"If a city actually has a lot of space decided to freeways, the message that sends is the city itself is less valuable than the time it takes to drive though it." That put it pretty perfectly.
Hello, Mexican viewer here, and former inhabitant of Guadalajara. The reason why we have so few highway-type roads is due to relatively low motor vehicle ownership until the 1970's or even later. There are a few "expressway" kind of road but it isn't fully segregated like American urban highways, they just have preference regarding traffic lights and overpasses to reduce interference with other avenues. In Mexico City, during the 1970s the mayor took to build a grid of such expressways (ejes viales) by widening older avenues and connecting them, but as entire neighborhoods were demolished it was a big political blunder that damaged the ruling party's reputation in the capital. In Guadalajara, one such avenue was built in 1973, Calzada del Federalismo, but is nowhere near a highway, we even call it the slowest expressway in town. I think they resemble more a Parisian boulevard (in function, not aesthetically) than American highways. Some expressways were built on former river beds, like the Viaducto Miguel Alemán in Mexico City, where the river was enclosed in a pipe. As for the Guadalajara ringroads, they were originally two-lane roads to avoid the city centre, and they were expanded over time with some frontage roads and underpasses, that's why the Periferico you showed has very different widths along the route. The other "highway" you showed as I-80 (Calzada Lázaro Cárdenas) was originally a bypass for heavy vehicles but the state governor also wanted it to be a expressway, and is the closest thing we have to a highway here.
I wonder how much the way administrative divisions work affected city planning. In Mexico, municipalities are responsible for urban planning, so it makes little sense to plan for roads outside the municipal border and more sense to build roads and infrastructure to keep people and jobs within the municipality.
@@alex21345 it is a problem with municipalities and in the few cities that are separated by state limits. The best example is Mexico City where you have an abismal difference between the former Distrito Federal and the State of Mexico. In Guadalajara is pretty much the same, some streets end up abruptly in municipal borders so the state government has to invest and plan there
@@CityNerd Actually Mexico City has been on a push to build elevated lanes (coloquially known as the _segundos pisos_, lit. "second stories") on its major highways, with the first section of the Periferico opening in 2006, and some as recently as 2012, with plans to build new elevated sections over existing highways in the northern and eastern inner suburbs (Insurgentes Norte, and Zaragoza or Periferico Oriente). Unfortunately this push means that, since the early 2000s, new transit projects have mostly been confined to new BRT lines, the fateful Metro Line 12, and, until more recently, a few cable car lines and purchasing of new trolleybuses. The Metro was pride and glory of the city, but now it's just an afterthought, and you won't hear many politicians supporting it because it is more closely associated withpoor service, overcrowding, decay and ugly neighborhoods around its stations, instead of its citywide benefits if service was improved and expanded. Since 1997, when the city first gained home-rule (being previously a federally-controlled district), and until 2018, the local and federal governments were always of different colors, and thus willingness to collaborate in expensive, long-term projects like rapid transit wasn't common. The only such case, Line 12, opened in 2012, but was born plagued with technical problems and accusations of corruption, and soon major repairs and closures had to be undertaken. Even if in 2018 both federal and local governments were again of the same color, the mindset had already changed deeply and the Metro was not a priority anymore. Later, the collapse of a section of line 12 in 2021 has, in my view, completely erradicated the possibility of any new Metro construction in the 2020s. Sorry, rant over. Thanks for your videos and for including Mexico in your analysis.
i have made this comment on so many other urban planning channels. why are the examples always the outlier countries of usa canada or australia? from mexico to argentina youll see cities that are both older and newer as those in those countries with other unique and sometimes troubling design. im sure the same could be said for africa and southeast asia!
@@cjoutright9255 Correct. DO NOT confuse a cultural and geographical region. Latin America is a CULTURAL region where languages that come from Latin are spoken, such as french, Spanish, and Portuguese. On the other hand, north and south America are GEOGRAPHIC regions that rely on factors such as size and the tectonic plates, and divisions. North and South America are divided at the Panama channel. From this, Mexico is a Latin American country located in North America, the same for Guatemala, Honduras, etc... P:D. Some people may even divie the Americas further and classify the countries between Guatemala and Panama as Central America.
Mexican viewer here, I remember first time visiting the US and thinking, how tf do people get around without cars, people from there actually looked weird at us for walking. I'm from Puebla and we used to have a nice grid structure in the city center, but with time they've been adopting a more US-like approach, and I hate it
I think in order to live comfortably in some major mexican cities adjacent to the us border a car is necessary eg tijuana and juarez. google maps doesn't even provide navigation of public transport in those cities! idk why but that's pretty sad. definitely not the case in cdmx.
I'm an American and I went to Puebla to study in college. It was so interesting being able to have public transportation everywhere and not need a car. I lived in Mexico City over the summer and loved being able to take a metro. Don't get me wrong, I love owning a car and driving, but I want to be able to have other options too and not always have to worry about traffic or gas.
Your comment about people looking weird to other people, walking on the sidewalk in the US, is spot on! Some people even call the police on them. And woe betide you if you're non-white or match the description of a wanted violent felon! ☹️
@@edwardmiessner6502 I'm from Germany and visited friends in LA. I walked to the grocery store and people stared at me from the cars. It was hot as hell, too. I also used the metro in DC and people avoided eye contact as hard as they could. Way different than in Germany, where people tend to look at other people in order to acknowledge them. The dualism was interesting to me. I enjoyed DC way more than in LA, but I wasn't interested im urban planning back then and couldn't put it into words. Now I know, it was walkability and scale that made DC more fun.
First of all, congratulations on the 1k subscriber milestone 🎉. Regarding the question, most of the highways in Mexico were built in the other municipalities of the metropolitan areas during the years of rapid expansion (which would count as American and Canadian suburbs, but much denser). For example, Guadalajara's ringroad is practically uninterrupted from Zapopan to Tlaquepaque (~35km), or Monterrey having most of them to connect San Pedro Garza, Apodaca, Guadalupe, and more with Monterrey proper. The central parts of most mexican cities were spared from highway construction (laws regarding protection of historical heritage), and the ones that were built were located in the outskirts at the time.
Thanks for the great background. I actually became annoyed while making this video that I didn't really know enough about the history of highway building in Mexico (or at least not as much as I know about US and Canada), so I've been reading up on it more. (Slightly difficult because my Spanish is a work in progress.) Now that you mention it, I want to learn more about the history of municipal boundaries in the big Mexican cities and interface with suburbs.
