That's American cities for you. I have to say though, Atlanta is no where near on the same level of Phoenix, like that's a LOT better. Maybe Jacksonville, Florida (Florida in general) is a good example of a city/place that's overwhelmingly suburban.
its weird how in the US you talk about "suburbs" which are 20 - 30 miles aways from the city centre. In the UK 30 miles from a city centre...you are in a different city!
Bullshit, i live in the farthest suburb from the city centre, and i live in the sun belt, which means its the most auto dependent and suburban part of America. I only live about 5-10 miles from the city centre
Warren Moon You know nothing and you’re a fucking moron. You just want to make yourself feel better about it because you don’t understand anything. There are quite a few cities in the United States that sprawl outwards 10 to 20 miles and are within the same city limits as the downtown too. What the fuck is wrong with you. And sometimes when people are on the outskirts of the city, their actual address is still listed as this city that they are next to. In some cases people do generalize where they live because if they say something to an outsider like I Live in Oak Bluff versus Kansas City, people will know what Kansas City is but not Oak Bluff. Too bad I had to school you......you stupid fuck.
I live in the Nashville metropolitan area and the suburb I live in is about 35-40 minutes away from town. Rent is still super high, and traffic is a little crazy at times.
I've noticed that the city of Houston has a weird kind of high-density urban sprawl. There's skyscrapers 10-20 miles outside of downtown and/or skyscrapers next to farm or ranch land.
If you look at most Southern Ontario cities you will find that as well. I noticed that you had a map of the GTA up, and it is surprising how dense it is considering the type of development is located in the periphery.
Texas doesn't have strict zoning laws. so high density buildings are able to be built anywhere a developer wants. unlike most other cities where the municipality controls what type of building can go where.
Steven Poke I St.Louis (which is where I live) there are suburbs further from the city than that, for example godfey Illinois is 39 miles away from downtown
Yea in the woods ... might be the "METRO" area but its trees woods ... 20 west woods ... 75 north kinda woods until you past Kennesaw ... 75 south morrow .... 85 kinda urban ... but atlanta is trees bro ...... now L.A is sprawl until san Bernardino Ventura ... Houston is sprawl in every way n .s. e. W . Nw sw se ne
Franjo Kristof both wrong, apartment buildings aren’t boring, that’s why cities built like that were made for you to get out and be productive around the city, I live in a suburb and hardly anyone comes out to do anything recreational like except jog, no stairs to walk up and down, same bland design of housings, and same small but boring parks that no one even goes to. The only reason why people move to suburbs because the housing is bigger for families to raise but other than that, the more young and hard working people or graduates who are ready to start a career move into the city like NY, SF, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Miami etc.
MrAtlfan21 8,000 square miles vs LA 10,000 square miles. In 20 years Atlanta metro will probably be that big since it lacks any Coast , desert or mountain boundaries.
Atlanta's sprawl is ridiculous and basically takes up the entire northern portion of the state until you get about 70 miles from Tennessee and North Carolina.
Wow No wonder why america is such a co2 producer Ya whole coutry(-NewYork i think) is designed ineficiently for the car and a lot of unnecessary fuel consumtion
@@sovietpotatoes2353 For our size, we actually produce relatively little pollution. If you want to go scream at a country about muh environment go scream at China and India.
@@colonelcrossfire8268 Not true. The United States produces 16.1 tons of CO2 emissions per capita. Compare that to 8.0 tons of China and 1.91 tons of India. The problem with China and India is their enormous population size, so the emissions quickly add up. That said, China is the only country that produces more CO2 emissions than the United States. Two times more in fact. India two times less than the US.
Yes the LA sprawl rivals any, really only the conurbation of Tokyo compares. For its pop though sydney Australia is pretty sprawling. The geographic size of London but with only 5 million people (London has 14).
No, it's not. NYC is by far the most densely populated. L.A. barely cracks the top 30 in terms of population density, even though it's #2 in total population, which is why it's definitely one of the most sprawling cities. I was shocked at how far literally everything was in L.A. after having been to New York and Chicago. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population
Atlanta the "I'll be there in 45 minutes" city. Meanwhile I'm driving 85 mph on highway 985 to get to highway 85 the switch to highway 75 to get to my destination and I've been on the north side of the city the entire time!
Atlantans are very used to long commuting distances. Atlanta was set up this way and it worked ok when the population was only 3 million. At 6 million it is a nightmare.
I live in Portland which is relatively dense with a comprehensive transit system and very bad traffic. On the worst rush hour days, the light rail MIGHT be able to make similar time to a car sitting in the gridlock. Any other time forget it. The other day I talked to some people from Phoenix and they were shocked at how compact yet hard to get around Portland was.
Take a look at Jacksonville, the largest city (by area) in the continental US. Tiny "downtown" area, surrounded by miles upon miles of strip malls and pickup trucks.
Blood Bath and Beyond yeah that is crazy i cant believe Jacksonville, okc, anchorage, are bigger than Houston, which in turn is bigger than NYC & Chicago, and LA area wise
i was born in atlanta. when moving to europe, the city dimensions changed dramatically. you could drive for hours and still be in the same metropolitan area in the usa, but in dense european areas that would only take minutes to get to another province!
I think the definition of metro area doesn't necessarily equate to the sprawl of the city though. I'm not saying Atlanta hasn't had the biggest growth and amount of sprawl, much more than most American cities, it is huge, but development along highways without much residential landuse to me isn't sprawl, not in the same way as suburb after suburb being built to expand cities and engulf other cities around them. Looking at the satellite image of Atlanta on Google Maps, and from my memory of being there, albeit a while ago, you don't have to go far until you come to open countryside, not on the scale of the distance you'd have to go from downtown LA, for example. That's not to say it isn't one of the biggest in the country though.
@@mattpotter8725 What are you talking about you don't have to go far until you hit open countryside in Atlanta? Along I-85 northeast from downtown, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Braselton, and that is 48 miles from downtown Atlanta. Along I-85 northeast and forking onto I-985 north, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Gainesville, and that is 57 miles from downtown Atlanta Along I-75 northwest from downtown, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Lake Allatoona, and that is 32 miles from downtown Atlanta. Along I-75 northwest from downtown and forking onto I-575 north, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Canton, and that is 41 miles from downtown Atlanta. Along GA 400, by way of I-85 from downtown, you don't hit some exurban area until you get past Coal Mountain, and that is 43 miles from downtown. You don't hit outright open, rural areas until you get past the Outlet area some 53 miles from downtown. Along I-20 east from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Covington and that is 37 miles from downtown Atlanta. Along I-20 west from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit exurban area until you get past Douglasville, and that is 23 miles from downtown Atlanta. You don't hit open rural countryside until you get past Temple, and that is about 38 miles from downtown Atlanta. Along I-75 southeast from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Locust Grove, and that is about 35 miles from downtown Atlanta. Along I-85 southwest from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until you past Fairburn, which is 21 miles from downtown Atlanta. However, after a brief exurban area, you pick up with suburban development down around Newnan which comes in from the east like a wrap around kind of development. You don't hit open countryside along I-85 southwest of Atlanta until you get past Newnan, which is about 40 miles from downtown Atlanta. So, from what I have shown you along the freeways heading out of downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until: 57 miles along I-985 53 miles along GA 400 48 miles along I-85 north 41 miles along I-575 40 miles along I-85 south 38 miles along I-20 west 37 miles along I-20 east 35 miles along I-75 south 32 miles along I-75 north The closest you'll get to any open countryside from downtown Atlanta is taking I-85 south to the south Fulton Parkway and heading westward. From downtown, it is 23 miles. Nowhere else in the metro area does it come anywhere close to that. Also, Atlanta and Los Angeles are about the same size, in terms of the number of miles of built-up land. As of 2010, the Atlanta urbanized area comprised 2,645 square miles of built-up land. Los Angeles by itself was considerably smaller than that at 1,736 square miles. However, when you take the real urbanized area by adding Riverside-San Bernardino, Oxnard, Simi Valley, etc., the areas are within like one hundred square miles of each other and basically the same size. Search List of United States urban areas - Wikipedia
It has to be the LA metro area. Once for giggles, when I jumped on the 10 in Santa Monica heading to Phoenix, I reset my trip counter so I could note how far until I got out into open country. This was nearly 20 years ago, keep this in mind. It was 94 MILES of uninterrupted development along the 10! Phoenix is big, but it's nowhere near the size of Los Angeles.
Santa Monica to downtown LA, about a 15 mi trip, is extremely dense. You have downtown Santa Monica, mid city Santa Monica, Westwood, downtown Century City, Wilshire/Western, WeHo, Sunset Blvd, Hollywood Blvd, K-Town (Vermont and Wilshire), and a booming downtown LA. Google any of these places to see how dense it is.
EntropyFan Chicago also sprawls pretty far too. The downtown loop and within city limits is dense but then it drops the further you go away from the loop. Chi city limits is 2.7 million. cook county is 5.5 million, add in the other 6 collar counties and surrounding 14 counties from lower Wisconsin to northwest Indiana you get about 10 million ppl. Kenosha to Merrillville Indiana is over 100 miles plus of Midwest long broad n flat n wide sprawl like the Mississippi river. Even further if you take 294 south around downtown through the burbs, and possibly longer than taking I 90-94 directly through downtown. Extra bonus if you take lake shore drive down into downtown, you can really appreciate the differences in density from the far north burbs into far south burbs and into Indiana. Lake Michigan beaches are better in Indiana or northern Wisconsin or western Michigan
Atlanta and the other sunbelt cities in Texas and Arizona have no coasts, no mountains and no boundaries. Eventually they will surpass LA metro in size not population.
Me: Oh I beat it's going to be like L.A. or some west coast city. Him: Greensboro/Winston Salem Me: HEY WTF THATS MY CITY OH.. wait... hes very right... I live 2500 feet from my school, there isn't even a sidewalk for me to walk on to get to my school. I drive to school because the grass is wet and it ruins my socks. The nearest target is 10 minutes away, nearest grocery store is 5 minutes away, nearest apple store? 25 minutes away. We have a GIANT interstate system that they are building right now and they are just finishing up an urban loop. Wow it is really hitting me now that my life revolves around a car when I think about where I live...
I was surprised the Twin Cities were on there too. I’ve always felt that there’s been a “biggest small town” feel about the cities, but yeah, there’s almost no public transportation and what we do have is very inefficient. We were the birthplace of some of the biggest causes of sprawl, malls, and have the biggest mall in the US. The suburbs might not go on forever, but even the inner suburb rings bus lines are barely used. Then again, downtown is very walkable, even in winter with covered bridges between buildings and a massive park and path system.
I loved that part of it. The urban planners crapped all over intelligent road planning, but it is beautiful. If you come down 75 and head onto Eastbound 285 (northern part, inner loop), you pop out of the trees and see skyscrapers right ahead of you. And then you turn and pop down below the treeline again and can't tell you're in a city until you see Sandy Springs. Gorgeous. Horrendous traffic. But gorgeous.
Jason Miller ... Although much smaller, the "City in a Forest" also describes Memphis, Tennessee when flying into the city or looking east from one of the taller downtown buildings.
Urban sprawl makes commuting extremely annoying. Generally, the residential areas would be segregated from commercial areas, and the residential areas would literally look like clones of each other, dull and boring. And it takes a lot of time to commute from one end of the residential area to the other, then into the commercial area. In NYC here, there is plenty of public transit, and the residential areas are often mixed with commercial areas, so usually, I can find a supermarket or grocery store almost every block. There are rows and rows of restaurants as well, and plenty of stores within walking distance. Commuting is much more convenient, and you won't be forced to use a car.
V8 Power who wants to live in a place that looks like chernobyl anyways??? basically america is for all the car drivers and the conservatives while europe is pretty much for all the liberals (and the liberals haven't done shit to get rid of the slums that still exist in spain, portugal and france). can't say anything about eastern europe because it's the second world, and all that i know about the second world is uranium
i've flown into almost every major American city...and i can tell you from the simple eyeball test, the Los Angeles area easily wins the urban sprawl contest..
Yes, LA is big, but LA is densely developed, and on top of that, it is in an arid region, so it is much more easy to see development from a plane than in metropolitan regions with lots of trees.
