The real reason suburbs were built for cars

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There was a plan. And it worked perfectly.
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[@PhilEdwardsInc]

Use code PHILEDWARDS50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus 20% off your next month at bit.ly/3VG8xtI!

[@willychilton]

perfect.... im fuckin hungry!

[@carkawalakhatulistiwa]

when the tram company went bankrupt. General Motors bought it and replaced it with a bus.when people ask for funding for public transportation. the government always gives money for buses. not a train

[@carkawalakhatulistiwa]

Soviet microdistric vs USA suburbia

[@AMPProf]

Fyi 14:13 massive bummer

[@TohaBgood2]

It's unfortunate that you don't mention the specific neighborhood in Berkeley, CA that "invented" the single family zoning concept, and how it's ironically now become a place where the racial-covenant protected single family homes of yesteryear are now being split up into multi-unit dwellings to accommodate the increasingly urban population of Berkely students. The inaugural, definitive single-family neighborhood is finding it impossible to serve the needs of the city it arose in and evolving into multi-family and mixed use. The ultimate irony of unsustainable single-family development.

[@ronvandereerden4714]

Ironically the good business design philosophy has created the worst business case as suburbs fail to generate enough taxes while those ramshackle street front businesses do all the heavy lifting.

[@wilsonli5642]

I find it weird that so many of these planning guides seem to hinge on "profitability", while the evidence over the years has repeatedly shown that low-density, car-dependent suburbs are a money sink. Were those ideas of "profitable" plans based on anything? Just lower cost to build?

[@xxxdroidmonkeyxxx]

You're applying costs of operating and maintaining infrastructure from over 100 years ago to current costs and needs. Not exactly a "gotcha" now is it?

[@trackman2300]

To me it a dream to live like in a walkable

[@WalterBurton]

@@wilsonli5642 : Normalizing the necessity of car ownership was the foundational goal (pardon the unavoidable pun). That's where the most important "profit" was realized. Not saying that was a good strategy.

[@jeffkunce8501]

I agree. It's a big topic, and you can't cover everything, but I think Phil should have mentioned the growth-dependent ponzi scheme aspect of suburbanism. It's much much easier to find funding for something new and shiny than to come up with money to maintain what we have. Developers and politicians have ridden that slash-and-burn wave of profit for years, and the momentum is failing.

[@RobustFilms1]

Moved within my city simply so I could walk to coffee, pharmacy, grocery, and produce stores. The impact on my mental health has been nothing short of stunning. I’m a fan of cars, and depend on them more that I could ever appreciate (shipping, travel, emergency) but it’s the small daily dependencies on a vehicle that really wears me down.

[@cheeseborgors]

Same, I don't think people understand how much subtle stress and anger driving causes most people. Takes a toll!

[@jltb5283]

Moved from the city to the suburbs and the impact to my mental health has been nothing short of stunning. I feel so much safer in my car than in public transportation, so much less stressful! No longer have to deal with all the criminals and general nut cases in the city! I can go shoping without fear of gangs of shoplifters. And when I use my car no concern of car jacking like in the city. No homeless and drug addicted. And I live in a nice house with a beautful yard instead of a cockroach infested apartment with constantly increasing rent. Let's face it American cities are horrible places to live. That is unless you are insane.

[@nomms]

​@@jltb5283Imagine being this scared of poor people lol

[@nomms]

​@@jltb5283 Man, you're real scared of poor people

[@AtomicBuffalo]

@@jltb5283 Happy it works for you. Glad you don't let the prospect of road rage, car break-ins, and collision fraud get you down. Are you lucky enough that you don't even have to tell police officers that you pay their salary? Do you have a solid non-residential tax base that can subsidize maintaining your infrastructure, or are your neighbors supportive of enough property taxes to keep things flowing smoothly? Or is that the next generation's problem?

[@JesusChrist-qs8sx]

One thing I will say - a lot of what can fix the suburbs is just allowing them to change, naturally, over time. One of the biggest things making it so hard for them to change is that, by law, most of these places simply can't. The car is here to stay, yes, but the suburbs don't have to stay frozen in time. Let the people who live in these places change them, as they see fit, shaping their communities in the way they want to see them. I think you'll be surprised just how urban these low density, more car dependent places can become, if we let them.

[@MarcWard]

Neighborhood councils and statewide growth plans do not help nor facilitate these changes. Unfortunately until the oil runs out we're stuck with Autos one of the last things the U.S. continues to produce other than tech companies.

[@AlRoderick]

​@@MarcWard cars are going to outlive oil. EVs are really good and we can produce enough batteries and electricity to run them all. The question is whether we should.

[@ericfielding2540]

The EV industry is working hard on keeping the car in use for the next 80 years. EVs are perfect for suburban living in many ways.

[@RedAlert39]

​@@AlRoderick The cost of producing EVs is very high, and it's only rising as demand for cobalt and lithium increases. The issue isn't that we won't have the raw materials to make them, the issue is that most people in the world will never be able to afford them.

[@nicoj9984]

Gas stations in Germany and the US get roughly the same amount for each gallon they sell, about 3$. Yet the average price per gallon the consumer has to pay is ~$3,49 in the US and ~$7,32 in Germany. The difference? Taxes and other levies. The same with parking: while there is more than plenty of free parking in the US, in Germany parking spaces are comparatively sparse and in most places you have to pay for them - not much, but looking for and walking to a vending machine to buy a ticket with spare change makes the experience far more inconvenient. All of this is intentional and done for a reason: by making driving more expensive and less convenient, you disincentivize car usage and widen the radius people are willing to walk, bike or use public transportation to get where they want or need to go. Unless you do the same in the US, it doesn't matter how many stores or service businesses you plunk down in American suburbs, people will still drive there even if they're just half a mile down the road, simply because it's so cheap and convenient...

[@DiannaCarney]

Yeah, I have to drive every morning 1 mile away from my house just to take my dog on a walk , which always feels so silly that I’m driving to go walk. 😭

[@Simon-ku5fp]

As a non American I cannot concieve how this is possible. Hopefully you can find somewhere better to live.

[@mardiffv.8775]

Why do not you cycle? 1 miles = 5 minutes of cycling. I do not know weather your dog is big or small? A small dog can be carried in a bucket on your bike, a medium seize dog can ride in a trailer (buy one on Gregg's List) and a big dog you can take with you on a leash. Getting rid of its energy. In case the street design is not safe for cyclist, than don't cycle.

[@DiannaCarney]

@@mardiffv.8775 Unfortunately, it’s the busiest street in town, with no sidewalks, and has many curves that create dangerous spots where the drivers can’t see what’s around the corner while going 40 mph. It’s caused a few deaths over the years, so I don’t trust it enough with my life. I wish so badly that they would add sidewalks but I think they’d have to take private homeowners land for it as the road is so narrow and that just won’t happen. ☹️

[@mardiffv.8775]

@@DiannaCarney Thank you, I understand your position.

[@harriehausenman8623]

Thats really so sad. Now I have to tell my grand-daughter that whe will starve in 20 years, because some people had to drive their dog around. 👍

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

I was once invited to give a class at James Madison University. I was staying in a Best Western and over the weekend I attempted to walk to a nearby mall (less than a mile). There was no sidewalk so I had to walk on the grass next to the road. After a few minutes I was pulled over by a police car. Someone had reported somebody ‘acting weird’ (ie walking). Once the police realised I was a Brit on my way to the shops they let me go on my way

[@jneilson7568]

That Ray Bradbury story is reality in the US 😮

[@vf1923]

"Pulled over" from walking, haha.

[@kingchucklesii2197]

I'm a mechanic and racing fanatic, I love cars. But this is infuriating. Cars aren't really good at suburb and city commuting. They are big and annoying and expensive and often dangerous. Cars are better suited for remote and low population rural areas and for immediate response emergency or service vehicles. I live out in the Vermont hills and cars work alright, but the second I get to a town, or God forbid, traffic in Burlington, I just want to park and hop on a trolly or something.

[@southend26]

Preach.