I live in the medium sized city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, in northwestern México, (fairly dense city, quickly approaching 1M inhabitants) and we don't have anything like a freeway or similar, just some recent under and overpasses. But there has been some talks about a peripheral ring that could surround the city in the coming years, it would relief traffic issues that are becoming a problem. The reasons we don't have freeways are because mass car adoption came later in time, around 70s and 80s, cultural site protection laws and generally not having the same car culture as in the US. My city in particular has been heavily investing in pedestrian and bike safety, so, there's that at least, even thought we have one of the top car ownership percentage in the country. Cheers, new sub!
Thanks for the great comment! I see a lot of Mexican cities making moves with pedestrians and bike infrastructure that put most US cities to shame. I'll keep an eye out for Culiacán!
Its definitely okay to include Mexico in these videos! I think its ok to compare to them to US/C cities it terms of population and maybe size in some instances. But at the same time you are right about the part where you compare the Mexican cities to old European cities, as in keeping it a bit historic and not wanting to have many highways through the city. On top of what these fellow commenters have been saying already, but we for sure love to see Mexico included so we can all see the difference in the Mex/Can/US civil structure
There were plans to put in freeways through downtown Vancouver in the early 70s that would have wiped out Chinatown, but public pressure put an end to that. It now has one of the best transit systems in North America.
It's been years since I've spent any time in BC, but I loved being able to walk from my friend's apartment in Van to a sky train station, to a bus terminal to the ferry, then catch another bus on the island to downtown Victoria all in a reasonable time period. Plus you get the amazing scenery on the ferry on the way over.
I live in Vancouver and the city is horribly difficult to get around and the lack of good highways and exorbitant land prices are causing logistics companies to move to Alberta. So now goods come off the boat in Vancouver, get out on a train to Calgary and go back to Vancouver on truck. Some basic connections would be good
@@reccilake7912 I live in Vancouver too, I sold my car after moving here. I hate driving in this city, its an utter disaster unless you're driving in the middle of the night. I looked back at some old pictures of Vancouver from the 1800's, it's funny seeing the rigid grid still in place today, it was never intended to deal with the vast amount of people and trips it has today. Hell, the Granville street bridge was a massive accomplishment because it removed a bridge with a pivoting function for ships. The city has exploded in population in such a short period of time.
I grew up in Vancouver, so it definitely wasn't a surprise for me to see us top the list! I grew up traversing up and down Granville St daily, and having a tree lined arterial is so much more pleasing than would a freeway. The potential time savings in having a freeway isn't that great anyways, so I'm happy with not having any. The only real drawback of not having a freeway is that industrial traffic is dumped through residential districts - Knight St in the east is a major arterial through residential areas that sees a lot of large trucks and 18-wheelers as it's the most direct route and largest road from the Port of Vancouver to points south.
Industrial traffic is a very valid point that politicians often overlook when criticizing highways. Knight Street is an excellent example of what can go wrong. If a highway is removed, or never built, alternative routes and transport options should be incorporated into the plans, otherwise the end result will be a traffic chaos. It seems that in many cities the most important thing is that highways have to go, with little thought placed on how the city and its businesses continue to function after they're gone. Politicians simply expect everyone to just jump on their bicycles. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but trying to deliver concrete with a bicycle trailer is impractical.
the problem I have with vancouver bc is that although it has very few freeways, the public transportation isn't as good as many european major cities or cdmx or nyc. many residents still drive a lot anyways...
@@Tuppoo94 Knight Street ended up as it is with the growth of container shipping. The Clarke/Knight corridor links the Port of Vancouver with I-5 in Washington because US West Coast ports can't handle all of the American traffic.
@@Tuppoo94 I honestly think Knight street is fine the way it is. Yes it technically goes through a residential area, but it's a hell of a lot better than a highway through the same area, and Knight St still moves a lot of traffic despite not being a freeway
@@katiebrown5185 Interestingly, Knight Street is a short freeway in Richmond to the south, terminating at the northern end of the bridge where Vancouver proper starts. It has historically been the most dangerous intersection in the region for crashes so there have been improvements in recent years.
Mexican here, I'm glad you included our cities in your video. I'm from a medium sized city called Tampico, in the Gulf of Mexico, and the closest thing to a freeway here would be a four lane road, it has controlled access but it's small and only conects to the neighboring city, also it's in the outskirts of the city.
Definitely glad to see some representation of Mexican cities on these lists, though I completely agree that they are so different to their American and Canadian counterparts, it almost doesn't make sense to compare them with. In my case, I lived in Guadalajara for 8 years and then moved to Phoenix a few years ago. And let me say... boy do I miss the walkability of Mexican cities. Sure, they aren't the best, and infrastructure can be messy. But there is a much higher level of social cohesion I think because of how much people walk or use public transportation. Everyone here talking about Mexican infrastructure bring up great points, though one thing I can add is I think there's also a large amount of opposition to car centric infrastructure in many Mexican cities. Guadalajara for example was starting to invest heavily on car-centric infrastructure in the early 2000s but has slowly reversed that course and has been building really good segregated bike paths, improved the bus system, and has been expanding the metro system. When Mexican cities do work on car-centric infrastructure, there's never talk of creating a "freeway", but rather just creating grade separations on busy interchanges, but without full access control. An avenue will just have a bridge to cross over a major signalized crossing and then continue being an avenue along the way. I don't think I've heard anyone mention "autopistas" in cities in Mexico at all. If anything, governments will use words like "via rapida" or "flujo libre". Mexican cities are basically bad copies of American cities (with tons of big box stores in dense urban areas) and bad copies of European cities (there's somewhat of a density but without the fantastic public transport to back it).
Fun fact, after Jane Jacobs had successfully organized against Robert Moses in NYC and helped get the Lower Manhattan Expressway cancelled, she moved to Toronto only to find it had its own massive urban highway plans. The Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway were built without opposition because they went through an industrial rail corridor and a river valley respectively. It wasn't until the Spadina Expressway was started that opposition was galvanized. With Jacob's help the highway opposition movement successfully halted construction on the Spadina Expressway, which ultimately killed the rest of the urban highways. The short 4 mile section that got built before cancellation lives on as Allen Road (but it's really an expressway).