Hell, we can't support the growth just in the last 20 years. Atlanta is the king of sprawl. Before you know it, the Atlanta Metro area will include parts of Alabama, SC and Tennessee.
It's too bad they didn't reroute I-85 off of the connector 10 years ago when land was still cheap in West Atlanta. That being said, I think those ridiculous highway laws Nixon passed might have made my plan technically illegal because it involves oppressing too many poor people. It's also too bad Atlantans hate MARTA even though it's actually a pretty great system.
People from Atlanta whine and bitch and moan about the traffic, but no one wants to actually commit any money to a public transportation system (chiefly a metro system that actually allows movement within the area) to fix it. This is truly stupidity caused by American pride and arrogance.
YEP! I noticed it about 2 minutes in, and honestly, that's really freaking clever! No money needed to be spent, just used what he had, and it works impeccably!
I always had a soft spot for engineering and city planning. Makes me wish I pursued that rather than a business finance degree. Maybe I can intermingle the two in my future.
Alright listen up bitch, I'm the fucking Don here and I'll call the shots. I don't need to take career advice from little plebs like yourself. Is that understood sweetheart?
@Moon Shine Some of that is false but okay. Atlanta is not the only city like this. Orlando can be worse. 40 mins just get from your cheap hotel to Disney world 😂. And I didn’t find any transit their either, just freeways and traffic.
Americans don't realize how great it is to have efficient public transport close to everything obviating the need to have to drive everywhere. You spend less money, get a bit of exercise and get to explore. I hate urban sprawl, and there needs to be more mixed-use area. There's only so much highway/road expansion that can be done. Atlanta is a perfect example. It takes hours to get from one side of Atlanta to the other b/c traffic is terrible. I lived abroad in a country with PHENOMENAL public transport. It took me 15 - 20 mins max to get to and from work. I didn't know anyone who owned a car. People walked/biked/or took the train to work. In the states, most people waste away in traffic and get fat. There needs to be renewed planning that focuses on the pedestrian rather than the automobile.
chigasaki06 I agree. I live near riverside, CA and I’ve been to the Netherlands a few times and OH MY GOD public transportation is the best! I was able I get any where I wanted. Everything is close by. And I just felt a lot closer to the people. Americans are missing out.
But but but Public Transpiration is Socialism. 'America is capitalist and it's not the governments job to use taxpayer money to build inefficient infrastructure. Americans should have the option to use PAY TOLLS . Just look at California and New York. Socialist shiza holes' ---- Texans and Mainstream conservatives against Public Transportation.
julio ventura I’m from a big city with pretty good public transportation but it’s so inconvenient for groceries and many life’s situation. I wish I could live in a suburb with my personal private house and backyard and a car. Cars are the best way of transportation.
@@urbanistgod I used to carry my groceries on a bike or carry them in a bag. The problem with the American lifestyle is that we consume so much more than what we need. You need a car for your grocceries because you're buying too much of things(heavy excess meats&junk food) , i'd bet you weigh 300 lbs. Also, American cities were designed for autos and thus are way spread out. In a normal city /country cities are planned in walking distance. That's why East Coast cities have a lot of close amenities because they were built in a time when cars didn't exist. Out West and in the South everything is built for the sub urb , so thats why PT to you seems inconvenient but its not.
I'm reading a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. So far so good. It talks about sprawling, the use of a sidewalk, and other urban planning things that I have yet to read. Give it a go! I lived in Grenoble France for a summer and agree with getting around. It was much easier in Europe. Plus, I stayed in shape :) In America, I feel it is harder to do that. Specifically, I live in Detroit.
As a European these endless low-density suburbs would bother me, but I guess it's a matter of accustoming. If you grew up in such a suburb, maybe you would think the other way around. The clear negative aspects of this are of course the inefficiency, needing much more energy for mobility (and heating in northern areas). Another thing is the high level of soil sealing, that could lead to ecological problems.
I grew up in the suburbs. It's not efficient at all. All my friends that travelled to Europe(germany, Spain) agreed that Europe does city/urban planning the best. America is deprived of such basic human infrastructure. At least the BART has made attempts towards it and NYC is a different country.
DefCon1Shooter - yes, ecological problems are definitely a major concern in Houston at least. When Hurricane Harvey hit a couple of years ago it was a giant wake-up call for urban planners. The worst flooding occurred almost entirely in the recently developed outer suburban areas, where prior to development there were floodplains that channeled water away from the metro area. The city is now focusing most of their efforts into densifying the core neighborhoods and discouraging suburban expansion, because it’s only a matter of time before another hurricane or tropical storm hits the area.
I'm sorry, I prefer my own home, my own yard, my own driveway, and a lot of space between homes as opposed to he piled up like sardines in europe. Also why do y'all build your homes with brick? An earthquake would wreck your cities.
Things get even more confusing when you factor in what even counts as a city. Pretty much everything in a 100 mile radius from LA is taken up by something, be it residential, industrial or commercial. But all of that area is shared by dozens of individual cities. It's not all LA. But driving from downtown LA on the 405 to the 5 to the 60 to the 10, you will go 100 miles and never see an area without a house or factory along the freeway. So is it all considered sprawl of LA? Or is there a point where the sprawl stops being LA and turns into Pasadena or Fontana or Anaheim? Probably when you enter those city limits, right? If we go by this logic, then you could argue LA has the largest "sprawl" because it covers every possible spot of land leading up to the boarder of a neighboring city. But then other cities do the same.
Orange county itself is basically a suburb without a major city, same with Ventura county, some argue they're an extension of Los Angeles. There's definitely an argument to be made for that. Whenever I've flown into LAX, I'm always blown away by how it sprawls. From one end of the basin to the other, there aren't many gaps.
Yeah, I have to drive 80 miles just to visit friends in LA. Along those 80 miles, there is nothing but houses, buildings, shops and factories. In a sense, it never feels like you leave the city. It's a large area with a a bunch of towns. Even when you drive down to San Diego from LA, there are nothing but cities and towns. So you are never really isolated from a proper city.
Dustin Reed - Orange County is definitely a suburban extension of metro L.A., as much as it pains many OC residents to admit that. It’s not like there’s some dramatic change that occurs when one drives over the county line from Cerritos to Buena Park. It’s all part of the same developed mass.
City Beautiful The metrics used to identify sprawl (density, single use, auto dependency) would seem to apply for rural areas as well. It seems to me it would be possible to game the rankings based on where the threshold for where “rural and therefore exempt” is set. But rural areas don’t suffer from congestion in the way suburban areas do, so perhaps that could be another criterion for identifying sprawl. It also seems that geographic extent or scope would also play a role: one square mile of low density surrounded by rural area wouldn’t be as subject to congestion as 100 square miles of the same density in suburbia.
I remember in 2004 when I first went to visit my aunt and uncle in Atlanta and the local common joke was that "Atlanta has more highways than people." Looking back, the joke was spot on.
Atlanta doesn't even feel like I city to me. The streets are not on a grid system which is the real reason why traffic is so bad to me. I describe Atlanta as some big towers and high rises in the middle of a forest lol.
I used to drive cross-country for a living. I drove through all states in the lower 48 and through pretty much every single city - big or small - that had an Interstate running through it. Of all the cities I had to drive in or through, the two absolute worst were Boston and Atlanta. In Atlanta you’re pretty much at the mercy of the horribly congested freeways, because the streets make no sense at all. I once made the mistake of trying to take shortcuts on the streets of Atlanta, and wound up completely lost in some godawful ghetto. I was lucky I got out of there without being jacked up. At least in most other major cities (not named Boston) I could always find shortcuts on surface streets. Not Atlanta. Those streets are a fucking maze.
The Atlanta traffic is bad but the freeway system is not as extensive as LA's and has a lower capacity (fewer lanes overall). The LA freeways are so wide yet the traffic still sucks. Most cities have 2 lanes in each direction which expand to 4 in each direction in the most congested areas. I'm still going with LA on this one
In phoenix if I want to go to the store to pick up a stick of butter I have to go outside into the 120 degree heat (it's like that 5 months a year), walk across the parking lot at my apartment complex, get in the car which is like 130+ degrees inside, drive for 7 miles in traffic, get out, go inside the giant fucking store, get the butter, go back out, get into the car and head back for 7 miles. It can take between 20 and 50 minutes based on traffic. If I didn't have the car, it wouldn't be possible at all. Not only would you be at risk of heatstroke but the butter would melt within the first 2 miles, and within 1 mile during the summer. It is the same for everything else. Want to go to the bar? 20+ minutes in the car. Want to get a haircut? 20+ minutes in the car. Go to work? Visit a friend? Taken your kid to sports practice? See a movie? You better fucking believe you are spending 20+ minutes in the car. It hurts to live here.
Atlanta the "I'll be there in 45 minutes" city. Meanwhile I'm driving 85 mph on 985 to get to 85 the switch to 75 to get to my destination and I've been on the north side of the city the entire time!
Atlanta's urbanized area is at least 70 miles across. It isn't city then nothing. If you got that idea from a trip down I-75 through the northwest of the city where there are large leafy lots, then you really didn't discover the area. Atlanta is massive. Unless you're talking about NYC, there isn't any city with 50 miles (100 miles across) of development in all directions.
I’d say *DEFINITELY* the most sprawled in the country. Metro Atlanta is even bigger in land area than the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex (which itself is one of the nation’s most sprawled metro areas), but with almost 2 million less people. Atlanta takes the trophy for sprawl, easily.
Dave, started following you recently. Your videos are short and crisp, packing technical details in just the right amount. I'm not American but the lessons from your case studies are still relevant. Mentioning your scholarly sources and further references also helps. Your videos are as you would say- neat. Keep uploading.
I live in Riverside. Sprawl is pretty bad here. Traffic is a nightmare on all freeways and major roadways in and surrounding Riverside due to the fact that most people drive. Public transportation is okay, but it does little to ease congestion. The city government have proposed some solutions to address these issues, mainly by strict zoning to increase housing density in our downtown and along our major roads, as well as installing light rail along those roads, but a lot of proposals get watered down or are straight up cancelled because of rabid NIMBYism here. It's a crazy thing to witness.
Dank Memez89 Riverside county in general is pretty bad, but Temecula definitely stands out. It's one gigantic suburb. Miles of single family housing. I hear Temecula residents are getting fed up with all the traffic, lol.
+Alex Smith Yes, good idea! This is actually my area of research, so I may wait to do that video until I can share something I've published. In the meantime, you could check out "Retrofitting Suburbia" by Dunham-Jones or "Retrofitting Sprawl" by Talen (ed.). I co-authored a chapter in the latter book.
Just because something is "desired by a certain part of the population" doesn't make it automatically okay. Smoking is desired by a certain part of the population, but it still has negative effects for smokers and society as a whole, for example.
Roberts I think that the idea here isn't to destroy suburbs and single family houses, but build neighborhoods with diversified zoning, and well planned living. Where I live for example, every new development has to include some sort of high rise for housing, small commerce, walk path, cycle, and public transport has to be easily integrated to the community. In recent years, new neighborhood don't only have better quality of live, but it has allowed to reduce criminality (since more people could afford to live in these areas), reduce traffic (because major congestion was becoming an issue), and made the city less isolated (more community feeling). Our city also included new sectors of commercial and industrial activity. With a technologic industrial park, an insurance and financial district, as well as a video game and start-up sector. CHECK IT OUT. I live in Quebec city, as city well known for its suburbs and highways. Today, unemployment is 3,8% and the city even refused Amazon to build it's new Canadian headquarters in the city, because the city feared it would bring in too many jobs in the city XD.
yeah, maybe the proper term should be transition. How does a city transition from the monolithic zoning of low-density suburbs, to a more united con-urban community. Personally, I think it comes with the transformation of actual suburbs. I mean, Paris was a shithole until Hausmann completely morphed the city into the city of lights in the late 19th century. The rebuilding of Paris wasn't a cheap project, but 150 years later we can conclude that the operation was a success. I'm pretty sure something similar could be done with other cities in North America, that could include a better urbanism, without overcrowding the areas.
Kathryn White you are talking about a central city of well over 600 square miles. If Houston were completely built out at high density it would easily topple New York City and become the largest city in the US.