[@MrTakaMOSHi]

I've been saying it for years; you can be a car enthusiast and be against car dependency

[@kingchucklesii2197]

@@MrTakaMOSHi exactly, I want to enjoy driving, not be forced to drive

[@patrickbutler87]

omg, say it again for the people in the back! 👏

[@kevinandrew_]

​@@MrTakaMOSHiI'd take it a step further and say that car enthusiasts who live in an urban center SHOULD be against car dependency. Study after study has shown that the only financially responsible way for a city to slow down increases to traffic is to provide people with (actual, quality) alternatives to driving. If everyone has to drive, your ability to drive your car in a spirited manner gets ruined. Not to mention that the most fun type of driving is most certainly not bumper to bumper rush hour traffic. Many people would gladly take a proper LRT/BRT/subway to work if their city actually had one.

[@PsRohrbaugh]

My #1 issue with suburbs are lack of connections between streets. There is a strip mall that is 1/4 mile from me by air. But because of the way the roads are laid out, I have to walk / drive over 2 miles to get there. Unless I cut through people's yards, and climb the 8 foot fence on the outside of the community. It's a problem with an easy solution.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

and what's so maddening is that the separation was totally part of the plan!

[@bbartky]

When I was in junior high the school was, by air, only five blocks away. However, it was over 1/2 mile to walk or bike to get to. The other maddening things that very few streets had sidewalks so you had to walk in the street or face the wrath of angry neighbors.

[@SigFigNewton]

Easy solution? Tear down the fences?

[@jasonriddell]

@@SigFigNewton and tramp through peoples back yards

[@fazdoll]

I'm a suburban hiker who has spent a lot of time scoping on Google Maps, so I know about this. Connecting the streets like that only creates through-way shortcuts that commuters will speed through. In fact I've seen streets which had clearly started off as a convenient through-way, but were later broken into two dead-ends to stop that kind of traffic. I have also seen openings in fences, or short sidewalks between houses and through a tree-line, so that pedestrians could walk from a residential cul-de-sac to a major street. I see this especially in planned neighborhoods from the 60s-80s. But more recently, those pedestrian shortcuts have become places for homeless to hang out, or gangs to shortcut in and out and cause trouble. So newer developments erect unbroken fences, if not outright walls, to prevent anyone from passing through.

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Towns are good for families. People want to live in towns. Suburbs emulates some features of towns while leaving out the mixed use and productive centres. It's essentially the town without the money to keep everything funded. We don't need to tear down all the suburbs, we just need to convert them into towns. The people are there, so lets give them places to work, places to shop, and places to loiter around.

[@Praisethesunson]

This idea makes way more sense than it should

[@andre-cmyk]

ive heard of a few cities taking the areas of dead suburban malls and making dense mixed use centers using all that space! there is still hope i think streetcraft is a great channel that shows what could be done and helps imagine a better future

[@evanrhildreth]

Most towns are bad for teens. Limited jobs except working at a tiny handful of local businesses, and by extension, limited exposure to potential careers. Worst, there is little for teens to do except drink or get pregnant. A suburb's proximity to a city means proximity to a larger variety of job opportunities, exposure to a larger variety of potential careers, access to colleges and universities, and things to do to stave off boredom. The best is a town where a nearby city has grown into and around the town, because it has the walkability of a town but the access of a suburb.

[@spookyshark632]

​@@evanrhildreth That just sounds like the suburbs. What is there for kids to do when the only things within walking distance are endless rows of identical houses?

[@matthewluck9077]

exactly! this video didn't end very hopeful, but if suburban land was freed from restrictive use designations, then shops, denser housing, offices, etc, could be built in them too, not too differently thn most american towns before the car. the problem is that this is still largely disallowed across north america

[@tadnauseum]

I wish someone would acknowledge that the land upon which suburbs were built wasn't empty waste land. People were there before people arrived from the city. Farmers, ranchers, their families, workers, their little townships with post offices, churches and rail stations. That land grew food. What motivated smaller farmers to stop farming and to sell? The centralization and monopolization of food production. That part never gets brought up in "suburb development" essays. Onto what preexisting space were suburbs built? Why was that land for sale? It wasn't empty nor unused.

[@oppositeofh8]

bravo! excellent point!

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

that's interesting. i had someone else bring up grocery chain condensing too - similar but not unrelated.

[@delftfietser]

Not everywhere, not all the time. In my city, it was electric trams that grew outwards from the center, either establishing communities that became our suburbs or connecting small communities bulit to escape the noise of our overcrowded city center.

[@Mistwolfss]

​@@delftfietserwhere are you from?

[@delftfietser]

@Mistwolfss Winnipeg Canada. Working class city with not much money today. Late 1800s early 1900s, was a boomtown, the Chicago of the North, was the saying then. Once streetcar lines were built, in time cars replaced their service, because fewer people wanted to be limited to the schedule of the streetcars, especially once cars became as quick as the streetcars (a function of the car itself, the roads made for them, and that there weren't enough cars to make congestion a problem). I had read that in some cities, people used the streetcars for work commutes, and the car was left for errands and visiting fam and friends.

[@atreidhd]

Not gonna lie, I was skeptical when I saw the video title, I thought it was gonna be apologetic to auto manufacturers. I'm glad you didn't go down that route and actually did real research and highlighted how it was a systemic issue and not one singular person / group that led to this problem. Excellent video! Only part I disagree with is how you say this problem will probably never be fixed because it'd be too difficult to rebuild. Cars will never completely go away (nor should they, they have their uses), but difficult is not impossible, and cities continue to be developed and rebuilt every day. It's entirely possible, we just need to organize and build and maintain the pressure on the government until they comply. Like all progress, it will take work, a lot of work, but it's worth it.

[@jasonriddell]

I go "both ways" on the impossible front as there is SO MUCH PRIVATE land locked up in suburbs I see the suburb and the car based strip malls NEVER going away totally there always will be demand for detached housing with yards AND "quite" that comes with that model and that alone will prevent it from going away even if we don't BUILD more in that form directly but hopefully we can allow density to grow around the edges and main streets

[@lhpoetry]

A lot of the poorer neighborhoods in Mexico City rely on cars but not personal vehicles: neighborhood taxis take you to the edge of the subdivision, where you can catch a minibus every ten minutes, which will take you to the metro. Mexico City is a city about 30 million, but this works well even in fairly small residential areas.

[@beerdedwanderer]

@jasonriddell the high density utopia that plays in your fantasy is also privately owned, it just ain't you owning it.

[@lhpoetry]

@@beerdedwanderer: That's one way to do things. But in many parts of the world, developers sell the apartments or multiplexes or store space they build rather than renting them in perpetuity.

[@PSingletary]

I always appreciate the kind of context you provide. "Product of its time" isn't a dismissive term, it's the start of an explanation. When you do urbanist content, you ever collaborate with Climate Town?

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i've watched it! never done anything urbanism before

[@jasonriddell]

I believe far to many urbanists "lens" what happened back then through todays experience and NOT what it WAS like leaving DIRTY cities that where often COAL heated and with poor sanitation and having a home of your own out in the "fresh air" AND away from "them" and the automobile WAS a life changing AND improving tool problem is "scale" it is a model that does not scale to the population sizes in 2020 but in 1950 there was zero down side

[@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub]

​@@jasonriddell this is still looking at things through rose-colored glasses, and the effort meant to sell people on this invented idea post-war rings disingenuous even for the time. Given immediate resistance efforts and the evidence of diminishing returns not even 20 years later speaks to this as well.

[@onemorechris]

i think you highlighted why, as a european, much of the planning in America i’ve seen feels a little off (more parking and shops, strip malls, interstates etc); it’s because it’s all top-down ideas from the 1940s. it’s what a couple of people born in the 19th century thought the 20th century should be like.

[@cmdrls212]

As a European you don't grasp how big the USA is. 😂

[@SigFigNewton]

@@cmdrls212not relevant

[@cmdrls212]

@@SigFigNewton entirely relevant. Density is a function of area and the US is bigger than Europe and has less people 😛 Canada has the same problem, even worse 🤣

[@jasonriddell]

@@cmdrls212 2 points one Canada is DENSER then the USA while having far MORE land per capita and second once ouitside a "commuter belt" the rest of the country does NOT matter as nobody is commuting from NYC to Las Vegas

[@onemorechris]

@@cmdrls212 i’ve visited more US states than you

[@Killerbear02]

i'm from germany and i feel so sad for you guys over in the states. i'm 36 years old and never owned a car cause i can walk or bike everywhere i need to.