"The Death and Life of Great Canadian Cities." I'm slightly embarrassed I didn't even mention Jane Jacobs in this video (after I mentioned Moses), but I already spent more time talking about NYC than I should've. Maybe it warrants its own video. Thanks for the additional background on Toronto -- didn't know that!
@@CityNerd I grew up on a section of the St. Lawrence River that got dammed and flooded in the late 50s to supply electricity to New York. The power dam is named The Moses-Saunders Dam, and where I lived in Ontario is the Lost Villages Region. Flooding the river also eliminated some rapids that prevented modern ships from reaching the Great Lakes. The navigational canals around the Great Lakes in both countries might be interesting to you.
I watched most of the video thinking that you had 50-100k subs, blown away that you didn't have more. I really like how you kind of talked through the metrics you used, as it shows how you really though through the best way to analyze this.
I think some people find the methodology discussion bring and skip through it. I'm always thinking about the balance between how much to say to make sure people understand my approach, and not saying so much it drags the pacing down. Glad to have your feedback.
Hello from Columbus. The city gets its borders from the fact that it controls the water and sewer service and has made annexation a condition of receiving those services since the 1950s. However there are grandfathered township areas that remain as a patchwork. Columbus has made a *lot* of progress over the past 30 years at having nice urban neighborhoods such as the Short North and German Village. In particular, a highway cap was placed over I-670 and it has made a huge difference in removing the real and perceived barrier between downtown and SN/Victorian Village. We’re fortunate that the state DOT isn’t fighting us and has agreed to build a bunch more caps over the 70/71 split as that highway is improved. Hoping to end up with something a bit like the Big Dig in Boston without the astronomical cost, although this is still a near billion dollar project all in.
This is very welcome development. I remember seeing a picture of Düsseldorf, Germany with a highway going through it in the 90s, and the same place in 2019 with a nice park. What is usually conveniently left out is that the highway wasn't simply demolished, it was moved into a tunnel. In the end everyone won. The road is still there, and the above-ground environment is much nicer. We have the means to do something nice for everyone, but rarely have the political will.
@@dannylittle6766 There are some planning studies being done now to improve the corridor and/or create a bypass that would connect 23 to 71 north of delaware. In addition, I wish that columbus would consider a regional rail system as it has many exurbs and satellite cities like delaware, marysville, lancaster, and newark
On the bright side, the city seems to be attempting to improve their biking infrastructure. They are gradually linking the Scioto River trail to the Alum Creek Trail to carry USBR-21/USBR-50/OHBR-1 through the city, and have properly linked the Ohio State University to the city via OHBR-47 (Olentangy river trail)
Several neighborhoods within Cleveland city limits were annexed the same way pre-WW1. The day Cleveland decided to sell its water/sewer access to the suburbs was the day the city stopped growing geographically. Although I doubt any of them would dream that the city population a century later would be less than half what it was then.
hey Chicago native here, I take huge pride in not needing a car except maybe to get to some places in the suburbs. love the train and bus infrastructure even if it's not as nice as DC's metro. when friends come to visit they're usually shocked by how easy it is to get around to attractions and restaurants and neighborhoods all over the city with a CTA 3-day pass!
It hurts to call Chicago underrated because Chicago natives never shut up about their city, but really, if you haven't been there, you should go! Great city.
So happy to see Vancouver as the #1 city on this list. 😀 🇨🇦 I’m curious about where Boston and Portland landed in your rankings. Big congrats on 1000 subscribers!
I looked at 39 cities (metro pop > 2M...didn't include Toluca or Puebla, which I consider too far within the Mexico City influence area, or Riverside/San Bernardino, too far within the LA influence area). Portland ranked 16th, Boston...29th. I've had a couple people ask about Boston. Keep in mind I didn't give credit for freeways that are buried in tunnels, so you can definitely quibble with that.
@@CityNerd Yeah, I kind of understand the Boston ranking, at the same time the freeways being in tunnels really do help make them far less intrusive than in some of the cities on this list. The again, that might have to do with public transport availability. For example, even though Portland is higher on the list, I've had to use my car far more than in Boston because public transportation options are much more spread out and far less convenient to use.
Just a little applause to # 10, San Francisco. Not only is it on this list, but it is the first American city ever to stop a federally funded freeway already under construction in the city and, I believe, is the first American city to reject federal funds to build a freeway. It also razed two different existing freeways damaged in the 1989 earthquake rather than rebuilt them.
I am so glad being in Austria. I bought my Klimaticket and I can use every public transportation union-wide for free (or better said for just 699EUR). The trains are fast, new, comfortable and reliable and relaxed. Love it.
For honorary mentions, it would have been nice to hear more about smaller US cities that kept the freeways out of downtown (since that is where they do the most damage), like Lexington and Madison.
Old Toronto’s only really ugly highway is the Gardiner between the Port Lands and the Humber River. All the other highways are in suburbs that were not built to be as walkable (or the Don Valley). Suburban Toronto still feels infinitely more walkable than any US city outside NYC.
Philadelphia viewer here. I often question the existence of 676. Bisects the city into two halves through potentially some of the most valuable real estate in the city. Northern Liberties and Fishtown are two growing regions of the city that may be interesting for further research! Love that you gave Mexican cities consideration. Please include Mexico in your future videos, would love to learn more of our neighbors to the south!
I feel like the Vine St expressway is not nearly as bad as some of the other urban freeways. Every surface street has a bridge over 676, so the freeway is as unobtrusive as it could possibly be and the urban fabric is largely intact. Compare this to something like I85 in Midtown Atlanta. There are only bridges at North Ave (1st St), 5th St, 10th, 14th, and 17th. I85 completely separates the city One per negative thing about Philly freeways is how they completely separate Philadelphia from the lovely waterfronts on both rivers.
I'm hopeful that the planned freeway cap by Chinatown is so successful that they go on to cap the whole stretch of 676 to put new buildings and green space on it.
@@HessianHunterI feel like if they actually address the capacity issues on the Schuylkill and increase SEPTA capacity/frequency they honestly can just get rid of the vine.
I was thinking the same thing. 1-90 is in a trench with major air rights already constructed or in the process of construction throughout the whole Boston corridor. 1-93 through the central city was submerged at a cost of 15 billion! Money very well spent in my opinion. Boston proper has very little actual freeway mileage on the surface.
