Who's been to (or LIVED IN!) a New Urbanist community? So far I've been to Celebration, Orenco Station, and Laguna West. Hope to get to Seaside in the near future.
City Beautiful so how different are new urbanism communities from planned communities like The Woodlands, TX? I’ve been there and it has a lot of green space but isn’t focused on being pedestrian friendly.
My parents took me to Seaside several times growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and we loved it. It is such a wonderful place and so well designed.
I’ve also seen some New Urbanism in Atlanta, with the Glenwood Park development, which is denser than the surrounding Ormewood Park/Grant Park neighborhood. Charleston, SC has Daniel Island, Mixson Village (incomplete), and one on Shelmore Boulevard in Mount Pleasant that I can’t find the name of. Cincinnati did some experiments with New Urbanism in the past, the most notable examples being the incomplete CityWest development in the West End, which replaced the Laurel Homes, a public housing project from the 1930s, and the yet-to-be-completed The Banks development, which surrounds a large park on the riverfront and reconnects downtown to the Ohio River. Nearby Louisville has Norton Commons, which is like Seaside, Stapleton (Denver), or Celebration. Asheville, NC also has some new urbanism with the Biltmore Park Development, but it’s not connected to any residential area, it’s like a downtown island with apartments and shops surrounded by roads, suburban sprawl-style single-use development, and parking.
I know right. There is a mod and few assets that allow this, but it’s highly time for either Cities 2 or some other company to make a better city simulation game.
@@NicholsKT it's interesting enough I'd like to try making a city sim But I'm neither an urban designer nor a game dev so actually doing it isn't within my reach
You may not be able to have buildings act as both residential and commercial, but you can sure manually zone in the occasional corner store. I've naturally shifted my city building skills from suburban hellscape to walkable communities. Not because I've always been a fan of it, but mostly because I despise traffic with a burning passion.
These Disney-land examples are not really typical of what results from Smart-growth projects. What you usually get have no real charm at all. And once a suburban area gets smartified there is no way to reverse the process. It's a downhill grade. In 20 years it will be a disaster zone.
@@mitonaarea5856 If you like it, I wish you the best of luck in finding a community like that. But the US has 320 million people, and a single aesthetic definitely wouldn't be appropriate for all of them. There should be hundreds of major design families so that people have a reason to look at and appreciate other neighborhoods.
To me, as a European, I still see the same insanely wide streets, car centric design, and low density buildings, that make it difficult to have a really walkable city.
@@nxdark Perhaps not in the US... those streets look scary as they are. Her in the Netherlands(and other European countries) they are very walkable and it is great(unless you go a big distance, but that defeats the point)
I lived in Orlando in the early 2000s and remember Celebration being thought of as “the town that Disney built but no one could afford to live in.” And the HOA rules were very strict. Think Pleasantville.
I've been to many of these types of communities and they all skip on the affordability part. They just seen like a new way to make gated upper class housing without the actual gates.
The problem is how easy credit is. Getting loans/mortgages for hundreds of thousands of dollars leads to constant rising prices. Imagine a world where you could only get a loan for $20k-$200k.....this would make it more affordable; however, would cripple the economy.
I worked as a long-term temp on Celebration. The developers worked hard to get the mixed use areas to work organically, including allowing for areas that could change as the community grew. The affordable housing was in the early designs that I saw, but it was getting push back.
When my parents were my age, they could buy a small starter home after they got married, but developers don't seem to bother building anything but expensive housing anymore. Can you do a video on this?
No... what your talking about isn’t a planing issue it’s a market problem.. Ask your parents what they sold that starter home for and you might find your answer
The value of the dollar was a lot better then. You didn't even have to graduate to be able to get a good paying job where only one pay coming in would cover the family. Nowadays it's hard enough for people to get a decent paying job after university to afford a home, even with another income coming in, let alone paying off that student debt.
@@johnj3636 It's both. A lot of houses that were built, specially in the 90s and 00s were nothing more than McMansions, which took up more space than smaller, regular houses. This creates a lack of space, which in turn causes inflations.
supply and demand....there is more people now (which will increase demand) but the supply hasn't been able to grow as quick. And you can only do so much before some places would start to get more crowded
I love your videos. I live in Celebration and I love that I’m able to just take my bike out and ride to parks and to our downtown area. I do appreciate this style over the endless urban sprawl around the rest of Orlando.
Anything that gets Americans to live in closer proximity would be an improvement I suppose. They sort of remind me of those outside malls. It's like an attempt at making something interesting and urban but it doesn't hit the mark. Hopefully they'll improve though.
Here in sprawled-out Atlanta, we’re seeing more new urbanism with the Halcyon project and near by soon to be built Alpharetta Center. It seems these concepts are replacing the typical sub division and even in the perimeter, more development with a focus on new urbanism.
You kind of skirt one of the biggest issues with Celebration, FL. It was developed as a "Company Town," owned and operated by Disney. That meant stifling competition with Disney and restricting residents' ability to have say in the governance of their community. Disney has since stopped trying to control everything in Celebration; but the taint remains.
@@Girtharmstrong69 It's my tax dollars that go to fund it like every other welfare leech on the planet. I bet you live in a post-Communist bunker and are trying to speak for my country.
"It was too hot, and too sunny... so we're doing the rest of these shots in the studio". EXACTLY THIS! A lot of the walkable stuff you mention would be great if you lived in a temperate area of the country but I wouldn't think much of Florida would be pleasant to walk around in, even if it were shaded.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel. For example, in Seville (Spain) they reach over 40ºC in summer, and it is one of the cities in the world with more life on the street. th-cam.com/video/xjGRkyHn6iM/w-d-xo.html
As someone who lives in Florida - walking anywhere in Florida is rarely pleasant. The joke being that we don't have seasons, we just have "hot humid" and "not-as-hot-and-not-as-humid." There's a reason Florida didn't seem much of a population boom until the invention of the air conditioner - not even shade helps when the humidity can reach 90% on an average day.
@@grt1977 A couple things. Florida is essentially just a massive swamp, it is extremely humid almost all the time. This results in the very unpleasant experience of intense sweating (due to the heat) and then the sweat doesn't evaporate and cool you off, even in a shaded area. Second, when you live in inland Florida, there is almost never any wind. This creates very stagnant air. Walking for even a couple minutes during most times of the year is almost unbearable here, there is a reason large numbers of people have lived in Sevilla for thousands of years while Florida always had a low population density until the invention of Air Conditioning.
I guess its all what you are used to, I live in Florida and I walk and bike in the heat... bring lots of ice water. On the reverse I quite dislike going outside when its less than 60F/16C
@@3of11 must be a genetic predisposition, 50-60 degrees fahrenheit is still tshirt weather to me and I was born and raised in texas so if I haven't gotten used to the heat it's just something you have or don't have
@@eastpavilion-er6081 Eddington is cubist/modernist. I don't see it acheiving any populatiry with the general public; it's a town built by architects, for architects.
This is off topic but it sprung to mind and I feel obligated to share: If you drive around the Greek island of Zakynthos you will notice a weird road layout and bizarre fake plot depressions where houses used to be before the big Earthquake took out every building bar one on the island.
I’ve been binging your videos and saw celebration in the title and got excited because I’m moving there in a month!!! This was so interesting, thank you for you videos!
@Bjarnþór no it isn't. The area have been a failure so far. And it isn't well planned, their weren't any major plans to begin with. The whole area was build so they could sell lots, and then use that money to build the metro.
There's another similar community in Central Florida, Baldwin Park. Part of my cross-town cycling commute brought me through there, and I really appreciate the way these designs accommodate every mode of transport.
Thank you for this awesome video explaining New Urbanism in detail. When I first learned about it, I completely subscribed to the idea and still have a description in one of my social media accounts and "advocate of new urbanism." But now I see the flaws of it, but like you said, an incremental improvement of the suburbs is better than nothing! Thank you!
I think the problem with New Urbanism is that, as always, we are looking for a sort of ''perfect urban form'', a utopian vision of the city that could be absolutely unsuccessful considering the real intrinsic complexity of a city that does not only concern aesthetics or physical environment, but on the contrary a relationship that is anything but simple between an urban center and its inhabitants
Exactly. I am a traditional urbanist myself, and i put commuting patterns and economic impact above all else. If US cities are to succeed in the future, we need to make utility the biggest priority. I prefer gridded "Minor" streets and "Major" streets (Manhattan being the prime example) with large highways connecting our biggest neighborhoods (BQE, 405), and interstates connecting our biggest cities. As a part of this, Route 66 should be the starting point of a new US Urban Route system, called System 66, which connects the most scenic and commercialized cities. The original route would be revitalized and expanded to include all major US cities of this time, which would be a national hub and spoke system centered on Chicago, but the route's exit numbers would start at New York, working their way out.
