-40 years ahead of a lot of places. We could all be like that with enough political will.
This is on the east coast mostly and clustered near major cities (NJ, NY, PA, Virginia, Mass). All of these places have a higher cost of living but average incomes are also higher. My pro tip for affordability would be to look at housing where you could commute to a major city with a transfer. From the transit data I’ve looked at Americans are allergic to transferring.
I was an exchange student in a smaller town in Missouri back in 2010, and one of the dumbest things I experienced was trying to get to my school. I lived about a 4 minute walk away from my school, but I had to get a ride every day to and from school because walking would mean suicide. I had to cross a six-lane road with no way of crossing as a pedestrian, so after trying a few times I would give up. It´s absolutely insane to me that Americans are so car dependent that they can´t even make a single pedestrian crossing anywhere on the six-lane road that literally carved the city in half.
the worst thing is this is a self-inflicted injury. they COULD build their cities in a denser space with ample alternatives to driving but decided that spacing things out and using cars (exclusively) to bridge the gap was preferable... the luxury of having the extra space tempts the mind into making the error of using it.
I don't even understand why people want these big ass lawns and nothing around. Do my fellow Americans just like... hate being social and want to pretend to have a little fiefdom?
@@autoteleology I just don’t want to deal with people around me or HOA at my house …… I got to deal with people all day long ( good neighbors are good but it’s not worth the risk of bad neighbors come in or just annoying dogs barking all day and night long ).
Having learned about this over the past year out of professional curiosity (I'm a planner in the UK) it's amazing how almost everything that is wrong in the USA goes back to racism. The drive to suburbia based on single family homes was not even disguised - it just was segregation.
@@jonarific8504 Yep, American here, it was initially all down to White flight from the cities post WW2 because they wanted to get away from minorities. Thats when you get the freeways being built by the feds to the detriment of local neighborhoods for the sake of racist suburbanites and sprawling hell scapes like LA
As a European who doesn't have a driver's licence and has relied almost exclusively on public transport or biking throughout most of my adult life, it's pretty crazy learning about how things work in America.
For real though, i live in a pretty big Polish city, and i've been going on foot to the nearby towns all the time. The thought of not being able to even leave your house without a car sounds so surreal to me.
@@StewartRoll Do you guys in US suburbs get physically active like walking, or biking? I did it every day and it's 100 meters from my building and i live in suburb area in Europe/Balkans(Serbia/Belgrade suburb Galenika)lemme describe my neighborhood...i walk every day 200 meters to our suburb center and it has: Post office, once we had bank now there are everywhere bankomats(ATM cash-mashine), local Clinic, Apothecary (drugs-shops)3x private and state, local small Library, bookstores 2x, open air grocery market and big supermarket, small markets 3x, drugstores 4x, butcher markets 2x and barbecue, bakery, fish market, Chinese shops 2x, money exchange 3x, local-Caffè 4x with barbecue for order and mini restaurant in some of them, mobile service shop, hairdressers 4x, pc/tv service, car services 2 nearby, ...even hi-teck all stuff mall is like 450 meters from my home 6 minutes walking...huge restaurant with domestic meals right next to highway and my home 950 meters 12 minutes walking...we have one big primary scool in our suburb area and two kindergartens, we have 8 open sport terrains like mixed-ones with mini-football (soccer) and basketball...behind every building we have children's playground and parks with trees and flower mini gardens infront our buildings....Only thing that we lack is parking spots, even we have huge parking lots everone wanna have his car infront of his flat/house, houses have basement garages but many turn them into renting apartments for living (for the poor non-situated families or couples)...
I work in residential development in Florida and when I mention why all the engineering plans never include public transit access or any other way for people to get around either than their cars, I’m met with looks of confusion or demeaning remarks.. thanks for advocating for logic Adam!
Florida is literally one of the worst offenders in my mind. Never have I ever seen more stroads, strip malls, and empty suburban expanses. I live in Colorado now, and am amazed by the difference that just slightly less pedestrian hostile design makes.
@@ExistenceUniversity Even if you still use cars, why exclude those other options for everyone else? Even if you don't ride it, it will benefit you for taking multiple drivers off the road.
Once in Florida we wanted to visit a mall with our 2 kids (6 and 8 years), which was so nearby , that we even could see it in the distance. We wanted to enjoy our lifes and just take an enjoyable walk there :) But after after a few hundred meters the sidewalk suddenly ended ! My wife and the kids were terrfiied from the idea of continue walking a few hundred meters on the stroad with the fast and huge vehicles. The end of the story is: we walked back to the motel and drove by car to the mall. :( Thats a very typical story for europeans visiting the USA I guess
Something simmilar happend to me. My first year in the US I tried riding a bike. But it was very difficult. Too many hills so most of the time I had to push the bike. My second year I was only driving but I don't mind it because I love driving.
Tried to walk to a an arcade in Us with my kids, was 200m away, did it ones and never again. Was a sidewalk bit needed to cross a major road, it had no crosswalk.
As an exchange student from Switzerland, it’s crazy to see how my dependence on my US-parents has increased. I can‘t go anywhere without asking them. The infrastructure here is so depressing…
Tschau kolleg, missing the sbb much now? 😉 But jokes aside, I've only been to the us once for 5 weeks, but I was horrified by the lack of infrastructure for non-cars, like pedestrian or cyclists. We ended up taking the car for grocery shopping just fre hundred meters away which I would never ever do here. I always walk or take the bike. I really didn't like how heavily we depended on the car!
Ya Its shit crap bull crap and more because as someone who as been in America for all 20years of my life its crap you cant even go get abite to eat without needed a car you want to go to the park car want to go see a movie car want to buy a new tooth brush car its so annoying.
@@celestialtree8602 I couldn't imagine how it must've been if I were to live there when my parents divorced when I was 15... going out of the house brought me so much peace of mind. I hope your financial situation improves so that you can take better advantage of America's features.
Having lived both in Berlin and in rural Germany taught me: yes, a car is nice to have, especially when often travel outside. Even driving is fun for me, I love driving. But being forced to depend on it *sucks*. Berlin's public transport is much easier to deal with than finding an affordable parking spot, and that is not by coïncidence. For me, a car is now a luxury item.
Also, car ownership in Germany is expensive. (Although still cheaper than in other European countries.) Which makes the situation worse for poor people living in rural areas. You have to pay taxes and an insurance, to at least partially cover for road maintenance costs. Car maintenance itself is no joke when something important breaks. And fuel isn't cheap anymore, either, the equivalent of about $8 to $10 per gallon. With energy prices soaring in general, an electric vehicle isn't cheaper than a used fuel-driven car for the first few years of ownership.
Problem in Germany is, public transport anywhere but in big cities is pretty bad and getting worse. They continuously reduce the amount of bus and train transit, from 15min to 20min to 30min to 1h intervals. When you need to get somewhere it can take hours. And that is if it's not past 10pm, then you can be lucky if anything runs at all.
A car in the USA is just seen as a need like food, clothing, shelter. And unless your the type to look at videos like this most don't realize there is any other way and really just don't care. You might agree with better options but most probably won't actually do anything.
As someone who was born in Azerbaijan and grew up in Russia, the first time I visited Amsterdam I was blown away by just how comfy the streets are. I mean it was an amazing place in general, but the fact that just being out on the street felt almost like being home has left a lasting impression on me.
Even as a German with a hometown full of bike lanes my 1 month stay in Den Hague left an Impression on me. You could literally buy a 50€ bike and get around most of the country just with that. Never felt so free.
I felt the exact same way in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and to some degree all across Europe. Russia seemed to have the worst urban planning in the world. But after moving to the US, I feel like any city in Russia is very walkable and has great potential, even new areas like Parnas or Devyatkino at least have everything you need in walking distance and good transit options compared to even NYC. The point is to ask just one question "Can you live a full life in this city without a car". Russia can pass that one at least, unlike the US.
Many European suburbs are basically smalltowns with an own town center and the usual smalltown public services, plus a train station of the suburban transit network (S-Bahn, RER, etc) which takes people to the neighboring big city.
While I was in Finland last year, I noticed how easy it was to get around. Whether it was in city or to another city, I deeply appreciate European transit systems.
And it's only barely good in the Helsinki area. But go 30 kilometers from the city center, and the public transit starts to be very cumbersome. Let alone the rural areas and towns, where the public transit is basically non-existent. Though even the smaller cities are still bike- and walk-friendly, so if you happen to live close to a shop and your workplace, you might get by without a car.
You better never wade even 5km away from the nearest rail backbone, tram line at least. Get close to the brink of town's public transport area - and you may wait up to one hour to swap one bus to another after taking a 15 minutes stroll on the sidewalk in between of two "connecting" bus stops. Like in a large Russian village, basically.
Just wanted to share some fun history about my local community here in the US. I live in Canton, Ohio (a small/medium-sized Industrial-era city). During the white flight eras, the white middle class moved out of Canton and into the suburbs around it. One of these suburbs in particular, North Canton (formerly New Berlin, but WWI anti-German hysteria forced the name change), has grown so much in recent decades that it is officially a city now. North Canton is built on a population that is strictly opposed to any taxes, but now that the city is larger they find that they need taxes to support a larger school system, public safety system, municipal water and sewer systems, and (of course) more roads. On top of that, they've developed into low-lying areas that are prone to flash flooding (our ancestors were smart enough not to develop these areas). Now every year there are North Canton residents moving to even more distant suburbs because they don't want to pay for public services or for flood recovery programs. It is truly a Ponzi scheme, nobody sees it because it happens over the span of decades.
The fun part about this is that no American suburb can actually afford basic maintenence. Every ghetto brings more revenue, but the money these underdeveloped areas are generating goes to the suburbs instead of reinvesting in the underdeveloped districts, because the governments care more about rich white vultures than the working class.
This once I am really glad about anti-German sentiment. As a citizen of, well, *old* Berlin, this doesn't sound like a place I'd like to see our name on.
I remember when they built Cardinal homes all over NE Ohio in the 80s. A friend of mine lived in one in N. Canton. I wonder if any of those shitboxes survived the millennium...
@@KD10Conqueror Not necessarily... if it is now faster to walk than to drive because you made it easier to walk, then yes! However, if you mean it's faster to walk than to drive because you made driving unbearably slow, then no.
@@HighAdmiral But thats what car-centric planning does on its own to a certain degree. If you compare travelling a certain distance on bike vs in a car between the Netherlands and Houston for example, its faster to take a bike to drive the same distance in Amsterdam as you would by car in Houston. Car-centric planning is self-defeating and just does not work, cars are only good one for thing and thats being able to travel long distances independently, but if you're willing to let go of the "independently" then Trains can do the same thing but faster and at larger volumes.
I travelled to Germany for a solo vacation when I was 19 and I found it so incredibly convenient that I could walk anywhere I wanted and if it was far I could just use the train (which stations were also easy to walk to) that would cost at most three euros. Coming back home to the US made me start hating using my car all the time and missed walking to the center in 10ish minutes from my temporary home.
As an American whose family had an opportunity to live and work in Europe, my kids definitely enjoy significantly more independence here than they would have in the US. For a good portion of the day, they can function on their own in the center of the city where we live, enjoying plenty of activities after school without ever having to get into a car.
even here in the US, kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s in the city had more independence than those in the suburbs. Kids rode public transit to school and everywhere else. Now they are all driven everywhere or their parents face a social backlash, except for the lucky ones who live very near schools and services.
I had a friend recently show off his brand new house to me and it was quite a beautiful house to be sure. However, the first thing I asked was where the street lights and side walks were as I knew they had a kid and this was supposed to be a "prestigious" neighborhood. They admitted that they hadn't thought to look at something that basic when they were buying the house and are now kind of stuck with it. In addition to that, there isn't anything anywhere close that the kid can go to other than some pretty basic playgrounds, not even woods to go explore like I did as a kid. I am happy for them if they are happy with those trade offs. I just hate that in America, that isolated, desolate situation is the standard being forced on the vast majority of people rather than it being just a choice. I spent a whole month when I first arrived at this base trying to find a walk-able neighborhood of any description to live in, other than base housing as the waiting list favors families. The best I found was an apartment complex across the street from a typical American strip mall with a grocery store. So the parking lot is twice the size of the strip mall, and the street has 8 lanes not counting turn lanes, no cross walks, and no public transit. I haven't worked up the nerve to try and cross it yet, but wish me luck for when I do because my car had broken down. I miss Pordenone.
If somebody were to propose building a sidewalk in that neighborhood, you can bet that at least one, or more likely, several of the neighbors would oppose it. They'd rather have people walk in the road and risk get running over than to ruin their nice lawn.
The ending call to action really stood out to me! A few days ago, I went to my very first town hall (I’m 21) & I talked about how my city is not a walkable city & used a lot of the info that Not Just Bikes talks about as a starting point. I was pleasantly surprised that the people clapped but I had people come up to me afterwards wanting to talk about what I had said!! While this isn’t the end of the road for me, I will not stop until the roads in my city are multi use!
I'm all for multi-use roads but for example in Prague many "demands" are turning into borderline extremism and some of the streets already reflexted this. Just not far from my house a street that had wide enough sidewalk, road and tram line running in the middle they widened the sidewalk to the point you could play football there even though not that many people walk there while pushing cars onto the tram line so the moment a tram stops there the whole street jams up completely and people who are stuck in the traffic stare at the empty bike lane and half empty side walk. Also none of the public transit/bike/walk "activists" understand that not everyone has a luxury of having enough time to use public transportation for everyday stuff.
I moved from the US to Germany 5 years ago and the topics in this video are spot-on and one of the reasons I love living in Germany. Suburbanism is so ingrained in the "American Dream" that the vast majority don't even consider that life could be any different. I'll never forget after I had been living here for a few years already my mom called and asked what I was doing that day and I said I was about to walk to the grocery store - for me a totally mundane errand 20 minutes total there and back. She reacted like I told her I was climbing Mount Everest that afternoon. Then it dawned on me that from our home in the U.S. they really would have to walk minimum 1 hour each way (down a busy highway with no sidewalk) to our nearest grocery store. I wish more people would start to see how we can make our cities work for people and not just cars. Great video!
Yeah, there's just a lot of cultural momentum behind suburbs to the point that living in a big house with a huge lawn and having an SUV or truck to drive everywhere is just part of American identity. I feel like for many Americans this is all they know and they actually LIKE living like this. I spent the whole summer in Europe and frankly find it somewhat depressing being back in the US. The only places in America that could offer any kind of lifestyle even somewhat comparable to Europe are prohibitively expensive and require an income well into the six figures just to barely get by. Americans also can't seem to fathom the idea of raising a family in an apartment or condo. They feel this is something that can only be done in a far-flung suburb in a big 2,000 sqft house. To Americans raising a family within the city in an apartment is for poor people only.
you know my local grocery store is 3 minutes walk from my house in the American suburbs. Lol. I guess it just depends on location. My brother lived in Germany for almost 3 years and hated and never wants to return. I guess it’s all subjective. But at the end of the day, it’s you who picks your poison.
@@rexx9496 that is so true but I hate suburbs and suvs and everything you described I lived in Germany with my German husband until he died at age 48 and I thought life there was easier and more pleasant
I was visiting the USA and walking to the local supermarket in Michigan when suddenly the walkway just ended. I would've had to walk the side of the road. My mother-in-law said she did it once (on a different trip) and was stopped several times to ask if she was okay. Such an incredible difference.
@@simonjaz1279 yea and that tells me that there is something wrong if you need to buy a weeks worth of groceries i mean you can to that in europe to but you always have the option to just walk to your supermarket buy some stuff and go home but in the usa many people just cant do that because they need a car for it
@@たくや-o5g something wrong? Absolutely not. Its how you can have more time to be with people u want to be with or have fun. If you Europeans like wasting time going to the store, fine. But most Americans buy a good amount of groceries and cook at home. It's easier and allows us to do other things. Sorry but nothing wrong with EITHER lifestyle. Thats just you being like Adam and not understanding different cultures and how a majority want to live. I think walking to the store all the time is stupid imo. Oh, and let me add, MOST in the usa CAN just walk somewhere if they want milk or something because MOST dont live in the suburbs. In urban areas, you are like a 2 minute walk from a CVS or train station or SOMETHING that gives you access. So this statement you made isn't even true unless you live in like Houston texas.
@@simonjaz1279 I think you didn't get my point i wrote European ALSO can buy a weeks worth of groceries i mean it is so obvious so all the thing you just wrote there applies to everyone in Europe to not only that they also have the OPTION to just go to the store and buy things on there own without a car so yea i don't see why USA is better in this regard if you literally have fewer options and pls i am not a USA hater i just say what it is like to life here and there that's it.
When I was a kid and watched American cartoons, I always thought the way estates were drawn was just because it was a cartoony world. The fact they actually look like that was mind blowing to me.
Same! I am from Argentina and it was mind blowing to me to learn that the US does, indeed, look like in cartoons. I was also extremely disappointed that there are just very few cities that look walkable and with life, like New York (which... it's a city that tends to be in a huge chunk of US movies and distorted my perception!) I am sure the US is beautiful in many other ways, but I wouldn't consider living long term.
Same, I thought it was just lazy design. Taking the Simpsons for example: Just copy paste relevant houses in the same neighborhood and later add other set pieces like the tavern or the stores "somewhere else". I mean technically it's still lazy design, but somehow they managed to make real life like a poorly thought out film set.
Oh damn, the Simpsons where probably a bad example. Considering it's from Matt Groening, it's probably intentional mocking of "individualism" among other things I might not even have noticed yet.
It depends on the subdivision. The decent ones will have multiple styles and colors of houses so that it doesn't look *too* same-y. But there are actually some places where the houses are absolutely *identical*.
Thank you for your video Adam Something. I recommend Japan too. I moved from Michigan, US, to Kansai area Japan between Osaka and Kyoto 25 years ago and enjoy life near mountains in a multi-zoned area with homes and 6-floor apt buildings, parks, restaurants, and shops and ride my bicycle everywhere. It’s 5 minutes to the nearest train station and 20 minutes to work. Japan is very livable for me and my family. It looks like we’d be happy in many places in Europe as well.
That sounds awesome I am also from MI and hate having to drive places. So much wasted money on insurance repairs tabs gas etc just to go to work and back
My mother used to live in the little town of Springboro Ohio. The town was incorporated in 1815, long before zoning codes. While her area is in between stroads, it is still very walkable. There are schools, shops, restaurants, churches, a public library, an urgent care centre and a public park, all within easy walking distance and with no need to cross the stroads. It's so sad that newer suburbs can't be built like that anymore.
The comparison here is actually nonsense. A suburb in the USA is compared with a district of Leipzig. But these suburbs with single-family houses on the green field can also be found in every suburb in Europe. There are few options for using public transport as well. The properties are just smaller and the distances shorter, but everyone drives by car.
So glad someone mentioned this. I appreciate what he is saying, but what he is showing is not all US suburbs. Not even most around where I live. The only time you see the stuff he is showing is in Allotments (which I agree suck and need to fall in a hole), which have to be built in the middle of no where in order to get that yard space. He needs to compare a US suburb that is actually within or immediately adjacent to a city. It looks a heck of a lot more like the European one.
@@spectilia I agree. My town is a 32 minute Amtrak train ride to NYC and it's wonderful. It has trees, sidewalks, interesting buildings that all vary, the roads are small, the downtown is quite nice, and everything is pretty walkable and it has ample park space. The only downside really is having to drive to the nearest Trader Joe's since it's 5 minutes away from my apartment and on a busy highway. Other than that, everything I could want I could just walk. A lot of towns in the northeast are like this, especially old suburbs
@@spectilia Not necessarily; when I was young, my family lived in Centerville, Ohio, a suburb within the greater Dayton area and a few miles from Springboro, but newer. There were literally only single-family houses with cookie-cutter lawns, in blocks surrounded by ugly stroads. Going anywhere required a car. Springboro and Centerville, two neighbourhoods so close to each other, were in many ways worlds apart. The sad thing is that even in my mom's area of Springboro that is so walkable, few people actually walked. Everyone hopped in their cars even to go just a block or two. Nice for me because I could walk everywhere in peace and quiet, but sad that so few took advantage of the lovely neighbourhood they lived in.
I'm Spanish and one thing I love about towns and cities here is that pretty much you don't need to use the car every day. You can just walk, or take public transport (works really well in cities) and you don't have to spend a lot of time driving. I love driving, it's relaxing for me, but less necessary driving means less money to spend on fuel and less pollution you're pumping to the atmosphere
all those apartment blocks that everyone loves like a cockroaches, lissen all neighbours , if they re in a discussion, having sex or showering , it’s gross , I live in Europe too and I hate live in a flat.
Make no mistake, there are a lot of nonfunctional suburbs in Europe too. I've lived in both Sweden and Finland, and some suburbs here are _theoretically_ reachable by transit, but built so far away from all relevant centers that you are basically stuck there if you don't have a car. It does not help if you have a metro/commuter rail line within a 15 minute walk if the metro ride to the city takes 40 minutes on top of that.
I think I have been to one of those in Stockholm. The problem is that the city has far too much land for the number of people. So they built their suburbs a 10 minute train ride away from the center. These suburbs have basic groceries but for anything you need to go to Stockholm center. Here (in NL) a 10 minute train ride would be a different city, with its own centers, shopping malls ect. E.g. Arnhem to Nijmegen (150k and 175k people cities) is a 12 minute Intercity ride and there is a village in between (Elst, approx. 20k people).