[@anders6383]

As an American who has lived in Germany. Will say that is my favorite part of living there. The 49€ Deutschland ticket is just the cherry on top.

[@mardiffv.8775]

Gute Sache ohne Auto. 🤩

[@AllenGraetz]

No, no. I feel sad for you. My car gives me options in life you'll never have.

[@mardiffv.8775]

@@AllenGraetz Germany has an excellent rail network, complete with high speed trains (Inter City Express ICE). Killerbear02 probably lives in a big German city, or even the Rhine-Ruhr Conglomeration of 9 million people. All of those cities have streets cars, subways and buses, if it is too far to walk. You can cycle in a German city fine, with separated bike lanes. AllenGraetz, I understand that you as American has no other option then to drive and you are used to driving.

[@Killerbear02]

@@AllenGraetz i can unterstand that you think that way and i can't convince you otherwise. But i can tell you that with a good public transportation infrastructure we have all the options we need that makes a car just not necessary (even inconvenient)

[@cancerino666]

Basically, they took into account the cost of building, but not of maintenance. Suburbia is much more expensive to maintain vs the taxes it produces than walkable spaces.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

though i think sidewalk/curb maintenance costs were part of the reason for omitting sidewalks as well

[@jeffkunce8501]

@@PhilEdwardsInc That kind of proves the point. *All* of the linear infrastructure costs way more per person when housing density is low. When they built those suburbs, they cut back on sidewalks because they were already paying way too much for roads, water and sewer pipes, power and phone lines.

[@SigFigNewton]

It would be reasonable if suburbs paid far higher property taxes. Tired of people in suburbs being so anti personal responsibility. Pay for yourself.

[@cmdrls212]

​@@SigFigNewton they pay taxes 😂 however taxation without representation is a no go buddy. Don't be mad suburbs vote more than urbanites

[@eriknervik9003]

@@SigFigNewton Lol whatever bro. Suburbs almost never have problems funding their municipal services. What you mean is you want suburbs to be subsumed by cities to subsidize urban problems with their tax money

[@user-lv6rn9cf8m]

As a European it feels weird seeing the car and walking icon without a commuter train icon, tram icon, metro icon, bus icon, light rail icon etc next to them

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i did cut out the bus for readability

[@theweirdorange]

@@PhilEdwardsInc if you make a video on cacti extinction *_please_* mention the sentient saguaro cactus RP at the start

[@tbird-z1r]

There are plenty of places in Europe with absolutely terrible public transport. Why don't you actually say which country you're from?

[@iamarizonaball2642]

@@theweirdorange and if he doesn’t respond, mind making a video on it yourself?

[@trialspro]

Another arrogant “In Europe” comment. Major cities in North America also have those icons. This video is about the suburbs, not big cities. Big cities in North America typically have good public transit systems. Obviously with additional density comes more transit. My experience with European public transit was definitely not all its cracked up to be.

[@sypherlynx]

Urbanist content is always appreciated :)

[@joeybaseball7352]

You're the first comment, and I'm so disappointed in you. You're supposed to write "first."

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@joeybaseball7352 have to agree with joey on this one. I still give you a 🏆

[@Novusod]

This is one of the best videos on KZbin explaining why suburbs are the way they are. I have watched dozens of videos by Not Just Bikes and City Beautiful and they are just longer exposé of Tik-tok tropes. They never really get into what caused it other than to blame cars and highways. It is not that cars are bad. Problem is top down planning is bad. The Federal Government created a pigeonhole and then tried to cram every community into it without understanding of context or nuance.

[@Galadhatan]

​@@Novusodtry some of the videos by Strong Town. They're very detailed and researched

[@Novusod]

@@Galadhatan I have watched Strong Towns' videos too and they are indeed detailed but their research goes down the wrong paths usually blaming highway construction. Sometimes they bring up parking minimums BUT never have they mentioned where those minimums came from. This is the only video I have seen where they blamed it on top down decisions by the FHA.

[@Janokins]

I think one step in fixing this is to change the zoning of suburban neighbourhoods, maybe some people would like to set up a little corner shop there, or a cafe, and the people living there wouldn't have to drive.

[@DanielGreenlee]

Sometimes they’re not dense enough to even support a small business like this. I’m optimistic though and would LOVE to see what ratio of homes:small business would work in the burbs..

[@cmdrls212]

Impractical. If you admit you can't walk, sustaining a business on a cul-de-sac foot traffic is ludicrous

[@Digger-Nick]

Nearly every suburb has a downtown area. I swear the people commenting on these videos are the dumbest people on youtube

[@BobFrTube]

I was recently visiting a house in a cul de sac and noticed it was near the trolley station. It was a long walk by the roads and commented on it a resident who told me there was a short walkway a few houses down between the houses. Adding a few walk-through easements might do wonders.

[@beerdedwanderer]

So you want the government to take land from private owners so your life can be better, cool.

[@BOABModels]

It's interesting to compare to the UK - Birmingham and Coventry, two of the largest car building cities in the country, were rebuilt to be much more car friendly after being heavily bombed during the Second World War. However, as congestion increased and there was better understanding of pollution, both city centres are being made more pedestrian friendly. Hell, Birmingham even has trams again for the first time since the '50s!

[@bbartky]

Thanks for sharing that. I wonder if they could be a model for US suburbs to be less car centric.

[@BOABModels]

​@@bbartkyHard to say, but pretty much all new housing here in the UK is built with green space included and usually a playground as well. I think because we are a smaller, more densely populated place, sprawling suburbs like in the US are rare.

[@jasonriddell]

in my city in Canada we built a bus rapid transit" a 2 lane access controlled bus only roadway from our downtown to the university and there is talk of 4 more lines plus a some streetcars / trams with a "big" push for a streetcar line from downtown running along a route through a lot of older suburbs

[@quefreemind5698]

The influence of car and gas companies on those policies is very understated.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i'm skeptical of that argument but open to hear it. it seems clear to me that the streetcars going bankrupt was because people didn't like em or the business model was bad

[@quefreemind5698]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Car infrastructure also isn't a successful business model (its publicly funded). Car companies worked very hard to change America's perception of what future cites were supposed to look like and how cars were important in achieving the American dream. Even putting out videos to tell politicians that investing into roads was America's future. A very successful multi decade marketing plan.

[@jasonriddell]

@@PhilEdwardsInc LA street car system was bankrupt along with the city due to the wars and the depression leaving a 30 years of LOSS so having GM BUY the works and on there dime replace the tired and now 30 year old system with brand new and FAR BETTER bus service there was an immediate ridership increase and in the 60s when the GMC "new look" AKA fishbowl" transits came out ridership increased again I personally believe urbanists want an "enemy" and big bad GM is a prime target and burning trollys is a GOOD way to become an enemy but the system was all but garbage by then and statistics show GM and there busses MASSIVELY improved transit ridership

[@jasonriddell]

@@quefreemind5698 but you had a VARY receptive population and on the back of the war vets returning home and the subsequent "baby boom" made the ideas imbedded in there message readily accepted and actively sought out

[@beerdedwanderer]

People like cars, that's why they chose them.

[@rocksnot952]

God I hate those curving, no outlet suburban streets. A nightmare for emergency services too.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

yeah they thought it helped to follow the topography of the neighborhood, but it definitely was all about saving money too

[@rocksnot952]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Filling as much land as possible with saleable lots. I hate it. Good video, Phil, but I think the message is mixed. Suburbs good? Bad? Dunno.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@rocksnot952 not for me to say!

[@scopie49]

I chose to bike to a work meeting last week and missed the trail so I figured I'd just go into the neighborhood as long as I was headed generally west. Stupid street curves, loops, end up in a culdesac, turn around, keep following it, end up back on the same main road that lead me into the neighborhood in the first place. Even better was somehow my phone not connecting to a good enough internet to pull up a map and check to see which road would lead me out. Getting lost in a neighborhood is such a stupid modern problem that I'd never have thought possible.