Based upon City Nerd’s methodology, I’d also like to know where Boston fell on the list of all eligible cities. I agree with the two comments posted above, interstate highways that run through tunnels, or are located in trenches that are being covered by new construction should receive special attention; these solutions avoid the blight and destruction of the urban fabric caused by elevated and surface interstates.
I chuckled at your comments about the Columbus city limits. I don't know why it's like that but I remember driving through Columbus years ago from south to north and seeing lots of little green signs on the side of the freeway that said 'Enter Corp" or "Leave Corp." I must've passed a dozen of those city boundary markers.
I've lived in both Monterrey and Guadalajara. I didn't expect MTY to be higher in the list than GDL tbh. GDL have more Mass transit coverage, and MTY actually have a reputation of being the most car-oriented city in MX. Perhaps the outer ring from GDL + excluding neighboring cities are doing the trick here. Mty has not only 1, but 2 massive outer semirings northside. But only crosses MTY municipality for a couple miles. Nice content BTW, you got yourself one more Mexican suscriber.
Great research! While I think it’s good to compare Mexican and Canadian cities with US cities in general, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was so prolific in development of highways, its hard to compare US cities to other North American cities. State DOTs became attached to the almost endless funding source for building highways much to the detriment of cities.
Hi! I'm a new viewer from Mexico and I'm super thrilled that you do include our cities in the comparison lists. Regarding why the biggest mexican cities don't have highways there are some reasons: One is that a lot of city centers in Mexico are protected by the national institucion of anthropology and history and some are UNESCO's heritage sites so that's a no go for demolition and building new stuff. The second reason would be money, freeways and highways are very expensive to build and mantain and its just not feasible to have so many in here when it's not affordable. And the third reason I can think of is density. While suburbs do exist they're not as widespread as they're in Canada and the US. Mexico city being the outlier, having a huge commuting time and size, even bigger then some other american cities.
Something to consider for Chicago, every major rail line ends up in Chicago too. It just became a transfer and trade hub of, basically, the entire country if you're looking to ship goods, services, or people cross continent. So when a transfer was happening from less trains to more trucking, its kinda unsurprising that freeways would largely cut into and through Chicago. Even still, given that its at #8 out of NA says something on how they've focused public transit and limited their effect on the city, though the Ike displaced a lot of people. . The L and CTA is arguably one best public transit systems in the U.S. Still don't recognize DC though. No one wants to go to DC by any method, people are forced to be in DC.
hey man, new subscriber here, quick tip, i think the capture software you use for google maps has it's brightness or contrast dialed way too high, it's causing the images to be super washed out, thus diminishing legibility a bit, the operations room yt channel had this problem too and they've solved it , i think you can too love the videos , keep up the urban planning content, i love it greetings from turkey (which probably makes me your first turkish sub i hope )
Big thanks for this comment. I'll look into it! Can't say for sure you're the first Turkish sub, but there's a good chance -- Istanbul definitely features in my Aqueducts video if you haven't seen it. 😀
I visited San Antonio last year and their Highway situation was incredibly stressful. And the downtown area is difficult to get around to in a car or on foot unless you’re on the River walk.
I think the two worst are the Southwest Freeway in Washington, DC and the Mulberry-Lombard Freeway in Baltimore should be mentioned. Also I-40 West in Nashville, I-277 in Charlotte, and I-95/I-395/SR-836 in Miami. The last one is the worst! The Black neighborhood of Culmer-Overtown was basically drawn and quartered.
Thanks for including Mexico. I think it really should be included when talking about North America. As someone who emigrated to Europe, México has very strong US influences especially in terms of cars and infrastructure.
I grew up in Vegas and I appreciate you bringing awareness to this! I had no idea for most of my life that there was any better alternative to the endless stroad grid that the city has. Since moving to a similar sized city w transit and walkable areas it has made going home bitter sweet as all I see is how far behind my hometown is. If you are in Vegas for a while, you should check out the water street district in Henderson. Allegedly it is going to be a more walkable/natural downtown for the city of Henderson. Or if you want to experience rage read about failed light rail plans... Ugh
As a Monterrey-based viewer, I can say that while we don't have many freeways, we do have some sort of continuous-flow roads that have spread widely in the last decades. They're all limited to 50km/h (31mph), sometimes 60 (37) but usual speeds vary between 70-110km/h (~45-70mph), 6 to 10 lanes wide with no pedestrian crossings except at intersections with an over or underpass, some have side lanes, some don't, and they often have curbside parking and a lot of driveways. Av. Paseo de los Leones and Av. Eugenio Garza Sada are great examples of this if you want to take a look. I consider them to be worse than freeways because they try to be one but they're merely a nice little road that got widened at some point to turn into that atrocity and has become unsafe for all modes of transport.
Im glad you're including San Juan as a candidate your lists! You should do more North American cities. Ik most your viewers are English speakers but it's nice to be included ⭐️
I consider San Juan a US city, so I'll always include it! Even if I sometimes don't include other Caribbean cities in my "North American" videos. San Juan is very cool and unique...I'll talk about it when I can!
I never understood why - after Eisenhower saw the Autobahn in Germany and brought the concept into the US as Interstates - planners really planned them through the city, sometimes even through downtown, effectively segregating both sides of the city at that freeway. I know this was often used to cut of the African American Neighborhoods from the "white ones", but in general even in the 1950ies and 1960ies everyone should have seen why that is bad. But on the other hand, the US defined city completely different - just as an organisation level. Either single family home far out and you will never touch downtown or apartment buildings / high rises in downtown / the center.... In Europe nearly all cities have ring roads (as you showed) with exits to the various parts of the city. The notable example is Saarbrücken in the State of Saarland, Germany... The Autobahn goes through the city... (and is often flooded when the Saar reaches high levels).
Many inner cities neigborhoods were at the end of they "life expectancy" i.e. needed rebuilt down to sewer and water lines and many city saw building a freeway a way to get federal funds to rebuild those areas. Many of these inner city freeways went through areas of housing first built prior to 1900 and did not have internal pumping i.e. you used a communal tiolet and often hauled water from a pump. The cities knew this type of housing had to be replaced but did not have the funds to do it themselves till the Federal Government offered federal funds to build these freeways and those funds included funds tobuy up that sub sandard housing and upgrade the water and seweage systems the freeways had to go over. Racial segegation was also a factor but it was access to funds to buy up the sub standard housing that was the main reason for shifting Freeway consruction from around cities to through such cities.