Lol I live in Tallahassee, Florida, and that's the time it takes me to get to university everyday with the bus. I feel like most Americans would not be shocked at all by a 40min or 1hr commuting time or so, car or not.
Don't forget one important factor - population density. We have quite a lot less people here and sadly it's impossible to make proper public transport for a tiny suburb. At that point it's more environmental that people living there use cars instead of empty busses driving through the suburbs
That's just plain wrong what you are saying about Stockholm. I live here and nowhere in Stockholm or it's suburbs are you stuck without a car like in the U.S. and nowhere are you 40 min away by train to a "relevant center". Of course there sometimes are distances to travel like in any major city but you make it sound like there's a problem that I really do not think exist the way you put it.
As a Brazilian, American suburbs have never made any sense to me. Here, most of the most expensive properties are the ones located downtown, where you have schools, hospitals, supermarkets and, most importantly, your workplace, close to you and thus it's far more practical. In most cities, the distance from downtown is inversely proportional to the property's cost, since nobody wants to have to waste hours daily to go to work, school, supermarket, etc... Of course, there are exceptions to this, mainly some rich neighborhoods that are walled off and have their own private security companies to take care for them, but this is mostly due to Brazil being a fucking criminal hellhole. Apartments in big cities are valued for the same reason, they do provide some extra protection against burglars, and no, we're not retarded to have those fire ladders outside the window.
In America, most suburbs have schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and workplaces that are close to home. The proximity to such amenities is the driving force in buying a home. The maker of this video and many of the people in the comments seem to be confusing rural, suburban and urban.
@@CoryEvans yeah this guy is well known for not understanding what a 85% of Americans go through. Most Americans live in an urban environment where most of this stuff is fairly close (relatively speaking).
That's how most cities around the world and throughout history are: the upper middle class lives near downtown where the most shops and jobs are, and the working class and poor live in the periphery. A few rich people live in remote mansions somewhere, but only a few. That's inverted in the US for several reasons. Ever since the 1700s there has been an ideal of a large country house since the US has so much space compared to Europe. Religious zealots condemn cities as centers of sin and low morals. Large cities like New York were industrial, with polluting factories in lower Manhattan. Poor workers lived near the factories because they couldn't afford to live elsewhere and couldn't walk from elsewhere. Rich people lived in the opposite half of town. When people go the chance to move away from those polluting factories and overcrowded tenements, they did, and often they moved to a small country house and retained a lifelong anti-city attitude. Then there's chattel slavery. Many whites wanted to live in areas without blacks, non-WASP minorities, or people poorer than themselves. They equated all those problems with inner cities. In the 1950s the Civil Rights Act outlawed "separate but equal" (i.e., apartheid), and a Supreme Court decision mandated school integration -- busing students from segregated neighborhoods to integrated schools. White families moved outside the city boundaries to suburban school districts, where they couldn't be bused across school-district boundaries. That was right when suburban greenfield tract housing and freeways were being heavily built, so you could get one if you had the money. It's the American Dream to live in a suburban house, many thought. The greenfield developments and freeways were subsidized by government, so their price is artificially low, and city dwellers subsidize their suburban counterparts.
@@simonjaz1279 it’s far enough that walking is still not practical and the sprawl is still way to bad for transit so it’s still car dependent. In a suburb I lived in 25mi(40km) outside of Detroit .As a teenager I had to bike 30 minutes through the suburban maze , through a dirt trail , then cross a 55mph (90km/h) busy rural road to get to a cvs (a convenience store and pharmacy) and bike 45 minutes 4 mi (6.4km) to a nearest grocery store where 60% of the route isn’t even paved with sidewalks.
There's a show thats been popular in Japan for ages but has recently gained popularity overseas called hajimete no otsukai. It's a show where young kids (like real young kids sometimes just 2 or 3 years old) are sent to do their first errand by themselves. Usually just buying something from the super market or something like that. It's kind of incredible watching that show and thinking about how it could ever be implemented in America, the kids would just get hit by a car instantly. The show does have people observing to make sure the kid is safe but 99% of the time it isn't necessary. Everything is so accessible and in walking distance there's not much concern. The kids also all know the way already because they're used to walking with their parents to go to the store and stuff. Considering how much time kids in America spend staring at the back of the front seats I imagine far fewer would be able to do the same. It's just such a shame that kids in America have had their freedom/independence significantly reduced for the past 70 years or so.
That show is quite funny and cute! Also very relatable. I live in switzerland and growing up in a suburb in the 90ies, we'd just go out and play in the neighbourhood and nearby fields and forest. Even as 5 year olds and younger. Our mum would just whistle really loud if we had to come home. The idea that many american kids could never go anywhere without their parents bringing them and picking them up again (and thus also knowing exactly where they are at all times) is horribly restricting.
Years ago I spent 3 months cycling around Japan. I started in Tokyo, headed South West, and cycled hundreds of miles. Every day was wonderful. One memory is cycling through quite a large city at about 9'o'clock at night. Not that many people around. I passed a bus stop, where just one person was waiting - a girl of about 10years with a violin case. All on her own, probably headed back home after a music lesson. I was amazed and very impressed. This, and many other things, helped me realise what a nice safe environment Japan is. I wish it could be like this everywhere around the world. I've often wondered if Heaven is simply a place where people are nice to each other, with no anger, negativity or ill intent.
I would like to note that in a U.S. suburb, the school runs school buses to get children to school. One big difference I noticed were the lack of sidewalks in the American suburb you showed. It's pretty hostile to pedestrians and the disabled.
I always find that a bit nuts when you see the amount of dedicated school bus infrastructure to make that work. Meanwhile in most of the rest of the world kids just walk or cycle to school.
I had to catch the bus at like 6:30AM because I was the on the first stop for school which started around 7:50AM. Everything is such a disaster and any attempt to change anything is labeled as communism. Going to seriously consider moving abroad when I have saved up enough
When I migrated to the US, I went out for a walk. I was intercepted by an astonished 4 year old child whose dad came after her, she was shouting "Why are you walking? Are you poor too?" Very embarrassing for everyone, but it did make me ask a question as everyone I ever came across walking was an immigrant. We had a car. But we wanted to walk. This was an irregular thing for folks, but back in Europe I walked everywhere and sometimes cycled. Very difficult here to get around without a car.
I’m an American and I love cars… but I also love sustainability and sensible living spaces where people can easily access the things they want and need. Zoning definitely need to be fixed over here. When I’m at our apartment with my youngest son, we live in a suburban area where you have to walk at least 3 miles if you want to access the city bus. And let’s not talk about the building materials used to make this place. Thinnest windows, thinnest walls.. you hear the neighbor kid tumble down the halls. I think I just wrote a song with that last comment.
Thanks for showing me that the European suburb I grew up in wasn't actually that bad. It was boring as a teen and I think it was a bad decision from an urban planning perspective but at least we have a decent bus connection there and the suburb itself is walkable aka escapable without a car. And it's not a mind numbing wasteland of copy paste houses.
I still remember when me and my (Canadian) friend were visiting another friend who lived in a Florida suburb. While he was at work one day, we decided to go for a walk and look for some food. Well that was a mistake. Walking in 36 degree heat for like 1 hours, all we finally managed to find was a gas station. It was honestly pretty horrible!
My father (white European) got stoped by a police patrol once while he was visiting the US. He got stopped simply because he was walking trough a Suburb. When they realised he was European they immeately changed their behaviour because they apparently think that there are only two reasons why people would walk in such an area: They're either poor (and this more likely to be in conflict with the law, e.g. suspects) or from some country of crazy people who like to walk everywhere (Canadaians, Europeans, Asians, Californians etc.).
@@FernandoHernandez-jw4yy This is normal. If someone sees "a strange man" wandering around their home, they report it and police are _required_ to respond. My friend has a shooting range on his rural 15 acres and every time he's _legally_ shooting, the neighbors call and deputies come, hang out, chat a bit, then leave. It has nothing to do with walking. Also Recently, I was teaching a friend to drive stick in an empty carpark. The police questioned us, then just watched us for 30 minutes. Maybe thought we were there to rob the place. ?
My girlfriend and I like to watch this show, "Property Brothers". Oftentimes, she says how beautiful those suburban areas they show there are. I try to tell her that there is literally nothing but huge houses for miles and miles. No shops, no cafés, no restaurants, no parks, no public pools - everything is an hour-long car ride away. She doesn't quite believe it. Because, you know, that would be crazy...
@Ostia Hermes As an American it disturbs me that anyone would think the USA or UK or a monarchy is a good idea. If anti-globalists are allowed to be Separatists, then anti-nationalists & anti-monarchists are allowed to be Separatists. But rightards VIOLENTLY SUPPRESS and ARREST antimonarchists/separatists in the UK for speaking out against their worthless unnecessary childish freeloading monarchy.
I’m from Montreal and There’s a pretty big push for less car dependency in the city but also some suburbs like Laval who recently changed their zoning code to increase density and invest in public transit alongside smaller towns like Granby. We’re heading in the good direction and I hope places in the us outside of big cities will get a piece of that sweet sweet pie
As someone who lives in Laval im ever so grateful for the fact they put a bus stop literally 3 minutes from my house, i live in the suburbs since that's what laval is mostly anyway, and gosh being able to walk somewhere instead of taking the car is amazing, We're headed in a good direction and im grateful, and as silly as it is, im happy they have parkings outside of Metros for some places, a car in Montreal is asking for 4 hours of parking search of 10 an hour private parking xD But i hope eventually those parkings outside of the metros arent needed since everyone can effeceintly take the bus. and we need the busses to have card readers, i never carry change anymore and it's a problem when taking the Bus anywhere
As someone who lives in Montreal, I will be more than overjoyed when the REM opens up, as I always preferred PT over cars when I was little, as well as the crappy car dependent regions that are over reliant on cars that finally get connected to PT
I live in the SeaTac area of Washington State, and I remodel residential buildings. Here I've noticed more European-style suburbs than the desolate suburbs of other more recently developed areas (Covington). I consider myself lucky now.
Us pacific northwesterners owe a lot to those mountains. Us vancouverites have the 4th highest population density in North America and a metro that’s extensive for a city our size. We do build up in North America, when mountains and oceans physically prevent us from going further out
@@alc3biades262 It really has been satisfying to watch our passenger-train and trolley system grow here, and from what I remember of my time in Vancouver it was very reminiscent of Seattle. Too bad we're still bogged down by car traffic.
How do you like living in that area? I live in Tacoma right now but wanting to move up closer to Seattle and the airport. Any recommendations for areas to live in?
I don't know how to get the idea that I don't want suburbs where people are literally trapped in their houses and unable to walk anywhere heard. I mean, you can make any suburb nice by adding sidewalks, a town square, a transit system. I live in Evanston which is a suburb of Chicago. But it's connected by the train, it has a town square, everything is walkable and bikable. I'm sure it's still not as convenient as Europe, but it's pretty awesome, there's even a bike path by lake Michigan. However this is not the most expensive place to live in. Evanston is old, it was probably built around the turn of the century. Just because a suburb is in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean there's no place to walk to. A hiking path would always be nice, especially if you can walk there, by the sidewalk. These places seem to be built so gas companies can make money. Built for cars, not people. I just don't understand how living without sidewalks became a thing. It's completely unsafe. And just the exercise of going for walks for fun is forbidden from you. It seems impossible to me. There's this weird idea that people in the suburbs want it that way and they're "uppity". Some suburbs which are more inconvenient because the houses are bigger are actually more expensive. Yet they have no sidewalks. To me though, suburbs without sidewalks seem like a suburb of the trailer parks, not the cities. I believe in Jamaica you would call them Shantytowns. But one of the horrible things about democracy is that everything is blamed on you because it's assumed that everyone decided this together, when in fact, people had no choice but to move to places without sidewalks really, that was what was available. I mean, I would rather be dead than live in a place like that. People really have very little idea how to appeal to government to do what they want, and suburbs without sidewalks are a result of corporations skirting the law-- legally businesses have to have sidewalks, but not houses.
@Anna-Flora is right. I am from the western US, but lived in neighborhoods in Greater Boston (e.g., Somerville, East Arlington) that were pretty walkable and there was a reasonable and reliable transit system. In other places I lived, like Tucson, demand a car. I'd had to take the bus when my car was in the shop. Even though the bus was scheduled once every two hours, it might not even show up, and my route only ran from 7am-7pm. Try standing in the AZ sun wondering if the bus will even show up. The difference was the Boston neighborhoods were built before the widespread introduction of cars, the western ones were all designed with private cars as an assumption. I'm now in Italy, and our car is used only for emergencies and to take weekend trips. I kind of miss having a bit more bucolic space, but given the choice, higher density neighborhoods that aren't purely residential are demonstrably better.
Evanston is a classic streetcar suburb, combining the better aspects of city and suburb. Not only does Evanston have Northwestern University and Lake Michigan, it also has sidewalks, and a subway/commuter rail in the Purple Line, running south back into Chicago. Great town..
Chicago has great suburbs, I'm in Elgin we have sidewalks, a private park with tennis and basketball courts, and many local owned shops in walking distance ( no one does though cause well, we like driving lol) Also walking distance to middle and elementary school but they also have bus drivers which is something else this guy didn't really mention mommy and daddy don't have to drive most kids.
If you believe this person's biased propaganda, then it would seem that way. If you consider reality, personal freedoms & privacy, & other vast differences between the US & Europe, then you'd see it's inaccurate & more complex.
@@flow185 What's your frame of reference on what the ACTUAL standard suburb looks like in the US, the advantages, or the cultural differences that cause many to prefer one vs the other? If it's this video, then it's too inaccurate to form a realistic perspective. As for freedoms, what freedoms do you believe Europe has upheld better? I have seen zero evidence of that being true, but I'm open to the knowledge & experience of others. I fully recognize & appreciate that Europe has done plenty of things better than the US, but both lead the way in plenty of ways. I believe Europe & the US can learn a lot from each other. That would be more clear if there were less propaganda.
@@Simplicitywins My frame of reference isn't just *this* video, it's lots of similiar videos as well. Now, you were the first person to mention freedoms and cultural differences and whatnot, so really I think the onus is one you to provide some examples. Anyway, here's a few off the top of my head. Freedom to select from whatever means of transport you prefer. (Freedom to spend your hard earned cash on things besides a car). Freedom to get some regular exercise (Americans could do with some more of that). Freedom to get to places quickly. Freedom to afford a house (denser housing -> more housing -> cheaper housing)(generally speaking)(Considering how much land the US has, it's a minor miracle they've managed to have less available housing than Europe.) As for privacy: generally, our houses aren't made of glass (or I wouldn't be throwing stones) so you can do whatever you want inside your own property. Perhaps you can't play a private game of baseball on your massive lawn, although I doubt that you do that frequently enough to require one. Probably you could just rent a pitch somewhere. That being said, big lawns do exist in Europe, but they're expensive. This goes back to my "freedom to own a house" statement earlier. You can 100% get what you get in American suburbs, in Europe. You just have to be rich enough. (And if you aren't rich enough, shoulda used a little bit more elbow grease eh? Lazy freeloader wants the government to subsidise his lawn.) Thinking about it, if you want the American suburb experience, you could probably just live somewhere rural in Europe. Big lawns and privacy etc., but it still takes about as long to get to the city centre. (Because there's way less traffic). Finally, cultural differences. I don't give two hoots about culture. What's good is good, no matter where you're from.
I've lived in southern Poland my whole life and the idea of American suburbs literally scares me. I mean, it all looks like some kind of a creepy backrooms space! In Europe, when you walk through the suburbs, you see life; the houses are varied and I'd say more "lively". In the US there's so much empty space... I could never live there!
Scary😂😂😂😂 you guys are literally going to get invaded by Russia and soon. Wtf are you talking about lol scary 😂😂😂😂 bro you better wake up and fast!!! If Russia would be that close to a U.S suburb like they are to your country the world would have ended already we don’t play those pretend games here.
As someone who bikes to school every day, I'm incredibly jealous of communities with consistant bike lanes. It would be so nice to be able to bike to school without almost getting hit by a car every time lol
It's really not a standard in germany at all yet. there are some pioneer cities like shown. But where I live, I would not let children younger than 14 ride anywhere through the city by bicycle. It's so dangerous.
Yea, as the person above said, many suburbs dont have bike lanes. As somebody who lives in polish suburb, while there are some bike lanes, they dont help that much as they cut out fairly quickly. Similiar thing in other towns i have been to, people here usually ride on bike either slowly on sidewalk (if not busy) or between main road and sidewalk. So yea, it would definitely be nice to be able to get around without making other participants in street life annoyed while doing it safely. ...And then, there is Netherlands, Lmao. If you will google map of Europe with bike pathes included, Whole country will get colored.
@@RTXpl first of all, its Netherlands, Holand is just a small part of Netherlands but i suppose you are just American so i cant expect too much. Now, US is much much bigger, obviously they will have more bike lanes (duh), but if you will count by density of bike lanes (in which usually amount of streets, railways etc is measured in) Netherlands is unquestionable winner.
@@JacobG4lant than, according to Cambridge dictionary “Holland” is acceptable name for Kingdom of Netherlands but by your nick I suppose you are Polak Biedak Cebulak so i expected that “Polak nie rozumie co się dookoła niego dzieje” Now, Netherlands are significantly smaller than average US State, But if you count by density of roads NL has much more kilometers of highways per 1000km2 then America so they had built big highways system and then they add Bike paths. Commuting in Netherlands focuses around cars and driving to neighbor city on wide roads just like in US,
Really makes me appreciate my home country Denmark. Even the smaller towns here that are part of bigger cities has great public transport so you can live almost anywhere and still have great access to stores, movie theaters, parks etc.
I bet y’all also don’t have as many homeless people who defecate in the streets too. Sometimes there’s a good reason for not wanting certain people to be able to travel where you live, Bc it’s a two way street. You can get to the city, but they can get to the suburb.
@@blankface5052 Oh yeah we don't deal with that at all. We have such a little percent of homelessness (5.800 out of a population of 5.800.000) and out of those, half of them actually lives in 'hostels' that we offer. And for the rest we offer them a lot of help. We have a homeless magazine called "Hus Forbi" which they can sell as a job and earn a a good amount of money and since health care is accessible to anyone, police will do regular check-ups on the homeless and if in need bring them for a check-up.
in Switzerland, little pre-school kids go to kindergarten on their own, or in small groups. it's organized and parents and teachers stay in close contact over the phone but it was still unbelievable for me to see that in the beginning. kids are trained how to cross the street at a pedestrian crossing, also there are underground passages around schools. it's sometimes really amusing to watch the little people walking slowly through the street, stopping for a minute because they see a cat, or having to pick up every pretty leave fallen from a tree. or standing at a crossing until some car arrives and gives them the way, the driver laughing and cheering the little one. I once saw a little man walking alone and crying and the teacher was standing at the door of the kindergarten supporting him from a distance, come on you can do it. incredible
I know, i spent 6 months in Lausanne and i was shocked to see kids so small go to school alone, but it's very safe, cars are driving 10 km per hour nearby, everyone respects the safety laws
I traveled nearly all states in the US. And it’s true, 90% of suburbs look similar from the way they are designed. I also talked to some locals and some told me they even need to put their dog 🐕 into their cars to drive to the next park / public green area were they can walk the dog 😅 Also most can not just go to a pub at night or bakery in the morning for fresh bread without taking the car 😮 And what I found really weird is that some residential areas were gated. Especially in Florida. Never seen that here in Europe where you can actually go everywhere.
Actually there are a sort of gated communities, at least in Czechia. They are basically a certain type of what we call "zahrádkářská kolonie" (gardening colony), which is basically a whole neighbourhood made just of gardens which are mostly owned by people living in flats who couldn't otherwise own a garden. But sometimes people live there, sometimes in kind of temporary conditions but quite often they even build houses. And some of such "colonies" where lots of people actually live are gated and have some kind of special self-governance and regulations. But from what I know, they are an exact opposite of american gated neighbourhoods. They seem to be more of a place for people seeking some kind of alternative livestyle or outhright recluse, not a safe haven for rich people worried about meeting some poor people.
@@lukasprazak7362 Same we have in Germany. We call it Schrebergärten. But they are usually not gated. You can go inside. At least those I know about in my city.
As an american, I do agree that you do need a car to go most places and the public transportation is very underdeveloped as a whole. However, I also wanted to point out that the quality of public transportation does very greatly depending on what state you live in and even what town. I have lived in Iowa and Massachusetts and I have had very good experiences with being able to walk anywhere I need to be (more so in Massachusetts). Also I did not even know that there are states that dont require sidewalks to be built next to roads until I saw a video that talked about how bad Florida's walkability is. From my experience, sidewalks are everywhere in Iowa, Massachusetts, and a lot of the states surrounding Iowa. If you live in a very rural area you get the worst of it though because there may be crop fields separating your house from the nearest convenience store for several miles. I will also say, the major cities and areas near the east coast are very walkable and have good public transportation in general. DC and NYC are prime examples of America being able to have good public transportation.
American Suburbs always feel like liminal spaces to me, just so devoid of life. And I unfortunately live in one of them, so its not just an outside perspective.