[@cmdrls212]

I love them. Super safe. Anybody drives by who is not known gets flagged quickly. I've even called the cops on lost people 😂 the outlet is right where you came from 😂

[@robinmichel9048]

Just bought a 1938 cottage in town. 5 minute walk to downtown, grocery store, library, Post Office. LOVE it. ❤

[@Strideo1]

I live in a town with tons of houses and small apartment buildings right next to the downtown main street and it's amazing how much everyone walks and how downtown is thriving with shops and restaurants. There are two grocery stores, a pharmacy, and multiple shops and restaurants within a five to ten minute walk from my doorstep. It feels like a small town too. It's not like a big "scary" or "dirty" city that suburbanites claim their town will turn into if you make it walkable. I wish everyone could get a chance to live this way in America if they wanted to.

[@danielcarroll3358]

@@Strideo1 I'm in the same situation. I live in a former streetcar suburb of 120,000 people with a walk score of 98, a bike score of 99 and a transit score of 62. That means I can walk to almost anything in 5 minutes. The transit score is because there is only one bus line that runs every 12 minutes at the corner, but a ten minute walk will get me to 7 more lines and the subway that will take me to two international airports and several Amtrak stations and that's on the west coast.

[@robabiera733]

Yes, there is a place for cars. But that doesn't mean it has to be all about the car. Sidewalks are a good thing and I'm glad they're coming back.

[@jasonriddell]

cant speak for a LOT of US cities but in Canada we are starting to see mixed housing types in NEW "suburbs" and incorporated "city centre" - still car dominated but walking back on single family ONLY developments

[@danielcarroll3358]

@@jasonriddell California is now requiring single family only suburbs to allow higher density, to great gnashing of teeth and wailing.

[@rodchallis8031]

I think one of the things often missed is how much industry was located in areas we consider "downtown" or core areas today. Originally, many of these industries (in the northern hemisphere) were in the East Ends of the town-- or village. In them thar days, industries were noisy and dirty, often having their own coal fired power plants-- for steam or electric. So, city planners, noticing that the wind came most frequently from the west, thought it a good idea to locate industry in the east. As cities grew around them, many industries were encouraged to leave core areas for the east. Check out your rush hour traffic flow. I bet it's still clogged east bound in the morning, clogged west bound in the afternoon. Shifting industry from core areas to what we might call the industrial suburbs did as much to kill mass transit as the advent of the car-- or maybe it was collateral damage in the switch to the car society. Workers coming into core areas brought with them lunch money, picked up a few things before heading home, etc. Remove those workers and the surrounding residential neighbourhoods just weren't enough to support local business entirely on it's own. And of course we no longer needed street cars or mass transit to those areas. Today, industry is cleaner-- power comes from generating stations far, far away, and we've off loaded most of our stinky noisy industry off shore. Given the wasteland that is common in so many of our core areas, I think it's time city planners dusted of their 19th century guide books on where to locate industry. I think it needs updating.

[@chongjunxiang3002]

There is a reason why there is a meatpacking (or related) in some city too. Back in the day they do slaughter cow right next to where people live in.

[@mindstalk]

"Remove those workers and the surrounding residential neighbourhoods just weren't enough to support local business entirely on it's own" The industrial workers were removed by increasing automation and outsourcing as much as by suburbanization, but they were _replaced_ by masses of office workers. The dense skyscrapers of downtown NYC and Chicago never housed much industry (and light industry at best.) I worked in a high tech startup located in a high-rise dedicated to startups, in downtown Boston. And so on. The majority of workers are 'service' workers, and have been for decades, which means everything that isn't agricultural or industrial. Retail, hairdressers, lawyers, publishers, doctors, etc.

[@rodchallis8031]

@@mindstalk I think the process started before automation and trading our good jobs for magic beans started happening, mostly taking off in the 80's. Core area de-industrialization-- which was probably at a natural pace as towns grew-- really took off in the late 50's and was probably complete in most places by the late 70's. Many places have tried to bring in office workers into downtown areas, but these jobs don't come with a lot of expendable income, tending to be employee abuse centers and the like, so while it may be better than a lit cigar up the nose, it's not likely to have the same effect as worker spending in the before times. New York, Chicago, Toronto, New York etc., are different beasts.

[@jasonriddell]

@@mindstalk I live in an industrial town with factories for everything including transit busses and long haul "tour" busses lots of "AG" equipment and even a GE jet engine testing and with modern factories these places are clean as any "tech park" or warehouse district and you NEED to know where the factories are AND be there on shift change to actually know something "big" is going on

[@StellaMariaGiulia]

American suburbia looks super alienating to me, coming from a place where cities/towns are build around the roman decumanus and cardo and/or medieval little sprawling streets.

[@OspreyKnight]

It is, its one of the big problems we have. Suburbs are built in such a way that there is very little reason to interact with our neighbors.

[@cmdrls212]

​@@OspreyKnight that's a plus in the united states where the second amendment means your neighbor has the firepower of a small military 😂

[@OspreyKnight]

@@cmdrls212 ​ more than 24 guns is a rich hobbyist. 12 is an average hobbyist. 3 is a budding hobbyist. 1 or 2 is someone who needs to use a gun. Criminals tend to be in this category. So sure, I have more than 12 guns in my safe. And 12 background checks. And a carry permit that requires me to be in good standing with the law and mentally sound and remain in a permanent FBI database and fingerprints that are on permanent record. Over 15 years I probably have close to 50,000 dollars invested in my hobby and more than enough data in police hands I am practically assured to have left something behind they can trace to me. I think that pretty well makes me among the least likely people on the planet to commit crimes. I know you think you said something funny, but you basically said that I'm a witch that should be feared and pushed out of society. Maybe chained up like a diseased animal. Maybe put down by the state for the good of society. Its the same evil shit I hear from fearful bigoted people. The same people for whom I can't just enjoy my life in peace. I own 2 particular weapons that are not really part of the "collection" and are more practical. A pistol I carry to keep the bigots from playing smear the queer with myself and my loved ones, and a rifle if the government decides it likes waterless showers and big ovens. Considering we have a president threatening us with hellfire missiles to stay in line and Trump driving fascists into a frenzy. I'm pretty happy I have a small arsenal I can arm my community with and the training to use those weapons. Never again hits different when you're the undesirable of society.

[@miguelcontreras3953]

It is and looks creepy when some places have no sidewalk. If you decide to walk or bike drivers think you are no good or homeless. In some communities walking around is considered suspicious behavior where residents feel threatened and calling the cops to investigate.

[@Digger-Nick]

​@@OspreyKnightWhat? Suburbs are where you interact the most with your neighbors and all the kids know each other. Stop lying to appear edgy

[@andrewselvo7878]

I believe one question missing from many Urbanist videos is the “Why?” question for Americans choosing Cars/suburbs vs. walkability/urbanism. One of the attempted answers I read was actually from Railroad Historian Christian Wolmar (“The Great Railroad Revolution”), where he argued that Americans’ (and probably other Western countries) love of individualism naturally led to more infatuation with car culture, helping spawn the suburb-bias as we know it. Americans just embraced the car rapidly and whole-heartedly, while rail transport, which is by nature more collective, was always suspect. I am not sure this argument could ever be empirically “proven”, but it does seem convincing to me at least at a base level.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

yeah, i am funnily enough working on a totally different piece that grapples with this issue. i'm pretty split. i think i tend to view it as too simplistic, but it makes an ok argument for some things. i do, however, as evident in the video, think our car issue was definitely about timing.

[@andrewselvo7878]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Yes I believe that. It is an interesting phenomenon, especially how the significance of our transition to car infrastructure seemed to evolve so quickly and relatively smoothly for our forefathers, that they did not stop and grasp the full significance of the revolution around them. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed your video and am looking forward to your next one as always. 😁

[@commentor3485]

That is something i wish they would address more. Would people move to the suburbs still if America had more more walk able areas. As of now, the answer seems to be not really pro walkable areas

[@mindstalk]

@@commentor3485 Prices show that a lot of people do want to move to walkable areas: many Americans are literally willing to pay more money (and for less housing space) to live in such areas. Everyone? Maybe not, but many. And many more Americans enjoy visiting walkable areas like European cities, or malls, or Disneyland (once you've driven there), so might not be averse to some walkability near them... thing is that real walkability requires a certain density, or expensive multi-level parking, to sustain it. (OTOH if Strong Towns is right, existing suburbs aren't fiscally sustainable, period.)