Yeah, I don't like freeways in cities either, and Vancouver sounds ideal without any gashes of impassable car infrastructure cutting through its neighbourhoods. But there is a downside, given that aside from its very dense downtown and clusters of transit-oriented towers sprinkled throughout, Vancouver is in fact a sprawling city of single-family housing. It's doing a lot of things right, from changing its zoning to create more missing middle housing to building bike greenways to investing in transit and seeing its ridership go up and up and up. And it does a surprisingly good job of getting cars out of a difficult downtown that is surrounded by water on 3 sides. But until we no longer have suburbs or none of us drive, all those cars have to go somewhere before they hook up with the suburban freeways surrounding the city limits, and every arterial road, even the smaller ones like Prior/Venables or E. 12th, is hell during rush hour. Admittedly, though, the drive through Stanley Park and over the Lion's Gate bridge is absolutely beautiful, if bumper-to-bumper.
There are some significant differences between US and Canadian cities contrary to popular belief. It is Ontario that is almost exactly like the US. The rest of the country not quite as much.
I am surprised Pittsburgh didn't make it but D.C did. I remember visiting DC, and was surprised how large the freeways were compared to what we have here. There are 279, 376 and a few others, but not many compared to other US cities I have been to.
Hi, I’m from Columbus, OH. I read that one of the reasons our city is so oddly formed is because one the mayors from the 40s had a very aggressive form of annexation. Essentially if a community wanted to use water line, gas, sewage, etc., he forced them into joining the city so that the could use. It’s called water gun diplomacy. I think it’s still somewhat practiced today only now, new sub-divisions just claim Columbus since it the largest municipality.
Hi! I am a (newly subscribed) Mexican viewer, and I appreciate you include our cities in your research! Hope to see more of them in your upcoming videos! 👏🏻
I'm glad Mexico didn't destroy their own cities for freeways but it probably wouldn't have sit well since most Mexican cities developed well before cars became popular. And since the country is poorer, it took a lot longer for cars to become popular and even today, most don't own a car. But I think the north american city with the least freeways is probably La Habana, Cuba
Yeah, at the beginning of research I was including Central American and Caribbean cities, and it just kind of became a headache of trying to figure out what qualifies as a freeway and what doesn't. Havana was definitely going to score high, and Santo Domingo and probably Guatemala City. I should've been clearer in the video that this was just Canada/USA/Mexico, if I wasn't.
I love your channel. I am an urban geographer and cartographer by trade and training. I knew before the video started that Vancouver BC would be number one and Kansas City would be last. I have spent time in both cities and I am not surprised. The interchange of 71 highway/I-470/I-435 in south Kansas City is truly mind bending. Thanks for mentioning it! There is a reason people love living in Vancouver BC., no freeways downtown!!
0:44 Honestly, I have to say that, as a driver myself who enjoys going fast from time to time, freeways aren't really that necessary for drivers who love driving fast down the open road. In fact, one could say that interstate freeways are actually detrimental to those drivers (including myself).
As an amateur review for Monterrey. I can tell you that there are definitely some ugly parts here. We don’t have highways per say, but we do have some 4 lane atrocities that try to be them while also being near buildings. They are take however, not like a 4 lane street in the US, think of it like a Boulevard but it’s chunkier. Some newer areas like San Jeronimo are great but I think San Pedro Is a better place to live. On an entrance to that city you immediately get introduced to a big center roundabout and continuous Kilometers of narrow parks that substitute lanes on streets. That is the best city in Mexico IMO
Next video: Why is it so hard for architechs and engineers can't seem to build sports stadiums that integrate with the local city? The best designs I've seen are Key Arena in Seattle and Soldier Field in Chicago.
I love your channel, but man you forgot the city that CARE always forget New Orleans. It has a small freeway footprint and currently serious talks are being made to remove half of the freeways downtown.
If Mexico city doubled down on improving mass transit (and also getting ppl to obey the frickin rules) that would make the existing "freeways" even less necessary The "ejes" and "autopistas" really don't feel like freeways at all and they feel out of place, the city could do with fewer BUT atm mass transit (even tho it's great compared to American cities) is just not there yet The collapse of metro line 12 made ppl realize how useful it was but also angry at how badly that investment has gone I definitely don't see more freeways in Mexico city any time soon but also expect more investment in mass transit to be a tougher sell despite the congestion that can plague the roads It's an award situation there
I just found this channel and I love it, been looking for channels that focus on urban design, and the likes, much like Not just bikes or city beautiful
You could probably also include the Georgia/Dunsmuir viaducts and the Granville Street bridge in the calculation for Vancouver, but there are plans to tear the viaducts down and also put the Granville bridge on a road diet and make it walkable/bikeable. There is a push also to extend Skytrain to the North Shore (West and North Vancouver) which would alleviate a lot of traffic on the Second Narrows Bridge (the one attached to the Trans Canada Highway on the eastern side of Vancouver). As someone who grew up in Vancouver, it's shocking how bad other cities are in North America w/r/t their freeway systems, and it's equally baffling why there are still people in Vancouver who clamour for freeway expansion, particularly in the suburbs. The replacement for the George Massey Tunnel (Highway 99 between Delta and Richmond) and the widening of the Trans Canada Freeway in Langley and Abbotsford (to the south west of Vancouver) come to mind. I think some of the suburbs in Vancouver are finally starting to understand how unique the region is, but it's really, really hard to fix things like broken street grid systems and acre after acre of parking lots and strip malls.
About Here has a good summary of the history of the Vancouver viaducts and their association with the racist "urban renewal" agenda: ruclips.net/video/ReDPLxaTwjI/видео.html
Yeah, I actually thought about including the viaducts -- I biked under those bad boys last time I was up there! -- but lots of cities have long viaducts over, like, railroad tracks/yards, and I just didn't want (or have the time) to get that granular. I'm excited to see those come down -- it's the least pleasant part of downtown Vancouver.
When I lived in Vancouver they were upgrading the freeway near my house near Phibbs and for what? Traffic on either side of that section was always bullshit, the worst anywhere in Van. I reckon the real litmus test for freeways is how people who want then don’t want them near them. Yes In Someone Else’s Back Yard
Yes, Vancouver *proper* is very bicycle and transit-friendly, but many of its suburbs are a different story (and not all that different from North American norms).