American suburbs are liminal spaces. Other than your home its just a transitionary space with nothing for people. Walking around in a modern US suburb (one built say after 1990, and the worst are after 2000) is an uncanny experience. You are supposed to be in a community, but the first thing you notice is that very few, and perhaps no people will be around. Almost like you came across an abandoned city or something.
As a kid I didn't realize that some of those extremely polished looking suburbs with identical house after house that you see on American TV are like, real, normal places in the US. It's kind of funny. I always liked the one on Malcolm in the Middle though, but I've always been a sucker for large trees on residential streets.
@@Lukas-bg4yn The one in Malcom in the middle would be like as suburban neighborhood built prior to like 1970 in California (which the actual neighborhood it was shot in). The ones built after the 1990s are much more of the huge liminal feeling places. The ones built in the 2000s are full blown uncanny.
That's what I hate about American front yards. The lawns are supposed to look like lush pastures (at least that's what they were initially invented to mimic for mansions and palaces). But your mind can immediately tell that you would NEVER find any person do any activity in their yard or let their animals graze in that mandated strip of setback. I guess I'm happy to live in a "single family housing" style neighborhood where half of the front yards are left to grow wild. You still know that the owners choose to not spend time there, but at least it's inviting looking enough that you know that you _could_ spend time there. And the many plants give you something to look at.
I live in an European suburb and it is really amazing. You pretty much have everything from stores to schools, cafes to go out to, playgrounds for kids, walkable areas such as sidewalks and there is also a small park. US suburb looks more like a map in some video game than a place people actually live in. Also if I want to go to a bigger city, aside from car, I can also take a bus or even a train since most European suburbs also have a train and bus station.
The idea that American kid don't play with each other is such bs that you have to be really styoopi to believe Amerian kids play with each other and get together just fine. Nobody here gives a fak about or misses public transport I promise you.
@@larrybuchannan186 I didn't say that American kids don't play with each other, I just talked about stuff that you have in an European suburb. Also when it comes to public transport, you guys would appreciate it more if only it was done in a better and more efficient way.
So this is not what alot of people like though. I live in a suburb...I dont want it to be a place for people to come hang out or go to school near my place. When you move closer to many us cities the suburbs seem more European in nature (especially in the older cities like boston). I promise there are places you can go that make it a copy paste of cluttered European suburbs. But there are many of us that strongly dislike that. Id rather it be a 10 minute drive instead. More relaxed and more fun tbh.
Evironmentally, US urban planning is terrible for the environment. Compact urban planning is better for land usage management as well as has been shown to decrease carbon emissions. An experiment was done with Volusia county, Florida and showed this exact fact.
It's not only sun and roses here in Europe as well. In Czech Republic we have a phenomenon (somehow surviving from 1990s) called "satelite towns" which are basically american-style suburbs made somewhere "out of city centre" usually lacking any appropriate public transport options. They are usually private development projects where a firm buys parcels and builds a block of houses (one same as the other) and sells them afterwards. The "building phase" of satelite-towns died out after 2008 crissis, yet still significant portion of people live there. "Soccer mums" over there are called "green widows" and they are also mostly relegated to be mamataxi and dependent on their husbands (at least as far as the income goes) who spend most of their days out of satelite to support the family and pay-out the mortgage.
In the US suburbs, households typically have more than one vehicle. Husbands and wives both drive. I live in a suburb in the USA. This suburb was created in the 1950's also well outside of any city center. It started out first as a milling company built next to a cargo railroad track. There were originally dorms and small houses built for the employees. There was a company-owned store for the employees to shop at. The company was wiped out by a tornado about a decade later. However, the people stayed and other industries eventually came around. This place became a town. Eventually, it became a small city. It was never really planned for it to be a town or city, so there was never any design to it. There is no center to it at all. The closest things to a center that we have is the railroad (only for cargo trains) that runs through its center literally splitting the city into half. Suburbs were built into the hillsides for the people to live while the businesses, government, and farms took the flatlands in the valley. After all, they need more space for the larger buildings or, in the case of the farms, acreage. You'll find that a lot of towns and small cities started out under similar circumstances. They weren't planned. Most homes and small businesses are built around the larger industries. They are industry-centered, not government-centered.
@@RADZIO895try "satelitní město" if you don't mind the results being in Czech.. these are completely dead areas that only exist for people to sleep at night. I can't understand why anyone would think of such a dumb idea, or buy into it
It’s funny you mention that about sports in the suburbs. In my American suburb we had houses close by, near a beach and parks with athletic fields and parents felt safe with kids going places on their own and even cutting through neighbor’s properties. Not all of us were athletically gifted, but all of us were pretty good at sports because we had the freedom to pursue those activities on our own. As I grew up and got out of the neighborhood I was shocked how our situation seemed to be an exception and not the norm in the American system
As a German, seeing someone praising German city planning feels kinda weird... but then I look at the nightmarish hellscape of US cities and I know, things aren't so bad here after all. I give US suburbs this: The spacious lawns do look nice and tidy (if they are well kept) and I'd rather have a large garden than a small one if I could choose, but I get super uneasy when I look at aerial photos of dozens of square miles of near identical houses on near identical roads in a nearly limitless, fractal-like sprawl of suburban roads covering ground in an unnatural manner, integrated with this weird mosaic-like cubistic madness that is real-estate-planning in the US. Seriously, go to the online map of your choice and take a look at virtually any place in central US and you'll see that everything is one giant chessboard of squares. Squares of fields, squares of forests, squares of cities. It does not take the lay of the land into any account, it's literally just some guy with a ruler, pen, map and compass putting down a grid across an entire continent. I'm not into esoteric stuff, but if there is any merit to it, the US must be a snarl of broken ley-lines. Even when you're not into esoterics, looking at that kind of stuff does make you realize how terrible this all is. Then add an entirely car-centric planning for cities, industrial areas and so on and you end up with a total mess. This can't be good for mental health, even when you're part of the upper strata of society in a nice cozy suburban house in the middle of a giant metastasizing wasteland of identical homes.
A big piece of land is nice if you do something with it. A huge private lawn is IMO a waste of space. That could have been a garden, or forest, or field, be it for crops or sports.
Totally agree. I frequently look into Satellite image over USA for a few hours at a time and compare to other places but the US is something different. Totally dystopian.
In most places in North America, having a garden on your front lawn ist verboten! And people generally don't use their frontage because there's no privacy. So it's completely useless and a waste of time (mowing on Saturday mornings suck) and money (to achieve that perfect lawn look one needs to spend on herbicides and sometimes fertilizer). Many of these pesticides are carcinogenic, teratogenic, allergenic, you name it and have been banned in Europe. Over here, they'll stick a little sign in the grass saying not to walk on the grass. It's all so unbelievably dumb.
It's not city planning because it's not usually the city's responsibility. Suburbs are often developed outside of the city limit and belong either to a separate city, the county, the township or unincorporated part of the county/state. In other words, don't blame Chicago for the sprawl in Barrington.
American here. I would NEVER "drive my kid to school". He can take the dang school bus which my taxes already pay for. Back to the video, this guy is right, America centered its infrastructure around the car and now almost all of us have to drive a dang car to get ANYWHERE. It sucks.
Growing up in Portugal was amazing , you could go anywhere on your own. You could even travel the entire country on your own if u wanted without a single car , there is even a event called "The Caminho de Fatima" is a pilgrimage route to the Shrine of Fatima , you can go from any part of the country and on foot.
@@simonjaz1279 yes but what i meant to say is the infrastructure is in place , you dont need to worry about not having pedestrial routes but ye you could do that everywhere but is supported? Dont think so unless you go in high speed roads which is against the law you walk there.
Thanks for the video. It's actually put a lot of what I've seen into context for me. I'm the owner of a hobby, game, and toy store in my home town. I've seen young men who are desperate to get out and join game clubs not able to do so because they don't have transportation. These folks are bored, lonely, and in desperate need of a community. I see now that just providing a safe space for them to meet, talk, and play isn't enough. I will be attending my town hall meetings when possible to see what I can do to help increase transit options.
My family recently moved from Australia to California and my dad was very shocked when his car broke down and told his friend he was going to take the trains. He replied wit
I genuinely think this can help preventing such men for, for example, being sucked into the incel community or in conspiracy theory spaces. I mean, what else are you going to do when you can barely do anything aside from sitting at home all day?
Young Men living in towns in Europe don't even have the option to go to gaming spaces. Their only option is to get wasted. That is why we have the stereotype of the drunken European
I was born in San Diego, CA and lived there for most of my childhood until I moved to New York, NY. San Diego, like most American cities, is filled with car dependent suburbs and conservative car lobbyists. However, NYC has suburbs more similar to most European cities. I really like living in New York, and I wish other cities in the USA would improve their suburbs.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 A lot of blue-voting Americans are still conservatives by dictionary/international definitions. They might call themselves liberal, but they'll certainly clutch their pearls at the idea of having a bus or tram run through their suburb.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 I live in San Diego and every bike lane is met with howls of disapproval. There are a TON of 'conservative car lobbyists' here in San Diego.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Again as the other poster said, just because you vote blue does not make you a "liberal." Dems would be center right if you put them in most European countries.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 th-cam.com/video/hNDgcjVGHIw/w-d-xo.html this video explains conservative-liberals well. Not exactly about cars but still about them.
Latin American suburbs have taken a page out of America, not Europe, but many times with the extra step of becoming closed gate. Some of this is due to geography (sometimes they are in more mountainous regions), but a lot of it is heavy car dependency and heavy crime. I saw this when I went to Guatemala City. All car traffic from these little closed communities is completely stuffs the main roads, which are basically boulevards that double as highways. Even the urban areas are car-infested. The little street where I was staying at was littered with cars and trucks parked on the sidewalk. A very popular attraction in Guatemala City is the new Ciudad Cayala, which is a new town or suburb that is an imitation of European style streets and shopping. As it turns out, walking is very nice. Many of my family who have gone to Europe say how nice the streets are over there, but at the same time while disparage their own Latinos as being very uncivilized,.........and yet they themselves will contribute to that same car traffic. The desire is there, but that may require *gasp* some sacrifice.
Yes, also, building a european-like city takes a lot of money and gov. investment in public transport, public spaces, public hospitals, schools, roads, etc. It's much cheaper to follow the American style and leave people build their own homes in their own little isolated and private comunities.
Spanish colonial settlements built during the 15-1700s were actually shockingly well designed. Made sense, there was literally no good alternative to walking for most people. In the 19th century, European, North and South American cities still looked somewhat similar. In other words, it's not some inevitable result of local culture but was screwed up during the last 70 years.
The bottom line is, suburbs in the US are built around a culture of having your own vehicle while the rest of the world builds around public transportation systems which is more efficient.
Absolutely relatable. Even in Melbourne, Australia we had at least some form of effective public transport. Here in the US it is crazy. My house is right next to a six-lane highway, with a bi-directional “suicide lane” in the center.
The larger cities in United States have public transit New York City ,Boston ,Washington DC , Philly. I’m not surprised the largest cities in Australia have public transportation but how about the outback towns and the outer suburban areas of major Australian cities
As someone, who's lived in the Czech Republic my whole life, and just recently got to experience the US (visiting a friend in Indiana, then going for a roadtrip to New York, through Boston and a stop in Connecticut), I was absolutely SHOCKED by how unnecessarily sprawled out the suburbs are. When we went to visit Chicago and NYC, I imagined these cities to be extremely dense, as the ones in east Asia. I was really surprised, when I found out that the giant high-rises immediately turn into a barely-urban-looking wasteland, just as you leave the city core. The nearest groceries store my friend has to his home is a Kroger's at least 15 minutes far away by car. A lot of Europeans know and love to laugh at Americans about this, but it's a completely different story, when you actually get to experience it. Other than that, from a car enthusiast standpoint, and having driven near to 6000 kms in the states, the roads in Europe are SO MUCH SAFER. In the US, you have no reflective bollards on the side of the highways or roads, making late-night driving very difficult. The mergers are sudden and very dangerous, absolutely NO ONE has an IDEA how to drive on a roundabout, and except for Chicago and NYC, the PT is barely existent. Except for the School Buses, those are ever-present, as they pick up every single child from their homes, since the schools are so extremely far away, they coudn't possibly make it by foot or bike.
Having lived in American suburbs my entire life, including for 4 years on campus at college and 4 years on campus at graduate school, yes - American roads are dangerous as hell for pedestrians and cyclists. 2011 to 2015 I put my car on ice and rode an electric-assist tricycle. Dangerous as hell, since there were no bike paths. However, the roads in the USA ARE incredibly safe BECAUSE they are so spread out. Moreover, and this is EXTREMELY important, the huge positive of American non-dense housing is that you are spaced FAR AWAY from your neighbor. Millions of people, including my brother, have had nothing but horrible experiences with shitty evil neighbors, whether in next door apartment buildings, or in single-family units that are squeezed close together, like my brother suffers now in his single family unit with horrible neighbors on either side. So that is the ONE HUGE benefit of suburban low density: DECENTRALIZATION and BEING FAR from your neighbor.
@@theultimatereductionist7592 Yup, isolation has it's own benefits. And yep, having driven through Napanee, IN, that being a huge place for the Amish, I was surprised how there were basically no bike paths, no sideroad lane, nothing. It's bikes driving next to 18-wheelers. Insane.
@@drakvaclav826 I mean Czech Republic and it’s culture is great, but it’s like 1/4 the size of an average state and population wise is close to a state. It’s really going to be a lot different since USA is huge
@@chad2522 That's true, however - The style of building towns and cities is very different in the states. In Kazachstan, for example, their towns, though being thousands of kilometres apart, are still very congested within. The US towns don't have that, they cover an area 4 times the size of what an average town of the same population would cover in Europe/Asia. This makes walking around kinda difficult.
I am from Germany and travelled all over North America and the video is spot on. The only city that I felt like at home wasn't in the US but Canada, specifically in Montréal. Coffee places, restaurants, shops like literally eeeeeverywhere.
Lmao i would have to walk half a kilometer to a gas station to get anything - and no restaurants or cafes (something people dont really even do here) within a day on horseback
To be fair its not just conservatives , the left , the right and conservatives have a mix of people with different approaches and its not just one political group pushing for or against cars. For example the previous mayor of Zagreb was a leftist and he was pushing for more and more parking lots and parking spaces in the inner parts of Zagreb to allow greater traffic all while depriving the town run electric tram company of funds leading to reduction in trams per line and reduction of bus lines as well and what of those were left were often were pretty bad schedule wise of groups like students who would otherwise frequently use em.
Similar story here in the UK. I live in a suburb of Manchester, the 3rd biggest city in the UK and my house is five miles from the centre. I have shops, clinics, pharmacies, gyms, schools, pubs, parks, many cafés and restaurants etc within walking distance of my house. The housing is a huge mixture of private and state, big and small, old and modern, expensive and 'cheaper', houses and flats (apartments) all close together. I can get a bus from either end of my road to go anywhere local and the fares are capped at £2 for a single journey. I am a 10 minute walk from a tram stop which takes me into the centre of Manchester or Bury at a cost of £4.30 for an all-day pass. I own a car but don't use it much. Petrol is £1.63 a litre (or for Americans - gas is $6.20 a gallon). However, unlike most America suburbs my suburb can be found on maps going back to the 1700s when it used to be a village. So that village had a little centre, was a community and had an identity long before it got swallowed up by Manchester as it grew. This is often the case in London too. In some respects European cities are lots of little villages stuck together. I wonder if this is one reason why so many European suburbs are more self-contained.
London is no different. Shops, night life, parks, schools e.c.t all within walking distance, short tube or rail ride and/or bus ride. Fares are maxed out at £1.65 for an hour of unlimited travel for the bus. Made me so independent compared to the horror in the US, I couldn't imagine living like that 🤮
Its for sure a factor that most suburbs in Europe where bevor own villages and got slowly integratet in the big city who spread out more and more. In the US most suburbs are just createt from not used land and a blank paper. What makes them more like a iland instead of an integral part of the outskirts of the big citys.
it's true for most cities in Poland - whether it's Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow or smaller cities- scheme seems to work same- only the speed of that process differs... City grows as it attacts more and more people. Nearby villages also grow, as some of citizens prefer to leave outside of city and have a closer conntact to nature. As a result distance between city and villages surrounding them are getting smaller and smaller, to a point, where villages are added to city as it's another district. Former village borders become new city border...
It’s so funny. The neighborhood you picked in Leipzig is where my dad lives these days. So odd to see streets I know so well in an Adam Something video. Also great to see it as a positive example. It truly is a very nice and calm neighborhood that is very walkable with green alleys and parks. Lots of nature, rivers and fields are close but it also takes less than 25mins by bike to get to the city center. Leipzig is very underrated and beautiful.
So true!! When I was growing up in suburban USA, I didn't really have any idea of how things could be different. I'm so glad to have been able to raise my kids in Europe and give them the opportunity to go places on their own as they were growing up.
Same here. I recall the most eventful weekend in the suburbs was when the HOA had the whole neighborhood garage sale. Everybody was suddenly out walking around the neighborhood like it was an actual functioning city with businesses and commerce.
Im an 18 yo hispanic guy who has lived in the suburbs for almost 3 years and while I do have great memories living there and meeting new people, I want to give my two cents here: Something that was left out of the video was that suburbs were built for WW2 veterans and families in the early 50s (hence the phrase white flight). Here in the US, redlining has been illegal since 1968 and I have seen a ton of non whites whenever I visit my friend. I mentioned white flight earlier and black flight also exists as well. The number of black people in Texas, Atlanta Georgia, New York state, Illinios, Ohio and Maryland are a few examples of black families moving into the suburbs. Other than that, this video is great and it demonstrates the flaws with US suburbs. Driving 30 to 60 minutes to wherever you want to go isnt good.
The “US Suburb” in this video is Virginia Beach, VA this is my hometown! Its the perfect example of car dependency. To get from my childhood home to the entrance of our neighborhood was a 5 minute drive. After that you’d have to drive at least 10 more minutes to get to any type of services you’d need.
@@Dan_Kanerva dont live in the US simple as that. Its a capitalist paradise for a reason Its not like there a 50/50 chance you are already deep into debt due to Student loan, a 80/20 that you are deep into debt because you just had to have an health problem not covered proberly by the greedy health care system etc...
The implied scenario is, most American families who own a large single-family suburban home will also own 2 or more vehicles. 99.9% of the time they have at least one vehicle. How else could they reasonably get around such a place so hostily designed for pedestrians?
I admit a lot of US suburbs and planned communities are like the one presented in the video. But a lot of suburbs closer to major cities, like Fairfax county, VA, and older communities in the northeast, like the towns around Boston, MA, are closer to the European suburban model-denser, more walkable, more public transit access, less car dependent
@@dhtheghost9412 yeah I try to explain this but people can't believe America has this lol. I moved a bit further out because I like more rural suburbs but my friends live near Boston and they can walk anywhere they want.
You can now pretty much add the argument of ever increasing gas prices as well, that regardless how hard you go against public transit, driving your own car gets more and more expensive and will "scare off/change" more and more people.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 The cost of owning a car is around $10000 a year. Combine that with the fact many families in suburbia need 2 or three cars to get everyone around, and you’ll see how suffocating car centric development is on its citizens
Stockholm syndrome is strange phenomenon, isn't it? American suburbanites are hostages of cars, yet any attempt to free them is met with fierce resistance.
i think it’s important to understand that not all European cities are as well planned as German ones. For example: the UK, Norway, and Poland all have significant sprawl/car-dependent problems
Not everywhere in Europe is this way. Sofia is interesting city that moved from soviet-style car-centric to "modern" car-centric, leading to pleasantly-packed (and not boring) neighbourhoods interconnected with stroads. Within each neighbourhood there are mixed living spaces, with a lot of businesses, schools, etc. In between them is a transportation network surrounded usually by parks. So even when the whole city is full of trees, even when there is usable and extensive public transport system, due to the city geography and its sprawling and roads, it is one of the most polluted cities in Europe. And average 6km commute is ~1:20 by foot, ~1:00 by public transport and ~0:45 by car (excluding the amount of time required to locate a parking space), so both drivers and other commuters are equally unhappy (unless you are pedestrian and your commute passes mostly through a park).
But Sofia has very convenient subway connection nowadays. You could get almost everywhere around the city including to the airport. As I traveled a lite bit around western Europe cities, I see that Sofia actually is not that bad.
@@The_Wanderer_And_His_Shadow Yes, if you are lucky enough to commute from near-the-metro location to another near-the-metro location, you can get in half an hour. But there are only 3 lines and last 1-2km of commute require switching, which require waiting usually 5-10 minutes. 2 switches = 10-20 minutes of waiting. Include 5-10 minutes of walking between station (which is underground) and bus-stop (on the ground) and you get one hour of travel for ~1:20-1:40 *walking*. While metro and buses speed averages around 50-60km/h the total commute speed with waiting times results in 8-10km/h. But with stroads it is similar - 0:40-0:50 minutes of driving during the day, while the same distance you can drive at night (when most traffic lights are off) for 0:15-0:20 minutes or even less. Even driving is stressful and not pleasant. Biking on stroads is a suicide. If you can bike through a park, then it is okay. I live in Netherlands for 5 years now, and I can see the difference. 6km for more than 30 minutes is unthinkable here, and all of it without even drop of fuel, on a regular bike.