@@shanekeenaNYC you seem to know about this stuff so may i ask you a question? what would the typical approach of european cities be named? most cities her seem to develop naturally and there are few meticulously designed developments and instead everything seems to arise pargmatically from those who inhabit the area
Why don't you build several story apartment buildings? That would make communities denser, cheaper and more walkable. You could have a grocery store/bar/coffee-shop on the first floor (ground floor) and with people living above.
Iam Cleaver Plenty of places do have that, there’s just options for houses too. Idk the ins and outs of Celebration, Fl but I do know other new urbanist communities do what you say.
"New Suburbanism" does sound more correct. But that's not really a critique. This is a huge upgrade over the current design of suburban communities. Suburbs aren't going anywhere, but it would be nice if we could have them without trading away basically all of the benefits of urban development. Improving and combining these principals with actual urban planning for high density metros would be a vast improvement overall. Liveable cities with multiple available modes of transportation, and suburbs you can actually get around without feeling like you've travelled to a wasteland with houses in it. Zoning laws need a serious overhaul. And it needs to be combined with a new method of bidding out smaller parcels of land for more varied and even mixed-use development. The people in charge of distributing land and city planning need to be people who understand the needs of a given community at a far more granular level than what we currently have. Allowing communities to rapidly grow without losing all functionality. City "Planning" almost doesn't seem to to exist in many US metros, so much as ticking off boxes of required resources on a spreadsheet and then connecting roads between them. (Simplification I know, but that's the *feel* of US-style sprawl).
Great stuff as always. Nice job of making complex urban planning terminology interesting and digestible. Look forward to the next one. Come visit us in Chicago sometime!
Your videos are awesome, thanks for doing them and keep it up. But man, I get more and more glad to live in Europe with each issue you bring up about US cities.
Alexandru Juncu Eh, some of us Americans grew accustomed to living in large houses and having large yards in the quiet suburbs. To each his own. I lived in Europe for a bit and each style has its own unique traits that I like.
@@t-bone9239: the traditional European suburb is on the edge of a large town or city and it doesn't feel plonked down with the need to jump in the car for a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk. The newer suburbs are different: further away; row upon row of cheaply built housing; and no public transport links.
@@eattherich9215 yeah most „suburbs“ are small town or villages nowaadays who connected with big metropolitan centers over time who have no buildings except single family house zoning. Many of them don’t even have a bakery or a small store in walkable distance so people have to get their cars most of the time as well. It’s slowly becoming like American suburbs because cities get to expensive so people build in the surrounding villages. So sad to see because these villages are pretty much dead. Everybody commutes to work and school to the nearby city and just comes home to sleep. On the weekends they go to the city as well or go to the countryside. Suburbs are just large sleeping pods and during daytime it’s just empty
Similar to Seaside, the community of Rosemary Beach, just up the road from Seaside, is probably the most beautiful small town I've been to. Highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the panhandle of Florida.
For the criticism of New Urbanism, one could argue that for some having suburbs look like old towns got some to finally pay attention to the real McCoy. Many old downtowns are no longer ghost towns and New Urbanism may have contributed to this. I certainly prefer the older cities with a real history.
You mentioned the aesthetic style a lot of these houses arcs back to the small town I’d love to see an episode on why the small town so iconic and why it worked for its day
There’s a lot cool stuff happening here, but unfortunately the social repercussions aren’t great. If you make a video about Baltimore, you should include that
City Beautiful very underrated city! So many great neighborhoods and a very expansive urban fabric. Obviously it’s got some problems but that’s what will happen when a third of the city (and the top-earners) move out in a span of three decades.
Fascinating I always thought new urbanism was principally about a style/aesthetic. Interesting to learn that there’s much more too it and it has goals and rules for urban living beyond the look of the houses.
Don't know if this counts but, Some Developers here in the Jakarta Metropolitan Area build new communities, they're usually filled with gated communities with specific architecture styles, schools and retail (at least one mall) and sprawling roads. Developers often use Highway access as an advertising tactic (although this is changing)
This concept is very interesting to me, I’ve not heard of the term before but thank you for giving me something to research further. I think something like this rather build new communities would be better applied to already existing ones where costs are cheap and there is the need for well-built thriving communities. It’s not perfect but it’s a start.
Walkability is very important for quality of life and for the environment. My brother recently moved to an area that could be called New Urbanist in the neighborhood of Brookhaven, Atlanta and I highly enjoy visiting. Easily walkable to numerous restaurants, shops, grocery stores, a gym, etc, with rooftop amenities. Compared to the depressing suburban sprawl of "Bedroom districts" outside of the city, it's much more enjoyable, and reduces reliance on a vehicle.
Hmmm, why do they call it urbanism if its so green and leafy? Because the population density is high. It may seem park-like during the day. But at night all the teens are out there on the street, getting away from their parents and those small smart-growth apartments. And every little leafy alcove has its own local gang of hangouts. Some are good kids, but others aren't. And some are downright criminals. Smart growth areas don't age well. To be honest, you're better off in well lit downright urban areas than in those dark leafy disguised neo-urban park communities. A man's home is his castle, as long as its his. But in areas where everyone lives in apartments (whether rented or owned) what's outside becomes no man's land. This kind of modernistic urban planning is not new. It's been around for decades. Here in France there are a lot of areas that were planned in this manner 50 years ago. You wouldn't want to live there now. The people behind Agenda 21 and Smart Growth present themselves as Utopian progressive thinkers. But then again, so did the Bolsheviks.
@@texasray5237 Why are you afraid of teenagers? I doubt any adolescent boy wants to go near your bratty children, and they definitely don’t care if it’s a suburb or a giant city, the streets are their place at night. You definitely seem like the person to be a helicopter parent, not allowing little Timmy to go outside because of “bAd tEeNaGeRs”. I like living in a walkable community because I can walk to my friends house and have a gathering. I also like living in a walkable community because it’s rare to find people with the White suburban middle class altitude.
Europe: I live next to a church from the 15th century a cafe and bar a CEO couple with 700 square meters house. Some students apartments and a new renovated shop / apartment house. Building for city electricity ( transformer station ) 6 parking spaces and an old tree.
The gate is there, you just can't see it. Overly high property costs, busybody HOAs to drive out anyone with alternative values or who can't keep up with the Joneses, and private security to drive off "undesirable" visitors make a physical gate redundant.
3rd world developers: Allow me to introduce what i call superblock! Some block that cramped up with apartments, mall, hospital, (maybe school too!) in one area.
It seems a lot of master planned communities I see these days (not all, but not an insignificant amount) seem to try and tackle this whole new urbanist idea. A mix of housing densities with commercial and job centers. I would love for you to make videos sort of analyzing some of these master plan communities based on their aspirations (how good of a target are they even shooting for) and how well they do (or do not) achieve those goals. I know here in the Phoenix area there are some really interesting master planned communities like Verrado, Eastmark, Vistancia, etc that to different degrees attempt to do some of what you say, I'd be curious about the various ones around the US and how well they live up to this sort of goal.
I’ve been to celebration, Florida, it’s a nice little town and it’s design is very good for small businesses because there’s a lot of pedestrian traffic
We have to abolish parking minimums , road standards and zoning , leave it for the developer to decide.That way we can increase density and walkability. Local governments must also improve transit within the city and with the suburbs.Its the only way our cities can become cities again
If done right zoning could make sense, but zones must be smaller, and there must be sufficient mix of services, shop, small commercial activities, parks, and auxiliary city centers. Parking minimums and road width minimums are bad tho, especially in residential settings. They are absolutely atrocious, makes spaces unlivable, and makes everything far away, with bad land use, and forces everybody to use cars. Also zoning should be planned decades in advance. If I got a home now at the edge of current development, I really want to know how the city will grow in the future around me.
New Suburbanist has a nice ring to it. Sounds like something I'd like for my mountain town of 8000. (More bike paths, more hiking trails accessible right from town, walkable community, mixed use, bus service. Already have a modicum of all that, and people who make use of it. ) Not everything needs to be New York City or Paris.
Seaside is a beautiful community! Everything is accessible by either sidewalk or multi-use trail, and it is designed where even the _need_ to drive is limited just to tourists coming in and out of the coastal area. This is because the main road that this development sits on, County Road 30A, has its own, separated bike path, meaning that people from many other locations can come from nearby!