I don't even get why cul de sacs would favor cars, In the Netherlands they have streets blocked off with bollards, effectively making them dead end streets for cars, but bikes and people can easily go from one section to another and some bollards are retractable and can be lowered by emergency vehicles, thus eliminating one of the down sides of dead ends. Some towns even allow residents to get a remote that they can use to lower bollards.
Because all of the land around the cul de sac is privately owned, and the distance to the next road is actually moderately sizable (e.g. 600-1000 meters).
You truly need to go back to look at the origin of the growth of Los Angeles in area. In 1915 it had a truly extensive system of streetcars that went far beyond its built-up areas. That system encouraged people to move to the San Fernando Valley. It was only later that cars became affordable and ubiquitous. In other words, Los Angeles, unlike most other cities, was built around the streetcar. Amazing but true.
Lots of cities have "streetcar suburbs." I agree that streetcars played a role in urban expansion, but the rate of growth increased considerably with the car.
@@CityBeautiful In the case of LA, though, almost ALL of the suburbs were streetcar suburbs, and you see that when you look at the Pacific Electric route map.
What's interesting though is they weren't just streetcars. The Pacific Electric Railway was built to standard gauge, which meant they could receive freight trains on the same tracks. Most of the PE system would shut down from midnight to 6 am and then use electric freight locomotives to deliver railcars from the Southern Pacific Railway to various factories that had sidings along Pacific Electric streetcar lines.
In Spain if you drive 30 miles (some 48 km) from the city centre, you're not only in a different city, but you will have crossed several towns and cities in between.
Spencer Smallwood not as far south as Hillsboro when you take 35 east south bound the sprawl ends around oak leaf/red oak. In the north it ends around Sanger Texas. When it comes to 75 Anna Texas 45 Wilmer. 30s sprawl ends just before Royce city and west word it ends around Weatherford. With I-20 east it ends around the seagoville area. Dfw is sprawling but it's mitigated sprawl.
DFW is smaller than Atlanta, in terms of urbanized area's square miles. It does have a little larger population, however. The Atlanta metro area is not a small town. It is 5.7 million people. Most people live in the suburbs. The city limits aren't all that large, and one third of the city is filled with expensive homes on large, leafy lots. There's also a lot of industrial areas, such as three rail yards, half of the airport and the corresponding industry surrounding the airport. This leaves less room for housing.
More like (from W to E) White Settlement to Rockwall, and (from N to S) Prosper to Waxahachie. Yes, still a massive, massive amount of area. Easily the most sprawled in Texas... even more than Greater Houston.
After living in Atlanta for over a year now, it's definitely no where near the size of Dallas-Fort Worth! If you add the Birmingham metro 30 miles to the east of Atlanta and fill it in between, that would be Dallas-Fort Worth!
@@jamesgreen7752 You're wrong. Look at the official statistics instead of going off what you think. Atlanta by far is the larger metro area by developed, built-up area, while DFW does have a larger population because it is built a little more densely. White Settlement on the far western end of the developed area to Rockwall (which isn't exactly straight across, but I'll give it to you anyhow, is about 63 miles. Prosper to Waxahachie is also about 63 miles from north Prosper to south Waxahachie. Now for Atlanta. Gainesville to Newnan is 86 miles miles Villa Rica to Loganville is 64 miles. So, Atlanta is considerably larger north south and about the same size east west, built-up area wise.
The only thing that stops the Sydney sprawl are the Blue Mountains in the west and the national parks in the north and south, otherwise it would have already merged with Wollongong and Newcastle and made them into suburbs of Sydney.
Perth looks to have an urbanized span about 19 miles east west and 40 miles north south, with more in the string of cities along the coast to the south.
I can't speak for all other cities, but LA has to take the crown here. You could drive 2.5 hours from Ventura to Temecula and still be around suburban developments. But what can really expand LA's sprawl is if you include Santa Barbara and the High and Low Desert communities in the definition. That adds an immense amount of square miles.
Adding Santa Barbara to me sounds like a stretch, but you could definitely add the Antelope Valley and everything in the Mojave all the way out to Barstow.
NekoMouser Jacksonville, Florida is the largest city by square miles ... in the continental U.S.A.. However, Alaska 's Jeanue (sp) is the largest city (in the entire 50 states) ... yet has a small population size.
@@DmitriyK12 The city government of Juneau governs that huge area, but basically only possesses it for the purpose of building roads and improving navigation. There's no actual urban development except in one tiny area. It's really more of a Port Authority than a city.
Atlanta, DFW, Phoenix, Tucson, Nashville, and San Diego are probably the most sprawled out. LA and Houston are sprawled out, but they're also dense in some areas.
Nashville is definitely very sprawled out. Take a look at the Tennessee congressional districts and compare the sizes of the ninth district with the fifth district... and Nashville is considered to be a larger city. Derp. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee%27s_congressional_districts
@@stevenmatthews2278 In reality Nashville is a tiny city surrounded by a bunch of suburbs that for some reason are counted as part of the city. Just because "the development never really ends" doesn't mean it's all city.
profd65 It pretty much is the same city and the area is growing larger every day. Murfreesboro is one of the fastest growing cities in the country and the population has doubled within a decade. If I can be in Nashville within 35 minutes it really isn’t that far removed from Music City.
I just found your channel, and I love your content! I am currently doing research work in my university on the autonomy of cities (in terms of their ability to govern) within Canada, and your videos have provided me with many things to think about. Cheers!
Houston had so many suburban areas though. I lived in Northeast Houston and there’s always something being developed. Whether it’s a big highway or some business development Houston just keeps building all the way out to the country. If there was somewhere I needed to be it always took forever just to get there and there was endless amounts of suburbs along the way.
Too Vexx - That’s probably all going to change after what happened with Hurricane Harvey. It kind of has to. The main reason the flooding was so extreme was because they developed all these suburbs in the floodplains. You just can’t do that in a big city that’s built on a swamp. It was a very rude awakening for urban planners. Houston (the city-proper) has already been making efforts to densify and urbanize in the core neighborhoods inside loop 610, but now they’re really beginning to step it up and focus on densifying outside the loop as well. It’s a matter of necessity at this point, because there will inevitably be another hurricane or tropical storm in the near future. Building even further out from the city at this point would be really stupid.
Jason Williams - From the Northern end of the metro (Conroe) to the Southern end (Galveston), it’s 92 miles. From the Western end (Katy) to the Eastern end (Baytown), it’s 53 miles.
I live in San Antonio. While it is super... not dense overall, there are pockets of higher density areas. The largest being downtown, but uptown is seeing blocks of low density housing being replaced with mid-rise lofts and tons of commercial development. The other higher density areas include the northeast side, where most industrial development is taking place, Stone Oak, La Cantera and Medical Center. More recently, the Alamo Ranch/Westover Hills area is seeing an explosion of mid-rise apartment complexes and low density neighborhoods as land out here is cheap. Development on the farwest side has been so intense, the suburbs extend into the next county. In fact, I live the same distance to Medina River/Castroville as I do downtown San Antonio(roughly 12 miles). It's crazy how quickly this city is growing, just 5 years ago, I could drive out west and there was almost nothing but trees, but now, it's houses running from here to just outside Rio Medina(a farming town along Medina River). There's almost nothing west of San Antonio, so the city is basically free to annex a good portion of Medina County over the next few decades.
SlenderPsycho I don’t understand it. I moved from Chicago and can’t figure out why anyone wants to live in a city and have to drive everywhere. The via is ok if you’re taking major routes like the 550/551 but you better hope what you need is on the access road.
used to live in San Antonio but since I had a job in another city for about 10 years and then when I returned to visit, I didn’t wanna live there anymore. more congested, of course, and everywhere you have to drive, to visit, friends, to go out to eat, to jobs to recreation, to drive many miles, and the rush-hour traffic has extended from one hour to more than two hours several times a day.!!!! Start and stop traffic is very stressful, I’d rather have a train, of course not possible here and commute somewhere without having to drive. Haven’t found my new city yet.
I really find it a shame that much of the land that was country outside of San Antonio is been built with dozens of new suburban houses plus some people that lived on a farm for years that wanna retire in their family home are still having to keep it a farm and keep some cattle just so they wouldn’t have to pay a luxury tax, but keep it agriculture. They are still working hard, even though they’re past retirement age because some people from the city Herbert what used to be farms just so they can live out in the country and then the commute to the city but they haven’t had the storm for several generations like some other people have actually worked their whole life there and now they’re property tax would go up higher if they didn’t still keep working past 65
Can someone explain why there is a very aggressive trend to building a new class of shopping center complex called a power center? You can't get from one store to another safely without getting back into your car and find a new parking space. The worst part is you spend a lot of time looking for said parking space. There are some single big box retailer or mega department store with parking lots that take an entire square mile, for one single business.
I moved to Detroit when I was very young and always wondered how can a city this big not have a rail system of any type. Much smaller cities like Miami Atlanta Cleveland Seattle Portland and many more have rail or subway systems. the decline of Detroit had as much to do with no dependable regional transit system, as it did with crime and drugs. Successful cities all have dependable transit systems that include some sort of rail and or ; SUBWAY SYSTEMS. WAKE UP MICHIGAN AND PROVIDE YOUR ONLY REAL CITY AND METROPOLITAN AREA WITH A STATE OF THE ART TRANSIT SYSTEM! BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME!
@C caymer if you mean the People Mover in Detroit, it's tiny and rather useless as a main way of public transit. It was mostly designed to get you from your closest parked car to things like the auto show or a Detroit Red Wings game. But in order to get to the people mover in the first place you most likely drove. The Q-Line is a good start. But still will need massive extensions to make it properly reliable for many people as a main way of transit for people connecting all across the city.
I live in a modern suburb. Pretty much every neighborhood has a school and shopping center within a mile, and a large better shopping center within ten. Every neighborhood also has a lake or nature trail that connects to the tobacco trail, which is a huge statewide walking and biking trail.
I live in Santa Clarita CA which is the northern end of the LA area, and my grandma lives in San Clemente CA which is the southern end of the LA area. Everytime we visit her we consider it a road trip even though it’s in the same metro area. It’s a 93 mile drive and takes at least 1 hr 15 min to get there without traffic. The sprawl is crazy both North-South and West-East
Greater LA has an insane amount of sprawl, you can drive for 2 hours before seeing an open field. Drive from San Clemente up North and you will see development everywhere until Camarillo. That's over 100 miles!
How the Miami metro area can not even mentioned once is beyond me. Sure there are 3 major cities in the area, but there is little to no real public transportation, no one walks on the street to go somewhere, and everyone owns a car. It's 6 million people in an area thats 6000 sq miles thats growing at a crazy high rate. It's a huge suburb.
At 3:50 on the night satellite map what is that big bright blob in the A4 (if the horizontal axis was divided into 10 and a is along the top) section. I can identify most of the cities but what is going on there? I think it is around Williston, ND
I subscribed to your channel and am enjoying your videos immensely. Your research is thorough and your production values are top rate. Very watchable fare. You speak clearly so your rapid-fire delivery is totally intelligible. You are concise and are effective at conveying complex ideas quickly. Kudos to you! PS - the LEGO mic stand is a nice touch!
I noticed every nation sort of sprawled when the car became affordable. Even Germany has its sprawl areas around Munich, or Vienna Austria has its sprawl... only in urban areas where you can't sprawl are metro.
@@jmitterii2 In Britain, they actually have lots of suburbs, but the suburbs are connected to the mass transit system just like the city centers are and also typically have a walkable "village" area with a pub, coffee shop, et cetera.
I would love a video on way comparing cities makes little sense; instead we should compare metro areas. For example, people often tell me that SF is tiny compared to NY, or compare their densities. I insist that we have to use metro areas, but I don't have a good explanation prepared. Same for lists of the biggest cities - if you're not using metro areas, it's a bit misleading. Finally, things like densities in general are very hard to compare. Imagine one city with a dense urban core and then low density suburbs. This is very different to a city with medium density all over, but they might have the same density.