The former eastern block is such a mess, because the commie leaders started to copy America to show off wealth. The best examples I know are Czechia and Poland. The only good thing during cold war times was a good, but still slow bus network.
As long as you have a connection to the subway you can reach any part of the city for 50-60 min at most. The public transportation ain’t half bad, actually quite decent. It has improved considerably in the last few years believe it or not. In most cases you can find you daily needs in a 5-10 min walk radius and if you need something from the center it’s 30-40 mins worst time (as long as you have any public transit around at all) unless you live in like idk Bistritsa or Bankya. Although yeah it ain’t perfect and it has lots and lots of issues (as yeah you have to actually switch sometimes a lot, but for what the network has it’s not bad, there’s still a lot that can be done but still), it’s quite pleasant. And the fact that if you walk enough you can go thru lots of architectural designs it feels like you go from one town to another
I am currently living in Belgrade, Serbia. In one mile of walking distance from my building, there are seven parks, four small grocery stores, two big grocery stores, four hairdressers, a dentist, police station (ID, passport and drivers license renewal, car registration) two elementary schools, one gymnasium, two community health centres (one state and one private) one green market and about 10 cafés/restaurants. I can choose to never leave that radius if I want to, and most elderly people living alone do so. And if I want to leave that radius, I have two minutes of walking to the nearest public transportation stop and then about 20 minutes ride to the city centre. By car I need more because buses have their own lanes and I will need to drive more because some streets in city centre are bus only or pedestrian only, and also I will need 20 minutes of searching a parking space. So in general you do not need a car and a lot of people do not have it or they indeed have it but use it so rarely that they forgot where did they park it.
@@radovan2279 i wouldn't say so, it has problems with crowded buses and non-realization of buses but the network is extremely well expanded, belgrade NEEDS metro though
I live in a suburb of Athens in Greece and I have 3 supermarkets, 3 pharmacies, cafes, restaurants butcher, petshop, bus stations and train station and most other things you could need within 5 minute walking distance.
The thing about your european suburbs clips ,is that it's not exclusive to cities. I live in Austria in a village circa 30min away from the neares city with around 30.000 people. Everywhere I go, there is so much life on the properties, some have trees, some have pretty gardens, some even have ponds. It just feels like there are actual people living there. And another thing is, that even the smalles villages with less that a thousand people, have have multistories appartments.
@@derunfassbarebielecki Can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing. Yes, it is because things are closer together, because the planners had the good sense to build them closer together.
@@thomasfisher4833 lol they had much smaller countries to work with. America is larger than Europe things are not gonna be as close to get to as in Europe OBVIOSLY! Its just geographics nothing to do with planning
@@derunfassbarebielecki As opposed to waiting on the train or bus while creepy old guys keep glancing over at you while you wait for the buss, that's late AF again. I'd rather be in the car any day. (Edit: missed a word)
You made me love trains so much, as well as hate cars. Cities were made for pedestrians, not vehicles. Thank you very much for this. Lots of love from Ukraine🇺🇦
I'd still be a bit lost without my car but I have plenty of great opportunities to get around in my city. I live on a canal that's an hour's walk into the centre, I have bus, tram and trainlines too. If I really need to get in quick I can take my car and park it somewhere, but I'd rather not have to do that
@South Bay Baby I hope you aren’t the usual subsequent russian bot, but still I’m gonna reply. First of all, I haven’t even mentioned America. But if you are American, and I’m speaking on behalf of Ukrainians, we are very grateful for all the military and financial aid that you provide to Ukraine. To be honest, I’m studying and working my ass off right now, because I know that in the upcoming future we’re gonna have to repay everything that you’ve lended us right now. We’re never gonna forget your help, and I hope we’ll be best buddies in political, economical and sociological realms. Secondly, I won’t take my words for granted, because when I visited America I seriously noticed the problems with transportation infrastructure. It’s impossible to get around without cars and planes. The railway transport is much cheaper to sustain, it has much higher throughput (in a single tiny train or tram, dozens of people can comfortably travel), and it’s overall much cheaper for passengers. So tell me, isn’t it good for your country? The satisfaction of human needs and comfort. I mean like In Austria you can pay around 800$ for a ticket that lets you travel throughout the whole country for a year. And when we’ll start thinking more about pedestrians, the necessities such as supermarkets, schools, workplace… than it will become much comfortable to move around. I hope I answered your reply or allegation may I say. Anyway, in controversies the veracity is born, so if you have any questions I’ll be happy to discuss))
Thank you for highlighting problem and actually offering a solution, unlike some other channels who just try to criticize evrything without giving any improvement suggestions, maybe to make themselves feel superior. I like that you try to incite change, that's the goal after all.
Things get a bit mixed up here. That German „suburb“ you are showing still belongs to an older, urban part of the city. We also have areas with lots of newly built detached houses („Einfamilienhäuser“) with much less infrastructure, even around smaller cities - however, they are much smaller than in the US.
What you have shown as European suburbs are living zones deep in the cities. Actual European suburbs looks a bit differently and have less convenient stuff around them. There are no apartment buildings and only single family houses, trams are also only present in the more densely populated areas of the city and definitely not in the suburbs. Suburbs of course still have buses. A bit less frequent than deeper in the city, but still you can always count on them. There are always elementary schools relatively close, but for highshool you don't go to what's close but to what has the best profile for you, so you may end up having to get to the other side of the city to your school of choice. (I'm speaking from my polish perspective)
@@LCA1985 the post-communist parts are almost in the middle of the cities. Suburbs only sometimes show some signs of it in the form of the older houses being designed around the same cube base that's not in use for long enough for those houses to have marginal presence in the older parts of the city. I bet suburbs in Germany are different from the center part of the city, similarly as in Poland. Would be nice to get some confirmation from someone living in Germany tho.
@@hory-portier yes I do live in Germany. Of course it is different from the center than the new areas but Germany has a lot of suburbs with family houses, comparable to USA. Thats why the comparisson. In Poland you have much more residential buildings areas like we do have in Spain (Im spaniard). In a nutshell: money gives you family houses and USA has more money so they do have more family houses and cause of this the extension of the towns go ridiculously wide and large.
I'm from that city in the video and even if you go to surrounding villages and suburbs, there are still plenty of apartment buildings (lived in some myself) and there are still plenty of supermarkets too.
I live in London and don’t drive but it’s so easy getting about the city due to the amount of public transport available at all hours of the day. I’ve even walked to central London within 45 minutes
Someone once said "if you want to understand american foreign policy, you need to first understand its domestic policy" i.e. almost 100% individualised addiction/dependence on fossil fuels at virtually every level of daily living. By the way, that 'someone' is me!
Lol that's just an unfair comparison at that point, especially with how interconnected the public transit system is down to having stops for 30k population towns whilst the same town in America would just be straddling on some interstate.
American conservatives think any socialism is Orwellian, but think the tracks of identical suburbs sprawl where everyone buys clothes and other goods from the same stores is freedom. Just yesterday, the people across the street had a party and almost every car in front of the house was a white SUV.
I was recently told by a member of a local city council that there are usually not many people showing up to the meetings or even speaking there. Therefore, if one person talks about a specific topic, there's usually not much attention. As soon as a second person advocates for the same idea, they start to listen. But if a third person brings up the same issue, council members get seriously anxious and afraid to loose votes and therefore will start to act.
My point is, go to town hall meetings, you could be this second or third person! Or even better, bring a friend and be two persons :D
This is what a lot of people forget in the US. Advocacy groups are strong in DC and in NY as well as in media, but they sorely lack representation at the lowest levels of the bureaucracy.
For years in America, I told people that it only takes a few people to do real change at the local level. I could never convince any of them to go with me to town meetings.
@@kitbradley2689 partly because, we must admit, it's boring as f***. But that is where things really happen.
@@ianhomerpura8937 It is the horror of representative democracy. It is incredibly dull and crucially important. Yep.
that's an interesting difference between US and EU, in italy for example you can attend a city council meeting but you can only listen
As someone who has lived in Europe my whole life, that drive around the suburbs was genuinely shocking: It felt more like a G-mod map than a place where people live
Yeah it does like a the Devs spaced out the assets to save on time/cost.
What a ball ache mowing all that lawn.
It really does. Which is why it also feels really isolated.
it´s like a Barrack i think
As a US resident, I have to say you're right. I grew up on the east coast closer to urban areas which were more European style. However, here in California the suburban sprawl is almost legendary. Honestly, a lot of it does look like Gary's Mod! ✌️😸
And the fact that most don’t have real sidewalks makes me nervous... I feel like if you don’t have a car, you’re basically trapped in your own house
I grew up in suburbia and I _hated_ the suburbs. For me, the suburbs meant cookie cutter houses, car dependency, and crappy big-box stores.
Imagine my surprise the first time I went to an European suburb and ... it was really nice! Nice houses, big sidewalks, town centres with lots of cool shops within walking distance, and a tram line with frequent service into the city.
It turns out there's nothing fundamentally wrong with "suburbs", the US and Canada just build them wrong.
I personally like how theres a lot more trees in european suburbs.
Not to mention other great works on positive and negative urbanist works!
US & Canada didn't "build them wrong", North America & Europe are both vastly different for a reason. Why can't people just accept that America can't be exactly like Europe?
@@ShroomsInLocker You can certainly call them 'wrong' when they're worse in basically every conceivable metric.
@@ShroomsInLocker we can and will call them wrong because without a car (and very often with) they're bland, boring, painfully dull and annoyingly hard to move around.
I was in the US a year ago and wanted to get a COVID test in the nearest Walgreens to be allowed on my flight back home. It was about half a mile from my hotel so I just walked there (not that there was a public transit option). The lady on the Walgreens counter pointed to a drive-thru window that was one meter behind her and said that she is only allowed to administer COVID tests in the drive-thru. I was irritated but went round the building to the drive-thru on foot. She said I am not allowed to be in the drive-thru, if I am not in a car. She told me I should get an Uber to drive through the drive-thru. I didn´t have local internet service on my phone, so I spent two hours on a busy road trying to get a cab to drive me through a drive-thru 10 meters behind me. In the end I got a bike-rikshaw that had a street permit. It took 10 minutes and a call to the regional Walgreens manager to confirm if I am allowed to use the drive-thru in a bike-rikshaw with a street permit. In the end she handed me a cotton swab that I had to self-administer - something we could have done very easily in 10 seconds, just insided the Walgreens at the counter. Every bit of this story is true and it has been the very low point of my personal experience with the US.
It's sad that you didn't really have to say it's true. I'm an American and I know it's true.
I couldn't help but chuckle reading this, but honestly this is some surreal stuff. Ugh.
Am in tears reading your story. It was so funny and so sad at the same time. That would be a great clip for standup comedy🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🫢🤣
Thats the most absurb story i have ever heard. I cant find the words. It is just unbelievable. They are so stupid. Im sorry you had to experience this. Im an European I would have gone crazy …
I live on the East Coast of America and I feel the same way. There really is no good public transportation here, especially where I live, and I've said for years that there aren't enough sidewalks, especially between communities and large shopping districts. I don't walk all that much because of the distance, but it would be nice to have the option to walk or at least have a decent public transportation option within the area. It's ridiculous.
This is the reason why in the US when teenagers get their first car or their driver’s license they get extremely hyped and excited.
Teenagers driving is such a wild concept.
@@KaterynaM_UA i know right!? yet in the US it's necessary for people to live an even remotely free life from home
As a 16 year old driver, this is the first time I’ve had an ounce of freedom and I wish it wasn’t like this.
@@Jana-ho9mu now imagine you could've had that freedom at essentially 6 years old. that's middle europe for ya
@@KaterynaM_UA in some European countries a 17 yo can drive completely alone too
I was a exchange student in the US and lived with my family in a small village in rural area. The school was 3 miles away in the middle of nowhere in fields. The school bus was leaving too early leaving me with no choice if I wanted to spend time in the library. Walking 3 miles home was not a big issue. Much bigger issue was to explain to all cars passing by that they don’t have to help me and that I am not a stranger if I simply walk home from the school myself. I was the only one :-(
transit is.
Yeah, US citizens don't understand "walking"
When i visited my great aunt in Sparta, New Jersey. I wen't joggin in the side of a "highway" because there was no road for pedestrians. I lie you not that i got stopped 3 times in 10 minutes and they asked do i need a ride or am i "okay". It was really something new for me. Other thing was that we wen't to central where there was shoprite, wallmart and couple bigger retail stores and lots and LOTS of fast food joints. So me and my sister parked in front of one of these bigger stores and we decided to go try dunkin donuts which was very near, but there was simply no way to walk to it. so we crossed the lawn and some random dude with a pickup-track stopped us and asked wtf are we doing. I have traveled a lot but still this was the biggest cultural shock i have had. :D
Really? I walk 2.7 miles home from school and no cars stop by or ask me anything because children walking home is normal. Maybe not 2.7 miles, but there are still some children who walk a distance.
i used to walk 6km from home to school, but at that time i was already in highschool.
As a kid I never realized how much the planning and arrangement of Vienna benefitted my childhood development, in contrast to other cities. My childhood would've been much worse in quality, if I didn't have the ability to visit friends, go exploring or go play sports on my own. Had I grown up in America, anytime my mom wouldn't be free to drive me somewhere, I'd have missed out on a learning experience. Thx Vienna. :)
As an American, you just described a normal day in my childhood
so jealous haha, growing up in middle of usa kind-of really sucks
The main problem with this type of content on TH-cam is it gives an unbalanced perspective. Yes, much of the US is empty suburbs. But much of the US is also dense and accessible. I've moved 9 times within the US and never had a car, relying on walking and public transit instead. And it's been easy in the places I've lived. You can grow up in the US and go exploring, visit friends, and play sports on your own.
@@meteorical8036 where have you lived lol
@@bunglebutts3163 Mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area
My sister visited a friend in Houston last spring, he was living in the suburbs with his parents while earning 80k.
While he was working at home she wanted to visit the city center.
She was advices to take an Uber but she didn’t like the idea and the cost, so she chose the bus.
Her friends parents were shocked, because the bus was only used by homeless, jobless or very poor people.
She did it anyway and had great time as the busdriver was super nice and happy to have an out of the order customer. He told her where to exit and where to go from there.
Public transport partially even exist at those spaces but nobody uses is for obvious reasons.
After that experience my sister was super confident to not take the Joboffers she had in the US and decided to move back to Europe 😂😂
Yeah america is not a good place for jobs unless your fast tracting to a board member. We pay bare minimum and expect a 140 percent out of you for that. Also even with the low $15 wage you got boomers in their comfy ass jobs whining how thats too much money to give to the peasents. I bet you could actually live life alot better with europian wages since america is addicted to quartly profits at all costs.
That mentality (public transport is for poor people) is deeply engrained in American society sadly.
@@alfrredd yup sad to say think nyc is one of the few who got away with it.
@@thewhitewolf58 NYC is not a good example, public transportation there is old, filthy and full os drugheads. USA has no good examples of good public transportation.
Hahaha, I had a similar experience the first time I traveled to the US: people were shocked I took a bus from Philadelphia into Jersey. But I have to admit, once I crossed the state border the neighbourhoods became quite dodgy and the people on the bus more noisy hahahaha. Well it was a once in a lifetime experience!
it's incredibly uncanny valley to see the american suburb with no pavements. walking is such an integral part of living in europe, that i can't even imagine not walking to school or the bus stop or wherever.
1:43 The part about kids not walking to school or sports by themselves has an even bigger problem. If a parent was to allow their child to do that by themselves, cross roads, etc, there is a possibility in some US states that they could be investigated for child abuse. Repeat "offenders" could find their children being taken from them and placed in state foster care. This happened to the parents of my child's classmate in 2003. It just became a LOT safer all the way around for all of the parents after that to just drive your kids to school or sports.
Most American suburbs have sidewalks for some reason this one doesn’t
I've never seen a suburb without sidewalks. This video is stupid.
@@Astro_Animator well sidewalks are somewhat common. on side roads almost never tho. on main roads the side walk tends to get very skinny and randomly just stop.
You could visit the new England area were I live many suburbs you can walk to your town school. Depending on what part of town you stay in though. That area on the video is a different area. In new England is not a flat area it has alot hills. Alot of the old architecture and homes are very European many of the older settlers wanted to bring the same style. Some areas are very expensive depending on what you can afford. Unfortunately not everyone can afford to buy a house.
As something from Europe I never fully understood the whole thing in American movies of ' there's nothing to do around here'. The way suburbs are portrayed in movies is different after all and I thought my suburb and theirs were comparable. In my suburb, there is an ancient roman burial mound 20 minutes away from me, fields, animals, little pounds, forest, a soccer field, river, old church and cemetary, horses
Grew up in a Belgian town.
15 minutes or less(mostly less, most of this is within 2 kilometers) by bike as a 12 year old got me,
To school. One 4 lane road with 50km/hour limit to cross where cops will be waiting to help people cross during school hours.
A sports center. Wall climbing, 4 football fields, athletics track, basket stuff, etc. Something we used all the damn time.
Park, often used by scouts and such.
Indoor swimming pool, again, something we used often during the summer months. Also the place we went for swimming in school.
2 separate tennis places.
Mini-golf
Skate park.
Mountain bike place where you could jump and everything.
My sport club, I played football locally from age 6 to 16.
Clothing/entertainment stores were on the main road which is your stereotypical middle age market place mostly. 17th century church, pub from the 1800's, etc.
Library
Bowling ally
And probably like 10+ supermarkets/restaurants/butcheries/bakeries, etc. so rather early on I could stay home alone for a few days(with the occasional check up of grandparents and such) and get my own food while going or coming from school and such. My normal route to school that was maybe 3 kilometers I passed like 3 supermarkets and 2 grocery stores.
Growing up in an American suburb seems like a nightmare for somebody that basically grew up independent from a young age.
Look at their demographics and you'll understand
We do have a lot of villages with at least a small portion of "downtown" (old town with walkable infrastructure) here in the Chicago suburbs. Also very fortunate to have decently viable commuter rail (if you're lucky enough to be within walking distance of that train station... most drive to park at it).
Yeah I'm sure the people in those movies (which always precisely portrays reality) having such complaints would be very entertained by a roman burial mound or fields...
@@Londronable "Growing up in an American suburb seems like a nightmare for somebody that basically grew up independent from a young age."
Quick survey for Europeans. The American movie 'Dazed and Confused' is:
a) unbelievable. Nobody would really do that and the police would stop it if they did.
b) Nostalgic fun. Boys will be boys. Am I right?
c) Horrifying. It reminds me of an abusive social system that I put up with as a child.
My family recently moved from Australia to California and my dad was very shocked when his car broke down and told his friend he was going to take the trains. He replied with only poor people take the train and that he's going to get stabbed or something. Its not only the zoning laws and building layout that needs to be changed but also people's mindset.
your dad's friend sounds like someone who would vote for Brian Dahle
It’s not like australia has amazing planning or PT either, Sydney itself is a fascinating example of urban planning hierarchy. The super rich get roads and no PT (so the poors don’t visit), the upper middle class gets nice European style neighborhoods with excellent PT, and the poors get terrible road gridlock and bad PT.
@@wkcia here in San Diego CA we have the same kind of hierarchy. No one questions why we spend millions on landscaping the 6 lane road medians in the north part of the city but still can't even pave some of the roads in the urban core.
@@theholypopechodeii4367 Propbably because all the service workers need to get into the center so the rich guys can be waited upon.
That mindset has been cleverly pushed by the oil and car industry
The idea that even as a 15 year old in America you’d have to get your parents to drive you everywhere if you wanna do anything because you can’t yet would suck so much-
err..
no. You get your driver's license at sixteen and get a car for birthday. Driver's ed is a class in school, like math and physics. And the test is easy enough to guarantee you're passing
@@AxelHoeschen That's best case scenario, drivers ed in a lot of states isn't in school and requires at least $800+ to drop on it, depending on if your parents have that money or have multiple kids its less likely, and if you decide not to driver's ed you'll have to wait an extra two years to get your license in the first place
@@AxelHoeschen And your parents teach you how to drive and this is the reason why Americans are such bad drivers compared to people in Europe. In Europe licensed driving teachers teach people how to drive, so they are better drivers.
@@AxelHoeschenyeah but until you can drive it fucking sucks to be a kid
@@AxelHoeschen who the hell gets a car for their birthday?
I'm from Canada and in my mid 20s I was studying in Europe (Czech Republic). I then decided if I want to go back or stay. One of the deciding factors was the amount of time I spend driving places. In Canada, I'd spend an hour going anywhere (another hour going back), and always had to drive. In Europe, I could walk most places and be there in 10-15 minutes. Plus I could always have a beer with friends anywhere, since I was walking, and also not get fat. Just by doing the math, I realized that by staying in Europe I'd spend a lot more time living and a lot less time driving. And I'm still here 🙂
European here who has been to US. You have given some good points, however my guess is that you live in Prague. Now you are in your 20s, but you will be in your 30s sooner or later and you will probably have a family. Try living in a small oldtown apartment with 2-3 kids. As the school infrastructure is most post-soviet countries are ridiculous you will need a car, no bus will come to take your 1st grade child to school, unless you can afford a private taxi. You will have to take them to school and probably take them back, with all the traffic you will spend more than 1 hour doing that. Most likely you will not have private parking in your oldtownish European place, it will be pain in the butt to find one every time you come back. Now you will not have your backyard either so you will have to take your children out much more. Now what is left for you is to find a house in the new suburbs of Prague. At this point your daily commute will probably become longer than in Canada as the cities are well planned there, while here they are old and chaotic. Soon you will understand that a big backyard, cul-de-sac lifestyle and tons of parking is much easier than all this EU suburb mess :) Personally I love the US way, however I really like Scandinavian cities too, they are very well thought out.