I grew up in New York City, but in east-central Queens, where there were mostly single-family homes with large backyards.The ironic thing is that the kids living on our street rarely played in the backyards, which tended to be used for the occasional barbecue only. Instead, as there was little traffic, we favored playing in the street.
I live in Celebration currently. Im also studying for my masters in Urban Planning at UCF. So I ADORE this video. You broke the area down perfectly. Celebration, as you said, is FAR from perfect. The biggest flaw is that has absolutely zero transit and still very car centric. To get basic needs like groceries and household items you still need a car, as the downtown area is mainly restaurants. But the big thing Celebration does get right is housing. The community is very dense for its size, with the majority of housing coming in the form of mixed-use apartments and townhomes. Even the single family homes are built relatively close together, in a way which encourages walking and community, unlike most Florida suburbs. I would argue that Celebration is overly expensive. Of course, buying a home here is astronomical. But the renting prices are very competitive for the area...at least from what I have seen. I know plenty of Disney Cast Members that live in Celebration and get by just fine, I used to be one! I currently live in a two bedroom apartment and we each pay $650 a month. Not too shabby. Although our hospitality workers are still grossly underpaid. One of the things that actually shocked me about Celebration is the wide range of class status you see living here. You walk down one street with million dollar mansions, turn the corner and see a block full of relatively priced apartments.
I think you should look at the Town Center in Robbinsville, New Jersey. It has different styles of housing, like apartments above its shops, townhouses and single-family homes. It is pretty cool, check it out!
I am very sympathetic to New Urbanism, but public transit is also very important. Workers need access to a wider region for employment which may not be available in a mixed-use New Urbanist town. For that reason, TOD (transit-oriented development) is becoming more popular in New Jersey where development is now encouraged around rail stations.
Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, GA is a good one to check out. Beautiful design but its remote location and lack of diversity has garnered some criticism. Definitely worth checking out
Close to you in Chicago is Beachwalk in Michigan City, Indiana at Stop 7 along Lake Shore Drive. It doesn't have much retail to speak of but that may change in the next 5-10 years.
"I'm in Florida!" Oh my God, I'm so sorry to hear that man. Orlando metro is a total disaster zone. What do you think of our roads and navigation? (asking somewhat seriously) I think they're so atrocious that I am studying construction engineering (because Disney is paying for that program in full) and then hopefully looking into something along the lines of Urban Planning. The roads' design here are so awful, that I want to finish college and get to work fixing them. Damn the designers of the 60's/70's!
Housing for a wide variety of incomes: well that disqualifies celebration then. It’s not the most expensive place to live in Orlando but you’ll have to be upper middle class or higher to live there.
Indeed something overlooked by urban planners. Entire neighbourhoods are being built while completely ignore the will of the people. People are demanded to live cramped while financially they're bleeding out in expensive cities while the urban planners have fixed a nice affordable house in the suburbs. Zoning is done stupidly too. Living and commercial zones can being mixed in small blocks as a sort of chess board. Or suburbs are allowed to have commercial activities inside houses while people are allowed to live in commercial zones (of course not near big polluting factories of course). Mixing zones in which living space is above commercial space always cause trouble one way or another. The entrepeneurs have no space to grow while always some people see the opportunity to complain about noise, crowdiness, etc...
This reminds me a lot of the community I live in, which was built in the 1960s. My community has a well documented history of trying to build a community based on new urbanism, even if they never used the term themselves. My community definitely gives off a very different vibe than celebration, FL tho. Celebration seems to be perfectly manicured and uniform, which is definitely not how reston looks. Reston, developed over the course of 50-60 years and has greater variety of styles and housing. Reston definitely meets the affordable housing criteria that celebration doesn't meet, but it does have a few other issues with public transport and walkability that the Reston Association and county government have been trying to fix in the past 10 years. I'm curious how City Beautiful would assess communities like mine that actually do try to meet the principles of new urbanism, instead of just stopping at the aesthetics like celebration did.
6:30 well there's the problem. Communities designed by beuraceats and corporations. Zoning laws and building codes that stop natural slums from being built which then can't be gentrified by developers.
i hate planned developments like this. they seem to have an unhealthy obsession with making the layout pretty from the air and it's just so ridiculous to me. like shit, why do i care if the junctions in my town look like a circle from above if it makes them a pain to cross and expensive to maintain?
Orenco (I live just down to the east of it on 185th) is a nightmare actually. Not good. Super high end, way out of most people's price ranges, and for being "walkable", it really isn't. In fact, it's a perfect case of how it works. There is a clear unwritten code for all businesses and development firms to follow. Everything ends up looking exactly the same. It's always high end-super high end. No affordable or low income housing or businesses are ever allowed in. It's always a very specific style and color code. All businesses are required to have the "boutique" style inside and out, with fake black iron facades and accents with those fake gold lettering following a very specific set of fonts, without allowance for any logos to be present (it must be spelled out in name). All of these communities are built car-centric too. Roads, driveways, parking garages everywhere and light rail (the US' gentrification and motorist creation machine) is usually placed right there, or very close by. The streets are keep very fancy, and narrow. The list goes onward for seemingly eternity! Orenco and many other places in the Portland Metro area embody this exact set of unwritten rules where it automatically is made for the wealthy, and closes out anyone who is on the lower middle income bracket and lower completely. It's just another political "capital project" utensil they adore lying about being built in order to better serve the commuters who are more reliant on transit systems and walking to get where they need to go to, namely those of affordable and low income. New Urbanism is almost exclusively developed along light rail lines and dubbed "Transit Oriented Development" aka, "TOD". This is why so many, especially around places like the Portland area are becoming increasingly bitter towards the idea of TOD/New Urbanism. We've experienced what it really is and always will be. And we are NOT okay with it anymore. We see it's just another political ploy and capital projects scheme that helps absolutely nobody at all. We're sick of it.
@Claire Yeah. I have a feeling it will either end up similar to the shopping mall death, or, end up similar to places like the Pearl District in Portland and any other districts/neighbourhoods in other cities similar. I suppose a third possibility is it'll end up with a bunch of homeless camped around and with a substantial amount of long term vacancy. When following demographic shifts, it seems these places always end up being developed in mass once there is a lot of Southern Californians that've moved into the state and area, while the municipal and county governments have shifted to accommodate big tech firms and corporations. It follows the SoCal code often as well as the Technocrat shift perfectly. That is my observance. And as for the prior, it was observed and noted by many others back through the late 70s. Our governor then turned secretary of state, Tom McCall HATED Californians, especially Southern Californians for this very reason and he held consistent speeches and pushes to make sure as he put it, "Oregon does not become California II." Well... Once he was gone and 2006 onward came along... Exactly what he wanted to prevent was encouraged and happening everywhere here. Still is. And as a result, people from other states actually outnumber the amount of Oregonians living here in Oregon. That says a heck of a lot, especially when this mass exodus out of the state began around 2009 or so due to wanting nothing to do with what they knew was impending from the Californian influx. It's not even something they can help either. It's like if you're born there, it follows you every place you go, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It's really weird. But history shows it is the truth, even if it comes without explanation. I know that Californians had and still are moving to Texas in mass right now, especially the Austin area. And the changes are following the steps and pace that it always has when Californians show up in mass like that. I can't put my finger on the why behind it as much as I try to. It's a mystery why this has always happened.