Subscribed! Good and intelligent film making. I recently watched another film here on TH-cam on farmland fading away as cities sprawl. That film was built on Atlanta in Georgia which is an incredibly sprawling city. The topic of sprawling seems to get a very important one for America the longer the process of sprawling continues. Regards from Germany where we don't have that much space and have to deal with space much more carefully.
I think this guy said he was studying his Planning degree at Berkely. Might be mistaken though. Either way, urban planning is a pretty saturated field and it seems like most who get into it now tend to do so for academia, it's one of my biggest gripes about the field when I went to planning school. Most people are good at regurgitating the theories and principles, but aren't very adept to problem solving. Thank god I switched from geomatics because otherwise I'd have no future in the industry or a backup plan for a career.
I live in a single family residence with a backyard on the edge of the Denver metro in a neighborhood with a stroad one street over. The only walkable options are a pizza place and a Mexican grocer that carries very little of what I cook with. I make supply runs to a grocery store once a week and cannot walk to much of anything. I would not trade where I live for an apartment or row home with more walkable shops and restaurants. I do not need to consume more than I am currently consuming. I do not commute to work. Just trying to add some balance to the discussion. Cheers.
Good video. I'm catching up on many of your videos and enjoying them. Another way to measure sprawl: take a list of essential places such as parks, shopping, government, laundry. If, say, 80% are accessible by foot or bike (or mass transit in less than 20 minutes), then you're not in sprawl-land.
Hi, I live in Queretaro, Mexico. And if you are interested to make a video about urban sprawl in Mexico and how is it different from US, I d be happy to help.
Cities & Skyscrapers Densification is making the society poorer. Public transportation is making us less free because it’s less convenient for most life’s situations and you can’t go from point A to point B. A house with a backyard with a car is the ideal way of living.
Only because it won't help you. Sim City 4's transportation flows are EXTREMELY unrealistic. The game basically assumes that your sims always commute to the closest workplace, will treat neighboring towns as workplaces, and won't favor freeways over slower roads even for long distances. I love Sim City 4, but the unreality of the simulation can be a really turn off.
Almost all of the cities that are sprawling in the US are cities that are landlocked like Atlanta and Phoenix. Both of those cities are growing so much because there isn't any large body of water that could block the way of expanding a city. This is the same case for Dallas-Fort Worth and Las Vegas as well. There are benefits to having a city by the coast like having trade access. However, having a landlocked city can help to expand a city quicker and easier. I know that some cities like Denver have the Rockies which block the way of expanding the city to the west.
Dallas,Houston,LA,ATL actually break one of your metrics since they have random tall buildings/highrises in low density areas(though density is increasing) Scattered skylines of you will. Makes them beautiful and unique IMO.
Very true, I lived in Houston and there were a lot of tall buildings randomly placed and multi use buildings, I was in complete walking distance of my schools, shops, restaurants and parks.
Another thing that’s unique in Houston at least, is the fact that there’s no zoning ordinance. Because of this, the residential areas, commercial/retail, nightlife/entertainment districts, business districts, warehouse districts, and industrial areas are all jumbled up and mixed randomly throughout the city. Many people hate this about Houston, but personally I think it’s very interesting, and it also means you never have to go very far (in the city-proper) to find what you need. People can say what they will about Houston, but it’s definitely a very unique and interesting city.
You seem like a great public speker, I could never speak for that long without making a mistake, and you put great emotion into your voice too, it makes it really listen-able.
Most sprawled cities in each region. (South) Atlanta, Houston, Dallas.FtWorth, Miami (From West palm beach to Miami it has a North to South Axis ) , Charlotte. (North) Boston, D.C, Newark Nj. (MidWest) Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus OH, Kansas City, St.Louis. (West) Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix Az, Las Vegas.
At the 0:29 point, I have the video paused. I would define sprawl as a high ratio of population to a low population _density._ A city has a lot of _people,_ but they're all spread _out._
0:40 instantly recognized that as 28th Street in Wyoming, Michigan, suburb of Grand Rapids. They have built some multistory apartments across the street from those restaurants, in a massive parking lot where a 20 screen movie theater once sat for 40 years.
Living in the suburbs in the US is lonely. You have to drive everywhere by yourself and everyone goes to different places. I don’t even know most of the people that live on my streets names, let alone anything about them.
Yep, I did post a link to this channel at r/urbanplanning a month ago. And someone else posted my latest video there. So the word is starting to get out!
I would have thought Jacksonville Florida would be on this list? Isn't it the largest city by size, not population? You definitely need a car there. Constantly driving to get anything done.
Phoenix, holy shit. It's not even a city, it's just a massive suburb.
Xavier Cobalt visit Atlanta 😳. It's extremely 'not-dense' and is very large in sq miles
Samuel Macrae I can confirm that as someone who lives in Atlanta, especially outside of the downtown area
That's American cities for you. I have to say though, Atlanta is no where near on the same level of Phoenix, like that's a LOT better. Maybe Jacksonville, Florida (Florida in general) is a good example of a city/place that's overwhelmingly suburban.
Xavier Cobalt Seriously though, Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the U.S. yet our downtown is the size of other cities’ stadiums.
Thank you so much for this comment, this is what a tell everyone about Phoenix, but no one ever believes me. It's the same for Las Vegas too!
its weird how in the US you talk about "suburbs" which are 20 - 30 miles aways from the city centre. In the UK 30 miles from a city centre...you are in a different city!
Bullshit, i live in the farthest suburb from the city centre, and i live in the sun belt, which means its the most auto dependent and suburban part of America. I only live about 5-10 miles from the city centre
Drive for like an hour in the U.K and you’re in the ocean, drive for an hour in the U.S and you haven’t left the city.
Steven Poke Look at how much larger we are in England. Several cities take up the entire county and are much larger than cities where you come from.
Warren Moon You know nothing and you’re a fucking moron. You just want to make yourself feel better about it because you don’t understand anything. There are quite a few cities in the United States that sprawl outwards 10 to 20 miles and are within the same city limits as the downtown too. What the fuck is wrong with you. And sometimes when people are on the outskirts of the city, their actual address is still listed as this city that they are next to. In some cases people do generalize where they live because if they say something to an outsider like I Live in Oak Bluff versus Kansas City, people will know what Kansas City is but not Oak Bluff. Too bad I had to school you......you stupid fuck.
I live in the Nashville metropolitan area and the suburb I live in is about 35-40 minutes away from town. Rent is still super high, and traffic is a little crazy at times.
I've noticed that the city of Houston has a weird kind of high-density urban sprawl. There's skyscrapers 10-20 miles outside of downtown and/or skyscrapers next to farm or ranch land.
Houston's a unique city and definitely worthy of a video someday!
If you look at most Southern Ontario cities you will find that as well. I noticed that you had a map of the GTA up, and it is surprising how dense it is considering the type of development is located in the periphery.
Texas doesn't have strict zoning laws. so high density buildings are able to be built anywhere a developer wants. unlike most other cities where the municipality controls what type of building can go where.
Fuck Houston
Houston is being examined in Australia. The MUD tax system ensures that housing affordability problem is dealt with. The consequence is sprawl.
Manchester to Liverpool is only 34 miles, yet two very distinct separate cities
Steven Poke I St.Louis (which is where I live) there are suburbs further from the city than that, for example godfey Illinois is 39 miles away from downtown
Henry Nark and wentzville mo is 42 miles from downtown St. Louis.
Same with DC and Baltimore.
How about SJ and SF - two distinct cities, connected by sprawl. What's in like between the two cities you mentioned?
@@oliversissonphone6143 Liverpool and Manchester both have green belts to prevent sprawl I guess.
You can drive 80 to 90 miles one way in still be in Atlanta metro area
same with LA
DMV errrea bob
Yeah the metro area on I 20 starts at the Alabama border and goes uninterrupted for 100miles at the Newton/Walton county line
It’s like that in Houston
Yea in the woods ... might be the "METRO" area but its trees woods ... 20 west woods ... 75 north kinda woods until you past Kennesaw ... 75 south morrow .... 85 kinda urban ... but atlanta is trees bro ...... now L.A is sprawl until san Bernardino Ventura
... Houston is sprawl in every way n .s. e. W . Nw sw se ne
Lol almost the whole country is made for cars not people
Jenny R. C. America was industrializing when the car was first made, that’s why city streets are different here than in Europe.
Mostly everything built after WW2, we did a decent job before the war.
Cadavre boi you hit right on the head.
You can live in Chicago or New York without a car but not many other places
Franjo Kristof both wrong, apartment buildings aren’t boring, that’s why cities built like that were made for you to get out and be productive around the city, I live in a suburb and hardly anyone comes out to do anything recreational like except jog, no stairs to walk up and down, same bland design of housings, and same small but boring parks that no one even goes to. The only reason why people move to suburbs because the housing is bigger for families to raise but other than that, the more young and hard working people or graduates who are ready to start a career move into the city like NY, SF, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Miami etc.
Atlanta’s metro area is like half the state of Georgia
MrAtlfan21 no its not its 5 counties 💀
No it's 30 counties.
It’s 11-12 counties depending on which MSA report you read. I should know. I live here.
Jason Miller same
MrAtlfan21 8,000 square miles vs LA 10,000 square miles. In 20 years Atlanta metro will probably be that big since it lacks any Coast , desert or mountain boundaries.
Atlanta's sprawl is ridiculous and basically takes up the entire northern portion of the state until you get about 70 miles from Tennessee and North Carolina.
Coming from the West on I-20, metro Atlanta basically begins just a few miles East of the Alabama state line.
Wow
No wonder why america is such a co2 producer
Ya whole coutry(-NewYork i think) is designed ineficiently for the car and a lot of unnecessary fuel consumtion
@@sovietpotatoes2353 For our size, we actually produce relatively little pollution. If you want to go scream at a country about muh environment go scream at China and India.
@@colonelcrossfire8268 America outpollutes India despite having a BILLION fewer people
@@colonelcrossfire8268 Not true. The United States produces 16.1 tons of CO2 emissions per capita. Compare that to 8.0 tons of China and 1.91 tons of India. The problem with China and India is their enormous population size, so the emissions quickly add up.
That said, China is the only country that produces more CO2 emissions than the United States. Two times more in fact. India two times less than the US.
LA holy shit it's all sprawl. The thing about La is its all a county and little of what people actually call "LA" is the city of Los Angeles.
Jason Reyes holy shit all the way up to Ventura and all the way down to OC? Jesus
Same with Detroit
Los Angeles ran out of space to sprawl as it's sandwiched between mountains and the sea, nowadays it's starting to grow up.
Yes the LA sprawl rivals any, really only the conurbation of Tokyo compares. For its pop though sydney Australia is pretty sprawling. The geographic size of London but with only 5 million people (London has 14).
most of the suburbans there are dull and boring.
It's one of 4 cities: Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, or Phoenix.
QR One LA is the most densely populated city in the country
It's:
1. NYC, 2. LA , 3. Atlanta, 4. Chicago, 5. Washington/Baltimore
No, it's not. NYC is by far the most densely populated. L.A. barely cracks the top 30 in terms of population density, even though it's #2 in total population, which is why it's definitely one of the most sprawling cities. I was shocked at how far literally everything was in L.A. after having been to New York and Chicago. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population
Interesting. Didn't know that. Thanks for sharing.
By approximate square mileage, urbanized area:
1) New York City Metro (3,450 sq. miles)
2) Los Angeles/Riverside-San Bernardino/Oxnard/Simi Valley/Mission Viejo/Murrietta/Hemet (2,841 sq. miles)
3) Atlanta/Gainesville (2,771 sq. miles)
4) Chicago (2,442 sq. miles)
5) Washington/Baltimore (2,038 sq. miles)
6) Philadelphia (1.981 sq. miles)
7) Boston (1,873 sq. miles)
8) Dallas (1,779 sq. miles)
9) Houston (1,660 sq. miles)
10) Detroit (1,337 sq. miles)
11) Cleveland/Akron/Canton (1,263 sq. miles)
12) Miami (1,238 sq. miles)
13) Phoenix (1,146 sq. miles)
14) Cincinnati/Dayton (1,138 sq. miles)
15) Minneapolis-St. Paul (1,021 sq. miles)
16) San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose/Concord (1,012 sq. miles)
17) Seattle (1,010 sq. miles)
18) Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater (957 sq. miles)
19) St. Louis (923 sq. miles)
20) Pittsburgh (905 sw. miles)
21) Charlotte (741 sq. miles)
22) San Diego (732 sq. miles)
23) Indianapolis (705 sq. miles)
24) Kansas City (677 sq. miles)
25) Denver (668 sq. miles)
Atlanta the "I'll be there in 45 minutes" city.