[@commentor3485]

@@mindstalk I wonder what the ratio would be if poorer people could afford the more walkable areas. As of now, most of the those walkable neighborhoods are pricy. There is also a difference between walking on vacation and daily usage. I am more than willing to walk a lot on vacation versus for daily walk. I would love to see a formal poll question about this.

[@PrivateEye10]

As an Architect in Paraguay, I appreciate a lot this video and it will help a lot in future classes...

[@AtomicBuffalo]

Suburbs, especially those so eagerly carved off from the larger metro area as their own cities, are either going to become wealthy enclaves, or reinvent themselves through more diverse zoning and coherent redevelopment, or descend into squalor as their infrastructure fails and they can't afford to fix it. It seems likely that shifting climate will accelerate this process and have a significant impact on which communities survive.

[@paulhowlett6619]

In all fairness Baltimore still has a light rail/ streetcar system and it works somewhat ok

[@EliStettner]

Somewhat okay is the operative word here. Once you are in the the city the bus system is pretty good, but the Camden line commuter rail I use to get into the city has pretty abysmal frequency.

[@JesusChrist-qs8sx]

Working somewhat okay, and being competitive enough with the car that the average person will use it for most trips are two very different things, unfortunately My city has a light rail line that also works okay, and is working on adding a second line. But the system still won't be useful enough that most people living along the line will still need to use a car for a large number of their trips. And at the rate we build transit (1 line every 40 years, and 10-30 miles of suburban extensions in that timeframe to existing lines) it'll be another 100 years or so before the transit system here is complete enough that a majority of people will be willing to give up their cars

[@tibbers3755]

Ehh, as a frequent user, it definitely has room to improve

[@EliStettner]

​@@JesusChrist-qs8sx Honestly, for me, just having better frequency and reliability on the already existing MARC lines would be good bang for buck. Camden trains are famously unreliable, and have worse frequency for Baltimore commutes than DC commutes. The Penn Camden Connector project would give a service rail link between the two lines in Baltimore and improved reliability. There have been plans to increase frequency on the MARC lines by through running trains with VRE. Ultimately, I think improving MARC services, and perhaps having some feeder buses in Howard and Anne Arundel to the MARC stations would be a massive improvement, perhaps with HOV lanes to speed them up. The Camden line right now is very slow coming into Baltimore, track improvements could make the service faster and more competitive with driving.

[@EliStettner]

@@tibbers3755 Yeah, I got straight up not picked up by the 71 bus at a stop. To be fair, I was standing on the side of the bus stop far from the sign, but only because of shade and the idling truck on that side.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

I love your approach to this. The self awareness, the little jabs at things. There is so much potential here. I just hope we can improve things here in America

[@Greyson-mm3dy]

I’m a resident of Morgantown. I love to see our city randomly on KZbin

[@jackeppington6488]

Go Hostetler! 🏈

[@skylark.kraken]

Zoning feels so alien to me. I live in the UK and we're one of the handful of countries without zoning, in theory anything can go anywhere but you have to apply to the local council first, but they won't flat out say no and enforce the same kind of zoning rules except not being explicit but if you were to set up industry in the middle of a residential area you would have to comply with various pollution (air, water, sound, light) and so industry doesn't generally try, but in my home town Europe's largest playground equipment manufacturer is placed in the middle of houses and you have employees who live a minute walk from it, there are also shoe factories, and more surrounded by residential. We also have a lot of corner shops, they're a really good place to go for your essentials rather than going to a big shop frequently, from the house I grew up in there were 3 corner shops within a 10 minute round trip (including buying stuff), and then a larger small supermarket which was an 8 minute walk away (but time spent there varies), if you want to grab some food you can go to a house where the ground floor was converted into a takeaway, hairdressers are also pretty common, the house that backs up against the house I grew up in was a physiotherapist, you could quite easily survive on these while going to your industry job on the same street without having to go further than 100m from your house. I don't live in a city, it's not particularly walkable (definitely still a preference for cars) but not having zoning creates such flexibility in spaces, where if there is a demand you can appeal to the council and they can say that you can - if the business or industry does not create excessive noise or crowding they'll allow you to do it and now everyone in that area has a thing to walk to. Right now tho I live in the countryside far from everyone, and I still don't drive (well, I'm not allowed to but my wife doesn't drive much) because we have a basement and we have so much storage space for non-perishables and non-food things, and plenty of freezer space for perishables, and we batch cook so we can turn fresh ingredients into meals that are quick to make and are actually good for us. Our car gets used like once a month for stuff we need, and then any extra time is for visiting my parents (a 22 minute drive on country roads that never have traffic and there are no traffic lights, the variability is so low I can be as specific as 22, not just 20 ish). American houses are so big you should use that space to fit more freezers and store your food better so you don't have to go out more often.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i'd love to dig into what the zoneless chaos of houston really is like - and how it compares to the uk.

[@Will_JJHP]

For anyone that wants to deep dive into the nuance of this discussion, Strong Towns is the gold standard organization for it

[@koertdubois6781]

The gold standard organization for development advocacy.

[@leeratner8064]

I think it helped a lot that Americans were very early adapters of the car in mass. Most American families had at least one car before World War II. It took many of our pier countries until the 1960s or 70s for this to be the case.

[@Galadhatan]

Here's my suggestion to a solution. I grew up in a suburb, have lived in Chicago, now i live in a small town outside Kansas City (thanks for the mention, the Plaza is still beloved). This small town boomed in the 1880s then declined (thanks to KC) so it missed the big suburbanization phase and now has quiet communities with schools and shops in a walkable grid. It might be time to reconsider the small towns on the edge of the big cities that existed before suburbs. A little spit and polish would make these great little communities, especially for those who can work remotely.

[@Big_Not_Good]

"Grapple the souls of future generations" is a pretty evil sentiment imo. Like, man that's weird! Anyway, I moved out the suburbs a few years ago into my local downtown area and it's been fantastic. I ditched the car for an ebike and got a work from home job. I rarely have to leave the downtown area and if I do, Uber is 12 to 25 bucks round trip. I honestly don't know how I used to maintain a car and drive to work everyday. I'm never going back! ✌️

[@shinydiglett]

This was a very interesting watch! As someone not from the U.S., car-centric urban planning is one ot the most baffling things about American culture to me, and it's nice to learn about the context that led to it.

[@jameslongstaff2762]

I live in Utah and in Utah we're slowly trying to connect the suburbs to the rail network. It makes more sense in Utah since we've pretty much built on all buildable land. We're in mountain valleys, so there's no where else to build new.

[@adambester3673]

Thanks for making me feel more hopeless in a very hopeless era. Just what I needed.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

can i offer you some sour patch kids? they help me.

[@anirudh_s17]

Morgantown has a funny little train that I think every small city should have

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i saw this!

[@bejammin2000]

Oh, yeah. Every town should have it's own Byrd Droppings..

[@void2258]

And now people are literally losing the homes they bought because they have gotten too old to drive and literally can't feed themselves.

[@jasonriddell]

I know there is a major issue in some areas that there is NOTHING between the family home and an apartment that "empty nesters" are NOT selling and moving as there is nothing to downsize into that allows them to KEEP there lifestyle AND stay in the same area making the housing crises far worse as those homes dont come up till they are beyond repair / need massive renovations and get knocked down and replaced with a bigger home often of far higher value

[@Digger-Nick]

What? That's not a new concept and applies to living anywhere but an assisted living facility lmao. These suburb videos attract the dumbest possible people to comment

[@neutraliserjanine]

They lose their home due to negligence of their children. I live both rural and have worked in nursing. This happens alot. Probably the best thing to due if your children are unworthy is move to a retirement community and live your best life drivng around in a golf cart to different activities.

[@FreedomTalkMedia]

Children also cannot drive. If you live in an area where there is no place to walk to, then the parents are constantly having to drive children every time they need to go somewhere.

[@shaunigothictv1003]

​@@FreedomTalkMediaExcellent point

[@dalegaliniak607]

As a Chicagoan, I have the transit map you posted for a fraction of a second at 0:36 burned in my soul. Also, 300 subways sounds nice...