@@uhohhotdog where do you get that idea? I am a mass transit nutcase in terms of how much I am impassioned in it and by it. I've studied it and watched it since I could read. I know what types are valid, good, helpful, needed and used correctly, and what ones stand opposite of that. Light Rail is the most damaging, overrated, costly, and inefficient form of transit that exists. Light Rail is even intentionally misused. It was created and strictly intended to be used to aid inner urban bus routes and never to be stand-alone. And they're only supposed to be used in high density urban settings via small, short loops in the urban core. Nowhere else. But the U.S. and now so many others who are copying the U.S. model are intentionally missing it as commuter & intercity rail, with the only intent being to induce more motorists (induced demand), and to gentrify the hell out of the corridor. And need I remind you that rail is always the worse option over buses for many reasons, but the primary reason being Trains cannot reroute, detour nor take any alternate routes when something happens to/on their system. Once something happens, the entire system stops and is stuck until whatever it is is cleared/fixed, stranding riders indefinitely. Buses on the other hand can go just about anywhere, so if anything on their routes goes wrong or blocks their path, they can just reroute/detour until whatever it is is cleared/fixed. Instant problem resolution! Bus Rapid Transit, Heavy focus abd emphasis on pedestrians by building out a lot of wide walking infrastructure, and then Bike lanes and paths. Those are the most efficient, important and cheapest big three and are all the most practical modes of transportation existent. These are the ones I emphasize and focus on every single day. And again, I have lived in the Portland metro area my whole life, I am transit reliant, and always have been. So adding this on top of my ridiculously deep interest, passion and love for mass transit and my constant research, observance and studying, I know what I am talking about here. Hell, with light rail, the world and the other states here that build light rail systems are copying on following specifically TriMet's system (MAX). So That again proves I know exactly what I am talking about here. Potential ridership elsewhere alongside those in place they're proposing it that want to know how it really is, look to us riders and operators to know how it, well, really is. And when they find out, it confirms their own suspicions, and makes then push against it too. TriMet refers to themselves on the national and international transit stage as "The Transit Mecca of the World" mind you. It couldn't be more of the opposite. There are countless other places in the world that are endlessly better than this shitty system here. And they actually give a shit about their system, employees and riders, unlike TriMet. But I digress.
Celebration, Seaside, Lakewood Ranch, and they're all in Florida. I never personally had to much issue with heavily planned communities but maybe that's because I really like Epcot (forever the GOAT Disney theme park).
There is a new urbanism development outside of Ottawa in Chelsea Quebec called Hendrick Farms. The houses are SO beautiful and the location is only about 5-10 minute walk from Old Chelsea which is a cute little town with restaurants, hiking trails and an amazing Nordik Spa. I don't care that new urbanism is really just new "sub-urbanism", anything that moves us away from houses that look like their 90% garage is a step in the right direction.
I think one reason there aren't enough urban places is because people tend to go to certain cities (boom towns). The demand gets crazy there and people move outwards to the cheaper areas.
How I personally define New Urbanism is the classical way of building cities but with some small modernist (or even not modernist, because garden communities in Europe are not modernist, but has same principles) touches. That is - no overcrowded outbuildings, a bit more space and a bit more green not only in park and squares, but on streets too. But it can be a bit Eurocentric, due to the fact that here districts built by the New Urbanism standards are exactly that - new districts of the city (or parts of existing districts), not a suburban villages.
Where I live we have no real building codes and zoning, but while it does allow for rather... "flexible" land use, it's also often a PITA when someone end up using the land in a way that disturbs the others. Are there provisions for those ?
Central Florida seems to have a ton of these communities. Not just Celebration, but Lake Nona, Lake Baldwin, Avalon Park, and probably some more I'm forgetting. I think it's cool, but feels contrived.
Biggest New Urbanist development going on in Orlando now is the Creative Village which is a Transit Oriented Development with affordable housing right downtown. Enjoyable video. Relies kind of a dated view of New Urbanism. Look at Miami21, Retrofitting Suburbia, and HOPE VI for a broader view.
"Perfection is the enemy of progress" - Churchill Hardliners need to focus less on what they're not getting, and more on the incremental improvements these communities are achieving.
I have never been, but looking at Celebration on google maps, it seems to be very car-centric, which is the exact opposite of what I think of for good urban planning. I don't see ANY bike paths or signs of public transit infrastructure, and I can't imagine it is easy for anyone to get to the downtown without driving unless they are less than a mile away.
The problem with these places is that they are both regulated, and planned. You won't get a good town until you get rid of most zoning, including minimum lot sizes, and minimum setbacks. And planners are just gum in the gearing. As long as a few constants are required, things should take care of themselves. Require a grid, don't let there be dead end areas that fail to do their part in moving traffic across town. Keep roadways for cars down to one lane each way. Plant trees along the streets. Set aside paths for cyclists and pedestrians. And splotch parks around at reasonable intervals. Only the basic, common sense, zoning laws would apply; no dangerous, smelly, or noisy, industries would be located near homes, otherwise, let people decide what to build on their property.
That... won't work at all. I completely agree with the general philosophy of decreasing road lanes and road speeds to ensure multimodal safety and encourage higher-density transit use, but there is no way that enough people and freight could move through a city with only one-lane roads unless you had extremely robust freight and passenger rail, which no US city does. If you want to add that, then you need planners.
![[Part 1] รักมาไม่ทันตั้งตัว❤ หนุ่มสาวโสดถูกจับมาแต่งงานกันกะทันหัน แถมเธอยังเป็นหัวหน้าของเขา?!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y2pOOMkuFI0/mqdefault.jpg)
Who's been to (or LIVED IN!) a New Urbanist community? So far I've been to Celebration, Orenco Station, and Laguna West. Hope to get to Seaside in the near future.
City Beautiful so how different are new urbanism communities from planned communities like The Woodlands, TX? I’ve been there and it has a lot of green space but isn’t focused on being pedestrian friendly.
My parents took me to Seaside several times growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and we loved it. It is such a wonderful place and so well designed.
I’ve also seen some New Urbanism in Atlanta, with the Glenwood Park development, which is denser than the surrounding Ormewood Park/Grant Park neighborhood. Charleston, SC has Daniel Island, Mixson Village (incomplete), and one on Shelmore Boulevard in Mount Pleasant that I can’t find the name of.
Cincinnati did some experiments with New Urbanism in the past, the most notable examples being the incomplete CityWest development in the West End, which replaced the Laurel Homes, a public housing project from the 1930s, and the yet-to-be-completed The Banks development, which surrounds a large park on the riverfront and reconnects downtown to the Ohio River.
Nearby Louisville has Norton Commons, which is like Seaside, Stapleton (Denver), or Celebration.
Asheville, NC also has some new urbanism with the Biltmore Park Development, but it’s not connected to any residential area, it’s like a downtown island with apartments and shops surrounded by roads, suburban sprawl-style single-use development, and parking.
City Beautiful I live in one actually 30 minutes from Celebration in East Orlando. Called Avalon Park, very well known around Orlando.
I lived in the village center of Haile Plantation, just west of Gainesville!
Talk about the urban planning of Pyongyang. A city rebuilt from the ashes of the Korean War
Pyongyang has a nice façade. If it were real, I would like it a lot.
This is gonna be fun. Will he have permission to film the suburbs and interview your serf- I mean, constituents?
the man actually has a point. that would be a very interesting video.
i was like - oh yeah that seems like a good video
*checks profile*
_oh_
lol
This just makes me wish Cities Skylines had mixed use zoning and affordable/upscale housing demands.
There might be a mod adding it in the steam workshop
I know right. There is a mod and few assets that allow this, but it’s highly time for either Cities 2 or some other company to make a better city simulation game.
@@NicholsKT it's interesting enough I'd like to try making a city sim
But I'm neither an urban designer nor a game dev so actually doing it isn't within my reach
...and medium density
You may not be able to have buildings act as both residential and commercial, but you can sure manually zone in the occasional corner store.
I've naturally shifted my city building skills from suburban hellscape to walkable communities. Not because I've always been a fan of it, but mostly because I despise traffic with a burning passion.
Mixed-use, and walkability seems key to new urbanisim. Otherwise it's just the same suburbs with nostalgic architecture.
Take away mixed use and affordable housing and all you have left is another gated community.
I love the old house designs from america. It looks so humble, simple and beauthiful. I think every house should look like that in the US.
These Disney-land examples are not really typical of what results from Smart-growth projects. What you usually get have no real charm at all.
And once a suburban area gets smartified there is no way to reverse the process.
It's a downhill grade. In 20 years it will be a disaster zone.
@@mitonaarea5856 If you like it, I wish you the best of luck in finding a community like that. But the US has 320 million people, and a single aesthetic definitely wouldn't be appropriate for all of them. There should be hundreds of major design families so that people have a reason to look at and appreciate other neighborhoods.
@@texasray5237 And you're saying the suburbs had charm before?
To me, as a European, I still see the same insanely wide streets, car centric design, and low density buildings, that make it difficult to have a really walkable city.
Netherlands is the exact opposite
Yep, exactly. I grew up near ish Orenco Station, OR. Not great
Walkable isn't as great as it is made out to be.
@@nxdark Perhaps not in the US... those streets look scary as they are. Her in the Netherlands(and other European countries) they are very walkable and it is great(unless you go a big distance, but that defeats the point)
One con for european style is very little nature
I will take urbanism any day versus the ugly suburbs that have popped up all over Texas .
Texas has the most ugly and wasteful design.