Meanwhile I'm driving 85 mph on highway 985 to get to highway 85 the switch to highway 75 to get to my destination and I've been on the north side of the city the entire time!
Los Angeles... the “I’ll be there in 2 hours” city.
Atlantans are very used to long commuting distances. Atlanta was set up this way and it worked ok when the population was only 3 million. At 6 million it is a nightmare.
I live in Portland which is relatively dense with a comprehensive transit system and very bad traffic. On the worst rush hour days, the light rail MIGHT be able to make similar time to a car sitting in the gridlock. Any other time forget it. The other day I talked to some people from Phoenix and they were shocked at how compact yet hard to get around Portland was.
Don't type comments while driving.
Yep , you can pretty much drive 60/70 miles and still be in the north side of Atl. It is insane.
Take a look at Jacksonville, the largest city (by area) in the continental US. Tiny "downtown" area, surrounded by miles upon miles of strip malls and pickup trucks.
Blood Bath and Beyond yeah that is crazy i cant believe Jacksonville, okc, anchorage, are bigger than Houston, which in turn is bigger than NYC & Chicago, and LA area wise
Jacksonville is only 32nd by urbanized area square miles.
Pickup trucks are by far the best vehicles to own. So versatile. You can do anything in them.
OKC is actually the largest US city by land area
@@luisvilla799 I dont know about LA, that shit keeps growing bigger and bigger and more traffic
i was born in atlanta. when moving to europe, the city dimensions changed dramatically. you could drive for hours and still be in the same metropolitan area in the usa, but in dense european areas that would only take minutes to get to another province!
I think the definition of metro area doesn't necessarily equate to the sprawl of the city though. I'm not saying Atlanta hasn't had the biggest growth and amount of sprawl, much more than most American cities, it is huge, but development along highways without much residential landuse to me isn't sprawl, not in the same way as suburb after suburb being built to expand cities and engulf other cities around them. Looking at the satellite image of Atlanta on Google Maps, and from my memory of being there, albeit a while ago, you don't have to go far until you come to open countryside, not on the scale of the distance you'd have to go from downtown LA, for example. That's not to say it isn't one of the biggest in the country though.
@@mattpotter8725 Detroit metro is denser than a lot of atlanta/atlanta metro in terms of % of pavement, not in terms of population density though.
@@mattpotter8725 What are you talking about you don't have to go far until you hit open countryside in Atlanta?
Along I-85 northeast from downtown, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Braselton, and that is 48 miles from downtown Atlanta.
Along I-85 northeast and forking onto I-985 north, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Gainesville, and that is 57 miles from downtown Atlanta
Along I-75 northwest from downtown, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Lake Allatoona, and that is 32 miles from downtown Atlanta.
Along I-75 northwest from downtown and forking onto I-575 north, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Canton, and that is 41 miles from downtown Atlanta.
Along GA 400, by way of I-85 from downtown, you don't hit some exurban area until you get past Coal Mountain, and that is 43 miles from downtown. You don't hit outright open, rural areas until you get past the Outlet area some 53 miles from downtown.
Along I-20 east from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Covington and that is 37 miles from downtown Atlanta.
Along I-20 west from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit exurban area until you get past Douglasville, and that is 23 miles from downtown Atlanta. You don't hit open rural countryside until you get past Temple, and that is about 38 miles from downtown Atlanta.
Along I-75 southeast from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until you get past Locust Grove, and that is about 35 miles from downtown Atlanta.
Along I-85 southwest from downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until you past Fairburn, which is 21 miles from downtown Atlanta. However, after a brief exurban area, you pick up with suburban development down around Newnan which comes in from the east like a wrap around kind of development. You don't hit open countryside along I-85 southwest of Atlanta until you get past Newnan, which is about 40 miles from downtown Atlanta.
So, from what I have shown you along the freeways heading out of downtown Atlanta, you don't hit open countryside until:
57 miles along I-985
53 miles along GA 400
48 miles along I-85 north
41 miles along I-575
40 miles along I-85 south
38 miles along I-20 west
37 miles along I-20 east
35 miles along I-75 south
32 miles along I-75 north
The closest you'll get to any open countryside from downtown Atlanta is taking I-85 south to the south Fulton Parkway and heading westward. From downtown, it is 23 miles. Nowhere else in the metro area does it come anywhere close to that.
Also, Atlanta and Los Angeles are about the same size, in terms of the number of miles of built-up land.
As of 2010, the Atlanta urbanized area comprised 2,645 square miles of built-up land. Los Angeles by itself was considerably smaller than that at 1,736 square miles. However, when you take the real urbanized area by adding Riverside-San Bernardino, Oxnard, Simi Valley, etc., the areas are within like one hundred square miles of each other and basically the same size.
Search List of United States urban areas - Wikipedia
It has to be the LA metro area. Once for giggles, when I jumped on the 10 in Santa Monica heading to Phoenix, I reset my trip counter so I could note how far until I got out into open country. This was nearly 20 years ago, keep this in mind. It was 94 MILES of uninterrupted development along the 10! Phoenix is big, but it's nowhere near the size of Los Angeles.
yeah its still more dense than atlanta.
Santa Monica to downtown LA, about a 15 mi trip, is extremely dense. You have downtown Santa Monica, mid city Santa Monica, Westwood, downtown Century City, Wilshire/Western, WeHo, Sunset Blvd, Hollywood Blvd, K-Town (Vermont and Wilshire), and a booming downtown LA. Google any of these places to see how dense it is.
it takes over an hour to drive from one end of L.A county to the other , with no traffic, driving 75 MPH...the L.A area is fuckin massive...
EntropyFan Chicago also sprawls pretty far too. The downtown loop and within city limits is dense but then it drops the further you go away from the loop. Chi city limits is 2.7 million. cook county is 5.5 million, add in the other 6 collar counties and surrounding 14 counties from lower Wisconsin to northwest Indiana you get about 10 million ppl. Kenosha to Merrillville Indiana is over 100 miles plus of Midwest long broad n flat n wide sprawl like the Mississippi river. Even further if you take 294 south around downtown through the burbs, and possibly longer than taking I 90-94 directly through downtown.
Extra bonus if you take lake shore drive down into downtown, you can really appreciate the differences in density from the far north burbs into far south burbs and into Indiana. Lake Michigan beaches are better in Indiana or northern Wisconsin or western Michigan
Atlanta and the other sunbelt cities in Texas and Arizona have no coasts, no mountains and no boundaries. Eventually they will surpass LA metro in size not population.
great video I hope your channel grows because people need to be more aware especially in America how urban planning works
Thanks for the kind comment!
Me: Oh I beat it's going to be like L.A. or some west coast city.
Him: Greensboro/Winston Salem
Me: HEY WTF THATS MY CITY OH.. wait... hes very right...
I live 2500 feet from my school, there isn't even a sidewalk for me to walk on to get to my school. I drive to school because the grass is wet and it ruins my socks. The nearest target is 10 minutes away, nearest grocery store is 5 minutes away, nearest apple store? 25 minutes away. We have a GIANT interstate system that they are building right now and they are just finishing up an urban loop. Wow it is really hitting me now that my life revolves around a car when I think about where I live...
Right! I live in Greensboro too and if you don't have a car here your fucked
I live in Greensboro, and yes...if you don't have a car in greensboro, you are most definitely FUCKED.
fun fact the wetlands bridge portion of the urban loop is being built right in my back yard.
I was surprised the Twin Cities were on there too. I’ve always felt that there’s been a “biggest small town” feel about the cities, but yeah, there’s almost no public transportation and what we do have is very inefficient. We were the birthplace of some of the biggest causes of sprawl, malls, and have the biggest mall in the US. The suburbs might not go on forever, but even the inner suburb rings bus lines are barely used.
Then again, downtown is very walkable, even in winter with covered bridges between buildings and a massive park and path system.
That sounds horrible, leave your city whenever your old enough haha😂
Just looking at Atlanta in google maps is eloquent : a small center and then tens of miles of cul-de-sac like little dots disseminated in the green.
Xavier Debidour Living in Atlanta I can tell you that it truly is the “City in a Forest.”
I loved that part of it. The urban planners crapped all over intelligent road planning, but it is beautiful. If you come down 75 and head onto Eastbound 285 (northern part, inner loop), you pop out of the trees and see skyscrapers right ahead of you. And then you turn and pop down below the treeline again and can't tell you're in a city until you see Sandy Springs. Gorgeous. Horrendous traffic. But gorgeous.
Atlanta is easily my second favorite American city. I've been thinking about moving to that area recently...
Jason Miller ... Although much smaller, the "City in a Forest" also describes Memphis, Tennessee when flying into the city or looking east from one of the taller downtown buildings.
@@jasonmiller3421 The Forest makes me want to move there, but the sprawl does not :(
Urban sprawl makes commuting extremely annoying. Generally, the residential areas would be segregated from commercial areas, and the residential areas would literally look like clones of each other, dull and boring. And it takes a lot of time to commute from one end of the residential area to the other, then into the commercial area. In NYC here, there is plenty of public transit, and the residential areas are often mixed with commercial areas, so usually, I can find a supermarket or grocery store almost every block. There are rows and rows of restaurants as well, and plenty of stores within walking distance. Commuting is much more convenient, and you won't be forced to use a car.
Mystic Dust I thought in nyc and boston it would be a burden to use cars lol
Too bad it's so expensive to live there. I'd love to live in downtown Chicago!
EmolgasApple actually don't. chicago is crime-ridden like most cities in the great lakes. if you want a safer alternative, go to pittsburgh
I prefer commuting by car because i love driving.
V8 Power who wants to live in a place that looks like chernobyl anyways??? basically america is for all the car drivers and the conservatives while europe is pretty much for all the liberals (and the liberals haven't done shit to get rid of the slums that still exist in spain, portugal and france). can't say anything about eastern europe because it's the second world, and all that i know about the second world is uranium
i've flown into almost every major American city...and i can tell you from the simple eyeball test, the Los Angeles area easily wins the urban sprawl contest..
Yes, LA is big, but LA is densely developed, and on top of that, it is in an arid region, so it is much more easy to see development from a plane than in metropolitan regions with lots of trees.
Agree. It looks kind of insane flying into LAX. Always wondered why the downtown was so small.
Not surprised Atlanta is only city listed twice....our transportation infrastructure cannot support how much we've grown since the 70's
Hell, we can't support the growth just in the last 20 years. Atlanta is the king of sprawl. Before you know it, the Atlanta Metro area will include parts of Alabama, SC and Tennessee.
It's too bad they didn't reroute I-85 off of the connector 10 years ago when land was still cheap in West Atlanta. That being said, I think those ridiculous highway laws Nixon passed might have made my plan technically illegal because it involves oppressing too many poor people. It's also too bad Atlantans hate MARTA even though it's actually a pretty great system.
@@alexanderfretheim5720 True Atlantans font gate Marta. Just white people.
People from Atlanta whine and bitch and moan about the traffic, but no one wants to actually commit any money to a public transportation system (chiefly a metro system that actually allows movement within the area) to fix it. This is truly stupidity caused by American pride and arrogance.
Is it just me, or are you holding up your mic with blue legos?
lol i see it
Ha! Just commented the same thing...then came down to see if anyone else had noticed it too! Hilarious! 😂😂
YEP! I noticed it about 2 minutes in, and honestly, that's really freaking clever! No money needed to be spent, just used what he had, and it works impeccably!
I always had a soft spot for engineering and city planning. Makes me wish I pursued that rather than a business finance degree. Maybe I can intermingle the two in my future.
Alright listen up bitch, I'm the fucking Don here and I'll call the shots. I don't need to take career advice from little plebs like yourself. Is that understood sweetheart?
Yeah nice burn you fucking loser. Send me your address tough guy.