@@CityNerd A street tunnel under that highway just at the Vancouver border was closed, and the skateboarding community gained permission to turn it into a skateboard park.
I gotta ask: why isn't Montreal on this list? It has one highway going through downtown, but it's totally underground with only one small trench. There is an elevated section going through a residential area, but it runs alongside an elevated rail that was built in the 1860s and predates the neighbourhoods that surround it. In the eastern part of the city it turns into a massive boulevard which did destroy an old neighbourhood and is disruptive, but there are plans to totally rip it up over the next decade. All the other highways in the city are pretty far from the downtown core. One is a trench, one is elevated, but neither really break up the local neighbourhoods and get a lot a lot of pedestrian traffic.
Can't remember if I addressed Montreal already in response to another comment, so will do so here -- it just didn't do well on the freeway miles-to-land area measure. I mean it still ended up at #12, just outside the top ten. And I didn't count subgrade freeways any different from surface (relevant for Boston too) -- there are still emissions, the traffic still has to go somewhere. And if I give credit for underground freeways, then do I have to give credit for freeways that are below grade (but still open), but have lots of good street connectivity over the top? (Philadelphia, Portland, etc.). Didn't want to start pulling on that thread.
@@CityNerd In Montreal's case, miles-to-land-area isn't quite appropriate as the prime measure because the city's population is so densely packed into that land area. If I'm not mistaken, the turn-of-the-century residential areas inmmediately surrounding the downtown business core have a much higher population density than US cities. If you re-calculated using miles-to-thousands-population - the Greater Montreal Area is about 4 million people while the city proper is nearly 2 million - I think you'd find Montreal coming in very close to Vancouver. BTW I drive from Montreal to my winter house in Mexico every year and am always dismayed to go through Cincinnati, Memphis, Austin, San Antonio and a chip of Dallas on their very broad and very scary Interstates. Meanwhile in Mexico I bypass Monterrey, Saltillo & San Luis Potosi on peripheral highways and only when I hit Queretaro do I have to pass through part of the city on my way to my desitnation, which is Morelia. I actually breathe a sigh of relief when I cross the border into Mexico because Texas is such a headache.
Portland went through a freeway revolt also, but unfortunately it was after most of the damage had already been done. The original plans were somehow even worse. I've always been jealous of our neighbor to the north lol.
Great video! Glad Philly got on this list. You are right the bar is low. And Philly made some huge mistakes, especially with I-95 which destroyed an unconscionable amount of waterfront neighborhoods. But the freeway revolts made sure that this city could be on the list. Thank goodness the Crosstown Expressway and the Cobbs Creek Expressway were never built and it was all thanks to the people rising up
The history of freeway revolts is so interesting. Every city has a different story. Or, unfortunately, I guess, there are some cities that don't have a story at all, judging by what I see out there.
@@CityNerd yeah some tried and failed with their revolts, but Philly's Crosstown Expressway revolt is one of the most inspiring... Go to South Street today and it's striking just how it all could have been a highway instead of a vibrant street. I'm friends with some people who participated in it and it was truly the effort of many people.
If you build it they will come. If you build it next to an impassable geographical feature on the edge of a continent - there will be less pedestrian through-traffic.
Mexican here (CDMX) this video appeared to me in recommendations and I am fascinated! I am also a city nerd, when I get bored I open Google Maps and see the transport systems of cities and their highways... keep it up!
I'm actually from Monterrey so yeah, this is very interesting. And yes older Mexico's cities were designed in many cases for XVI century horse carriages and walking, but there are freeways of course, many of them are toll roads too. Many cities were designed in the times we were part of Spain, you can see the historic quarters of Veracruz, Puebla, Queretaro, etc. Mexico City is just to big to say it was conceived at once, it had a main quarter designed under the New Spain era, but the city was greatly redesigned at the time of the Second Empire (Emperor Maximilian von Hapsburg) when a lot of French and Italian architects redesigned the main arteries such as Paseo de la Emperatriz (Paseo de la Reforma nowadays), and under the Porfiriato period when the French design continued (thus many turnabouts in the city, major ones like in Reforma and Insurgentes Avenue.) You can't see much of that in the north of the country where U.S. influence took over and you have a lot of grid designs.
Toronto may have looked much differently without its own inner city freeway revolt. If you look midway along the 401 you'll see a tiny expressway that runs north-south called the Alen. This was supposed to run all the way down to the Gardiner. This would have destroyed a bunch of historic and tight-nit communities. Many banded together and protested, even going so far as to claim they've seceded from Toronto as their own new city. On the East, the Gardiner ends into the Don Valley Parkway, but was actually supposed to go all the way along the lake and meet up with the 401 around Port Union Rd. As far as a downtown freeway is concerned, the Gardiner is fairly unobtrusive. The true "core" is north of the Gardiner, and since it's an elevated and quite thin expressway, you can walk under it to the lake shore where there is a whole bustling community.
I’m from Columbus Ohio, the city limits are insane. From my understanding it’s because the city annexed surrounding suburbs and smaller towns haphazardly several decades ago, while some neighborhoods resisted annexation
Yeah, I would guess that's what it is. Columbus isn't unique in this, just funny when I started actually trying to figure out what freeways were in the city. Beaverton, Oregon has all kinds of missing chunks for probably similar reasons...including a huge gaping hole where Nike headquarters is.
this channel helped me decide that i want to be an urban planner. Ive started my first semester at a florida college so we'll see how much i ACTUALLY learn but, love your channel! keep it up. love earing lunch and watching you talk about the same nerdy crap i love too!
UK viewer here, love your content. London doesn't have much central motorway. There were plans to build a huge urban network but this was cancelled in the 70s after the first oil crisis and when the era of public support for motorway construction had ended. London does have chronic car congestion and very slow traffic (average speed is 8 mph, about the same as it was pre-car). But no politician who wants to be re-elected would suggest the solution is to carve new motorways through London.