@@tomasgedrimas5475 I just have one question for you (as everything you described wasn't even a problem for me as a child, in the 90s when i lived in Moscow, in a village near Krivoj Rog, and a tiny medieval village in the very center of the Black Forest in Germany):
Why would you need a parking space to bring your kid to school or to pick it up? You just stop your car in front of the school, kick your kid out in front its friends and keep driving. And when you pick your kid up, you also just stop in front of the school where the kids who wait for their parents usually hang around and take it in and keep driving. It takes not even 2 minutes for each and parents do that all the time.
@@olgahein4384 You got it wrong. The main point was not a parking place near school, it was the parking place near your apartment when you come back. Especially when a lot of people work from home now it happens so that you leave your children at daycare/school and come back home. This child picking from school makes huge traffic, especially in the terribly planned soviet neighbourhoods. Sometimes you can spend 10-15 minutes looking for a place to park, Frank highlighted that he used to drive a lot so now he saves time. I am not really into agreeing with that.
@@tomasgedrimas5475 Living in most European cities you don’t need a parking space. In the suburbs, parking lots are generally available, and so is public transport. In my part of Europe parents taking their kids to school and home again isn’t looked upon favourably, by the way. It increases traffic and pollution, besides, parents bringing their children endanger other children.
@@olgahein4384 in cities most schools ask parents to park further away from the main entrance because it gets crowdy around school end time. So simple. Well, if you live in a small town in Europe, most people still use cars, especially if they want to Pick up their small children from school, and they arrive to the school usually at the same time. In the Warsaw Pact- communism times - 35 years before it was easy. Less cars, less parking rules, people were happy with a Soviet Lada. (Which is not even Russian, instead Italian sell).
Living a year in Europe (Budapest to be specific) has made me appreciate how important a well developed infrastructure that gives you quick, accessible and comfortable public transit is.
If only America's cities weren't thousands of years old then our urban planning would surely be better. It's not like every major US city was built from the ground up in the last 200 years. Oh wait.....
@n what are you attempting to say
@@florianschneider3982 common florian name L
200 years is more then enough to make proper infrastructure and cities
@@HelloThere-xx1ct there are plenty of videos out there highlighting that before the car us cities were much like European ones. US cities were a choice not an inevitability. If anything Europe had more excuse to do so rapidly redeveloping/expanding after the ravages of WW2 destroyed many of their cities.
The Netherlands had car focused development like the US until they decided to focus on bike infrastructure and are just 20-40 years ahead of a lot of places. We could all be like that with enough political will.
The U.S. has a lot of older neighborhoods that look like European suburbs, but they are rare and extremely expensive
very true
@@chemicalfrankie1030 and it shouldn’t be that way. Luckily the tide seems to be shifting, but not quickly enough.
This is on the east coast mostly and clustered near major cities (NJ, NY, PA, Virginia, Mass). All of these places have a higher cost of living but average incomes are also higher. My pro tip for affordability would be to look at housing where you could commute to a major city with a transfer. From the transit data I’ve looked at Americans are allergic to transferring.
On the contrary, I’ve only ever seen the European style suburbs, no matter what city
@@chemicalfrankie1030 The implication is that they are expensive because they are rare and desirable.
I was an exchange student in a smaller town in Missouri back in 2010, and one of the dumbest things I experienced was trying to get to my school. I lived about a 4 minute walk away from my school, but I had to get a ride every day to and from school because walking would mean suicide. I had to cross a six-lane road with no way of crossing as a pedestrian, so after trying a few times I would give up. It´s absolutely insane to me that Americans are so car dependent that they can´t even make a single pedestrian crossing anywhere on the six-lane road that literally carved the city in half.
the worst thing is this is a self-inflicted injury. they COULD build their cities in a denser space with ample alternatives to driving but decided that spacing things out and using cars (exclusively) to bridge the gap was preferable...
the luxury of having the extra space tempts the mind into making the error of using it.
I don't even understand why people want these big ass lawns and nothing around. Do my fellow Americans just like... hate being social and want to pretend to have a little fiefdom?
Pesky bee
@@autoteleology I just don’t want to deal with people around me or HOA at my house …… I got to deal with people all day long ( good neighbors are good but it’s not worth the risk of bad neighbors come in or just annoying dogs barking all day and night long ).
Having learned about this over the past year out of professional curiosity (I'm a planner in the UK) it's amazing how almost everything that is wrong in the USA goes back to racism.
The drive to suburbia based on single family homes was not even disguised - it just was segregation.
@@jonarific8504 Yep, American here, it was initially all down to White flight from the cities post WW2 because they wanted to get away from minorities. Thats when you get the freeways being built by the feds to the detriment of local neighborhoods for the sake of racist suburbanites and sprawling hell scapes like LA
As a European who doesn't have a driver's licence and has relied almost exclusively on public transport or biking throughout most of my adult life, it's pretty crazy learning about how things work in America.
For real though, i live in a pretty big Polish city, and i've been going on foot to the nearby towns all the time. The thought of not being able to even leave your house without a car sounds so surreal to me.
getting a drivers license gear is the easiest thing to do in the US though and automatic cars are common
Retard brokie yeah buddy aint nothing but a peanut
@@StewartRoll Do you guys in US suburbs get physically active like walking, or biking? I did it every day and it's 100 meters from my building and i live in suburb area in Europe/Balkans(Serbia/Belgrade suburb Galenika)lemme describe my neighborhood...i walk every day 200 meters to our suburb center and it has: Post office, once we had bank now there are everywhere bankomats(ATM cash-mashine), local Clinic, Apothecary (drugs-shops)3x private and state, local small Library, bookstores 2x, open air grocery market and big supermarket, small markets 3x, drugstores 4x, butcher markets 2x and barbecue, bakery, fish market, Chinese shops 2x, money exchange 3x, local-Caffè 4x with barbecue for order and mini restaurant in some of them, mobile service shop, hairdressers 4x, pc/tv service, car services 2 nearby, ...even hi-teck all stuff mall is like 450 meters from my home 6 minutes walking...huge restaurant with domestic meals right next to highway and my home 950 meters 12 minutes walking...we have one big primary scool in our suburb area and two kindergartens, we have 8 open sport terrains like mixed-ones with mini-football (soccer) and basketball...behind every building we have children's playground and parks with trees and flower mini gardens infront our buildings....Only thing that we lack is parking spots, even we have huge parking lots everone wanna have his car infront of his flat/house, houses have basement garages but many turn them into renting apartments for living (for the poor non-situated families or couples)...
Get a fucking license them
I work in residential development in Florida and when I mention why all the engineering plans never include public transit access or any other way for people to get around either than their cars, I’m met with looks of confusion or demeaning remarks.. thanks for advocating for logic Adam!
mindset.
Bruhhhh
Florida is literally one of the worst offenders in my mind. Never have I ever seen more stroads, strip malls, and empty suburban expanses. I live in Colorado now, and am amazed by the difference that just slightly less pedestrian hostile design makes.
Not taking a bus if I have to take the highway to work.
@@ExistenceUniversity Even if you still use cars, why exclude those other options for everyone else? Even if you don't ride it, it will benefit you for taking multiple drivers off the road.
Once in Florida we wanted to visit a mall with our 2 kids (6 and 8 years), which was so nearby , that we even could see it in the distance. We wanted to enjoy our lifes and just take an enjoyable walk there :) But after after a few hundred meters the sidewalk suddenly ended ! My wife and the kids were terrfiied from the idea of continue walking a few hundred meters on the stroad with the fast and huge vehicles. The end of the story is: we walked back to the motel and drove by car to the mall. :( Thats a very typical story for europeans visiting the USA I guess
Something simmilar happend to me. My first year in the US I tried riding a bike. But it was very difficult. Too many hills so most of the time I had to push the bike. My second year I was only driving but I don't mind it because I love driving.
Pathetic, why won’t a square act like a circle….
You were terrified? Stay in Europe.
@@jeffreyb2135 why
Tried to walk to a an arcade in Us with my kids, was 200m away, did it ones and never again. Was a sidewalk bit needed to cross a major road, it had no crosswalk.
As an exchange student from Switzerland, it’s crazy to see how my dependence on my US-parents has increased. I can‘t go anywhere without asking them. The infrastructure here is so depressing…
Tschau kolleg, missing the sbb much now? 😉
But jokes aside, I've only been to the us once for 5 weeks, but I was horrified by the lack of infrastructure for non-cars, like pedestrian or cyclists. We ended up taking the car for grocery shopping just fre hundred meters away which I would never ever do here. I always walk or take the bike. I really didn't like how heavily we depended on the car!
Ya Its shit crap bull crap and more because as someone who as been in America for all 20years of my life its crap you cant even go get abite to eat without needed a car you want to go to the park car want to go see a movie car want to buy a new tooth brush car its so annoying.
@@celestialtree8602 is biking not an option either?
My bruh you went from an area with the best possible public transports and all, to the exact opposite 🤣
@@celestialtree8602 I couldn't imagine how it must've been if I were to live there when my parents divorced when I was 15... going out of the house brought me so much peace of mind. I hope your financial situation improves so that you can take better advantage of America's features.
Having lived both in Berlin and in rural Germany taught me: yes, a car is nice to have, especially when often travel outside. Even driving is fun for me, I love driving. But being forced to depend on it *sucks*. Berlin's public transport is much easier to deal with than finding an affordable parking spot, and that is not by coïncidence. For me, a car is now a luxury item.
Also, car ownership in Germany is expensive. (Although still cheaper than in other European countries.) Which makes the situation worse for poor people living in rural areas. You have to pay taxes and an insurance, to at least partially cover for road maintenance costs. Car maintenance itself is no joke when something important breaks. And fuel isn't cheap anymore, either, the equivalent of about $8 to $10 per gallon. With energy prices soaring in general, an electric vehicle isn't cheaper than a used fuel-driven car for the first few years of ownership.
Problem in Germany is, public transport anywhere but in big cities is pretty bad and getting worse.
They continuously reduce the amount of bus and train transit, from 15min to 20min to 30min to 1h intervals. When you need to get somewhere it can take hours. And that is if it's not past 10pm, then you can be lucky if anything runs at all.
A car in the USA is just seen as a need like food, clothing, shelter.
And unless your the type to look at videos like this most don't realize there is any other way and really just don't care. You might agree with better options but most probably won't actually do anything.
Why did you spell Coincidence with that Double dotted "i"?
@@LordofExoria Which is why everyone who knows about good urban planning should spread the word!
As someone who was born in Azerbaijan and grew up in Russia, the first time I visited Amsterdam I was blown away by just how comfy the streets are. I mean it was an amazing place in general, but the fact that just being out on the street felt almost like being home has left a lasting impression on me.
But don't walk on the bicycle paths!
@@lakrids-pibe oh yeah, as a tourist I totally got in the way of several bikers before I got used to minding where I step lol
Even as a German with a hometown full of bike lanes my 1 month stay in Den Hague left an Impression on me. You could literally buy a 50€ bike and get around most of the country just with that. Never felt so free.
I felt the exact same way in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and to some degree all across Europe. Russia seemed to have the worst urban planning in the world.
But after moving to the US, I feel like any city in Russia is very walkable and has great potential, even new areas like Parnas or Devyatkino at least have everything you need in walking distance and good transit options compared to even NYC.
The point is to ask just one question "Can you live a full life in this city without a car". Russia can pass that one at least, unlike the US.
@@carbrained that's true. As unwelcoming as Russian streets feel, you can totally live there without a car. I did, and I still don't drive.
Many European suburbs are basically smalltowns with an own town center and the usual smalltown public services, plus a train station of the suburban transit network (S-Bahn, RER, etc) which takes people to the neighboring big city.
Sounds great!
While I was in Finland last year, I noticed how easy it was to get around. Whether it was in city or to another city, I deeply appreciate European transit systems.
And it's only barely good in the Helsinki area. But go 30 kilometers from the city center, and the public transit starts to be very cumbersome. Let alone the rural areas and towns, where the public transit is basically non-existent. Though even the smaller cities are still bike- and walk-friendly, so if you happen to live close to a shop and your workplace, you might get by without a car.
@@rahko_i I was in Oulu, and two years before that I was in Jyväskylä.
But yes, Helsinki is not the best for commuting.
@Fire Line Yeah, well, that's nice to hear. If only we could get our international rail lines in order...
You better never wade even 5km away from the nearest rail backbone, tram line at least. Get close to the brink of town's public transport area - and you may wait up to one hour to swap one bus to another after taking a 15 minutes stroll on the sidewalk in between of two "connecting" bus stops. Like in a large Russian village, basically.
The 'Whitewashing of MLK' is just 1 of 1000000 epic History-Videos of "Some More News". Guy is a Must-Watch for all History-Nerds.
Just wanted to share some fun history about my local community here in the US. I live in Canton, Ohio (a small/medium-sized Industrial-era city). During the white flight eras, the white middle class moved out of Canton and into the suburbs around it. One of these suburbs in particular, North Canton (formerly New Berlin, but WWI anti-German hysteria forced the name change), has grown so much in recent decades that it is officially a city now. North Canton is built on a population that is strictly opposed to any taxes, but now that the city is larger they find that they need taxes to support a larger school system, public safety system, municipal water and sewer systems, and (of course) more roads. On top of that, they've developed into low-lying areas that are prone to flash flooding (our ancestors were smart enough not to develop these areas). Now every year there are North Canton residents moving to even more distant suburbs because they don't want to pay for public services or for flood recovery programs. It is truly a Ponzi scheme, nobody sees it because it happens over the span of decades.
The fun part about this is that no American suburb can actually afford basic maintenence. Every ghetto brings more revenue, but the money these underdeveloped areas are generating goes to the suburbs instead of reinvesting in the underdeveloped districts, because the governments care more about rich white vultures than the working class.
ohio moment
@@asgdhgsfhrfgfd1170 this is well explained, thank you.
This once I am really glad about anti-German sentiment. As a citizen of, well, *old* Berlin, this doesn't sound like a place I'd like to see our name on.
I remember when they built Cardinal homes all over NE Ohio in the 80s. A friend of mine lived in one in N. Canton. I wonder if any of those shitboxes survived the millennium...
"It's almost faster to walk now than to drive."
If I were a mayor, I would take that as a compliment.
Same.
ISN'T THAT WHAT WE WANT?
@@KD10Conqueror Not necessarily...
if it is now faster to walk than to drive because you made it easier to walk, then yes!
However, if you mean it's faster to walk than to drive because you made driving unbearably slow, then no.
@@HighAdmiral in a dense urban environment, you can't really make it easier to walk without making it harder to drive
@@HighAdmiral the lowest speed limits in many residential areas, usually 20 kph (12.4 mph), is still faster than average walking speeds.
@@HighAdmiral But thats what car-centric planning does on its own to a certain degree.
If you compare travelling a certain distance on bike vs in a car between the Netherlands and Houston for example, its faster to take a bike to drive the same distance in Amsterdam as you would by car in Houston.
Car-centric planning is self-defeating and just does not work, cars are only good one for thing and thats being able to travel long distances independently, but if you're willing to let go of the "independently" then Trains can do the same thing but faster and at larger volumes.
I travelled to Germany for a solo vacation when I was 19 and I found it so incredibly convenient that I could walk anywhere I wanted and if it was far I could just use the train (which stations were also easy to walk to) that would cost at most three euros. Coming back home to the US made me start hating using my car all the time and missed walking to the center in 10ish minutes from my temporary home.
As an American whose family had an opportunity to live and work in Europe, my kids definitely enjoy significantly more independence here than they would have in the US. For a good portion of the day, they can function on their own in the center of the city where we live, enjoying plenty of activities after school without ever having to get into a car.
What city if I may ask?
Well, the internet. So, I will say we are in what the OECD might describe as a small sized city of 100,000 in Eastern Europe
@Eri 1 Eurosmart, we don't waste 3+ hours in traffic every day.
even here in the US, kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s in the city had more independence than those in the suburbs. Kids rode public transit to school and everywhere else. Now they are all driven everywhere or their parents face a social backlash, except for the lucky ones who live very near schools and services.
@Eri 1 americuck
I had a friend recently show off his brand new house to me and it was quite a beautiful house to be sure. However, the first thing I asked was where the street lights and side walks were as I knew they had a kid and this was supposed to be a "prestigious" neighborhood. They admitted that they hadn't thought to look at something that basic when they were buying the house and are now kind of stuck with it. In addition to that, there isn't anything anywhere close that the kid can go to other than some pretty basic playgrounds, not even woods to go explore like I did as a kid. I am happy for them if they are happy with those trade offs. I just hate that in America, that isolated, desolate situation is the standard being forced on the vast majority of people rather than it being just a choice. I spent a whole month when I first arrived at this base trying to find a walk-able neighborhood of any description to live in, other than base housing as the waiting list favors families. The best I found was an apartment complex across the street from a typical American strip mall with a grocery store. So the parking lot is twice the size of the strip mall, and the street has 8 lanes not counting turn lanes, no cross walks, and no public transit. I haven't worked up the nerve to try and cross it yet, but wish me luck for when I do because my car had broken down. I miss Pordenone.
Good luck!!! Maybe carry a white flag?
Well man to miss Pordenone actually says it all :)
I was a boi. They were two girls. Can I make IT any more obvious? I am TH-cam's ALPHA MALE. Acknowledge IT, dear lib
If somebody were to propose building a sidewalk in that neighborhood, you can bet that at least one, or more likely, several of the neighbors would oppose it. They'd rather have people walk in the road and risk get running over than to ruin their nice lawn.
This channel made me realise that widening roads only leads to nightmare scenarios.
cosmic 🍀
It doesn't even work in Cities: Skylines with its very basic traffic A.I. Or at least it stops working if too many lanes merge into one.
Also we got alot of people who think they are in the next fast and furious movies.
The solution is to remove roads
"But we need wide roads for our terrible drivers and huge trucks". Why incentivize that madness?
The ending call to action really stood out to me! A few days ago, I went to my very first town hall (I’m 21) & I talked about how my city is not a walkable city & used a lot of the info that Not Just Bikes talks about as a starting point. I was pleasantly surprised that the people clapped but I had people come up to me afterwards wanting to talk about what I had said!! While this isn’t the end of the road for me, I will not stop until the roads in my city are multi use!
I'm all for multi-use roads but for example in Prague many "demands" are turning into borderline extremism and some of the streets already reflexted this. Just not far from my house a street that had wide enough sidewalk, road and tram line running in the middle they widened the sidewalk to the point you could play football there even though not that many people walk there while pushing cars onto the tram line so the moment a tram stops there the whole street jams up completely and people who are stuck in the traffic stare at the empty bike lane and half empty side walk.
Also none of the public transit/bike/walk "activists" understand that not everyone has a luxury of having enough time to use public transportation for everyday stuff.
I moved from the US to Germany 5 years ago and the topics in this video are spot-on and one of the reasons I love living in Germany. Suburbanism is so ingrained in the "American Dream" that the vast majority don't even consider that life could be any different. I'll never forget after I had been living here for a few years already my mom called and asked what I was doing that day and I said I was about to walk to the grocery store - for me a totally mundane errand 20 minutes total there and back. She reacted like I told her I was climbing Mount Everest that afternoon. Then it dawned on me that from our home in the U.S. they really would have to walk minimum 1 hour each way (down a busy highway with no sidewalk) to our nearest grocery store. I wish more people would start to see how we can make our cities work for people and not just cars. Great video!
Yeah, there's just a lot of cultural momentum behind suburbs to the point that living in a big house with a huge lawn and having an SUV or truck to drive everywhere is just part of American identity. I feel like for many Americans this is all they know and they actually LIKE living like this. I spent the whole summer in Europe and frankly find it somewhat depressing being back in the US. The only places in America that could offer any kind of lifestyle even somewhat comparable to Europe are prohibitively expensive and require an income well into the six figures just to barely get by. Americans also can't seem to fathom the idea of raising a family in an apartment or condo. They feel this is something that can only be done in a far-flung suburb in a big 2,000 sqft house. To Americans raising a family within the city in an apartment is for poor people only.
you know my local grocery store is 3 minutes walk from my house in the American suburbs. Lol. I guess it just depends on location. My brother lived in Germany for almost 3 years and hated and never wants to return. I guess it’s all subjective. But at the end of the day, it’s you who picks your poison.
@@rexx9496 nobody cares Rexx
Much of this has to do with European cities being designed before cars were in existence and many in America at the same time or mostly after.
@@rexx9496 that is so true but I hate suburbs and suvs and everything you described I lived in Germany with my German husband until he died at age 48 and I thought life there was easier and more pleasant
I was visiting the USA and walking to the local supermarket in Michigan when suddenly the walkway just ended. I would've had to walk the side of the road. My mother-in-law said she did it once (on a different trip) and was stopped several times to ask if she was okay. Such an incredible difference.
😂 I can’t believe what I’m hearing
Usually people buy a weeks worth of groceries so they don't need to go to the supermarket everyday.