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

soooo difficult to go east west....used to take me like 90 minutes to go from lakeside to wicker park if i used a subway

[@dalegaliniak607]

@@PhilEdwardsInc (You mean Lakeview, right?) To be fair, ever since moving to Douglas, I've started seeing how well buses actually handle the east-west connections. I realized that, in a lot of ways, I was doing the CTA wrong, I don't need to go to the loop to get everywhere, I could just take the L long enough to transfer to a bus that's a straight shot to where I need to be. However, I think the east-west routes are a bit more predictable down here in the south side. I romanticize the days of the street car, but buses are actually good improvements over them. I just think that, especially in high traffic areas, they need dedicated lanes, to keep throughput high.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@dalegaliniak607 lol lakeside wow i am such a traitor. in my defense i only lived there a year. i TOTALLY realized i was doing things wrong after the fact.

[@dalegaliniak607]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Hey, it took me over a decade to lean that, so you were a quicker study than me! I blame living in the South Loop during that time, though, so I was already really centrally located.

[@PseudoFiction]

When you say the FHA rejected any city-like development, you need to consider who lives in cities - working class people, especially working class POC. These suburbs were always built for a certain kind of person.

[@pdawg193]

This was one of the best urbanist videos I've seen in a while. One of the main problems with online urbanism is that many TikTok urbanists tend to be social justice-centric progressives who want to use urbanism as a front for left-wing/socialist economic policies. These progressives point at zoning laws and redlining as being used by conservatives to move away from, and keep minorities out of their neighborhoods, despite zoning laws and redlining being Progressive Era and New Deal Era policies, respectively.

[@TommyJonesProductions]

Well, facts and reality tend to run counter to right wing ideology. Of course, if conservatives understood basic economics, there would be no conservatives.

[@vf1923]

I would suggest not getting your information from TikTok. I've heard it's not terribly accurate on like, everything. NotJustBikes is pretty good on KZbin, and also goes beyond the US (he's Canadian-Dutch) so you're going to run into fewer of these American-centric political party shifting policy problems. Or, more likely, you going to be able to enjoy the content a bit more because you won't know the history, haha.

[@solsoman102]

i'm australian and this infrastructure seems like a nightmare to me

[@Afterglow.Studios]

Good news; it is.

[@squidwardsbussy]

not sure what city u live but in melbourne, the more out you go, the worse the design of the roads and all that shit is. the gov got to get a grip i cant lie.

[@Blindriverside]

Can confirm

[@miilotheminer]

that’s a funny comment considering that australia is mostly the same lol

[@neutraltoxic]

Australia has 10x less people I promise it would be just as bad there if they had the pop. of the US

[@atroyz]

I don’t own a car and live in a very walkable city in the US, but recently on a visit to family in the suburban northeast, I decided to go for a quick walk into town (1.5 miles) to grab milk and eggs. It was terrifying. No sidewalks, tons of blind corners with cars whipping past me, and several people honking at me as if I were an alien. I had always understood the term “walkable” to be about proximity. Now I finally understand that it’s equally about safety. Yikes.

[@GUITARTIME2024]

If you chose the Walking icon on Google Maps, you would have known this before leaving.

[@garyburke6156]

Its depressing because I live in a suburban area in Canada that was only developed within the last 15 years and it sticks like glue to these principles. It is absolutely car-focused, stroads, strip plazas, parking lots, etc. There's 6 or 8 story apartment buildings but they are amid tons of single family suburban homes, with modernist architecture, that could have been laid out in the 1950s

[@TheRedBaron1917]

What if... you wanted a safe affordable form of interurban travel But General Motors and the Highway department said "nah drive lol"

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i dunno - i think the business model was pretty broken. and cars hold stuff 🤷

[@TheRedBaron1917]

@PhilEdwardsInc Yeah no I just look at pictures of Houston in the late 70s and think 'we created a monster' lol

[@AllenGraetz]

Love the tinfoil. Suits ya.

[@EPMTUNES]

Its interesting to see urbanism be a primarily left leaning ideology (at least in the US) because its government overreach that has created the problem (usually a critique of more right leaning folks).

[@dantem4119]

@@PhilEdwardsInci’ve seen people move TVs using the subway so…

[@shepshep8654]

The Los Angeles streetcar(redcar) stopped running to my city(Glendora) around 1950. The Metro Goldline is set to open new stations in 2025. It only took 75 years to get public transportation to the city back. Yeah

[@telafreeze]

You have left out one of the primary reasons behind the flight to the suburbs: the perceived need by American planners and officials to make the country more resistant to atomic warfare (see Tobin’s “Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defense” as a start). This was a “white flight” because government planners viewed African Americans as expendable in the case of such a conflict and thus allowed to live in inner cities. Yes, it is true the movement to suburbs began in the 1930s, but it was relatively modest compared to what occurred in the post-war period.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

interesting paper if anyone wants to read: www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly10/Cold.War.Urban.Vulnerability.pdf i find it a bit wacky though. seems in the same category as car company paranoia to me. possibly some influence, but marginal effect imho.

[@jasonriddell]

@@PhilEdwardsInc or a "reason" for there existing push for it

[@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub]

​@@PhilEdwardsInc our interstate system was designed with military mobility in mind - given the timing I don't see this as too much of a stretch

[@GUITARTIME2024]

That's a silly theory. An atomic blast would not spare suburbs. Stop this critical race insanity. A growing middle class, often with cars, wanted yards and space, and (yes) they wanted good schools where behavior issues weren't a constant problem.

[@timlash]

Great video! As an aspiring urbanist, this is the first time I've seen the role of the FHA explained as a motivating force in the DESIGN of 20th century development. Really interesting perspective.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i think they are hugely underrated in influencing this kinda thing!

[@sagewaterdragon]

Growing up in Kansas City, we always thought of the Plaza as the "nice part of town," you could make a day trip out of going there and walking around, seeing the sights, shopping, etc. It's funny to see it used as the first example of suburban design - it's probably the most walkable part of that whole city today.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

it seemed fancy when i visited!

[@TommyJonesProductions]

A "walkable" area that you have to drive to kind of defeats the point, though.

[@TAEYYO]

Excellent video showing us that it's never as simple as government good or government bad.

[@gurdoman]

The suburbs can change by just removing some of the stupid limitations that the government has set on them, allow houses to have small businesses in the garages, maybe a small restaurant or coffee shop, maybe a corner store, maybe they can build in the front yard a small little taco stand, allow for communities to have it's own identity and culture by allowing them to grow naturally instead of forcing a single way of doing things. At least you won't have to drive 15 minutes to get a bag of chips or a taco

[@johnnevada46]

American suburbs are boring and the isolation they create is undoubtedly a factor behind the polarisation that is tearing the nation apart.

[@sypherlynx]

Yay, acknowledging the nuances. Content that conveys a similar point but in an angry tone often alienates people and does nothing but further divide people. There are people in the urbanist space who have unfortunately fallen into the trap of realizing they make more money if they are more reactionary, and hateful.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

appreciate it! i really did want to admit that cars have utility while still staying true to my own preferences.

[@sypherlynx]

@@PhilEdwardsInc Absolutely, and from the little snippets I've gathered about your personal philosophy on journalism, you're very uncompromising, and that punk rocky-ness is always appreciated, thanks for the video.

[@empiricalandinquirical2435]

“Not Just Bikes” comes to mind.

[@ninjalectualx]

If you can't handle an angry tone in a video about a serious problem that's harming all of us, then you were never on our side to begin with. Go wallow in the mud with the other racist right wingers

[@ninjalectualx]

Yes, cars are useful, but they don't need to be mandatory. The second part is the problem.

[@parkervarin]

This is such a good video. There's so much stuff about why we have suburbs but this video explains how.

[@robstermeister]

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood!” is a quote from Daniel Burnham from the Plan of Chicago (Burnham, Daniel H., and Edward H. Bennett. Plan of Chicago. 1909, 40-42.). J.C. Nichols is probably a fan.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

yes indeed! here's the full context: archive.org/details/jcnicholschronic0000pear/page/70/mode/2up

[@perkipushb]

Welcome from Morgantown! Moved here from ATL 5 years ago and still settling. Hope you were able to enjoy yourself, get a pepperoni role, pawpaw, ramps, flatwoods monster, and visit New River Gorge!