I live in one and agreed. Feels like a waste of resources
I like Keller just the way it is
Lincoln TANKsley It’s unsustainable urban sprawl (I’m from Coppell)
i just got back from a trip to nyc. in comparison, texas suburbs are depressing and awful :/
I lived in Orlando in the early 2000s and remember Celebration being thought of as “the town that Disney built but no one could afford to live in.” And the HOA rules were very strict. Think Pleasantville.
Absolutely. Hoa rules and restrictions are severe.
I've been to many of these types of communities and they all skip on the affordability part. They just seen like a new way to make gated upper class housing without the actual gates.
Tarzan Please calm down.
The high price is the gate. Keep the undesirables out with the price tag. Who needs Jim Crow laws?
Tarzan who are you talking to lol
The problem is how easy credit is. Getting loans/mortgages for hundreds of thousands of dollars leads to constant rising prices.
Imagine a world where you could only get a loan for $20k-$200k.....this would make it more affordable; however, would cripple the economy.
@La Maci Maybe people who work hard and live responsibly don't want trashy degenerates for neighbors.
I worked as a long-term temp on Celebration. The developers worked hard to get the mixed use areas to work organically, including allowing for areas that could change as the community grew. The affordable housing was in the early designs that I saw, but it was getting push back.
No surprise there, NIMBY's love to ruin everything for us peasants
Can't have the workers living where they actually work. What are you thinking? 😉
When my parents were my age, they could buy a small starter home after they got married, but developers don't seem to bother building anything but expensive housing anymore. Can you do a video on this?
No... what your talking about isn’t a planing issue it’s a market problem..
Ask your parents what they sold that starter home for and you might find your answer
The value of the dollar was a lot better then. You didn't even have to graduate to be able to get a good paying job where only one pay coming in would cover the family. Nowadays it's hard enough for people to get a decent paying job after university to afford a home, even with another income coming in, let alone paying off that student debt.
@@johnj3636 It's both. A lot of houses that were built, specially in the 90s and 00s were nothing more than McMansions, which took up more space than smaller, regular houses. This creates a lack of space, which in turn causes inflations.
More expensive housing also tends to have higher margins.
supply and demand....there is more people now (which will increase demand) but the supply hasn't been able to grow as quick. And you can only do so much before some places would start to get more crowded
I love your videos. I live in Celebration and I love that I’m able to just take my bike out and ride to parks and to our downtown area. I do appreciate this style over the endless urban sprawl around the rest of Orlando.
Anything that gets Americans to live in closer proximity would be an improvement I suppose. They sort of remind me of those outside malls. It's like an attempt at making something interesting and urban but it doesn't hit the mark. Hopefully they'll improve though.
Here in sprawled-out Atlanta, we’re seeing more new urbanism with the Halcyon project and near by soon to be built Alpharetta Center. It seems these concepts are replacing the typical sub division and even in the perimeter, more development with a focus on new urbanism.
You kind of skirt one of the biggest issues with Celebration, FL. It was developed as a "Company Town," owned and operated by Disney. That meant stifling competition with Disney and restricting residents' ability to have say in the governance of their community. Disney has since stopped trying to control everything in Celebration; but the taint remains.
It's their land they can do as they please, why are you mad if you don't live there lol?
@@Girtharmstrong69 It's my tax dollars that go to fund it like every other welfare leech on the planet. I bet you live in a post-Communist bunker and are trying to speak for my country.
"It was too hot, and too sunny... so we're doing the rest of these shots in the studio". EXACTLY THIS! A lot of the walkable stuff you mention would be great if you lived in a temperate area of the country but I wouldn't think much of Florida would be pleasant to walk around in, even if it were shaded.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel. For example, in Seville (Spain) they reach over 40ºC in summer, and it is one of the cities in the world with more life on the street.
th-cam.com/video/xjGRkyHn6iM/w-d-xo.html
As someone who lives in Florida - walking anywhere in Florida is rarely pleasant. The joke being that we don't have seasons, we just have "hot humid" and "not-as-hot-and-not-as-humid." There's a reason Florida didn't seem much of a population boom until the invention of the air conditioner - not even shade helps when the humidity can reach 90% on an average day.
@@grt1977 A couple things. Florida is essentially just a massive swamp, it is extremely humid almost all the time. This results in the very unpleasant experience of intense sweating (due to the heat) and then the sweat doesn't evaporate and cool you off, even in a shaded area. Second, when you live in inland Florida, there is almost never any wind. This creates very stagnant air.
Walking for even a couple minutes during most times of the year is almost unbearable here, there is a reason large numbers of people have lived in Sevilla for thousands of years while Florida always had a low population density until the invention of Air Conditioning.
I guess its all what you are used to, I live in Florida and I walk and bike in the heat... bring lots of ice water. On the reverse I quite dislike going outside when its less than 60F/16C
@@3of11 must be a genetic predisposition, 50-60 degrees fahrenheit is still tshirt weather to me and I was born and raised in texas so if I haven't gotten used to the heat it's just something you have or don't have
You should visit Poundbury in the UK, the most famous new urbanist development in the country. The Prince of Wales is a fan.
It's very successful example of New Urbanism. Achieving density and affordable housing with plenty of mixed use developments.
@@finnersmcspeed5646 "Affordable" the only people I know who live there go to Eton so...
Also Eddington in Cambridgeshire. It's still under construction, but it's already a beautiful place.
@@eastpavilion-er6081 Eddington is cubist/modernist. I don't see it acheiving any populatiry with the general public; it's a town built by architects, for architects.
The prince of wales made it happen. He's not just a fan. IT was built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall... he initiated it.
This is off topic but it sprung to mind and I feel obligated to share:
If you drive around the Greek island of Zakynthos you will notice a weird road layout and bizarre fake plot depressions where houses used to be before the big Earthquake took out every building bar one on the island.
I’ve been binging your videos and saw celebration in the title and got excited because I’m moving there in a month!!! This was so interesting, thank you for you videos!
I’ve been to Celebration. It’s nice but once you dig into its history, it gets very complicated
Avery The Cuban-American why?
chattenmetchad Rob Plays did two vids about Celebration, it gets very complicated once you dig deep
The houses were poorly developed and there was strange practices at there school, also there’s a pond/lake nearby that multiple people have died in
I wanted to see an example of a perfect new urban town
Come to Europe.
@@iamcleaver6854 bro y? I'm not on tour or nothin
@Bjarnþór no it isn't. The area have been a failure so far. And it isn't well planned, their weren't any major plans to begin with. The whole area was build so they could sell lots, and then use that money to build the metro.
Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Pyongyang are all great cities.
Barcelona.
There's another similar community in Central Florida, Baldwin Park. Part of my cross-town cycling commute brought me through there, and I really appreciate the way these designs accommodate every mode of transport.
I thought of Baldwin Park too.
Im just chilling and saying hi from a 3rd world suburbs loll
the same here 😢
@@GerardoAguilar1 *Chiraq
LMAOOO OPEN THIS DUDES PROFILE
Bruh same
Thank you for this awesome video explaining New Urbanism in detail. When I first learned about it, I completely subscribed to the idea and still have a description in one of my social media accounts and "advocate of new urbanism." But now I see the flaws of it, but like you said, an incremental improvement of the suburbs is better than nothing! Thank you!
I think the problem with New Urbanism is that, as always, we are looking for a sort of ''perfect urban form'', a utopian vision of the city that could be absolutely unsuccessful considering the real intrinsic complexity of a city that does not only concern aesthetics or physical environment, but on the contrary a relationship that is anything but simple between an urban center and its inhabitants
Exactly. I am a traditional urbanist myself, and i put commuting patterns and economic impact above all else. If US cities are to succeed in the future, we need to make utility the biggest priority. I prefer gridded "Minor" streets and "Major" streets (Manhattan being the prime example) with large highways connecting our biggest neighborhoods (BQE, 405), and interstates connecting our biggest cities. As a part of this, Route 66 should be the starting point of a new US Urban Route system, called System 66, which connects the most scenic and commercialized cities. The original route would be revitalized and expanded to include all major US cities of this time, which would be a national hub and spoke system centered on Chicago, but the route's exit numbers would start at New York, working their way out.
@@shanekeenaNYC you seem to know about this stuff so may i ask you a question? what would the typical approach of european cities be named? most cities her seem to develop naturally and there are few meticulously designed developments and instead everything seems to arise pargmatically from those who inhabit the area
Why don't you build several story apartment buildings? That would make communities denser, cheaper and more walkable. You could have a grocery store/bar/coffee-shop on the first floor (ground floor) and with people living above.