@@simonjaz1279 yea and that tells me that there is something wrong if you need to buy a weeks worth of groceries i mean you can to that in europe to but you always have the option to just walk to your supermarket buy some stuff and go home but in the usa many people just cant do that because they need a car for it
@@たくや-o5g something wrong? Absolutely not. Its how you can have more time to be with people u want to be with or have fun. If you Europeans like wasting time going to the store, fine. But most Americans buy a good amount of groceries and cook at home. It's easier and allows us to do other things. Sorry but nothing wrong with EITHER lifestyle. Thats just you being like Adam and not understanding different cultures and how a majority want to live. I think walking to the store all the time is stupid imo.
Oh, and let me add, MOST in the usa CAN just walk somewhere if they want milk or something because MOST dont live in the suburbs. In urban areas, you are like a 2 minute walk from a CVS or train station or SOMETHING that gives you access. So this statement you made isn't even true unless you live in like Houston texas.
@@simonjaz1279 I think you didn't get my point i wrote European ALSO can buy a weeks worth of groceries i mean it is so obvious so all the thing you just wrote there applies to everyone in Europe to not only that they also have the OPTION to just go to the store and buy things on there own without a car so yea i don't see why USA is better in this regard if you literally have fewer options and pls i am not a USA hater i just say what it is like to life here and there that's it.
When I was a kid and watched American cartoons, I always thought the way estates were drawn was just because it was a cartoony world. The fact they actually look like that was mind blowing to me.
Same! I am from Argentina and it was mind blowing to me to learn that the US does, indeed, look like in cartoons. I was also extremely disappointed that there are just very few cities that look walkable and with life, like New York (which... it's a city that tends to be in a huge chunk of US movies and distorted my perception!)
I am sure the US is beautiful in many other ways, but I wouldn't consider living long term.
Same, I thought it was just lazy design.
Taking the Simpsons for example:
Just copy paste relevant houses in the same neighborhood and later add other set pieces like the tavern or the stores "somewhere else".
I mean technically it's still lazy design, but somehow they managed to make real life like a poorly thought out film set.
Oh damn, the Simpsons where probably a bad example. Considering it's from Matt Groening, it's probably intentional mocking of "individualism" among other things I might not even have noticed yet.
It depends on the subdivision. The decent ones will have multiple styles and colors of houses so that it doesn't look *too* same-y. But there are actually some places where the houses are absolutely *identical*.
Thank you for your video Adam Something.
I recommend Japan too.
I moved from Michigan, US, to Kansai area Japan between Osaka and Kyoto 25 years ago and enjoy life near mountains in a multi-zoned area with homes and 6-floor apt buildings, parks, restaurants, and shops and ride my bicycle everywhere. It’s 5 minutes to the nearest train station and 20 minutes to work. Japan is very livable for me and my family. It looks like we’d be happy in many places in Europe as well.
That sounds awesome I am also from MI and hate having to drive places. So much wasted money on insurance repairs tabs gas etc just to go to work and back
My mother used to live in the little town of Springboro Ohio. The town was incorporated in 1815, long before zoning codes. While her area is in between stroads, it is still very walkable. There are schools, shops, restaurants, churches, a public library, an urgent care centre and a public park, all within easy walking distance and with no need to cross the stroads. It's so sad that newer suburbs can't be built like that anymore.
The comparison here is actually nonsense. A suburb in the USA is compared with a district of Leipzig. But these suburbs with single-family houses on the green field can also be found in every suburb in Europe. There are few options for using public transport as well. The properties are just smaller and the distances shorter, but everyone drives by car.
cant have shit in ohio bruh
So glad someone mentioned this. I appreciate what he is saying, but what he is showing is not all US suburbs. Not even most around where I live. The only time you see the stuff he is showing is in Allotments (which I agree suck and need to fall in a hole), which have to be built in the middle of no where in order to get that yard space. He needs to compare a US suburb that is actually within or immediately adjacent to a city. It looks a heck of a lot more like the European one.
@@spectilia I agree. My town is a 32 minute Amtrak train ride to NYC and it's wonderful. It has trees, sidewalks, interesting buildings that all vary, the roads are small, the downtown is quite nice, and everything is pretty walkable and it has ample park space. The only downside really is having to drive to the nearest Trader Joe's since it's 5 minutes away from my apartment and on a busy highway. Other than that, everything I could want I could just walk. A lot of towns in the northeast are like this, especially old suburbs
@@spectilia Not necessarily; when I was young, my family lived in Centerville, Ohio, a suburb within the greater Dayton area and a few miles from Springboro, but newer. There were literally only single-family houses with cookie-cutter lawns, in blocks surrounded by ugly stroads. Going anywhere required a car. Springboro and Centerville, two neighbourhoods so close to each other, were in many ways worlds apart.
The sad thing is that even in my mom's area of Springboro that is so walkable, few people actually walked. Everyone hopped in their cars even to go just a block or two. Nice for me because I could walk everywhere in peace and quiet, but sad that so few took advantage of the lovely neighbourhood they lived in.
I'm Spanish and one thing I love about towns and cities here is that pretty much you don't need to use the car every day. You can just walk, or take public transport (works really well in cities) and you don't have to spend a lot of time driving. I love driving, it's relaxing for me, but less necessary driving means less money to spend on fuel and less pollution you're pumping to the atmosphere
And most importantly, we have bars
all those apartment blocks that everyone loves like a cockroaches, lissen all neighbours , if they re in a discussion, having sex or showering , it’s gross , I live in Europe too and I hate live in a flat.
@@AlexiAtlante That's a you-problem.
@@AlexiAtlante Consider not living in a shit flat with walls of paper
@@AlexiAtlante only if the building is poor quality as is often the case in North America.
Make no mistake, there are a lot of nonfunctional suburbs in Europe too.
I've lived in both Sweden and Finland, and some suburbs here are _theoretically_ reachable by transit, but built so far away from all relevant centers that you are basically stuck there if you don't have a car. It does not help if you have a metro/commuter rail line within a 15 minute walk if the metro ride to the city takes 40 minutes on top of that.
I think I have been to one of those in Stockholm. The problem is that the city has far too much land for the number of people. So they built their suburbs a 10 minute train ride away from the center. These suburbs have basic groceries but for anything you need to go to Stockholm center. Here (in NL) a 10 minute train ride would be a different city, with its own centers, shopping malls ect. E.g. Arnhem to Nijmegen (150k and 175k people cities) is a 12 minute Intercity ride and there is a village in between (Elst, approx. 20k people).
The UK has a lot of car-centric suburbs and even cities as well, especially as you get further away from London.
Lol I live in Tallahassee, Florida, and that's the time it takes me to get to university everyday with the bus. I feel like most Americans would not be shocked at all by a 40min or 1hr commuting time or so, car or not.
Don't forget one important factor - population density. We have quite a lot less people here and sadly it's impossible to make proper public transport for a tiny suburb. At that point it's more environmental that people living there use cars instead of empty busses driving through the suburbs
That's just plain wrong what you are saying about Stockholm. I live here and nowhere in Stockholm or it's suburbs are you stuck without a car like in the U.S. and nowhere are you 40 min away by train to a "relevant center". Of course there sometimes are distances to travel like in any major city but you make it sound like there's a problem that I really do not think exist the way you put it.
As a Brazilian, American suburbs have never made any sense to me. Here, most of the most expensive properties are the ones located downtown, where you have schools, hospitals, supermarkets and, most importantly, your workplace, close to you and thus it's far more practical. In most cities, the distance from downtown is inversely proportional to the property's cost, since nobody wants to have to waste hours daily to go to work, school, supermarket, etc... Of course, there are exceptions to this, mainly some rich neighborhoods that are walled off and have their own private security companies to take care for them, but this is mostly due to Brazil being a fucking criminal hellhole. Apartments in big cities are valued for the same reason, they do provide some extra protection against burglars, and no, we're not retarded to have those fire ladders outside the window.
In America, most suburbs have schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and workplaces that are close to home. The proximity to such amenities is the driving force in buying a home.
The maker of this video and many of the people in the comments seem to be confusing rural, suburban and urban.
@@CoryEvans I see, thanks for the clarification.
@@CoryEvans yeah this guy is well known for not understanding what a 85% of Americans go through. Most Americans live in an urban environment where most of this stuff is fairly close (relatively speaking).
That's how most cities around the world and throughout history are: the upper middle class lives near downtown where the most shops and jobs are, and the working class and poor live in the periphery. A few rich people live in remote mansions somewhere, but only a few. That's inverted in the US for several reasons. Ever since the 1700s there has been an ideal of a large country house since the US has so much space compared to Europe. Religious zealots condemn cities as centers of sin and low morals. Large cities like New York were industrial, with polluting factories in lower Manhattan. Poor workers lived near the factories because they couldn't afford to live elsewhere and couldn't walk from elsewhere. Rich people lived in the opposite half of town. When people go the chance to move away from those polluting factories and overcrowded tenements, they did, and often they moved to a small country house and retained a lifelong anti-city attitude.
Then there's chattel slavery. Many whites wanted to live in areas without blacks, non-WASP minorities, or people poorer than themselves. They equated all those problems with inner cities. In the 1950s the Civil Rights Act outlawed "separate but equal" (i.e., apartheid), and a Supreme Court decision mandated school integration -- busing students from segregated neighborhoods to integrated schools. White families moved outside the city boundaries to suburban school districts, where they couldn't be bused across school-district boundaries. That was right when suburban greenfield tract housing and freeways were being heavily built, so you could get one if you had the money. It's the American Dream to live in a suburban house, many thought. The greenfield developments and freeways were subsidized by government, so their price is artificially low, and city dwellers subsidize their suburban counterparts.
@@simonjaz1279 it’s far enough that walking is still not practical and the sprawl is still way to bad for transit so it’s still car dependent. In a suburb I lived in 25mi(40km) outside of Detroit .As a teenager I had to bike 30 minutes through the suburban maze , through a dirt trail , then cross a 55mph (90km/h) busy rural road to get to a cvs (a convenience store and pharmacy) and bike 45 minutes 4 mi (6.4km) to a nearest grocery store where 60% of the route isn’t even paved with sidewalks.
There's a show thats been popular in Japan for ages but has recently gained popularity overseas called hajimete no otsukai. It's a show where young kids (like real young kids sometimes just 2 or 3 years old) are sent to do their first errand by themselves. Usually just buying something from the super market or something like that. It's kind of incredible watching that show and thinking about how it could ever be implemented in America, the kids would just get hit by a car instantly. The show does have people observing to make sure the kid is safe but 99% of the time it isn't necessary. Everything is so accessible and in walking distance there's not much concern. The kids also all know the way already because they're used to walking with their parents to go to the store and stuff. Considering how much time kids in America spend staring at the back of the front seats I imagine far fewer would be able to do the same. It's just such a shame that kids in America have had their freedom/independence significantly reduced for the past 70 years or so.
Very important point - the car-centric lifestyle can and does also reduce freedom.
That show is quite funny and cute! Also very relatable. I live in switzerland and growing up in a suburb in the 90ies, we'd just go out and play in the neighbourhood and nearby fields and forest. Even as 5 year olds and younger. Our mum would just whistle really loud if we had to come home.
The idea that many american kids could never go anywhere without their parents bringing them and picking them up again (and thus also knowing exactly where they are at all times) is horribly restricting.
You mean THIS show, right? (snicker, giggle)
Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends! - SNL
th-cam.com/video/VhGTtWsW9F8/w-d-xo.html
in my suburb in germany no kid would ever be hit by a car or anything
Years ago I spent 3 months cycling around Japan. I started in Tokyo, headed South West, and cycled hundreds of miles. Every day was wonderful. One memory is cycling through quite a large city at about 9'o'clock at night. Not that many people around. I passed a bus stop, where just one person was waiting - a girl of about 10years with a violin case. All on her own, probably headed back home after a music lesson. I was amazed and very impressed. This, and many other things, helped me realise what a nice safe environment Japan is. I wish it could be like this everywhere around the world. I've often wondered if Heaven is simply a place where people are nice to each other, with no anger, negativity or ill intent.
I would like to note that in a U.S. suburb, the school runs school buses to get children to school. One big difference I noticed were the lack of sidewalks in the American suburb you showed. It's pretty hostile to pedestrians and the disabled.
yup
His video isn’t indicative of most us suburbs, most of them look very similar to the European suburbs, and they definitely have sidewalks
I always find that a bit nuts when you see the amount of dedicated school bus infrastructure to make that work. Meanwhile in most of the rest of the world kids just walk or cycle to school.
I had to catch the bus at like 6:30AM because I was the on the first stop for school which started around 7:50AM. Everything is such a disaster and any attempt to change anything is labeled as communism. Going to seriously consider moving abroad when I have saved up enough
@@6-4crusader55 That's complete BS and you know it.
When I migrated to the US, I went out for a walk. I was intercepted by an astonished 4 year old child whose dad came after her, she was shouting "Why are you walking? Are you poor too?" Very embarrassing for everyone, but it did make me ask a question as everyone I ever came across walking was an immigrant. We had a car. But we wanted to walk. This was an irregular thing for folks, but back in Europe I walked everywhere and sometimes cycled. Very difficult here to get around without a car.
hahahaha bro, do what I did and move back! 👍
What decades of brainwashing by oil and auto lobbyists does to several generations.
What nightmare land did you go to? People walk in most places and no one says anything about it.
@@InfernosReaper the majority of the country
@@andrewdiaz3529 only a nobody walks in LA
I’m an American and I love cars… but I also love sustainability and sensible living spaces where people can easily access the things they want and need. Zoning definitely need to be fixed over here. When I’m at our apartment with my youngest son, we live in a suburban area where you have to walk at least 3 miles if you want to access the city bus. And let’s not talk about the building materials used to make this place. Thinnest windows, thinnest walls.. you hear the neighbor kid tumble down the halls. I think I just wrote a song with that last comment.
Thanks for showing me that the European suburb I grew up in wasn't actually that bad. It was boring as a teen and I think it was a bad decision from an urban planning perspective but at least we have a decent bus connection there and the suburb itself is walkable aka escapable without a car. And it's not a mind numbing wasteland of copy paste houses.
the united states is exactly like the suburb in this video and its literal hell on earth
I still remember when me and my (Canadian) friend were visiting another friend who lived in a Florida suburb. While he was at work one day, we decided to go for a walk and look for some food.
Well that was a mistake. Walking in 36 degree heat for like 1 hours, all we finally managed to find was a gas station. It was honestly pretty horrible!
Never go to Florida in summer, go in February. I visit family in key Largo in winter. Even they leave by summer. :)
That temperature is miserable either in Celsius or Fahrenheit
My father (white European) got stoped by a police patrol once while he was visiting the US. He got stopped simply because he was walking trough a Suburb. When they realised he was European they immeately changed their behaviour because they apparently think that there are only two reasons why people would walk in such an area: They're either poor (and this more likely to be in conflict with the law, e.g. suspects) or from some country of crazy people who like to walk everywhere (Canadaians, Europeans, Asians, Californians etc.).
@@FernandoHernandez-jw4yy This is normal. If someone sees "a strange man" wandering around their home, they report it and police are _required_ to respond. My friend has a shooting range on his rural 15 acres and every time he's _legally_ shooting, the neighbors call and deputies come, hang out, chat a bit, then leave. It has nothing to do with walking. Also Recently, I was teaching a friend to drive stick in an empty carpark. The police questioned us, then just watched us for 30 minutes. Maybe thought we were there to rob the place. ?
@@nunya___ Nothing "normal" in that lol
As someone who doesn’t live in America or Europe, I find this really interesting
Do you call Australia home?
@@bababababababa6124 how is she lucky? She lives in India
@@bababababababa6124 Dude praise India for everything you want, but public transport? Bro...
@n shut up ive seen your alts saying the same thing
@@bababababababa6124 my brother in christ do you even know what you are talkin' about?
My girlfriend and I like to watch this show, "Property Brothers". Oftentimes, she says how beautiful those suburban areas they show there are. I try to tell her that there is literally nothing but huge houses for miles and miles. No shops, no cafés, no restaurants, no parks, no public pools - everything is an hour-long car ride away. She doesn't quite believe it. Because, you know, that would be crazy...
As a European, the lack of any sidewalks in the first few US Suburb Clips you showed is really disturbing and weird to me.
@Ostia Hermes dude posted cringe
@Ostia Hermes We dont, but the alternative is WW3 so ye...
@Ostia Hermes back at ya
As an American, it was disturbing to me too
@Ostia Hermes As an American it disturbs me that anyone would think the USA or UK or a monarchy is a good idea. If anti-globalists are allowed to be Separatists, then anti-nationalists & anti-monarchists are allowed to be Separatists. But rightards VIOLENTLY SUPPRESS and ARREST antimonarchists/separatists in the UK for speaking out against their worthless unnecessary childish freeloading monarchy.
I’m from Montreal and There’s a pretty big push for less car dependency in the city but also some suburbs like Laval who recently changed their zoning code to increase density and invest in public transit alongside smaller towns like Granby. We’re heading in the good direction and I hope places in the us outside of big cities will get a piece of that sweet sweet pie
As someone who lives in Laval im ever so grateful for the fact they put a bus stop literally 3 minutes from my house, i live in the suburbs since that's what laval is mostly anyway, and gosh being able to walk somewhere instead of taking the car is amazing, We're headed in a good direction and im grateful, and as silly as it is, im happy they have parkings outside of Metros for some places, a car in Montreal is asking for 4 hours of parking search of 10 an hour private parking xD But i hope eventually those parkings outside of the metros arent needed since everyone can effeceintly take the bus. and we need the busses to have card readers, i never carry change anymore and it's a problem when taking the Bus anywhere
As someone who lives in Montreal, I will be more than overjoyed when the REM opens up, as I always preferred PT over cars when I was little, as well as the crappy car dependent regions that are over reliant on cars that finally get connected to PT
@@geographynerd7839 oh yeah same! The REM will change Mtl like the metro did Imo at least we can hope so
The Frenchies got it right! :D
@@TheoEvian We actually have bike lanes that are not just gutters( unfortunately they are present in the suburbs)
I live in the SeaTac area of Washington State, and I remodel residential buildings.
Here I've noticed more European-style suburbs than the desolate suburbs of other more recently developed areas (Covington).
I consider myself lucky now.
Us pacific northwesterners owe a lot to those mountains. Us vancouverites have the 4th highest population density in North America and a metro that’s extensive for a city our size. We do build up in North America, when mountains and oceans physically prevent us from going further out
@@alc3biades262 It really has been satisfying to watch our passenger-train and trolley system grow here, and from what I remember of my time in Vancouver it was very reminiscent of Seattle. Too bad we're still bogged down by car traffic.
@@alc3biades262 now if Vancouver could get rid of zoning laws for singlw detached homes it would be a game changer for not just the city for Canada
How do you like living in that area? I live in Tacoma right now but wanting to move up closer to Seattle and the airport. Any recommendations for areas to live in?
@@MrAlen6e it's not like amending the Constitution or anything, it's the local governments who can do it whenever they want to.
I don't know how to get the idea that I don't want suburbs where people are literally trapped in their houses and unable to walk anywhere heard. I mean, you can make any suburb nice by adding sidewalks, a town square, a transit system. I live in Evanston which is a suburb of Chicago. But it's connected by the train, it has a town square, everything is walkable and bikable. I'm sure it's still not as convenient as Europe, but it's pretty awesome, there's even a bike path by lake Michigan. However this is not the most expensive place to live in.
Evanston is old, it was probably built around the turn of the century.
Just because a suburb is in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean there's no place to walk to. A hiking path would always be nice, especially if you can walk there, by the sidewalk. These places seem to be built so gas companies can make money. Built for cars, not people.
I just don't understand how living without sidewalks became a thing. It's completely unsafe. And just the exercise of going for walks for fun is forbidden from you. It seems impossible to me.
There's this weird idea that people in the suburbs want it that way and they're "uppity". Some suburbs which are more inconvenient because the houses are bigger are actually more expensive. Yet they have no sidewalks.
To me though, suburbs without sidewalks seem like a suburb of the trailer parks, not the cities. I believe in Jamaica you would call them Shantytowns.
But one of the horrible things about democracy is that everything is blamed on you because it's assumed that everyone decided this together, when in fact, people had no choice but to move to places without sidewalks really, that was what was available. I mean, I would rather be dead than live in a place like that.
People really have very little idea how to appeal to government to do what they want, and suburbs without sidewalks are a result of corporations skirting the law-- legally businesses have to have sidewalks, but not houses.
"probably build around the turn of the century"
Which one?
@Anna-Flora is right. I am from the western US, but lived in neighborhoods in Greater Boston (e.g., Somerville, East Arlington) that were pretty walkable and there was a reasonable and reliable transit system. In other places I lived, like Tucson, demand a car. I'd had to take the bus when my car was in the shop. Even though the bus was scheduled once every two hours, it might not even show up, and my route only ran from 7am-7pm. Try standing in the AZ sun wondering if the bus will even show up.
The difference was the Boston neighborhoods were built before the widespread introduction of cars, the western ones were all designed with private cars as an assumption.
I'm now in Italy, and our car is used only for emergencies and to take weekend trips. I kind of miss having a bit more bucolic space, but given the choice, higher density neighborhoods that aren't purely residential are demonstrably better.