Mexico City viewer here! As you correctly said, Mexico has a more "european style" cities. What I think is one of the most important things is that the block size in mexican cities is almost always less than a 100 meters (around 300 feet) which makes it very convenient for pedestrians. Also some places like Mexico City have always had a good amount of public transit such as the tranvias (streetcars) which unfortunately are no longer there. However, we have many subway lines, BRT lines, bikelanes and a good amount of pedestrian infrastructure. Public transit is incredibly cheap compared to owning a car, even more after considering that the minimum wage is very low compared to USA or Canada which does not allow many people to buy a car. Fortunately, we had the time to notice how dangerous is to dedicate too much infrastructure to cars before our minimum wages started to rise, so now that the minimum wage is rising a lot and the medium class is growing, we are building even more public transit and restricitng more and more the use of cars in order to discourage their use. For example, we have very strict emission controls so that cars need to be replaced for more efficient cars within a few years which represents a huge cost for car onwers, we are also now deleting minimum parking requirements for new constructions and implementing maximum parking laws as well. So in general I think we noticed just in time about what was going to happen and we are trying to change the perspective towards cars before it is too late. The good thing is that this growing medium class comes from a background where they always used public transit so many of them are not migrating to cars even if they could now afford them. Thanks for your great videos!!
@@CityNerd Yes it's great because now you can build apartments without parking making them very affordable, and not only that, now if you build with parking you are limited on the maximum number of cars per unit and if you build more than certain number of parkings, you have to pay huge taxes for each one.
Mexico City is one of the most walkable lovely cities I've been to. I lived there for 4 months and you don't feel it is that size due to its superb metro and BRT. One of the best public transit in America (OK, the US is the US for me and America the continent, period). Great videos!.
The youtube wizard decided to promote this to me and I'm so glad. Can't wait to watch all your others. Being an American urban planner is a depressing affair. If Brooklyn were still a separate city it would have the number two or three spot. I grew up in Queens and I love transit and walkability, but if you look at the full network, Moses really just built the bare minimum of freeway miles. Most of it makes sense as we needed to keep regional traffic, especially trucks, off the streets of Queens. I live off Queens Blvd, and despite it still being an 8 laner, there is a miniscule amount of truck traffic. And where freeways were not needed, like in Southeast Queens and Central Brooklyn, they ended up far enough down the priority list that time (1960s anti-hiway activism) and money (over indebted governments and suburban competition) finally killed those, along with the cross Manhattan proposed obscenities. The highways were one of several factors that drove up car ownership. Underfunded transit, incessant propagandization via advertising and ad friendly media are examples of those factors.
Vancouver sort of cheats by having never amalgamated with any of its surrounding municipalities. Would it still come out on top if you included Burnaby? What if New York had kept its boroughs separate, would Manhattan have less freeways than Vancouver?
Even Burnaby only has the trans Canada, Loughheed highway I wouldnt consider a highway at this point, as it has lights in plenty of locations and is more comparable to how arterials are done in Edmonton and Calgary. Delta and Surrey have more highways, but they're not that extensive when you look at the others on this list. It's mostly serviced by large arterials in the suburbs.
Just visited Kansas City for the first time. I caught myself several times asking my wife what on earth was going on with the freeways. Also pointing out so many interchanges in the middle of the city that were bigger than like 4-10 football fields. It blew my mind. I guess they just wanted to use as much space as possible. It takes more than an hour to drive across even on a freeway, and isn’t dense at all.
So glad you mentioned Kansas City as the worst. You can’t go anywhere in that city without having 4 different freeways in your route and the super tight ring road around downtown is an absolute mess of on and off ramps.
I think one thing that stuck with me from visiting the US, is not necessarily how much freeway there is, but just how much space is dedicated to roads in general: even downtown, they are so wide, with so many lanes, plus that space is practically entirely devoted to cars
I recently moved from Cleveland to Downtown Columbus. The amount of highways here is astounding, and you need a car to go anywhere. There’s absolutely no rail transit and the bus system is awful. I thought Cleveland was bad, but even in downtown, Columbus feels like one giant suburb. The city’s highway craze turned it into a Swiss cheese, making downtown a pedestrian island with few crossings. Even downtown, it’s just a smattering of buildings in a sea of parking lots. Most of the historic infill buildings present in the downtowns of Cleveland and Cincinnati have been raised in favor of parking lots in Columbus. Although, I must admit some of the inner-ring neighborhoods in Columbus have maintained their integrity and architecture much better than downtown. Also, I read somewhere that Columbus forced annexation upon many of its surrounding suburbs by holding hostage water and sewage connections with the city’s systems. Apparently this was a guise in order to maintain its tax base while it migrated to the newer suburbs.
Hey! I live in columbus and the downtown Highway ring totally pisses me off. Not only does it constrain the downtown and make it inaccessible, its also super confusing to drive on. There are interchanges literally everywhere. AND THEY ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON ONE RIGHT NOW THAT HAD NO REASON TO BE CHANGED OTHER THAN ITS CAPACITY SIZE. And of course over half of our highways jut straight thru historically nonwhite neighborhoods. And one of our highways was built on top of our olentangy river. The highway design here in columbus is truly disgusting and evident of how little these politicians cared about any part of our city.
Loved your channel! Subscribed already, congrats on the Subs milestones. Seems like you are heading towards 10k. To your point about Mexican cities, I know that even Brazilian (my country) cities could be analysed in a similar list. We didn't have a highlighted decade of freeways like the US did, but we certainly copied a lot from that decade into our countries in Latin America when started having more motor vehicle usage.
Thank you for including Mexican cities I really enjoy your videos and the way you analyze North America as a region, we have lots of differences but we’re also neighbors and have cultural and economic ties
I cannot fathom how my personal heritage is both rated as a top 3 place (Monterrey) yet also a dishonorable mention (Columbus, where I was born). What a journey
There’s now a plan to dismantle the western I-45 Freeway noose strangling Houston. The land is already being bought and buildings razed in hopes of having the best spots to build on. These will be either skyscrapers, residential mid rises or high rises. This would also connect Midtown with downtown. There’s also talk of leaving part of the freeway intact for pedestrian recreational use like New York’s Highline. I realize every city reinvents itself over time, but Houston does seem to want a much better urban fabric downtown these days with new bike lanes and nice pedestrian makeovers like you find on McKinney Street. Glad you enjoyed biking here. We bike downtown as a special treat coming from the White Oak Trail….just like you discovered on your recent video.
I am not as familiar with the cities south on the mainland. However, I do know a bit about Tijuana and Baja. There are some highways, but in Tijuana in particular, the infrastructure hasn't kept up with the exponential growth of the region. But even the highways north-south along the peninsula are not designed for 65mph. There are definitely more and more suburbs, but recently there has also been more vertical development in Tijuana.