Iam Cleaver Plenty of places do have that, there’s just options for houses too. Idk the ins and outs of Celebration, Fl but I do know other new urbanist communities do what you say.
A lot of people don't want to live there.
Soooo, you LIKE noise, roaches, and dirt?
"New Suburbanism" does sound more correct. But that's not really a critique. This is a huge upgrade over the current design of suburban communities. Suburbs aren't going anywhere, but it would be nice if we could have them without trading away basically all of the benefits of urban development.
Improving and combining these principals with actual urban planning for high density metros would be a vast improvement overall. Liveable cities with multiple available modes of transportation, and suburbs you can actually get around without feeling like you've travelled to a wasteland with houses in it.
Zoning laws need a serious overhaul. And it needs to be combined with a new method of bidding out smaller parcels of land for more varied and even mixed-use development. The people in charge of distributing land and city planning need to be people who understand the needs of a given community at a far more granular level than what we currently have. Allowing communities to rapidly grow without losing all functionality.
City "Planning" almost doesn't seem to to exist in many US metros, so much as ticking off boxes of required resources on a spreadsheet and then connecting roads between them. (Simplification I know, but that's the *feel* of US-style sprawl).
Fair video, but only about greenfield new urbanism projects. You should do one on sprawl repair and TODs!
You should have checked out Lake Nona, which is a large new urbanism community currently being built. Lake Nona is down the road from Celebration.
I only had a limited time on that trip, but I have family in the area so I’ll be back. Thanks for the tip!
Seaside, FL too!
Harmony as well just past St. Cloud.
Check out Tradition. It's a master planned community that's literally an entire expansion of Port St Lucie
Would love to see a video from you on soviet urban planning, or just urban planning in the whole eastern bloc.
Goo video, but I couldn't help but smile when the word "revolutionary" is used in context of what's the standard for most of the rest of the world.
"Scenic Osceola County"
LOL
Great stuff as always. Nice job of making complex urban planning terminology interesting and digestible. Look forward to the next one. Come visit us in Chicago sometime!
could you make a video on city authorities? such as the Port Authority in NYC.
John Oliver has a nice segment on that
Your videos are awesome, thanks for doing them and keep it up.
But man, I get more and more glad to live in Europe with each issue you bring up about US cities.
Alexandru Juncu Eh, some of us Americans grew accustomed to living in large houses and having large yards in the quiet suburbs. To each his own. I lived in Europe for a bit and each style has its own unique traits that I like.
@@BOLPutube we also have quiet suburb with „large“ houses. Granted not as large as the average house in Texas but plenty enough
@@t-bone9239: the traditional European suburb is on the edge of a large town or city and it doesn't feel plonked down with the need to jump in the car for a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk. The newer suburbs are different: further away; row upon row of cheaply built housing; and no public transport links.
@@eattherich9215 yeah most „suburbs“ are small town or villages nowaadays who connected with big metropolitan centers over time who have no buildings except single family house zoning. Many of them don’t even have a bakery or a small store in walkable distance so people have to get their cars most of the time as well. It’s slowly becoming like American suburbs because cities get to expensive so people build in the surrounding villages. So sad to see because these villages are pretty much dead. Everybody commutes to work and school to the nearby city and just comes home to sleep. On the weekends they go to the city as well or go to the countryside. Suburbs are just large sleeping pods and during daytime it’s just empty
@@t-bone9239: dormitory towns.
Similar to Seaside, the community of Rosemary Beach, just up the road from Seaside, is probably the most beautiful small town I've been to. Highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the panhandle of Florida.
I’m obsessed with your videos! Do one on Baltimore cities iconic row homes!!!
I like the front porch and entrance from Celebration, without the huge garage doors like the ones you showed from Seaside
Do you think Disney’s original vision of EPCOT would’ve worked with today’s technology? You should do a video on that.
For the criticism of New Urbanism, one could argue that for some having suburbs look like old towns got some to finally pay attention to the real McCoy. Many old downtowns are no longer ghost towns and New Urbanism may have contributed to this. I certainly prefer the older cities with a real history.
You mentioned the aesthetic style a lot of these houses arcs back to the small town I’d love to see an episode on why the small town so iconic and why it worked for its day
No illegals, No vagrants. No apartments, per se.
You should do a video on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and Charles Center redevelopment
Every comment section I get a Baltimore comment!
There’s a lot cool stuff happening here, but unfortunately the social repercussions aren’t great. If you make a video about Baltimore, you should include that
Interesting fact. The same architectural firm designed both Celebration and the Inner Harbor
City Beautiful very underrated city! So many great neighborhoods and a very expansive urban fabric. Obviously it’s got some problems but that’s what will happen when a third of the city (and the top-earners) move out in a span of three decades.
Mike Aziz interesting, never knew that.
I love Celebration! Thank you for making this video, and letting me learn more about where I live!
Fascinating I always thought new urbanism was principally about a style/aesthetic. Interesting to learn that there’s much more too it and it has goals and rules for urban living beyond the look of the houses.
Yep, that’s a common misconception
Don't know if this counts but, Some Developers here in the Jakarta Metropolitan Area build new communities, they're usually filled with gated communities with specific architecture styles, schools and retail (at least one mall) and sprawling roads. Developers often use Highway access as an advertising tactic (although this is changing)
They can use HSR access to sell it even more
This concept is very interesting to me, I’ve not heard of the term before but thank you for giving me something to research further. I think something like this rather build new communities would be better applied to already existing ones where costs are cheap and there is the need for well-built thriving communities. It’s not perfect but it’s a start.
Walkability is very important for quality of life and for the environment. My brother recently moved to an area that could be called New Urbanist in the neighborhood of Brookhaven, Atlanta and I highly enjoy visiting. Easily walkable to numerous restaurants, shops, grocery stores, a gym, etc, with rooftop amenities. Compared to the depressing suburban sprawl of "Bedroom districts" outside of the city, it's much more enjoyable, and reduces reliance on a vehicle.
Its incredible what can happen when you don't design a cities and neighborhoods around cars.
Traffic jams?
@@patrickmccarthy6430 Car centric design creates more traffic jams though
@@patrickmccarthy6430 One major point of New Urbanism is walkability, so that won’t be much of a problem.
Hmmm, why do they call it urbanism if its so green and leafy?
Because the population density is high.
It may seem park-like during the day. But at night all the teens are out there on the street, getting away from their parents and those small smart-growth apartments. And every little leafy alcove has its own local gang of hangouts. Some are good kids, but others aren't. And some are downright criminals.
Smart growth areas don't age well. To be honest, you're better off in well lit downright urban areas than in those dark leafy disguised neo-urban park communities.
A man's home is his castle, as long as its his. But in areas where everyone lives in apartments (whether rented or owned) what's outside becomes no man's land.
This kind of modernistic urban planning is not new. It's been around for decades. Here in France there are a lot of areas that were planned in this manner 50 years ago. You wouldn't want to live there now.
The people behind Agenda 21 and Smart Growth present themselves as Utopian progressive thinkers. But then again, so did the Bolsheviks.
@@texasray5237 Why are you afraid of teenagers? I doubt any adolescent boy wants to go near your bratty children, and they definitely don’t care if it’s a suburb or a giant city, the streets are their place at night. You definitely seem like the person to be a helicopter parent, not allowing little Timmy to go outside because of “bAd tEeNaGeRs”. I like living in a walkable community because I can walk to my friends house and have a gathering. I also like living in a walkable community because it’s rare to find people with the White suburban middle class altitude.
Europe: I live next to a church from the 15th century a cafe and bar a CEO couple with 700 square meters house. Some students apartments and a new renovated shop / apartment house. Building for city electricity ( transformer station ) 6 parking spaces and an old tree.
We know
Looks like a gated community just without the gate
The gate is there, you just can't see it. Overly high property costs, busybody HOAs to drive out anyone with alternative values or who can't keep up with the Joneses, and private security to drive off "undesirable" visitors make a physical gate redundant.
Wait... are you saying.... that... an expensive house.... is expensive????
@@fnsmike sounds like heaven to me, sick of getting my stuff stolen by those undesirables after I work my ass off every day
3rd world developers: Allow me to introduce what i call superblock! Some block that cramped up with apartments, mall, hospital, (maybe school too!) in one area.