But it looks really. Nice in Desperate Housewives.
Evanston is a classic streetcar suburb, combining the better aspects of city and suburb. Not only does Evanston have Northwestern University and Lake Michigan, it also has sidewalks, and a subway/commuter rail in the Purple Line, running south back into Chicago. Great town..
Chicago has great suburbs, I'm in Elgin we have sidewalks, a private park with tennis and basketball courts, and many local owned shops in walking distance ( no one does though cause well, we like driving lol) Also walking distance to middle and elementary school but they also have bus drivers which is something else this guy didn't really mention mommy and daddy don't have to drive most kids.
European suburbs are much better for the environment too
@@aturchomicz821 Which is not possible in central Europe because space does not grow on trees.
If you believe this person's biased propaganda, then it would seem that way. If you consider reality, personal freedoms & privacy, & other vast differences between the US & Europe, then you'd see it's inaccurate & more complex.
@@Simplicitywins i live in europe.
We have as much if not even more freesom than the us without having surburbs that look like gm_construct
@@flow185 What's your frame of reference on what the ACTUAL standard suburb looks like in the US, the advantages, or the cultural differences that cause many to prefer one vs the other? If it's this video, then it's too inaccurate to form a realistic perspective. As for freedoms, what freedoms do you believe Europe has upheld better? I have seen zero evidence of that being true, but I'm open to the knowledge & experience of others. I fully recognize & appreciate that Europe has done plenty of things better than the US, but both lead the way in plenty of ways. I believe Europe & the US can learn a lot from each other. That would be more clear if there were less propaganda.
@@Simplicitywins My frame of reference isn't just *this* video, it's lots of similiar videos as well.
Now, you were the first person to mention freedoms and cultural differences and whatnot, so really I think the onus is one you to provide some examples. Anyway, here's a few off the top of my head.
Freedom to select from whatever means of transport you prefer. (Freedom to spend your hard earned cash on things besides a car). Freedom to get some regular exercise (Americans could do with some more of that). Freedom to get to places quickly. Freedom to afford a house (denser housing -> more housing -> cheaper housing)(generally speaking)(Considering how much land the US has, it's a minor miracle they've managed to have less available housing than Europe.)
As for privacy: generally, our houses aren't made of glass (or I wouldn't be throwing stones) so you can do whatever you want inside your own property. Perhaps you can't play a private game of baseball on your massive lawn, although I doubt that you do that frequently enough to require one. Probably you could just rent a pitch somewhere. That being said, big lawns do exist in Europe, but they're expensive. This goes back to my "freedom to own a house" statement earlier. You can 100% get what you get in American suburbs, in Europe. You just have to be rich enough. (And if you aren't rich enough, shoulda used a little bit more elbow grease eh? Lazy freeloader wants the government to subsidise his lawn.)
Thinking about it, if you want the American suburb experience, you could probably just live somewhere rural in Europe. Big lawns and privacy etc., but it still takes about as long to get to the city centre. (Because there's way less traffic).
Finally, cultural differences. I don't give two hoots about culture. What's good is good, no matter where you're from.
I've lived in southern Poland my whole life and the idea of American suburbs literally scares me. I mean, it all looks like some kind of a creepy backrooms space! In Europe, when you walk through the suburbs, you see life; the houses are varied and I'd say more "lively". In the US there's so much empty space... I could never live there!
It depends in what metropolitan area the suburb is for example NYC suburbs in NEw Jersey are very diverse and you have everything close by
@@tomhoedt6467 yes I agree, sorry if I overgeneralized the American suburbs. I've never actually been to the US
Scary😂😂😂😂 you guys are literally going to get invaded by Russia and soon. Wtf are you talking about lol scary 😂😂😂😂 bro you better wake up and fast!!! If Russia would be that close to a U.S suburb like they are to your country the world would have ended already we don’t play those pretend games here.
@@TheLatinoExplorer I don’t think so Poland is part of EU and NATO
Scares you…. What a drip
As someone who bikes to school every day, I'm incredibly jealous of communities with consistant bike lanes. It would be so nice to be able to bike to school without almost getting hit by a car every time lol
It's really not a standard in germany at all yet. there are some pioneer cities like shown. But where I live, I would not let children younger than 14 ride anywhere through the city by bicycle. It's so dangerous.
Yea, as the person above said, many suburbs dont have bike lanes. As somebody who lives in polish suburb, while there are some bike lanes, they dont help that much as they cut out fairly quickly. Similiar thing in other towns i have been to, people here usually ride on bike either slowly on sidewalk (if not busy) or between main road and sidewalk. So yea, it would definitely be nice to be able to get around without making other participants in street life annoyed while doing it safely.
...And then, there is Netherlands, Lmao. If you will google map of Europe with bike pathes included, Whole country will get colored.
@@JacobG4lant But Holland still has fewer bike paths than USA :)
@@RTXpl first of all, its Netherlands, Holand is just a small part of Netherlands but i suppose you are just American so i cant expect too much.
Now, US is much much bigger, obviously they will have more bike lanes (duh), but if you will count by density of bike lanes (in which usually amount of streets, railways etc is measured in) Netherlands is unquestionable winner.
@@JacobG4lant than, according to Cambridge dictionary “Holland” is acceptable name for Kingdom of Netherlands but by your nick I suppose you are Polak Biedak Cebulak so i expected that “Polak nie rozumie co się dookoła niego dzieje”
Now, Netherlands are significantly smaller than average US State, But if you count by density of roads NL has much more kilometers of highways per 1000km2 then America so they had built big highways system and then they add Bike paths. Commuting in Netherlands focuses around cars and driving to neighbor city on wide roads just like in US,
I've been considering moving to Europe for a while now. I think I will probably choose the Netherlands because I love so much about it.
Great choice
Its a great place but from what ive heard it gets pretty expensive so hopefully you can get a good job, otherwise it might get tough
Really makes me appreciate my home country Denmark. Even the smaller towns here that are part of bigger cities has great public transport so you can live almost anywhere and still have great access to stores, movie theaters, parks etc.
I bet y’all also don’t have as many homeless people who defecate in the streets too. Sometimes there’s a good reason for not wanting certain people to be able to travel where you live, Bc it’s a two way street. You can get to the city, but they can get to the suburb.
@@blankface5052 Oh yeah we don't deal with that at all. We have such a little percent of homelessness (5.800 out of a population of 5.800.000) and out of those, half of them actually lives in 'hostels' that we offer. And for the rest we offer them a lot of help. We have a homeless magazine called "Hus Forbi" which they can sell as a job and earn a a good amount of money and since health care is accessible to anyone, police will do regular check-ups on the homeless and if in need bring them for a check-up.
Is Denmark even real?
in Switzerland, little pre-school kids go to kindergarten on their own, or in small groups. it's organized and parents and teachers stay in close contact over the phone but it was still unbelievable for me to see that in the beginning. kids are trained how to cross the street at a pedestrian crossing, also there are underground passages around schools. it's sometimes really amusing to watch the little people walking slowly through the street, stopping for a minute because they see a cat, or having to pick up every pretty leave fallen from a tree. or standing at a crossing until some car arrives and gives them the way, the driver laughing and cheering the little one. I once saw a little man walking alone and crying and the teacher was standing at the door of the kindergarten supporting him from a distance, come on you can do it. incredible
keep in mind that Switzerland is a white supremacist country. a few slashed throat-s as cultural enrichment and you can forget about all that.
💪
I know, i spent 6 months in Lausanne and i was shocked to see kids so small go to school alone, but it's very safe, cars are driving 10 km per hour nearby, everyone respects the safety laws
I traveled nearly all states in the US. And it’s true, 90% of suburbs look similar from the way they are designed. I also talked to some locals and some told me they even need to put their dog 🐕 into their cars to drive to the next park / public green area were they can walk the dog 😅
Also most can not just go to a pub at night or bakery in the morning for fresh bread without taking the car 😮
And what I found really weird is that some residential areas were gated. Especially in Florida. Never seen that here in Europe where you can actually go everywhere.
There are some gated places in London. Wouldn't ya know - UK, the eternal outlier.
There are a few gated neighborhoods in Missouri too
@@cathjj840 😆😆 true. But I googled. There are also some in Munich. Didn’t know that 🤓 but it’s really something very special here.
Actually there are a sort of gated communities, at least in Czechia. They are basically a certain type of what we call "zahrádkářská kolonie" (gardening colony), which is basically a whole neighbourhood made just of gardens which are mostly owned by people living in flats who couldn't otherwise own a garden. But sometimes people live there, sometimes in kind of temporary conditions but quite often they even build houses. And some of such "colonies" where lots of people actually live are gated and have some kind of special self-governance and regulations. But from what I know, they are an exact opposite of american gated neighbourhoods. They seem to be more of a place for people seeking some kind of alternative livestyle or outhright recluse, not a safe haven for rich people worried about meeting some poor people.
@@lukasprazak7362 Same we have in Germany. We call it Schrebergärten. But they are usually not gated. You can go inside. At least those I know about in my city.
As an american, I do agree that you do need a car to go most places and the public transportation is very underdeveloped as a whole. However, I also wanted to point out that the quality of public transportation does very greatly depending on what state you live in and even what town. I have lived in Iowa and Massachusetts and I have had very good experiences with being able to walk anywhere I need to be (more so in Massachusetts). Also I did not even know that there are states that dont require sidewalks to be built next to roads until I saw a video that talked about how bad Florida's walkability is. From my experience, sidewalks are everywhere in Iowa, Massachusetts, and a lot of the states surrounding Iowa. If you live in a very rural area you get the worst of it though because there may be crop fields separating your house from the nearest convenience store for several miles. I will also say, the major cities and areas near the east coast are very walkable and have good public transportation in general. DC and NYC are prime examples of America being able to have good public transportation.
American Suburbs always feel like liminal spaces to me, just so devoid of life. And I unfortunately live in one of them, so its not just an outside perspective.
American suburbs are liminal spaces. Other than your home its just a transitionary space with nothing for people. Walking around in a modern US suburb (one built say after 1990, and the worst are after 2000) is an uncanny experience. You are supposed to be in a community, but the first thing you notice is that very few, and perhaps no people will be around. Almost like you came across an abandoned city or something.
As a kid I didn't realize that some of those extremely polished looking suburbs with identical house after house that you see on American TV are like, real, normal places in the US. It's kind of funny. I always liked the one on Malcolm in the Middle though, but I've always been a sucker for large trees on residential streets.
@@Lukas-bg4yn The one in Malcom in the middle would be like as suburban neighborhood built prior to like 1970 in California (which the actual neighborhood it was shot in). The ones built after the 1990s are much more of the huge liminal feeling places. The ones built in the 2000s are full blown uncanny.
That's what I hate about American front yards. The lawns are supposed to look like lush pastures (at least that's what they were initially invented to mimic for mansions and palaces). But your mind can immediately tell that you would NEVER find any person do any activity in their yard or let their animals graze in that mandated strip of setback.
I guess I'm happy to live in a "single family housing" style neighborhood where half of the front yards are left to grow wild. You still know that the owners choose to not spend time there, but at least it's inviting looking enough that you know that you _could_ spend time there. And the many plants give you something to look at.
I live in an European suburb and it is really amazing. You pretty much have everything from stores to schools, cafes to go out to, playgrounds for kids, walkable areas such as sidewalks and there is also a small park. US suburb looks more like a map in some video game than a place people actually live in. Also if I want to go to a bigger city, aside from car, I can also take a bus or even a train since most European suburbs also have a train and bus station.
The idea that American kid don't play with each other is such bs that you have to be really styoopi to believe
Amerian kids play with each other and get together just fine.
Nobody here gives a fak about or misses public transport
I promise you.
@@larrybuchannan186 I didn't say that American kids don't play with each other, I just talked about stuff that you have in an European suburb. Also when it comes to public transport, you guys would appreciate it more if only it was done in a better and more efficient way.
So this is not what alot of people like though. I live in a suburb...I dont want it to be a place for people to come hang out or go to school near my place. When you move closer to many us cities the suburbs seem more European in nature (especially in the older cities like boston). I promise there are places you can go that make it a copy paste of cluttered European suburbs. But there are many of us that strongly dislike that. Id rather it be a 10 minute drive instead. More relaxed and more fun tbh.
which suburb?
Rather use my car lol busses or trains screw that
As an American, seeing a regular European Suburb is like seeing the lost city of Atlantis.
As a european, seeing a regular US Suburb is like seeing a nightmare to be honest
@@pollitorsiones Nah US suburbs look beautiful imo. More space. More greenery.
@@Chadgigington more greenery? If you think that a lawn with 1 cm high grass has something to do with greenery then yes
@@anonymerdackel8513 I'm from EU and it's a hellscape in most of it. US suburbs are my dream
@@Chadgigington exactly am from central europe and all of streets are just packed way too much for car to pass through US roads r dream
Evironmentally, US urban planning is terrible for the environment. Compact urban planning is better for land usage management as well as has been shown to decrease carbon emissions. An experiment was done with Volusia county, Florida and showed this exact fact.
It's not only sun and roses here in Europe as well. In Czech Republic we have a phenomenon (somehow surviving from 1990s) called "satelite towns" which are basically american-style suburbs made somewhere "out of city centre" usually lacking any appropriate public transport options. They are usually private development projects where a firm buys parcels and builds a block of houses (one same as the other) and sells them afterwards. The "building phase" of satelite-towns died out after 2008 crissis, yet still significant portion of people live there. "Soccer mums" over there are called "green widows" and they are also mostly relegated to be mamataxi and dependent on their husbands (at least as far as the income goes) who spend most of their days out of satelite to support the family and pay-out the mortgage.
That sucks but at least its not like the US where its everywhere
Europe is perfect stfu
In the US suburbs, households typically have more than one vehicle. Husbands and wives both drive. I live in a suburb in the USA. This suburb was created in the 1950's also well outside of any city center. It started out first as a milling company built next to a cargo railroad track. There were originally dorms and small houses built for the employees. There was a company-owned store for the employees to shop at. The company was wiped out by a tornado about a decade later. However, the people stayed and other industries eventually came around. This place became a town. Eventually, it became a small city. It was never really planned for it to be a town or city, so there was never any design to it. There is no center to it at all. The closest things to a center that we have is the railroad (only for cargo trains) that runs through its center literally splitting the city into half. Suburbs were built into the hillsides for the people to live while the businesses, government, and farms took the flatlands in the valley. After all, they need more space for the larger buildings or, in the case of the farms, acreage. You'll find that a lot of towns and small cities started out under similar circumstances. They weren't planned. Most homes and small businesses are built around the larger industries. They are industry-centered, not government-centered.
Same situation in the northwest towards Kladno and Slaný
@@RADZIO895try "satelitní město" if you don't mind the results being in Czech.. these are completely dead areas that only exist for people to sleep at night. I can't understand why anyone would think of such a dumb idea, or buy into it
It’s funny you mention that about sports in the suburbs. In my American suburb we had houses close by, near a beach and parks with athletic fields and parents felt safe with kids going places on their own and even cutting through neighbor’s properties. Not all of us were athletically gifted, but all of us were pretty good at sports because we had the freedom to pursue those activities on our own. As I grew up and got out of the neighborhood I was shocked how our situation seemed to be an exception and not the norm in the American system
Did you noticed on thumbnail, Those US houses were Waterfront 🤩😍
I also grew up right next to a park. My town has loads of parks that are within walking distance.
As a German, seeing someone praising German city planning feels kinda weird... but then I look at the nightmarish hellscape of US cities and I know, things aren't so bad here after all.
I give US suburbs this: The spacious lawns do look nice and tidy (if they are well kept) and I'd rather have a large garden than a small one if I could choose, but I get super uneasy when I look at aerial photos of dozens of square miles of near identical houses on near identical roads in a nearly limitless, fractal-like sprawl of suburban roads covering ground in an unnatural manner, integrated with this weird mosaic-like cubistic madness that is real-estate-planning in the US.
Seriously, go to the online map of your choice and take a look at virtually any place in central US and you'll see that everything is one giant chessboard of squares. Squares of fields, squares of forests, squares of cities. It does not take the lay of the land into any account, it's literally just some guy with a ruler, pen, map and compass putting down a grid across an entire continent.
I'm not into esoteric stuff, but if there is any merit to it, the US must be a snarl of broken ley-lines.
Even when you're not into esoterics, looking at that kind of stuff does make you realize how terrible this all is. Then add an entirely car-centric planning for cities, industrial areas and so on and you end up with a total mess. This can't be good for mental health, even when you're part of the upper strata of society in a nice cozy suburban house in the middle of a giant metastasizing wasteland of identical homes.
A big piece of land is nice if you do something with it. A huge private lawn is IMO a waste of space. That could have been a garden, or forest, or field, be it for crops or sports.
@@AwesomeHairo Most people don't water their yards. That's a rare thing.
Totally agree. I frequently look into Satellite image over USA for a few hours at a time and compare to other places but the US is something different. Totally dystopian.
In most places in North America, having a garden on your front lawn ist verboten! And people generally don't use their frontage because there's no privacy. So it's completely useless and a waste of time (mowing on Saturday mornings suck) and money (to achieve that perfect lawn look one needs to spend on herbicides and sometimes fertilizer). Many of these pesticides are carcinogenic, teratogenic, allergenic, you name it and have been banned in Europe. Over here, they'll stick a little sign in the grass saying not to walk on the grass. It's all so unbelievably dumb.
It's not city planning because it's not usually the city's responsibility. Suburbs are often developed outside of the city limit and belong either to a separate city, the county, the township or unincorporated part of the county/state. In other words, don't blame Chicago for the sprawl in Barrington.
American here. I would NEVER "drive my kid to school". He can take the dang school bus which my taxes already pay for. Back to the video, this guy is right, America centered its infrastructure around the car and now almost all of us have to drive a dang car to get ANYWHERE. It sucks.
Growing up in Portugal was amazing , you could go anywhere on your own.
You could even travel the entire country on your own if u wanted without a single car , there is even a event called "The Caminho de Fatima" is a pilgrimage route to the Shrine of Fatima , you can go from any part of the country and on foot.
I mean you could technically do this anywhere there is land...
@@simonjaz1279 Without a car?? I don't think so!
@@simonjaz1279 yes but what i meant to say is the infrastructure is in place , you dont need to worry about not having pedestrial routes
but ye you could do that everywhere but is supported? Dont think so unless you go in high speed roads which is against the law you walk there.
@@Thakkii i mean....what do u mean by supported? Lol we do have stuff everywhere for some people to literally walk and train to most of the us
Thanks for the video. It's actually put a lot of what I've seen into context for me. I'm the owner of a hobby, game, and toy store in my home town. I've seen young men who are desperate to get out and join game clubs not able to do so because they don't have transportation. These folks are bored, lonely, and in desperate need of a community. I see now that just providing a safe space for them to meet, talk, and play isn't enough. I will be attending my town hall meetings when possible to see what I can do to help increase transit options.
My family recently moved from Australia to California and my dad was very shocked when his car broke down and told his friend he was going to take the trains. He replied wit
I genuinely think this can help preventing such men for, for example, being sucked into the incel community or in conspiracy theory spaces. I mean, what else are you going to do when you can barely do anything aside from sitting at home all day?
@@Roanmonster are you joking i cant tell
@@turzilla Joke or not, there is a point. Isolation does take a toll on mental health, though probably not to that point. Not immediately anyway.
Young Men living in towns in Europe don't even have the option to go to gaming spaces. Their only option is to get wasted. That is why we have the stereotype of the drunken European
For more content like this, the channel Not Just Bikes is basically dedicated to this subject.
Remember when Adam Something was a 10k channel and the videos were just PowerPoint presentations. I remember.
Proud of your channel growth
I was born in San Diego, CA and lived there for most of my childhood until I moved to New York, NY. San Diego, like most American cities, is filled with car dependent suburbs and conservative car lobbyists. However, NYC has suburbs more similar to most European cities. I really like living in New York, and I wish other cities in the USA would improve their suburbs.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 A lot of blue-voting Americans are still conservatives by dictionary/international definitions. They might call themselves liberal, but they'll certainly clutch their pearls at the idea of having a bus or tram run through their suburb.
Yeah the most car dependent place in America is LA which is also one of the most left wing and Democrat.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 I live in San Diego and every bike lane is met with howls of disapproval.
There are a TON of 'conservative car lobbyists' here in San Diego.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Again as the other poster said, just because you vote blue does not make you a "liberal."
Dems would be center right if you put them in most European countries.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 th-cam.com/video/hNDgcjVGHIw/w-d-xo.html this video explains conservative-liberals well. Not exactly about cars but still about them.
Latin American suburbs have taken a page out of America, not Europe, but many times with the extra step of becoming closed gate. Some of this is due to geography (sometimes they are in more mountainous regions), but a lot of it is heavy car dependency and heavy crime. I saw this when I went to Guatemala City. All car traffic from these little closed communities is completely stuffs the main roads, which are basically boulevards that double as highways. Even the urban areas are car-infested. The little street where I was staying at was littered with cars and trucks parked on the sidewalk.
A very popular attraction in Guatemala City is the new Ciudad Cayala, which is a new town or suburb that is an imitation of European style streets and shopping. As it turns out, walking is very nice.
Many of my family who have gone to Europe say how nice the streets are over there, but at the same time while disparage their own Latinos as being very uncivilized,.........and yet they themselves will contribute to that same car traffic.