Ben Dover i'm actually at your mamas house right now. Come and meet me.......in a half hour caus i'm not finished yet.
Ben Dover haha
I'm still at my "little fucking pussys" place. Didn't she tell you. I've been busy filling all her holes.
Livin in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise
Like mountains beyond mountains
And there’s no end in sight
I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights...
my AP Human Geography textbook always said Atlanta, and we coined the term "Sprawl-anta" for the city.
Walk through Atlanta. You will find your answer in less than an hour
"Walk" its Atlanta you clearly meant drive bc one does not simply walk
@@mz4ahs
I didn’t expect my city to get this much criticizm
@Moon Shine
Some of that is false but okay. Atlanta is not the only city like this. Orlando can be worse. 40 mins just get from your cheap hotel to Disney world 😂. And I didn’t find any transit their either, just freeways and traffic.
@Moon Shine
Okay
@@mz4ahs Boromir: "One does not simply walk in Atlanta."
kudos for using Lego to build a microphone stand lol
haha, thanks. Sadly, I've since upgraded to a proper microphone stand. My kids are happy to have their Lego back!
thats awesome, keep on making more of these interesting videos!
Americans don't realize how great it is to have efficient public transport close to everything obviating the need to have to drive everywhere. You spend less money, get a bit of exercise and get to explore. I hate urban sprawl, and there needs to be more mixed-use area. There's only so much highway/road expansion that can be done. Atlanta is a perfect example. It takes hours to get from one side of Atlanta to the other b/c traffic is terrible. I lived abroad in a country with PHENOMENAL public transport. It took me 15 - 20 mins max to get to and from work. I didn't know anyone who owned a car. People walked/biked/or took the train to work. In the states, most people waste away in traffic and get fat. There needs to be renewed planning that focuses on the pedestrian rather than the automobile.
chigasaki06 I agree. I live near riverside, CA and I’ve been to the Netherlands a few times and OH MY GOD public transportation is the best! I was able I get any where I wanted. Everything is close by. And I just felt a lot closer to the people. Americans are missing out.
But but but Public Transpiration is Socialism. 'America is capitalist and it's not the governments job to use taxpayer money to build inefficient infrastructure. Americans should have the option to use PAY TOLLS . Just look at California and New York. Socialist shiza holes' ---- Texans and Mainstream conservatives against Public Transportation.
julio ventura I’m from a big city with pretty good public transportation but it’s so inconvenient for groceries and many life’s situation. I wish I could live in a suburb with my personal private house and backyard and a car. Cars are the best way of transportation.
@@urbanistgod I used to carry my groceries on a bike or carry them in a bag. The problem with the American lifestyle is that we consume so much more than what we need. You need a car for your grocceries because you're buying too much of things(heavy excess meats&junk food) , i'd bet you weigh 300 lbs.
Also, American cities were designed for autos and thus are way spread out.
In a normal city /country cities are planned in walking distance.
That's why East Coast cities have a lot of close amenities because they were built in a time when cars didn't exist.
Out West and in the South everything is built for the sub urb , so thats why PT to you seems inconvenient but its not.
I'm reading a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. So far so good. It talks about sprawling, the use of a sidewalk, and other urban planning things that I have yet to read. Give it a go!
I lived in Grenoble France for a summer and agree with getting around. It was much easier in Europe. Plus, I stayed in shape :) In America, I feel it is harder to do that. Specifically, I live in Detroit.
As a European these endless low-density suburbs would bother me, but I guess it's a matter of accustoming. If you grew up in such a suburb, maybe you would think the other way around.
The clear negative aspects of this are of course the inefficiency, needing much more energy for mobility (and heating in northern areas). Another thing is the high level of soil sealing, that could lead to ecological problems.
europe has been developing with modern techniques for 1000s of years. the US, only since the 1600s.
I grew up in the suburbs. It's not efficient at all. All my friends that travelled to Europe(germany, Spain) agreed that Europe does city/urban planning the best.
America is deprived of such basic human infrastructure. At least the BART has made attempts towards it and NYC is a different country.
Who cares? You have a private home with a private backyard a private pool and a private place to park your car it’s all what matters
DefCon1Shooter - yes, ecological problems are definitely a major concern in Houston at least. When Hurricane Harvey hit a couple of years ago it was a giant wake-up call for urban planners. The worst flooding occurred almost entirely in the recently developed outer suburban areas, where prior to development there were floodplains that channeled water away from the metro area. The city is now focusing most of their efforts into densifying the core neighborhoods and discouraging suburban expansion, because it’s only a matter of time before another hurricane or tropical storm hits the area.
I'm sorry, I prefer my own home, my own yard, my own driveway, and a lot of space between homes as opposed to he piled up like sardines in europe. Also why do y'all build your homes with brick? An earthquake would wreck your cities.
Things get even more confusing when you factor in what even counts as a city. Pretty much everything in a 100 mile radius from LA is taken up by something, be it residential, industrial or commercial. But all of that area is shared by dozens of individual cities. It's not all LA. But driving from downtown LA on the 405 to the 5 to the 60 to the 10, you will go 100 miles and never see an area without a house or factory along the freeway. So is it all considered sprawl of LA? Or is there a point where the sprawl stops being LA and turns into Pasadena or Fontana or Anaheim? Probably when you enter those city limits, right? If we go by this logic, then you could argue LA has the largest "sprawl" because it covers every possible spot of land leading up to the boarder of a neighboring city. But then other cities do the same.
Yep, it's really hard to define what is "urban" and what is "rural" in the age of endless suburban tract development.
Orange county itself is basically a suburb without a major city, same with Ventura county, some argue they're an extension of Los Angeles. There's definitely an argument to be made for that. Whenever I've flown into LAX, I'm always blown away by how it sprawls. From one end of the basin to the other, there aren't many gaps.
Yeah, I have to drive 80 miles just to visit friends in LA. Along those 80 miles, there is nothing but houses, buildings, shops and factories. In a sense, it never feels like you leave the city. It's a large area with a a bunch of towns. Even when you drive down to San Diego from LA, there are nothing but cities and towns. So you are never really isolated from a proper city.
Dustin Reed - Orange County is definitely a suburban extension of metro L.A., as much as it pains many OC residents to admit that. It’s not like there’s some dramatic change that occurs when one drives over the county line from Cerritos to Buena Park. It’s all part of the same developed mass.
City Beautiful The metrics used to identify sprawl (density, single use, auto dependency) would seem to apply for rural areas as well. It seems to me it would be possible to game the rankings based on where the threshold for where “rural and therefore exempt” is set. But rural areas don’t suffer from congestion in the way suburban areas do, so perhaps that could be another criterion for identifying sprawl. It also seems that geographic extent or scope would also play a role: one square mile of low density surrounded by rural area wouldn’t be as subject to congestion as 100 square miles of the same density in suburbia.
I remember in 2004 when I first went to visit my aunt and uncle in Atlanta and the local common joke was that "Atlanta has more highways than people." Looking back, the joke was spot on.
Atlanta is pretty bad at sprawl. The traffic here is terrible.
Atlanta doesn't even feel like I city to me. The streets are not on a grid system which is the real reason why traffic is so bad to me. I describe Atlanta as some big towers and high rises in the middle of a forest lol.
sophisticado100 they call it the city among forest for a reason
I used to drive cross-country for a living. I drove through all states in the lower 48 and through pretty much every single city - big or small - that had an Interstate running through it. Of all the cities I had to drive in or through, the two absolute worst were Boston and Atlanta. In Atlanta you’re pretty much at the mercy of the horribly congested freeways, because the streets make no sense at all. I once made the mistake of trying to take shortcuts on the streets of Atlanta, and wound up completely lost in some godawful ghetto. I was lucky I got out of there without being jacked up. At least in most other major cities (not named Boston) I could always find shortcuts on surface streets. Not Atlanta. Those streets are a fucking maze.
I saw the traffic just on the freeways flying over... pretty bad.
The Atlanta traffic is bad but the freeway system is not as extensive as LA's and has a lower capacity (fewer lanes overall). The LA freeways are so wide yet the traffic still sucks. Most cities have 2 lanes in each direction which expand to 4 in each direction in the most congested areas. I'm still going with LA on this one
Lol halfway through watching this I realized this guy was one of my professors
In phoenix if I want to go to the store to pick up a stick of butter I have to go outside into the 120 degree heat (it's like that 5 months a year), walk across the parking lot at my apartment complex, get in the car which is like 130+ degrees inside, drive for 7 miles in traffic, get out, go inside the giant fucking store, get the butter, go back out, get into the car and head back for 7 miles. It can take between 20 and 50 minutes based on traffic. If I didn't have the car, it wouldn't be possible at all. Not only would you be at risk of heatstroke but the butter would melt within the first 2 miles, and within 1 mile during the summer.
It is the same for everything else. Want to go to the bar? 20+ minutes in the car. Want to get a haircut? 20+ minutes in the car. Go to work? Visit a friend? Taken your kid to sports practice? See a movie? You better fucking believe you are spending 20+ minutes in the car.
It hurts to live here.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Just like a Canadian City in winter.....we hide inside most of the winter, you do so in the summer
Atlanta for the win :P were probably the most sprawled out in the country
More like the world 😱🤣
Atlanta born and raised, used to shock me how there was nothing then immediately city when I was used to 50 miles of solid suburbia in all directions.
Atlanta the "I'll be there in 45 minutes" city.
Meanwhile I'm driving 85 mph on 985 to get to 85 the switch to 75 to get to my destination and I've been on the north side of the city the entire time!
Atlanta's urbanized area is at least 70 miles across. It isn't city then nothing. If you got that idea from a trip down I-75 through the northwest of the city where there are large leafy lots, then you really didn't discover the area. Atlanta is massive. Unless you're talking about NYC, there isn't any city with 50 miles (100 miles across) of development in all directions.
I’d say *DEFINITELY* the most sprawled in the country. Metro Atlanta is even bigger in land area than the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex (which itself is one of the nation’s most sprawled metro areas), but with almost 2 million less people. Atlanta takes the trophy for sprawl, easily.
Dave, started following you recently. Your videos are short and crisp, packing technical details in just the right amount. I'm not American but the lessons from your case studies are still relevant. Mentioning your scholarly sources and further references also helps. Your videos are as you would say- neat. Keep uploading.
Thanks!
I live in Riverside. Sprawl is pretty bad here. Traffic is a nightmare on all freeways and major roadways in and surrounding Riverside due to the fact that most people drive. Public transportation is okay, but it does little to ease congestion. The city government have proposed some solutions to address these issues, mainly by strict zoning to increase housing density in our downtown and along our major roads, as well as installing light rail along those roads, but a lot of proposals get watered down or are straight up cancelled because of rabid NIMBYism here. It's a crazy thing to witness.
Danny Martinez I live in Riverside as well, you're correct about it all....u mean Riverside California right?
KasaiLifeTV yeah, Riverside, CA!
I live in Temecula and sprawl is still pretty bad
so... we need public transportation... until it's built near near you. people aren't really smart.
Dank Memez89 Riverside county in general is pretty bad, but Temecula definitely stands out. It's one gigantic suburb. Miles of single family housing. I hear Temecula residents are getting fed up with all the traffic, lol.
great video! I'm interested in the ways cities can recover from sprawl? it would make a great video topic I think
+Alex Smith Yes, good idea! This is actually my area of research, so I may wait to do that video until I can share something I've published. In the meantime, you could check out "Retrofitting Suburbia" by Dunham-Jones or "Retrofitting Sprawl" by Talen (ed.). I co-authored a chapter in the latter book.
City Beautiful Wow, you have grown fast! Well done!
Just because something is "desired by a certain part of the population" doesn't make it automatically okay. Smoking is desired by a certain part of the population, but it still has negative effects for smokers and society as a whole, for example.
Roberts
I think that the idea here isn't to destroy suburbs and single family houses, but build neighborhoods with diversified zoning, and well planned living.
Where I live for example, every new development has to include some sort of high rise for housing, small commerce, walk path, cycle, and public transport has to be easily integrated to the community.
In recent years, new neighborhood don't only have better quality of live, but it has allowed to reduce criminality (since more people could afford to live in these areas), reduce traffic (because major congestion was becoming an issue), and made the city less isolated (more community feeling).