[@letsgoOs1002]

Parking min and not having paths that can cut through neighborhoods is a huge reason. Simple path system doesn't cost a lot and can have a huge impact. Reducing or elimination or parking min allowes for more an cheaper house, but you will loose "free" parking. Again simple policy change that can have a huge impact

[@jktolford8272]

Depressing. My early childhood was in Georgetown Washington, DC in the 60s. Moved to the suburbs mid 60s. The continual decline in US livability since then now seems inevitable.

[@brsn2991]

To us the suburbs make no sense, and dense urban living is much more attractive. You can walk places, amenities are closer, its more vibrant and dynamic. But to the people that built the suburbs the memory of the industrial city was still fresh in their minds. Turn of the 20th century inner cities were dirty, crowded and polluted. From that perspective suburban developments with space and greenery were near utopian. In retrospect the consequence of that space is car dependency and all its ills we're now all too familiar with, while inner cities have largely de-industrialized in the US and are now desirable to live in again.

[@NsOmNiA91130]

As someone from RVA, I've always appreciate you showing off the area, using them as explanations in your videos, especially since there's a rich history here to pull from. I think the first time I directly noticed it was the Uneeda sign on 25th.

[@hunt0583]

I hate that the US has gone down this path. I hate how unwalkable the US has become

[@mcrawfish]

my favorite video essayist covering my favorite topic, this is a dream come true 🙌

[@evplatypus3039]

it sucks but I think it's fixable as long as we advocate for things like bike lanes and transit. biking makes the spread out-ness of the suburbs more traversable without a car and same with transit. you can even build bike parking at transit stations to let people bike to the train and reach more people than you could with walking. as for the euclidean zoning, I say we change zoning laws now and let the problem fix itself overtime; no need to demolish entire neighborhoods at once.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

nice idea but i do think it's tough (i love biking, used to bike every day and now i e-skate/walk, so i'm with yah....but i think it's tough)

[@mindstalk]

Also buying/seizing land for cut-through footpaths, to connect the cul-de-sacs.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@mindstalk I just don't know how you get that to happen in a practical sense. Like, city councils voting for seizing land? Seems hard.

[@OveranalyzingEverything]

​@PhilEdwardsInc I mean there's eminent domain for roads. But for bike or walking paths. Idk if that's justifiable

[@mindstalk]

@@OveranalyzingEverything It's completely justifiable. Eminent domain to secure a public right of way.

[@darkninjacorporation]

God have mercy on our next generation, they’ll never know how beautiful our hometowns could be. I’m not even very old and I remember knowing the kids from whole other neighborhoods. Getting a group of kids together to go riding bikes and scooters and whatnot halfway across the town to play Halo at another kid’s house. It was half the fun! I don’t want to raise my kid(s) in an apartment complex dude.

[@debildevil]

Rip Phil's mustache 2022-2024

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

requiescat in pace

[@Strideo1]

Wait. This is Phil?

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

@@Strideo1 changed man

[@IzzyIkigai]

I feel like that defeatist attitude of "it's hard to change the suburbs" is a bit sad. Suburbs are basically a bigger, more cookie cutter version of european villages and the easiest way to help them is kill zoning and minimum parking policies and allow houses to be replaced or reused with/for stores(for basic necessities, grocers, bakery, coffee shops..) while also making roads smaller in exchange for other lanes like bike and pedestrian when the street is up for repairs anyway. Sure, it's slower change than just tearing everything down and building it less shitty, but slow progress is better than no progress at all.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

that's a reasonable approach. getting it done is harder.

[@agoogleuser4317]

Lol! European villages? Those are actually pretty. You can randomly walk-by old architecture instead of the back sides of old warehouses and stores lol

[@TypoKnig]

Thanks for mentioning Radburn in Fair Lawn, NJ! A bit different than most suburbs. I think it also had egalitarian elements - houses of all price points backed up to the same parks, so kids of all classes could play together.

[@Smothtiger]

Do think that moving away from the car centric cities is very cultural too at this point. It's so ingrained that planing for more walkable mixed areas oft get some mix of car owners and lobbyists to push back on such ideas. It's a uphill battle to get meaningful change and not half measures like many bikelanes I've seen being incredibly dangerous or walking paths being drawn in a convoluted manor.

[@jasonriddell]

I believe the big "issue" is people wanting there space/privacy and offering the "American home" in a dense walkable area that is also dead quiet often "walkable" only offers an apartment or if "lucky" a 1000 square townhouse with near zero private LAND

[@JacobBumgarner]

So cool to see you in Morgantown! I spent many years there for undergrad/PhD.

[@DaveRessler]

Sadly I’d love to live in a major city near me but I cannot afford to do so. Only other option is a much cheaper suburb that is abysmal in public transit availability. Wish there was a middle ground.

[@0o0ification]

What a great video! This perspective is very helpful for understanding our American environment. I was glad to learn about some of the underpinnings of streetcar transit systems, and why previous generations were so proactive in upending that urban design language.

[@whowantstoknow1234]

Drive to Target then Starbucks then Target again. Funny, because a lot of Targets have Starbucks located in them.

[@arthurfine4284]

They were unfortunate enough to have a Target that was not renovated to include a Starbucks.

[@brandon6541]

😂 a target got built near us with a Starbucks inside but I do live in a massive suburb city of Prosper/Frisco/Denton so it's endless rows of homes and everyday it seems a new community full of homes are being put up everyday lol

[@86Jeoha]

The car is King and it's our reaction to that today. Awesome video! Loved it.

[@OlafsLeftArm]

The suburbs were the most cost efficient way to offer a dream that so many had. A house and a yard.

[@khalilheron8385]

A lawn and yard was a foreign concept at the time, 1910s-30s! It was an efficient way to house soldiers back from war and cause white flight

[@vf1923]

"Cost efficient" in the past, now now. That's the problem. Things that are cheap immediately are often terrible in a short amount of time in the future.

[@TonyPedretti]

Thank you as always for giving us insight to the world around us and how we got here.

[@CraigGorsuch]

Urbanists tent to feel suburbs are wholly soulless with the adoption of heavy car use. Then we rural people NEED our cars, and can walk long and far AND our small towns still have the old school street scapes.

[@danielvest9602]

Morgantown, WV now has one of the best public transit systems, in my opinion - the PRT system alone is miraculous.

[@connection_ok]

Transit is part of fixing the suburbs, but it's not the first step! The first step is density, by building new developments on top of old parking lots or by allowing people to build second homes in their backyard. By doing that, you'll have more people living in the same plots of land, which means you now have both the demand for transit, and enough tax value to pay for it.

[@mindstalk]

The timing is tricky. Transit needs density to provide more passengers, but increased density without more transit means more congestion and understandable hostility to density. America's rather nice "streetcar suburbs" were built transit-first: the streetcar lines were built, then housing sprang up along them and around the stations. Car suburbs follow roads (with some feedback loop.)

[@connection_ok]

@@mindstalk Certainly, and there are American examples of transit before density, like Honolulu's new metro and Brightline's real estate profitablity model. But I think density before transit in suburbs will make politicians aware of the fact that transportation is a problem, and thus more willing to look into ways to solve it. Letting officials come to their own conclusions will lead to them listening to planners, who will likely propose the smart, efficient options of transit.

[@mynameisben123]

Man it’s so obvious why does this baffle people? In the city it’s dense and you get the benefit of scale. Any one piece of infrastructure serves many people. But as you get out from the city it gets less dense and you can’t justify as much infrastructure per unit area. I think of the question “why aren’t the suburbs walkable” kind of like “why isn’t rural farmland walkable?”

[@robocop581]

There's nothing more boring than taking a stroll in a suburban neighborhood and just seeing houses and more houses. Even jogging was boring to me. I couldn't figure out why then I realized there were no people on the streets. There was no energy, just a bunch of houses around me like tombstones in a cemetery.

[@brandon6541]

That and the endless sea of cars in the driveway although the homes have at least a 2 car garage

[@archimetropolis]

And yet people say this has "character" somehow.

[@machtmann2881]

There's no reason to go outside in an environment like that. If you don't go to the gym, you won't move enough and be badly out of shape too. Nothing to explore or share is mind-numbing after awhile. After living in a suburb, all I did was question what the point of living was if I was gonna have little to no human interaction and put myself in debt over it so I just ended up leaving.