The desire is there, but that may require *gasp* some sacrifice.
In Argentina you can go to almost everywhere with a bus
Yes, also, building a european-like city takes a lot of money and gov. investment in public transport, public spaces, public hospitals, schools, roads, etc. It's much cheaper to follow the American style and leave people build their own homes in their own little isolated and private comunities.
Spanish colonial settlements built during the 15-1700s were actually shockingly well designed. Made sense, there was literally no good alternative to walking for most people. In the 19th century, European, North and South American cities still looked somewhat similar.
In other words, it's not some inevitable result of local culture but was screwed up during the last 70 years.
@@alfrredd
Only if they all pay for their own infrastructure.
Canada is practically like the US with its suburbs
The bottom line is, suburbs in the US are built around a culture of having your own vehicle while the rest of the world builds around public transportation systems which is more efficient.
Absolutely relatable. Even in Melbourne, Australia we had at least some form of effective public transport. Here in the US it is crazy. My house is right next to a six-lane highway, with a bi-directional “suicide lane” in the center.
im from melbourne too bro and ive never felt this grateful for footpaths
Lol what are you on about? Australia has almost no public transportation just like the US.
@@essamemon3123 kiddo
The larger cities in United States have public transit New York City ,Boston ,Washington DC , Philly. I’m not surprised the largest cities in Australia have public transportation but how about the outback towns and the outer suburban areas of major Australian cities
I'm Melbournian and yeah, is crazy to say but Melbourne is much, much better designed than average major American cities I've visited
As someone, who's lived in the Czech Republic my whole life, and just recently got to experience the US (visiting a friend in Indiana, then going for a roadtrip to New York, through Boston and a stop in Connecticut), I was absolutely SHOCKED by how unnecessarily sprawled out the suburbs are. When we went to visit Chicago and NYC, I imagined these cities to be extremely dense, as the ones in east Asia. I was really surprised, when I found out that the giant high-rises immediately turn into a barely-urban-looking wasteland, just as you leave the city core. The nearest groceries store my friend has to his home is a Kroger's at least 15 minutes far away by car. A lot of Europeans know and love to laugh at Americans about this, but it's a completely different story, when you actually get to experience it. Other than that, from a car enthusiast standpoint, and having driven near to 6000 kms in the states, the roads in Europe are SO MUCH SAFER. In the US, you have no reflective bollards on the side of the highways or roads, making late-night driving very difficult. The mergers are sudden and very dangerous, absolutely NO ONE has an IDEA how to drive on a roundabout, and except for Chicago and NYC, the PT is barely existent.
Except for the School Buses, those are ever-present, as they pick up every single child from their homes, since the schools are so extremely far away, they coudn't possibly make it by foot or bike.
Having lived in American suburbs my entire life, including for 4 years on campus at college and 4 years on campus at graduate school, yes - American roads are dangerous as hell for pedestrians and cyclists. 2011 to 2015 I put my car on ice and rode an electric-assist tricycle. Dangerous as hell, since there were no bike paths.
However, the roads in the USA ARE incredibly safe BECAUSE they are so spread out.
Moreover, and this is EXTREMELY important, the huge positive of American non-dense housing is that you are spaced FAR AWAY from your neighbor. Millions of people, including my brother, have had nothing but horrible experiences
with shitty evil neighbors, whether in next door apartment buildings, or in single-family units that are squeezed close together, like my brother suffers now in his single family unit with horrible neighbors on either side.
So that is the ONE HUGE benefit of suburban low density: DECENTRALIZATION and BEING FAR from your neighbor.
@@theultimatereductionist7592 Yup, isolation has it's own benefits. And yep, having driven through Napanee, IN, that being a huge place for the Amish, I was surprised how there were basically no bike paths, no sideroad lane, nothing. It's bikes driving next to 18-wheelers. Insane.
@@drakvaclav826 I mean Czech Republic and it’s culture is great, but it’s like 1/4 the size of an average state and population wise is close to a state. It’s really going to be a lot different since USA is huge
@@chad2522 That's true, however - The style of building towns and cities is very different in the states. In Kazachstan, for example, their towns, though being thousands of kilometres apart, are still very congested within. The US towns don't have that, they cover an area 4 times the size of what an average town of the same population would cover in Europe/Asia. This makes walking around kinda difficult.
Did you noticed on thumbnail, Those US houses were Waterfront 🤩😍
Imagine not having cafe, restaurant, shop, and park in 200 meters from your home. I would go insane.
220m to a state owned forest.... with plenty of walking paths and bicycle lanes..
I am from Germany and travelled all over North America and the video is spot on. The only city that I felt like at home wasn't in the US but Canada, specifically in Montréal. Coffee places, restaurants, shops like literally eeeeeverywhere.
Lmao i would have to walk half a kilometer to a gas station to get anything - and no restaurants or cafes (something people dont really even do here) within a day on horseback
Live in suburban Phoenix
Closest
Cafe: 5 miles
Restaurant: 1.5 miles
Park: 1 mile
@@fourtwenty1813 Dear God...
To be fair its not just conservatives , the left , the right and conservatives have a mix of people with different approaches and its not just one political group pushing for or against cars. For example the previous mayor of Zagreb was a leftist and he was pushing for more and more parking lots and parking spaces in the inner parts of Zagreb to allow greater traffic all while depriving the town run electric tram company of funds leading to reduction in trams per line and reduction of bus lines as well and what of those were left were often were pretty bad schedule wise of groups like students who would otherwise frequently use em.
Similar story here in the UK. I live in a suburb of Manchester, the 3rd biggest city in the UK and my house is five miles from the centre. I have shops, clinics, pharmacies, gyms, schools, pubs, parks, many cafés and restaurants etc within walking distance of my house. The housing is a huge mixture of private and state, big and small, old and modern, expensive and 'cheaper', houses and flats (apartments) all close together. I can get a bus from either end of my road to go anywhere local and the fares are capped at £2 for a single journey. I am a 10 minute walk from a tram stop which takes me into the centre of Manchester or Bury at a cost of £4.30 for an all-day pass. I own a car but don't use it much. Petrol is £1.63 a litre (or for Americans - gas is $6.20 a gallon).
However, unlike most America suburbs my suburb can be found on maps going back to the 1700s when it used to be a village. So that village had a little centre, was a community and had an identity long before it got swallowed up by Manchester as it grew. This is often the case in London too. In some respects European cities are lots of little villages stuck together. I wonder if this is one reason why so many European suburbs are more self-contained.
London is no different. Shops, night life, parks, schools e.c.t all within walking distance, short tube or rail ride and/or bus ride. Fares are maxed out at £1.65 for an hour of unlimited travel for the bus. Made me so independent compared to the horror in the US, I couldn't imagine living like that 🤮
Its for sure a factor that most suburbs in Europe where bevor own villages and got slowly integratet in the big city who spread out more and more.
In the US most suburbs are just createt from not used land and a blank paper. What makes them more like a iland instead of an integral part of the outskirts of the big citys.
it's true for most cities in Poland - whether it's Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow or smaller cities- scheme seems to work same- only the speed of that process differs...
City grows as it attacts more and more people. Nearby villages also grow, as some of citizens prefer to leave outside of city and have a closer conntact to nature. As a result distance between city and villages surrounding them are getting smaller and smaller, to a point, where villages are added to city as it's another district. Former village borders become new city border...
Thats what i love about smaller dense cities, theres a 30 minute walk from almost anywhere to the center
Last time I was there the Day Saver bus pass was £5 & took tram to Bury Mkt! 🥳
It’s so funny. The neighborhood you picked in Leipzig is where my dad lives these days. So odd to see streets I know so well in an Adam Something video. Also great to see it as a positive example. It truly is a very nice and calm neighborhood that is very walkable with green alleys and parks. Lots of nature, rivers and fields are close but it also takes less than 25mins by bike to get to the city center. Leipzig is very underrated and beautiful.
So true!! When I was growing up in suburban USA, I didn't really have any idea of how things could be different. I'm so glad to have been able to raise my kids in Europe and give them the opportunity to go places on their own as they were growing up.
Same here. I recall the most eventful weekend in the suburbs was when the HOA had the whole neighborhood garage sale. Everybody was suddenly out walking around the neighborhood like it was an actual functioning city with businesses and commerce.
Im an 18 yo hispanic guy who has lived in the suburbs for almost 3 years and while I do have great memories living there and meeting new people, I want to give my two cents here:
Something that was left out of the video was that suburbs were built for WW2 veterans and families in the early 50s (hence the phrase white flight). Here in the US, redlining has been illegal since 1968 and I have seen a ton of non whites whenever I visit my friend. I mentioned white flight earlier and black flight also exists as well. The number of black people in Texas, Atlanta Georgia, New York state, Illinios, Ohio and Maryland are a few examples of black families moving into the suburbs. Other than that, this video is great and it demonstrates the flaws with US suburbs. Driving 30 to 60 minutes to wherever you want to go isnt good.
The “US Suburb” in this video is Virginia Beach, VA this is my hometown! Its the perfect example of car dependency. To get from my childhood home to the entrance of our neighborhood was a 5 minute drive. After that you’d have to drive at least 10 more minutes to get to any type of services you’d need.
thta's disgusting... what if you dont wanna debt yourself buying a fvcking car ?
@@Dan_Kanerva dont live in the US simple as that. Its a capitalist paradise for a reason
Its not like there a 50/50 chance you are already deep into debt due to Student loan, a 80/20 that you are deep into debt because you just had to have an health problem not covered proberly by the greedy health care system etc...
The implied scenario is, most American families who own a large single-family suburban home will also own 2 or more vehicles. 99.9% of the time they have at least one vehicle. How else could they reasonably get around such a place so hostily designed for pedestrians?
I admit a lot of US suburbs and planned communities are like the one presented in the video. But a lot of suburbs closer to major cities, like Fairfax county, VA, and older communities in the northeast, like the towns around Boston, MA, are closer to the European suburban model-denser, more walkable, more public transit access, less car dependent
@@dhtheghost9412 yeah I try to explain this but people can't believe America has this lol. I moved a bit further out because I like more rural suburbs but my friends live near Boston and they can walk anywhere they want.
You can now pretty much add the argument of ever increasing gas prices as well, that regardless how hard you go against public transit, driving your own car gets more and more expensive and will "scare off/change" more and more people.
You could always include that agrument really, with the pressure to buy, insure, maintain, and fuel a car being a weight at the best of times
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 The cost of owning a car is around $10000 a year. Combine that with the fact many families in suburbia need 2 or three cars to get everyone around, and you’ll see how suffocating car centric development is on its citizens
@@Sentient_Blob And if you have 2 kids,When they're old enough to drive, suddenly you double the ammount of car on the roads!
I’ve lived in American suburbia for my entire life and I’ve never realized how bad it actually was until a little bit ago
Stockholm syndrome is strange phenomenon, isn't it? American suburbanites are hostages of cars, yet any attempt to free them is met with fierce resistance.
It makes me want to move to Germany
I love living in my US American suburb. I lived in Baltimore, Maryland when I was young and I hated it there.
i think it’s important to understand that not all European cities are as well planned as German ones. For example: the UK, Norway, and Poland all have significant sprawl/car-dependent problems
Babe wake up new adam something video just dropped
Not everywhere in Europe is this way. Sofia is interesting city that moved from soviet-style car-centric to "modern" car-centric, leading to pleasantly-packed (and not boring) neighbourhoods interconnected with stroads. Within each neighbourhood there are mixed living spaces, with a lot of businesses, schools, etc. In between them is a transportation network surrounded usually by parks. So even when the whole city is full of trees, even when there is usable and extensive public transport system, due to the city geography and its sprawling and roads, it is one of the most polluted cities in Europe.
And average 6km commute is ~1:20 by foot, ~1:00 by public transport and ~0:45 by car (excluding the amount of time required to locate a parking space), so both drivers and other commuters are equally unhappy (unless you are pedestrian and your commute passes mostly through a park).
But Sofia has very convenient subway connection nowadays. You could get almost everywhere around the city including to the airport. As I traveled a lite bit around western Europe cities, I see that Sofia actually is not that bad.
And half an hour on a bicycle.
@@The_Wanderer_And_His_Shadow Yes, if you are lucky enough to commute from near-the-metro location to another near-the-metro location, you can get in half an hour. But there are only 3 lines and last 1-2km of commute require switching, which require waiting usually 5-10 minutes. 2 switches = 10-20 minutes of waiting. Include 5-10 minutes of walking between station (which is underground) and bus-stop (on the ground) and you get one hour of travel for ~1:20-1:40 *walking*. While metro and buses speed averages around 50-60km/h the total commute speed with waiting times results in 8-10km/h.
But with stroads it is similar - 0:40-0:50 minutes of driving during the day, while the same distance you can drive at night (when most traffic lights are off) for 0:15-0:20 minutes or even less. Even driving is stressful and not pleasant.
Biking on stroads is a suicide. If you can bike through a park, then it is okay. I live in Netherlands for 5 years now, and I can see the difference. 6km for more than 30 minutes is unthinkable here, and all of it without even drop of fuel, on a regular bike.
The former eastern block is such a mess, because the commie leaders started to copy America to show off wealth. The best examples I know are Czechia and Poland. The only good thing during cold war times was a good, but still slow bus network.
As long as you have a connection to the subway you can reach any part of the city for 50-60 min at most. The public transportation ain’t half bad, actually quite decent. It has improved considerably in the last few years believe it or not. In most cases you can find you daily needs in a 5-10 min walk radius and if you need something from the center it’s 30-40 mins worst time (as long as you have any public transit around at all) unless you live in like idk Bistritsa or Bankya. Although yeah it ain’t perfect and it has lots and lots of issues (as yeah you have to actually switch sometimes a lot, but for what the network has it’s not bad, there’s still a lot that can be done but still), it’s quite pleasant. And the fact that if you walk enough you can go thru lots of architectural designs it feels like you go from one town to another
I am currently living in Belgrade, Serbia.
In one mile of walking distance from my building, there are seven parks, four small grocery stores, two big grocery stores, four hairdressers, a dentist, police station (ID, passport and drivers license renewal, car registration) two elementary schools, one gymnasium, two community health centres (one state and one private) one green market and about 10 cafés/restaurants. I can choose to never leave that radius if I want to, and most elderly people living alone do so.
And if I want to leave that radius, I have two minutes of walking to the nearest public transportation stop and then about 20 minutes ride to the city centre. By car I need more because buses have their own lanes and I will need to drive more because some streets in city centre are bus only or pedestrian only, and also I will need 20 minutes of searching a parking space. So in general you do not need a car and a lot of people do not have it or they indeed have it but use it so rarely that they forgot where did they park it.
keep in mind that Belgrade is a white supremacist city. you wouldn't be able to do any of that in a strong city
And all of that with Belgrade having one of the worst public transports of all European major cities.
Koji deo grada? Ako misliš na Novi Beograd to nije predgrađe. Za Beograd je predgrađe Batajnica, Sremčica, Mirijevo itd.
Good point made about the elderly!
@@radovan2279 i wouldn't say so, it has problems with crowded buses and non-realization of buses but the network is extremely well expanded, belgrade NEEDS metro though
I live in a suburb of Athens in Greece and I have 3 supermarkets, 3 pharmacies, cafes, restaurants butcher, petshop, bus stations and train station and most other things you could need within 5 minute walking distance.
The thing about your european suburbs clips ,is that it's not exclusive to cities.
I live in Austria in a village circa 30min away from the neares city with around 30.000 people. Everywhere I go, there is so much life on the properties, some have trees, some have pretty gardens, some even have ponds. It just feels like there are actual people living there.
And another thing is, that even the smalles villages with less that a thousand people, have have multistories appartments.
Thats because due to short travel distances people are able to spent some time at home instead of driving 1h to the next point of interest.
@@derunfassbarebielecki Can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing. Yes, it is because things are closer together, because the planners had the good sense to build them closer together.
@@thomasfisher4833 lol they had much smaller countries to work with. America is larger than Europe things are not gonna be as close to get to as in Europe OBVIOSLY! Its just geographics nothing to do with planning
@@derunfassbarebielecki As opposed to waiting on the train or bus while creepy old guys keep glancing over at you while you wait for the buss, that's late AF again. I'd rather be in the car any day. (Edit: missed a word)
@@nunya___ Americans are such snowflakes...
You made me love trains so much, as well as hate cars. Cities were made for pedestrians, not vehicles. Thank you very much for this. Lots of love from Ukraine🇺🇦
Let's hope the Ukranian Government invests in rail instead of roads after the war.
@@CPTE5069 That'd be a good opportunity.
I'd still be a bit lost without my car but I have plenty of great opportunities to get around in my city. I live on a canal that's an hour's walk into the centre, I have bus, tram and trainlines too. If I really need to get in quick I can take my car and park it somewhere, but I'd rather not have to do that
Take care, be safe! Love from Hungary
@South Bay Baby I hope you aren’t the usual subsequent russian bot, but still I’m gonna reply.
First of all, I haven’t even mentioned America. But if you are American, and I’m speaking on behalf of Ukrainians, we are very grateful for all the military and financial aid that you provide to Ukraine. To be honest, I’m studying and working my ass off right now, because I know that in the upcoming future we’re gonna have to repay everything that you’ve lended us right now. We’re never gonna forget your help, and I hope we’ll be best buddies in political, economical and sociological realms.
Secondly, I won’t take my words for granted, because when I visited America I seriously noticed the problems with transportation infrastructure. It’s impossible to get around without cars and planes. The railway transport is much cheaper to sustain, it has much higher throughput (in a single tiny train or tram, dozens of people can comfortably travel), and it’s overall much cheaper for passengers. So tell me, isn’t it good for your country? The satisfaction of human needs and comfort. I mean like In Austria you can pay around 800$ for a ticket that lets you travel throughout the whole country for a year. And when we’ll start thinking more about pedestrians, the necessities such as supermarkets, schools, workplace… than it will become much comfortable to move around. I hope I answered your reply or allegation may I say. Anyway, in controversies the veracity is born, so if you have any questions I’ll be happy to discuss))
Thank you for highlighting problem and actually offering a solution, unlike some other channels who just try to criticize evrything without giving any improvement suggestions, maybe to make themselves feel superior. I like that you try to incite change, that's the goal after all.
Those were really trite suggestions though. I'd rather have no suggestions than that.
@@isoscelestriangle I mean, as far as what you can do in america, I'll take it, and it's certainly better than nothing imo
Things get a bit mixed up here. That German „suburb“ you are showing still belongs to an older, urban part of the city. We also have areas with lots of newly built detached houses („Einfamilienhäuser“) with much less infrastructure, even around smaller cities - however, they are much smaller than in the US.
Love to see Leipzig represented in one of your videos!
What you have shown as European suburbs are living zones deep in the cities.
Actual European suburbs looks a bit differently and have less convenient stuff around them. There are no apartment buildings and only single family houses, trams are also only present in the more densely populated areas of the city and definitely not in the suburbs. Suburbs of course still have buses. A bit less frequent than deeper in the city, but still you can always count on them. There are always elementary schools relatively close, but for highshool you don't go to what's close but to what has the best profile for you, so you may end up having to get to the other side of the city to your school of choice.
(I'm speaking from my polish perspective)
True
Cause Poland suburbs kinda sucks thanks to communist heritage. The video compares top economic countries. USA no1 and Germany no4.
@@LCA1985 the post-communist parts are almost in the middle of the cities. Suburbs only sometimes show some signs of it in the form of the older houses being designed around the same cube base that's not in use for long enough for those houses to have marginal presence in the older parts of the city.
I bet suburbs in Germany are different from the center part of the city, similarly as in Poland. Would be nice to get some confirmation from someone living in Germany tho.
@@hory-portier yes I do live in Germany. Of course it is different from the center than the new areas but Germany has a lot of suburbs with family houses, comparable to USA. Thats why the comparisson.
In Poland you have much more residential buildings areas like we do have in Spain (Im spaniard). In a nutshell: money gives you family houses and USA has more money so they do have more family houses and cause of this the extension of the towns go ridiculously wide and large.
I'm from that city in the video and even if you go to surrounding villages and suburbs, there are still plenty of apartment buildings (lived in some myself) and there are still plenty of supermarkets too.
I live in London and don’t drive but it’s so easy getting about the city due to the amount of public transport available at all hours of the day. I’ve even walked to central London within 45 minutes
Someone once said "if you want to understand american foreign policy, you need to first understand its domestic policy" i.e. almost 100% individualised addiction/dependence on fossil fuels at virtually every level of daily living.
By the way, that 'someone' is me!
public transport is for broke boys, real alphas drive bigass Pickup Trucks. 💪💪
Good ...😊
I've lived in Switzerland all my life now and the American suburbs feel like a nightmare to me. They just feel so soulless
Well that's a pretty unfair comparison 👀
Having lived in one for most of my life, you're not wrong
Lol that's just an unfair comparison at that point, especially with how interconnected the public transit system is down to having stops for 30k population towns whilst the same town in America would just be straddling on some interstate.
American conservatives think any socialism is Orwellian, but think the tracks of identical suburbs sprawl where everyone buys clothes and other goods from the same stores is freedom. Just yesterday, the people across the street had a party and almost every car in front of the house was a white SUV.
Have you ever even been in America?