It seems a lot of master planned communities I see these days (not all, but not an insignificant amount) seem to try and tackle this whole new urbanist idea. A mix of housing densities with commercial and job centers. I would love for you to make videos sort of analyzing some of these master plan communities based on their aspirations (how good of a target are they even shooting for) and how well they do (or do not) achieve those goals. I know here in the Phoenix area there are some really interesting master planned communities like Verrado, Eastmark, Vistancia, etc that to different degrees attempt to do some of what you say, I'd be curious about the various ones around the US and how well they live up to this sort of goal.
living in hillsboro i see orenco station every day on my commute to work and i wish that everywhere could be as pleasant to bike through
I’ve been to celebration, Florida, it’s a nice little town and it’s design is very good for small businesses because there’s a lot of pedestrian traffic
Celebration looks like a film set.
I lived in Celebration back in 2008. Nice place.
We have to abolish parking minimums , road standards and zoning , leave it for the developer to decide.That way we can increase density and walkability.
Local governments must also improve transit within the city and with the suburbs.Its the only way our cities can become cities again
If done right zoning could make sense, but zones must be smaller, and there must be sufficient mix of services, shop, small commercial activities, parks, and auxiliary city centers. Parking minimums and road width minimums are bad tho, especially in residential settings. They are absolutely atrocious, makes spaces unlivable, and makes everything far away, with bad land use, and forces everybody to use cars. Also zoning should be planned decades in advance. If I got a home now at the edge of current development, I really want to know how the city will grow in the future around me.
New Suburbanist has a nice ring to it. Sounds like something I'd like for my mountain town of 8000. (More bike paths, more hiking trails accessible right from town, walkable community, mixed use, bus service. Already have a modicum of all that, and people who make use of it. ) Not everything needs to be New York City or Paris.
Seaside is a beautiful community! Everything is accessible by either sidewalk or multi-use trail, and it is designed where even the _need_ to drive is limited just to tourists coming in and out of the coastal area. This is because the main road that this development sits on, County Road 30A, has its own, separated bike path, meaning that people from many other locations can come from nearby!
I grew up in New York City, but in east-central Queens, where there were mostly single-family homes with large backyards.The ironic thing is that the kids living on our street rarely played in the backyards, which tended to be used for the occasional barbecue only. Instead, as there was little traffic, we favored playing in the street.
I live in Celebration currently. Im also studying for my masters in Urban Planning at UCF. So I ADORE this video. You broke the area down perfectly.
Celebration, as you said, is FAR from perfect. The biggest flaw is that has absolutely zero transit and still very car centric. To get basic needs like groceries and household items you still need a car, as the downtown area is mainly restaurants.
But the big thing Celebration does get right is housing. The community is very dense for its size, with the majority of housing coming in the form of mixed-use apartments and townhomes. Even the single family homes are built relatively close together, in a way which encourages walking and community, unlike most Florida suburbs.
I would argue that Celebration is overly expensive. Of course, buying a home here is astronomical. But the renting prices are very competitive for the area...at least from what I have seen. I know plenty of Disney Cast Members that live in Celebration and get by just fine, I used to be one! I currently live in a two bedroom apartment and we each pay $650 a month. Not too shabby. Although our hospitality workers are still grossly underpaid.
One of the things that actually shocked me about Celebration is the wide range of class status you see living here. You walk down one street with million dollar mansions, turn the corner and see a block full of relatively priced apartments.
Once I saw your last video on Disney, I knew you must have visited Celebration, FL.
I think you should look at the Town Center in Robbinsville, New Jersey. It has different styles of housing, like apartments above its shops, townhouses and single-family homes. It is pretty cool, check it out!
Could you make a follow-up video about new urbanism and its criticism?
Oregon resident here, never thought of Orenco Station as a new urbanist community, just as a shopping center inside of the city of Hillsboro.
South Korea planning is amazing.
Everything is within 5 minutes of where you live.
I am very sympathetic to New Urbanism, but public transit is also very important. Workers need access to a wider region for employment which may not be available in a mixed-use New Urbanist town. For that reason, TOD (transit-oriented development) is becoming more popular in New Jersey where development is now encouraged around rail stations.
Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, GA is a good one to check out. Beautiful design but its remote location and lack of diversity has garnered some criticism. Definitely worth checking out
Close to you in Chicago is Beachwalk in Michigan City, Indiana at Stop 7 along Lake Shore Drive. It doesn't have much retail to speak of but that may change in the next 5-10 years.
Thank you for showing the name of the city and state when showing example locations.
Omg I swear every episode you bring up Maryland and it throws me off
"Wholesale changes to how land is developed in the United States" Maybe you could expand on what changes you would propose??
"I'm in Florida!"
Oh my God, I'm so sorry to hear that man. Orlando metro is a total disaster zone. What do you think of our roads and navigation? (asking somewhat seriously) I think they're so atrocious that I am studying construction engineering (because Disney is paying for that program in full) and then hopefully looking into something along the lines of Urban Planning. The roads' design here are so awful, that I want to finish college and get to work fixing them. Damn the designers of the 60's/70's!
Housing for a wide variety of incomes: well that disqualifies celebration then. It’s not the most expensive place to live in Orlando but you’ll have to be upper middle class or higher to live there.
The thumbnails reminds me a lot of the view from the Semarang Tawang Railway Station haha
It still feels like many of the urban centers are too expensive for what you get out of them, compared to small town or rural devolopment.
Indeed something overlooked by urban planners. Entire neighbourhoods are being built while completely ignore the will of the people. People are demanded to live cramped while financially they're bleeding out in expensive cities while the urban planners have fixed a nice affordable house in the suburbs.
Zoning is done stupidly too. Living and commercial zones can being mixed in small blocks as a sort of chess board. Or suburbs are allowed to have commercial activities inside houses while people are allowed to live in commercial zones (of course not near big polluting factories of course). Mixing zones in which living space is above commercial space always cause trouble one way or another. The entrepeneurs have no space to grow while always some people see the opportunity to complain about noise, crowdiness, etc...
This reminds me a lot of the community I live in, which was built in the 1960s. My community has a well documented history of trying to build a community based on new urbanism, even if they never used the term themselves. My community definitely gives off a very different vibe than celebration, FL tho. Celebration seems to be perfectly manicured and uniform, which is definitely not how reston looks. Reston, developed over the course of 50-60 years and has greater variety of styles and housing. Reston definitely meets the affordable housing criteria that celebration doesn't meet, but it does have a few other issues with public transport and walkability that the Reston Association and county government have been trying to fix in the past 10 years. I'm curious how City Beautiful would assess communities like mine that actually do try to meet the principles of new urbanism, instead of just stopping at the aesthetics like celebration did.
"Affordability" is code for welfare housing.
6:30 well there's the problem. Communities designed by beuraceats and corporations. Zoning laws and building codes that stop natural slums from being built which then can't be gentrified by developers.
I dont think any cities want slums
Why would anyone build a slum in the first place? How do they plan to market it? 🙄
@@eattherich9215 the inhabitants would build their own houses as has happened throughout history.
@@1knurlagn no city wants slums though of course they would try to make a way to get rid of slums
@@novamike7121 cities dont want and stop the homeless from constructing shelters for themselves. Sounds like cities are fucking evil.
Just sounds like pricing out everyone but boomers and the nouveau rich with extra steps.
Dr LMAO Boomers have more money because they’ve been alive longer and have slowly increased their pay and saved money.
i hate planned developments like this. they seem to have an unhealthy obsession with making the layout pretty from the air and it's just so ridiculous to me. like shit, why do i care if the junctions in my town look like a circle from above if it makes them a pain to cross and expensive to maintain?
Orenco (I live just down to the east of it on 185th) is a nightmare actually. Not good. Super high end, way out of most people's price ranges, and for being "walkable", it really isn't. In fact, it's a perfect case of how it works. There is a clear unwritten code for all businesses and development firms to follow. Everything ends up looking exactly the same. It's always high end-super high end. No affordable or low income housing or businesses are ever allowed in. It's always a very specific style and color code. All businesses are required to have the "boutique" style inside and out, with fake black iron facades and accents with those fake gold lettering following a very specific set of fonts, without allowance for any logos to be present (it must be spelled out in name). All of these communities are built car-centric too. Roads, driveways, parking garages everywhere and light rail (the US' gentrification and motorist creation machine) is usually placed right there, or very close by. The streets are keep very fancy, and narrow. The list goes onward for seemingly eternity!