[@Aussiemarco]

I was born and raised in a Sydney suburban area that was laid out in the 1950’s and 60’s. My suburb was identical to all the other thousands of suburbs built across Australia at that time. I’m amazed that I recognised everything you said here. It’s as if the Australian state governments got a hold of the US Federal handbooks and replicated it across Australia. My suburb had such an emphasis on cars that we never had a sidewalk in front of our houses. (When I go back to see the street in which I grew up, there still isn’t a sidewalk even now.)

[@Green4CloveR]

Don’t call those word decorations millennial! They are actually for the GenXer suburban home owners. Millennials like Mid Century and/Industrial.

[@chriscarter2101]

In England we have Pavements (Sidewalks) and public footpaths through the country side. This makes walking so much easier. Whenever I've been to the States (Minnesota) it has always frustrated me that I needed to drive a few miles to walk. It's probably hard to fix, since folk wouldn't want others walking over their property: English paths back date back centuries and are protected by law.

[@michaelhiggins9188]

This video seems very similar to the type of content that Not Just Bikes produces. I found this video really interesting. You touched on this but I think the real reason that the suburbs were made to be so spread out and car friendly was to make sure that only middle class people lived there so they would be “nice”.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

yeah i get the similarity- i think im a bit more sympathetic to the suburbs and new arguments ultimately

[@kebosangar]

Great video Phil. Your video, especially the car centric suburbs is fascinating to me because of where I live; Jakarta, Indonesia. The government of Jakarta is ramping up public transportation integration throughout the city with, some, but very limited, private transportation restrictions (for now). But, for the Jakarta suburbs, the local developers are more focused on car centric designs. So, compared to what happened in the US where the top basically modeled the suburb and the cities to follow the car centric form, I am waiting for the clash between the car centric suburb and the public transport focused city.

[@andreabartsch]

That's why when I visit the USA I find it so alienating. You built-up the perfect environment to create generations of elderly people handicapped without any capability to walk anymore

[@hepcatliz]

Fascinating as always! Interesting too, to see how this all trickles down -- or up maybe -- to how Canada has been planned. VERY similar up here too😅❤

[@brockmckelvey7327]

Quick question: did J.C. Nichols have any stock in Ford Motors, Chevrolet, Chrysler, or GMC? Just asking, no real reason. Just kinda curious if the guy who made America so car-centric would have profited off of America becoming car-centric.

[@lyndabethcave3835]

This was also my question. . .

[@ArtamStudio]

As a big-time and influential developer, he probably profited handily even if he didn't own stock in the car-centric companies.

[@Dj_Nizzo]

8:01 J.C. Nickel, the big brother to J.C. Penny

[@__Math__]

"Robert No sus" - Gold

[@AndyInTheFort]

Love to see interest in development. My city of Fort Smith is emblematic of car-dependent sprawl, but enhancing transit was never going to be in the cards for us. We're one of the poorer cities in Arkansas (a state already known for being poor). So we have taken steps like: (1) implementing a form-based code to enhance and invigorate development in our walkable downtown core, (2) eliminated parking minimums in our downtown and lowered them elsewhere in the city, (3) reduced the minimum lot width from 50 feet to 30 feet, (4) fast-tracked permits for infill developments. You're right that there is no single magic bullet, but I don't share your pessimism that our city is stuck in amber. We can build our way out, it just requires a generation or two of very patient people.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i like it and am willing to believe along with you!

[@TheTalkWatcher]

We can easily rebuild, if we use eminent domain and centrally plan. We have to accept the fact. There is no libertarian market based solution to this problem. Considering the fact that we bulldozed much of the inner city in the 1950's to build freeways to the benefit of the car manufacturers and oil companies. They centrally planned so they could profit. We have to centrally plan to solve the problem,. So we have liveable cities.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

central planning is how we got what we have!

[@TheTalkWatcher]

​@@PhilEdwardsInc It was plutocratic central planning. The planning was done to the benefit of the car companies and oil companies. It was anti-democratic planning. We need democratic planning. I think there were other benefits as well for the carmakers and oil companies ie the oligarchs who run our nation behind the scenes. They are in the C. Wright Mills sense the power elite. Isolated atomized car commuters are in their cars either listening to mindless pop music or getting their twice a day dose of propaganda from talk radio. They are being indoctrinated to hate Unions etc. They have less time to organize and participate in their community. SO there is an element of political control and indoctrination when it comes to the suburban expansion of the 1950's.

[@TheTalkWatcher]

@@PhilEdwardsInc ​ @PhilEdwardsInc It was plutocratic central planning. The planning was done to the benefit of the car companies and oil companies. It was anti-democratic planning. We need democratic planning. I think there were other benefits as well for the carmakers and oil companies ie the oligarchs who run our nation behind the scenes. They are the C. Wright Mills sense the power elite. Isolated atomized car commuters are in their cars either listening to mindless pop music or getting their twice a day dose of propaganda from talk radio. The are being indoctrinated to hate Unions etc. They have less time to organize and participate in their community. SO there is an element of political control and indoctrination when it comes to the suburban expansion of the 1950's.

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

@@PhilEdwardsInc But the problem wasn't the central planning, it was the design philosophy of the central planners.

[@mindstalk]

"There is no libertarian market based solution to this problem." For once, there kind of is. If we waved a libertarian wand over cities -- or more realistically, simply loosened zoning -- there would be an explosion of construction in high-demand areas. Taller buildings, mixed use, private buses if public transit didn't keep up. Some planning is still good -- transit, bike paths, better intersections -- but tons of improvement would happen naturally. For _suburbs_... thing is, without massive immigration, there are only so many people to go around. If some cities are allowed to get as dense as they 'want' to be, then people will be sucked out of other areas. Less attractive suburbs will fall apart as their tax base vanishes. There's no good central planning solution for that, though you could maybe soften the blow by offering public housing in healthy areas to people from declining areas. (And if you really went libertarian... who's paying for all those suburban roads and highways, now? 'Libertopia' looks more like a Third World megacity than like American suburbs.)

[@JaredDixon]

Sam's Park & Shop in DC! 6:28 I live down the street and it still looks remarkably similar to the way it did in the 20s.

[@cjc2010]

I mean, I totally get the push for mixed housing and public transit… seeing a stroad makes my heart sink. But I still choose to live in a suburban nightmare because I wanted a single family home with a large yard. Yeah, I think America’s hooked for the long-term.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i get it!

[@theoneandonlyAeth]

Depends on how long term, the big issue with suburbs that wasn't highlighted in this video is how they're financially unsustainable. The maintenance of infrastructure costs more than a suburb brings in in taxes for a city. So far cities are patching that up by bringing in more money through selling land to build even more suburbs but that's making basically every city in the US rely on constant and exponential growth. At some point the bubble will burst.

[@hekkensnatser]

the message "mixed-use and medium density housing is underrepresented" definitely gets flattened down to "all suburbs are bad", from time to time. the problem isnt that some people can and want to live in the suburbs, but that people who dont, do not have a choice in the matter

[@JesusChrist-qs8sx]

The problem is that single family single use suburbs are enforced by law in 70% of residential land in the country - and I just don't think 70% of people want that. Urban areas wouldn't be so expensive if that were the case There'll always be a place for quiet, suburban low density residential neighborhoods. But forcing that to exist, and not allowing anything else, even in the heart of our urban centers, is a disastrous policy that's done nothing but prevent urban areas from being urban and driven prices of existing urban areas out of control. We need balance, and right now we don't have anything close to that.

[@johnmcanulty7341]

Maybe only a band-aid solution and just my perspective as a planner and architect: Those little, zippy ebikes and scooters recently are definitely having impacts - Perhaps you can address this issue? Last miles anyone? Bueller? Being able to scoot up a hill or do a walk that takes 40min in less than 15min is an advantage to your large demographic in a community. Provide safe infrastructure with traffic calming and you might even resuscitate a dysfunction. Or, two.

[@PhilEdwardsInc]

i am a eskateboarder myself and part of the trend perhaps!

[@Soljarag5]

I love cars

[@danielkelly2210]

Cars are great. I hope the future includes more and more cars.