Our city also included new sectors of commercial and industrial activity. With a technologic industrial park, an insurance and financial district, as well as a video game and start-up sector.
CHECK IT OUT. I live in Quebec city, as city well known for its suburbs and highways. Today, unemployment is 3,8% and the city even refused Amazon to build it's new Canadian headquarters in the city, because the city feared it would bring in too many jobs in the city XD.
yeah, maybe the proper term should be transition.
How does a city transition from the monolithic zoning of low-density suburbs, to a more united con-urban community. Personally, I think it comes with the transformation of actual suburbs.
I mean, Paris was a shithole until Hausmann completely morphed the city into the city of lights in the late 19th century. The rebuilding of Paris wasn't a cheap project, but 150 years later we can conclude that the operation was a success.
I'm pretty sure something similar could be done with other cities in North America, that could include a better urbanism, without overcrowding the areas.
Houston, TX for sure! It takes 2 hours or more to drive from one end to another with no traffic.
I'd favor Dallas-Ft Worth. Everything in Dallas is miles apart, even when they are right next door to each other.
dlwatib d allas is lame and boring.
It's like plain yogurt
Edwin Palacios nah Indianapolis takes the cake for that
Kathryn White you are talking about a central city of well over 600 square miles. If Houston were completely built out at high density it would easily topple New York City and become the largest city in the US.
Shit, just try driving up the I - 5 in the seattle area
I don't even get why cul de sacs would favor cars, In the Netherlands they have streets blocked off with bollards, effectively making them dead end streets for cars, but bikes and people can easily go from one section to another and some bollards are retractable and can be lowered by emergency vehicles, thus eliminating one of the down sides of dead ends. Some towns even allow residents to get a remote that they can use to lower bollards.
Because all of the land around the cul de sac is privately owned, and the distance to the next road is actually moderately sizable (e.g. 600-1000 meters).
You can even see that grid pattern in the night photos.
I love seeing the grid from a plane.
City Beautiful Me too
Grids are great. Sprawl isn’t big difference
You truly need to go back to look at the origin of the growth of Los Angeles in area. In 1915 it had a truly extensive system of streetcars that went far beyond its built-up areas. That system encouraged people to move to the San Fernando Valley. It was only later that cars became affordable and ubiquitous. In other words, Los Angeles, unlike most other cities, was built around the streetcar. Amazing but true.
Lots of cities have "streetcar suburbs." I agree that streetcars played a role in urban expansion, but the rate of growth increased considerably with the car.
@@CityBeautiful In the case of LA, though, almost ALL of the suburbs were streetcar suburbs, and you see that when you look at the Pacific Electric route map.
What's interesting though is they weren't just streetcars. The Pacific Electric Railway was built to standard gauge, which meant they could receive freight trains on the same tracks. Most of the PE system would shut down from midnight to 6 am and then use electric freight locomotives to deliver railcars from the Southern Pacific Railway to various factories that had sidings along Pacific Electric streetcar lines.
@@alexanderfretheim5720 I did not know that. Thanks.
@@Zeyev It was really smart actually. It's a shame more places don't do that.
In Spain if you drive 30 miles (some 48 km) from the city centre, you're not only in a different city, but you will have crossed several towns and cities in between.
DFW seems like it will stretch from Denton to Hillsboro and Stephenville to Greenville. That's larger than some eastern states.
Spencer Smallwood not as far south as Hillsboro when you take 35 east south bound the sprawl ends around oak leaf/red oak. In the north it ends around Sanger Texas. When it comes to 75 Anna Texas 45 Wilmer. 30s sprawl ends just before Royce city and west word it ends around Weatherford. With I-20 east it ends around the seagoville area. Dfw is sprawling but it's mitigated sprawl.
DFW is smaller than Atlanta, in terms of urbanized area's square miles. It does have a little larger population, however.
The Atlanta metro area is not a small town. It is 5.7 million people. Most people live in the suburbs. The city limits aren't all that large, and one third of the city is filled with expensive homes on large, leafy lots. There's also a lot of industrial areas, such as three rail yards, half of the airport and the corresponding industry surrounding the airport. This leaves less room for housing.
More like (from W to E) White Settlement to Rockwall, and (from N to S) Prosper to Waxahachie. Yes, still a massive, massive amount of area. Easily the most sprawled in Texas... even more than Greater Houston.
After living in Atlanta for over a year now, it's definitely no where near the size of Dallas-Fort Worth! If you add the Birmingham metro 30 miles to the east of Atlanta and fill it in between, that would be Dallas-Fort Worth!
@@jamesgreen7752 You're wrong. Look at the official statistics instead of going off what you think. Atlanta by far is the larger metro area by developed, built-up area, while DFW does have a larger population because it is built a little more densely.
White Settlement on the far western end of the developed area to Rockwall (which isn't exactly straight across, but I'll give it to you anyhow, is about 63 miles.
Prosper to Waxahachie is also about 63 miles from north Prosper to south Waxahachie.
Now for Atlanta. Gainesville to Newnan is 86 miles miles
Villa Rica to Loganville is 64 miles.
So, Atlanta is considerably larger north south and about the same size east west, built-up area wise.
would be nice to see a video on sprawls in Australia especially around Perth
The only thing that stops the Sydney sprawl are the Blue Mountains in the west and the national parks in the north and south, otherwise it would have already merged with Wollongong and Newcastle and made them into suburbs of Sydney.
Perth looks to have an urbanized span about 19 miles east west and 40 miles north south, with more in the string of cities along the coast to the south.
I've learned in the last two days more from youre videos about urban planning, than weeks of studying it at my university
When you find a new TH-cam channel to binge watch....
I can't speak for all other cities, but LA has to take the crown here. You could drive 2.5 hours from Ventura to Temecula and still be around suburban developments. But what can really expand LA's sprawl is if you include Santa Barbara and the High and Low Desert communities in the definition. That adds an immense amount of square miles.
Adding Santa Barbara to me sounds like a stretch, but you could definitely add the Antelope Valley and everything in the Mojave all the way out to Barstow.
It's Houston. Hands down. It never ends.
NekoMouser Jacksonville, Florida is the largest city by square miles ... in the continental U.S.A.. However, Alaska 's Jeanue (sp) is the largest city (in the entire 50 states) ... yet has a small population size.
Although, I could be wrong; Houston and Los Angeles also feature huge metropolitan areas. 😊😎
you should checkout the DFW (Dallas Fortwort metropolitan area)
Houston Ends... Go East
@@DmitriyK12 The city government of Juneau governs that huge area, but basically only possesses it for the purpose of building roads and improving navigation. There's no actual urban development except in one tiny area. It's really more of a Port Authority than a city.
Atlanta, DFW, Phoenix, Tucson, Nashville, and San Diego are probably the most sprawled out. LA and Houston are sprawled out, but they're also dense in some areas.
Nashville is definitely very sprawled out. Take a look at the Tennessee congressional districts and compare the sizes of the ninth district with the fifth district... and Nashville is considered to be a larger city. Derp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee%27s_congressional_districts
I live in a Nashville suburb and it’s 40 minutes from downtown, but the development never really ends so it’s really just all Nashville.
Portland is also mostly sprawl.
@@stevenmatthews2278
In reality Nashville is a tiny city surrounded by a bunch of suburbs that for some reason are counted as part of the city. Just because "the development never really ends" doesn't mean it's all city.
profd65 It pretty much is the same city and the area is growing larger every day. Murfreesboro is one of the fastest growing cities in the country and the population has doubled within a decade. If I can be in Nashville within 35 minutes it really isn’t that far removed from Music City.
Wow Atlanta was mentioned twice
Atlanta has piss poor infrastructure.
@@Imperial0666
You think Orlando does as well?
I just found your channel, and I love your content! I am currently doing research work in my university on the autonomy of cities (in terms of their ability to govern) within Canada, and your videos have provided me with many things to think about. Cheers!
Houston had so many suburban areas though. I lived in Northeast Houston and there’s always something being developed. Whether it’s a big highway or some business development Houston just keeps building all the way out to the country. If there was somewhere I needed to be it always took forever just to get there and there was endless amounts of suburbs along the way.
How big would you give houston at its furthest dimensions ????? Far east-west north-south nw-sw se-ne
Too Vexx - That’s probably all going to change after what happened with Hurricane Harvey. It kind of has to. The main reason the flooding was so extreme was because they developed all these suburbs in the floodplains. You just can’t do that in a big city that’s built on a swamp. It was a very rude awakening for urban planners. Houston (the city-proper) has already been making efforts to densify and urbanize in the core neighborhoods inside loop 610, but now they’re really beginning to step it up and focus on densifying outside the loop as well. It’s a matter of necessity at this point, because there will inevitably be another hurricane or tropical storm in the near future. Building even further out from the city at this point would be really stupid.
Jason Williams - From the Northern end of the metro (Conroe) to the Southern end (Galveston), it’s 92 miles. From the Western end (Katy) to the Eastern end (Baytown), it’s 53 miles.
@@Brewzerr it’s already sprawled past Katy
@@tflking4916 yea its creeping on Brookshire to the west for sure
We retired to a high density inner city neighborhood (yes, it's an actual neighborhood). No regrets at all.
@3:47 what is that city north of denver? I can find anything that could be it.
love this channel! Keep it up
I live in San Antonio. While it is super... not dense overall, there are pockets of higher density areas. The largest being downtown, but uptown is seeing blocks of low density housing being replaced with mid-rise lofts and tons of commercial development. The other higher density areas include the northeast side, where most industrial development is taking place, Stone Oak, La Cantera and Medical Center. More recently, the Alamo Ranch/Westover Hills area is seeing an explosion of mid-rise apartment complexes and low density neighborhoods as land out here is cheap. Development on the farwest side has been so intense, the suburbs extend into the next county. In fact, I live the same distance to Medina River/Castroville as I do downtown San Antonio(roughly 12 miles). It's crazy how quickly this city is growing, just 5 years ago, I could drive out west and there was almost nothing but trees, but now, it's houses running from here to just outside Rio Medina(a farming town along Medina River). There's almost nothing west of San Antonio, so the city is basically free to annex a good portion of Medina County over the next few decades.
SlenderPsycho I don’t understand it. I moved from Chicago and can’t figure out why anyone wants to live in a city and have to drive everywhere. The via is ok if you’re taking major routes like the 550/551 but you better hope what you need is on the access road.
used to live in San Antonio but since I had a job in another city for about 10 years and then when I returned to visit, I didn’t wanna live there anymore.
more congested, of course, and everywhere you have to drive, to visit, friends, to go out to eat, to jobs to recreation, to drive many miles, and the rush-hour traffic has extended from one hour to more than two hours several times a day.!!!! Start and stop traffic is very stressful, I’d rather have a train, of course not possible here and commute somewhere without having to drive. Haven’t found my new city yet.
I really find it a shame that much of the land that was country outside of San Antonio is been built with dozens of new suburban houses plus some people that lived on a farm for years that wanna retire in their family home are still having to keep it a farm and keep some cattle just so they wouldn’t have to pay a luxury tax, but keep it agriculture.
They are still working hard, even though they’re past retirement age because some people from the city Herbert what used to be farms just so they can live out in the country and then the commute to the city but they haven’t had the storm for several generations like some other people have actually worked their whole life there and now they’re property tax would go up higher if they didn’t still keep working past 65
Didn’t mean to write Herbert,
Can someone explain why there is a very aggressive trend to building a new class of shopping center complex called a power center? You can't get from one store to another safely without getting back into your car and find a new parking space. The worst part is you spend a lot of time looking for said parking space. There are some single big box retailer or mega department store with parking lots that take an entire square mile, for one single business.
You and your CityStreetSplaining.
Allie B ahahaahaha
Love this. I was your 50,000th subscriber btw :)
Thanks for taking the channel across the threshold!
The Twin Cities aren't that sprawling. I'd say Detroit or Chicago sprawl the most in the midwest.
Have u been to on the twins cities it defiantly sprawls but u r right Chicago sprawl is crazy Milwaukee is almost a superb of Chicago
The distance b/t Chicago airport and downtown is appalling. Boston's distance is so much better
+Jackson Matthias
I can't tell if you're agreeing or arguing. Maybe you meant definitely?