Orenco and many other places in the Portland Metro area embody this exact set of unwritten rules where it automatically is made for the wealthy, and closes out anyone who is on the lower middle income bracket and lower completely. It's just another political "capital project" utensil they adore lying about being built in order to better serve the commuters who are more reliant on transit systems and walking to get where they need to go to, namely those of affordable and low income.
New Urbanism is almost exclusively developed along light rail lines and dubbed "Transit Oriented Development" aka, "TOD". This is why so many, especially around places like the Portland area are becoming increasingly bitter towards the idea of TOD/New Urbanism. We've experienced what it really is and always will be. And we are NOT okay with it anymore. We see it's just another political ploy and capital projects scheme that helps absolutely nobody at all. We're sick of it.
TheCriminalViolin so your solution is to not have any transit?
@Claire Yeah. I have a feeling it will either end up similar to the shopping mall death, or, end up similar to places like the Pearl District in Portland and any other districts/neighbourhoods in other cities similar. I suppose a third possibility is it'll end up with a bunch of homeless camped around and with a substantial amount of long term vacancy.
When following demographic shifts, it seems these places always end up being developed in mass once there is a lot of Southern Californians that've moved into the state and area, while the municipal and county governments have shifted to accommodate big tech firms and corporations. It follows the SoCal code often as well as the Technocrat shift perfectly. That is my observance. And as for the prior, it was observed and noted by many others back through the late 70s. Our governor then turned secretary of state, Tom McCall HATED Californians, especially Southern Californians for this very reason and he held consistent speeches and pushes to make sure as he put it, "Oregon does not become California II." Well... Once he was gone and 2006 onward came along... Exactly what he wanted to prevent was encouraged and happening everywhere here. Still is. And as a result, people from other states actually outnumber the amount of Oregonians living here in Oregon. That says a heck of a lot, especially when this mass exodus out of the state began around 2009 or so due to wanting nothing to do with what they knew was impending from the Californian influx. It's not even something they can help either. It's like if you're born there, it follows you every place you go, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It's really weird. But history shows it is the truth, even if it comes without explanation.
I know that Californians had and still are moving to Texas in mass right now, especially the Austin area. And the changes are following the steps and pace that it always has when Californians show up in mass like that. I can't put my finger on the why behind it as much as I try to. It's a mystery why this has always happened.
@@uhohhotdog where do you get that idea? I am a mass transit nutcase in terms of how much I am impassioned in it and by it. I've studied it and watched it since I could read. I know what types are valid, good, helpful, needed and used correctly, and what ones stand opposite of that. Light Rail is the most damaging, overrated, costly, and inefficient form of transit that exists. Light Rail is even intentionally misused. It was created and strictly intended to be used to aid inner urban bus routes and never to be stand-alone. And they're only supposed to be used in high density urban settings via small, short loops in the urban core. Nowhere else. But the U.S. and now so many others who are copying the U.S. model are intentionally missing it as commuter & intercity rail, with the only intent being to induce more motorists (induced demand), and to gentrify the hell out of the corridor. And need I remind you that rail is always the worse option over buses for many reasons, but the primary reason being Trains cannot reroute, detour nor take any alternate routes when something happens to/on their system. Once something happens, the entire system stops and is stuck until whatever it is is cleared/fixed, stranding riders indefinitely.
Buses on the other hand can go just about anywhere, so if anything on their routes goes wrong or blocks their path, they can just reroute/detour until whatever it is is cleared/fixed. Instant problem resolution!
Bus Rapid Transit, Heavy focus abd emphasis on pedestrians by building out a lot of wide walking infrastructure, and then Bike lanes and paths. Those are the most efficient, important and cheapest big three and are all the most practical modes of transportation existent. These are the ones I emphasize and focus on every single day.
And again, I have lived in the Portland metro area my whole life, I am transit reliant, and always have been. So adding this on top of my ridiculously deep interest, passion and love for mass transit and my constant research, observance and studying, I know what I am talking about here. Hell, with light rail, the world and the other states here that build light rail systems are copying on following specifically TriMet's system (MAX). So That again proves I know exactly what I am talking about here. Potential ridership elsewhere alongside those in place they're proposing it that want to know how it really is, look to us riders and operators to know how it, well, really is. And when they find out, it confirms their own suspicions, and makes then push against it too.
TriMet refers to themselves on the national and international transit stage as "The Transit Mecca of the World" mind you. It couldn't be more of the opposite. There are countless other places in the world that are endlessly better than this shitty system here. And they actually give a shit about their system, employees and riders, unlike TriMet. But I digress.
@@TheCriminalViolin We in Texas do not want the contaminating Californians to move here.
Celebration, Seaside, Lakewood Ranch, and they're all in Florida. I never personally had to much issue with heavily planned communities but maybe that's because I really like Epcot (forever the GOAT Disney theme park).
I love the downtown Detroit map background!
There is a new urbanism development outside of Ottawa in Chelsea Quebec called Hendrick Farms. The houses are SO beautiful and the location is only about 5-10 minute walk from Old Chelsea which is a cute little town with restaurants, hiking trails and an amazing Nordik Spa. I don't care that new urbanism is really just new "sub-urbanism", anything that moves us away from houses that look like their 90% garage is a step in the right direction.
The flyover shots reminds me of the album cover of Modest Mouse's Strangers To Ourselves
New Urbanism! *terrifying hurricane sound effects*
Please do a video on Babcock Ranch, the "new urbanist" sustainable community in SW Florida!
I think one reason there aren't enough urban places is because people tend to go to certain cities (boom towns). The demand gets crazy there and people move outwards to the cheaper areas.
How I personally define New Urbanism is the classical way of building cities but with some small modernist (or even not modernist, because garden communities in Europe are not modernist, but has same principles) touches. That is - no overcrowded outbuildings, a bit more space and a bit more green not only in park and squares, but on streets too. But it can be a bit Eurocentric, due to the fact that here districts built by the New Urbanism standards are exactly that - new districts of the city (or parts of existing districts), not a suburban villages.
Where I live we have no real building codes and zoning, but while it does allow for rather... "flexible" land use, it's also often a PITA when someone end up using the land in a way that disturbs the others.
Are there provisions for those ?
Central Florida seems to have a ton of these communities. Not just Celebration, but Lake Nona, Lake Baldwin, Avalon Park, and probably some more I'm forgetting. I think it's cool, but feels contrived.
Great video!
it looks very Stepford wives town. Some of my coworkers wanted to move to Celebration . I guess they realized it was too expensive for them.
Biggest New Urbanist development going on in Orlando now is the Creative Village which is a Transit Oriented Development with affordable housing right downtown. Enjoyable video. Relies kind of a dated view of New Urbanism. Look at Miami21, Retrofitting Suburbia, and HOPE VI for a broader view.
Also I’ve never heard of a law in Florida requires affordable housing.
1:09 That moment when you realize that Seaside, Florida has the same street plan as Stalin's planned city "Nowa Huta"
Woah, I just realized the reason you're Called City Beautiful is cos you live in Orlando! Awesome, I live here too!
I wish you could make more videos about Mexico.
Any ideas in particular?
@@CityBeautiful maybe how the prevalence of mirco loans for building houses affect how the cities develop?
Seaside Florida is beautiful but gives me feelings of nostalgia; perhaps that's why I like to vacation there. If only I could own a house.
"Perfection is the enemy of progress" - Churchill
Hardliners need to focus less on what they're not getting, and more on the incremental improvements these communities are achieving.
Your videos are really great.
I have never been, but looking at Celebration on google maps, it seems to be very car-centric, which is the exact opposite of what I think of for good urban planning. I don't see ANY bike paths or signs of public transit infrastructure, and I can't imagine it is easy for anyone to get to the downtown without driving unless they are less than a mile away.
The problem with these places is that they are both regulated, and planned. You won't get a good town until you get rid of most zoning, including minimum lot sizes, and minimum setbacks. And planners are just gum in the gearing. As long as a few constants are required, things should take care of themselves. Require a grid, don't let there be dead end areas that fail to do their part in moving traffic across town. Keep roadways for cars down to one lane each way. Plant trees along the streets. Set aside paths for cyclists and pedestrians. And splotch parks around at reasonable intervals. Only the basic, common sense, zoning laws would apply; no dangerous, smelly, or noisy, industries would be located near homes, otherwise, let people decide what to build on their property.
That... won't work at all. I completely agree with the general philosophy of decreasing road lanes and road speeds to ensure multimodal safety and encourage higher-density transit use, but there is no way that enough people and freight could move through a city with only one-lane roads unless you had extremely robust freight and passenger rail, which no US city does. If you want to add that, then you need planners.