NƎcktie3223 yea sorry I meant definitely
Living in racine the Chicago sprawl is hugee
Whenever I hear sprawl, Dallas-Fort worth,Phoenix, Houston Atlanta,LA,Vegas, Detroit, St. Louis, Kansas city, and Oklahoma city come to mind
It's Houston fam.
Greater Houston is insanely sprawled, but still not as bad as Atlanta, Phoenix, DFW, Charlotte, Tampa Bay, Las Vegas, Austin, or Orlando.
austin is not even that sprawled as houston what?
I moved to Detroit when I was very young and always wondered how can a city this big not have a rail system of any type. Much smaller cities like Miami Atlanta Cleveland Seattle Portland and many more have rail or subway systems. the decline of Detroit had as much to do with no dependable regional transit system, as it did with crime and drugs. Successful cities all have dependable transit systems that include some sort of rail and or ; SUBWAY SYSTEMS. WAKE UP MICHIGAN AND PROVIDE YOUR ONLY REAL CITY AND METROPOLITAN AREA WITH A STATE OF THE ART TRANSIT SYSTEM! BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME!
Metro Atlanta is larger than Detroit. 5.7 million to 4.2 million.
@C caymer if you mean the People Mover in Detroit, it's tiny and rather useless as a main way of public transit. It was mostly designed to get you from your closest parked car to things like the auto show or a Detroit Red Wings game. But in order to get to the people mover in the first place you most likely drove.
The Q-Line is a good start. But still will need massive extensions to make it properly reliable for many people as a main way of transit for people connecting all across the city.
Detroit is the center of the automobile industry. do you think they'd rather have people on the trains or have people buying cars?
@@Imperial0666 And that was the problem.
I live in a modern suburb. Pretty much every neighborhood has a school and shopping center within a mile, and a large better shopping center within ten. Every neighborhood also has a lake or nature trail that connects to the tobacco trail, which is a huge statewide walking and biking trail.
I live in Santa Clarita CA which is the northern end of the LA area, and my grandma lives in San Clemente CA which is the southern end of the LA area. Everytime we visit her we consider it a road trip even though it’s in the same metro area. It’s a 93 mile drive and takes at least 1 hr 15 min to get there without traffic. The sprawl is crazy both North-South and West-East
why isn't Jacksonville on here? it's the largest city in the country by geographic size.
Scotty Haines it’s not about land dimensions
Oh yeah, by any metric discussed, Jacksonville should be on the list, but maybe the Tampa Bay area as well.
Jonathan Aman
Metro area as opposed to city.
Kaministquia Mahackamack Jacksonville still has one of the largest metro areas in the country if not the largest. It takes up almost 800sq miles
Anchorage is over twice the size of Jacksonville.
Greater LA has an insane amount of sprawl, you can drive for 2 hours before seeing an open field. Drive from San Clemente up North and you will see development everywhere until Camarillo. That's over 100 miles!
And south of San Clemente is open for a few miles before you hit Oceanside.
Cyrus992 - Only because that area between San Clemente and Oceanside is a giant Marine base.
Yes but it is of considerably high density
No other metro area in the country comes close to the sprawl of greater L.A. Over 12 million people. GIGANTIC.
How the Miami metro area can not even mentioned once is beyond me. Sure there are 3 major cities in the area, but there is little to no real public transportation, no one walks on the street to go somewhere, and everyone owns a car. It's 6 million people in an area thats 6000 sq miles thats growing at a crazy high rate. It's a huge suburb.
all that growth in South Florida is contained by the Everglades. South Florida is a long metro area, but it is not wide.
I see absolutely no forestry or open areas of natural vegetation.
The Miami area, especially Miami itself, its considerably pretty densely populated.
At 3:50 on the night satellite map what is that big bright blob in the A4 (if the horizontal axis was divided into 10 and a is along the top) section. I can identify most of the cities but what is going on there? I think it is around Williston, ND
But looking at a map, I can’t figure out why that area would be so bright
I subscribed to your channel and am enjoying your videos immensely. Your research is thorough and your production values are top rate. Very watchable fare. You speak clearly so your rapid-fire delivery is totally intelligible. You are concise and are effective at conveying complex ideas quickly. Kudos to you! PS - the LEGO mic stand is a nice touch!
Thanks!
I am loving your channel
Thanks!
Ayyy.
Australian cities have really huge sprawl too
I noticed every nation sort of sprawled when the car became affordable.
Even Germany has its sprawl areas around Munich, or Vienna Austria has its sprawl... only in urban areas where you can't sprawl are metro.
jmitterii2 Australia is a wannabe USA
@@jmitterii2 In Britain, they actually have lots of suburbs, but the suburbs are connected to the mass transit system just like the city centers are and also typically have a walkable "village" area with a pub, coffee shop, et cetera.
I would love a video on way comparing cities makes little sense; instead we should compare metro areas. For example, people often tell me that SF is tiny compared to NY, or compare their densities. I insist that we have to use metro areas, but I don't have a good explanation prepared. Same for lists of the biggest cities - if you're not using metro areas, it's a bit misleading. Finally, things like densities in general are very hard to compare. Imagine one city with a dense urban core and then low density suburbs. This is very different to a city with medium density all over, but they might have the same density.
What is that mess of lights near the North Dakota-Montana border at 3:48?
Oil production.
Subscribed! Good and intelligent film making. I recently watched another film here on TH-cam on farmland fading away as cities sprawl. That film was built on Atlanta in Georgia which is an incredibly sprawling city. The topic of sprawling seems to get a very important one for America the longer the process of sprawling continues. Regards from Germany where we don't have that much space and have to deal with space much more carefully.
I thought this video might be interesting to watch, it wasn't.
Chris L Nice
Nive Vhris L
Should have a city planner/architect explaining...not a Journalism major.
I think this guy said he was studying his Planning degree at Berkely. Might be mistaken though. Either way, urban planning is a pretty saturated field and it seems like most who get into it now tend to do so for academia, it's one of my biggest gripes about the field when I went to planning school. Most people are good at regurgitating the theories and principles, but aren't very adept to problem solving. Thank god I switched from geomatics because otherwise I'd have no future in the industry or a backup plan for a career.
Him waving his hand up and down constantly like Donald Trump doesn't help either. Visually annoying.
U.S urban sprawl is the worst thing to ever happen to urbanism
I live in a single family residence with a backyard on the edge of the Denver metro in a neighborhood with a stroad one street over. The only walkable options are a pizza place and a Mexican grocer that carries very little of what I cook with. I make supply runs to a grocery store once a week and cannot walk to much of anything. I would not trade where I live for an apartment or row home with more walkable shops and restaurants. I do not need to consume more than I am currently consuming. I do not commute to work. Just trying to add some balance to the discussion. Cheers.
Good video. I'm catching up on many of your videos and enjoying them. Another way to measure sprawl: take a list of essential places such as parks, shopping, government, laundry. If, say, 80% are accessible by foot or bike (or mass transit in less than 20 minutes), then you're not in sprawl-land.
Hi, I live in Queretaro, Mexico. And if you are interested to make a video about urban sprawl in Mexico and how is it different from US, I d be happy to help.
It’s great that there are a lot of new mid and high rise residential development in cities like Austin and Minneapolis.
Cities & Skyscrapers No, it's not. It's driving up land values, rent, and property taxes. It's making it so people can't afford to live here anymore.
Densification is necessary for the American cities. Period.
Cities & Skyscrapers Densification is making the society poorer. Public transportation is making us less free because it’s less convenient for most life’s situations and you can’t go from point A to point B. A house with a backyard with a car is the ideal way of living.
Is it bad that I'm watching this guys videos to get better at simcity 4?
Only because it won't help you. Sim City 4's transportation flows are EXTREMELY unrealistic. The game basically assumes that your sims always commute to the closest workplace, will treat neighboring towns as workplaces, and won't favor freeways over slower roads even for long distances. I love Sim City 4, but the unreality of the simulation can be a really turn off.
The Greater LA Area sprawls like no other. It's practically the definition of sprawl. Only the mountains break it up
Axel Axelrod yeah kind of like Seoul South Korea.
Almost all of the cities that are sprawling in the US are cities that are landlocked like Atlanta and Phoenix. Both of those cities are growing so much because there isn't any large body of water that could block the way of expanding a city. This is the same case for Dallas-Fort Worth and Las Vegas as well. There are benefits to having a city by the coast like having trade access. However, having a landlocked city can help to expand a city quicker and easier. I know that some cities like Denver have the Rockies which block the way of expanding the city to the west.
Dallas,Houston,LA,ATL actually break one of your metrics since they have random tall buildings/highrises in low density areas(though density is increasing) Scattered skylines of you will. Makes them beautiful and unique IMO.
Very true, I lived in Houston and there were a lot of tall buildings randomly placed and multi use buildings, I was in complete walking distance of my schools, shops, restaurants and parks.
Another thing that’s unique in Houston at least, is the fact that there’s no zoning ordinance. Because of this, the residential areas, commercial/retail, nightlife/entertainment districts, business districts, warehouse districts, and industrial areas are all jumbled up and mixed randomly throughout the city. Many people hate this about Houston, but personally I think it’s very interesting, and it also means you never have to go very far (in the city-proper) to find what you need. People can say what they will about Houston, but it’s definitely a very unique and interesting city.
The Miami metro is same way too
I'm surprised Houston wasn't even mentioned in this video.
0:43 a Grand Rapids suburb. Interesting choice.
You seem like a great public speker, I could never speak for that long without making a mistake, and you put great emotion into your voice too, it makes it really listen-able.
Most sprawled cities in each region. (South) Atlanta, Houston, Dallas.FtWorth, Miami (From West palm beach to Miami it has a North to South Axis ) , Charlotte. (North) Boston, D.C, Newark Nj. (MidWest) Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus OH, Kansas City, St.Louis. (West) Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix Az, Las Vegas.
South: 1) Atlanta, 2) Dallas-Fort Worth, 3) Houston, 4) Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach 5) Tampa-St. Petersburg
Northeast: 1) New York City, 2) Washington-Baltimore, 3) Philadelphia, 4) Boston, 5) Pittsburgh
Midwest: 1) Chicago, 2) Detroit, 3) Cleveland-Akron-Canton, 4) Cincinnati-Dayton, 5) Minneapolis-St. Paul
West : 1) Los Angeles, 2) Phoenix, 3) Seattle, 4) San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 5) San Diego
Don’t care what these studies have to say. If you’ve driven from Phoenix to Sacramento you know that LA is like 50,000 square miles
At the 0:29 point, I have the video paused. I would define sprawl as a high ratio of population to a low population _density._ A city has a lot of _people,_ but they're all spread _out._
Live in Atlanta. Am not surprised at all.
0:40 instantly recognized that as 28th Street in Wyoming, Michigan, suburb of Grand Rapids.
They have built some multistory apartments across the street from those restaurants, in a massive parking lot where a 20 screen movie theater once sat for 40 years.
Seeing that photo of Wyoming, Michigan in there threw me off. That was taken a mile away from my house.
american sprawling suburbs is what we call "American horror story" in europe
Yes we know. Nobody is as smug or as arrogant as you fucks.
Yeah, dying decaying crap hole Europe.
Living in the suburbs in the US is lonely. You have to drive everywhere by yourself and everyone goes to different places. I don’t even know most of the people that live on my streets names, let alone anything about them.
Why doesn't this have more views?
Thanks! It's a newish channel and I don't promote it yet, so most of the views I get are from TH-cam searches and recommendations.
City Beautiful I found you through Reddit
Yep, I did post a link to this channel at r/urbanplanning a month ago. And someone else posted my latest video there. So the word is starting to get out!
Maybe because most people are ignorant of planning and its affect on their lifestyle.
What location is that at 1:01? It looks really cool and I want to find it on google maps
I’m going to be majoring in urban planning so these videos are very helpful to me before I start taking my courses thank you guys🙏🙏🙏
I would have thought Jacksonville Florida would be on this list? Isn't it the largest city by size, not population? You definitely need a car there. Constantly driving to get anything done.
The greater Orlando area… No car no life.