Mexico is so different developmentally from the US and Canada that I find its inclusion in these videos unhelpful when we are trying to track urbanism in English North America. It is clearly more comparable to other Latin American countries than the US or Canada.
Yes to Washington DC. Don't get me wrong.. There are tons of freeways there, but not going all thru the city. There are more parks department (Rock Creek Park and Memorial area ) divided highways and main drags more that entering the city than anything... Outside the perifery of DC and between the suburbs, then there are lots of freeways
Good stuff. As a transit nerd of Mexican descent (here in the USA) I appreciate immensely your inclusion of Mexico in your videos. All too often Mexico is left our of the conversation. Even in fútbol, the English language media ignore the most popular teams/league in the US (per TV ratings)... unless the US beats Mexico in WCQ 😭😭😭. Seem like Mexico is excluded unless the conversation has to do with something challenging or nefarious, like immigration or drugs. Please continue the great work!
Yeah, this is very intentional. I have noticed when a lot of people in transit and urban planning talk about North America, they're really just talking abut the US and Canada. It's kind of stupid. I mean, any way you slice it, Mexico is part of North America. The only defense I can think of is that the primary language is different, so maybe it's harder to research information on Mexican transportation and planning...but come on, people, put in some effort. Oh, and also...2-0
Hello, Mexican here, I've worked wirh Mexican city and state governments. We do have proper freeway mirroring Canada and the US cities. They are called periféricos or anillos. And most metro areas are designed that way. One of the examples should be The Puebla Metro Área made of 4-5 cities. It is a continuous, non interrupted 8 lane highway with only interchanges. The Guadalajara one used to be like that but some cities in Mexico have had reorganizations and freeways have been modified to work lile arterial roads such as tbe Guadalajara one. Another very important thing to understand is that there are two types of Mexican cities. Spanish-founded (following euro mixed with North American zoning codes but mostly Euro) And Modern cities, relatively Young suburbs connected by freeway's that evolved into cities totally reliant on North American zoning codes, same minimum parking requirements, minimum parking slot size, minimum lane size, etc. My city is a huge offender with 18 lanes!
I have an explanation for Columbus's city limits! Back in the 70s/80s, the city saw the fate of older cities such as Cleveland who lost all their tax base to the suburbs. This led Columbus, which was a largely new city, to aggressively annex existing suburbs and rural areas for future development. This was a good idea but sadly it left the city with hideous borders. When I drive around town, I'll go through like 3 different "welcome to Columbus" signs each time even if I'm right in the middle of the city. Mostly because there's still several really weird tiny and disjointed townships that exist - Clinton Township for example is made up of two tiny non-contiguous parts located about 15 minutes from eachother!
Popped up in my recommended videos, probably due to my city beautiful subscription, and loved the video! I also liked the other videos you posted, really interesting content. I have a feeling that you're going to get bigger quickly.
I'm Mexican and I been in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City, the reason we don't have freeways is because sadly Mexican cities grow without any urbanism plan, and to resolve this we do have a lot of stroads( which I don't like) that can be quite wide like Lazaro Cardenas in Guadalajara that have 10 lanes, in this case in big intersections with a lot of traffic we just do overpasses and over the years we have stroads without any traffic lights.
So cool you included Mexican cities. Every time someone makes a video about city planning in North America it seems like they forget Mexico is here too lol
Interesting thing about Kansas City is that it has so many freeways due to the population in the early 1900's being so spread out. Why was the population so spread out? Because KC used to have one of the most extensive streetcar networks in the world🤷🏻♂️
Although Tucson is well below your 2 million cutoff it should get a honorable mention for being one of the largest if not the largest cities in the US that has made the decision rely almost entirely on surface streets.
"If a city actually has a lot of space decided to freeways, the message that sends is the city itself is less valuable than the time it takes to drive though it." That put it pretty perfectly.
Or that the city values suburban commuters (who don't pay taxes) more than the people living in the city itself
@Mark Stewger Not everyone speaks English as their native language you DOPE
Hello, Mexican viewer here, and former inhabitant of Guadalajara. The reason why we have so few highway-type roads is due to relatively low motor vehicle ownership until the 1970's or even later. There are a few "expressway" kind of road but it isn't fully segregated like American urban highways, they just have preference regarding traffic lights and overpasses to reduce interference with other avenues. In Mexico City, during the 1970s the mayor took to build a grid of such expressways (ejes viales) by widening older avenues and connecting them, but as entire neighborhoods were demolished it was a big political blunder that damaged the ruling party's reputation in the capital. In Guadalajara, one such avenue was built in 1973, Calzada del Federalismo, but is nowhere near a highway, we even call it the slowest expressway in town. I think they resemble more a Parisian boulevard (in function, not aesthetically) than American highways. Some expressways were built on former river beds, like the Viaducto Miguel Alemán in Mexico City, where the river was enclosed in a pipe.
As for the Guadalajara ringroads, they were originally two-lane roads to avoid the city centre, and they were expanded over time with some frontage roads and underpasses, that's why the Periferico you showed has very different widths along the route. The other "highway" you showed as I-80 (Calzada Lázaro Cárdenas) was originally a bypass for heavy vehicles but the state governor also wanted it to be a expressway, and is the closest thing we have to a highway here.
Great background. So interesting hearing about the different politics (and cultural history) around freeway building in the big Mexican cities.
I wonder how much the way administrative divisions work affected city planning. In Mexico, municipalities are responsible for urban planning, so it makes little sense to plan for roads outside the municipal border and more sense to build roads and infrastructure to keep people and jobs within the municipality.
@@alex21345 it is a problem with municipalities and in the few cities that are separated by state limits. The best example is Mexico City where you have an abismal difference between the former Distrito Federal and the State of Mexico. In Guadalajara is pretty much the same, some streets end up abruptly in municipal borders so the state government has to invest and plan there
My respect, I’m also from Guadalajara but damn, you explained so well. Thanks for that.
@@CityNerd Actually Mexico City has been on a push to build elevated lanes (coloquially known as the _segundos pisos_, lit. "second stories") on its major highways, with the first section of the Periferico opening in 2006, and some as recently as 2012, with plans to build new elevated sections over existing highways in the northern and eastern inner suburbs (Insurgentes Norte, and Zaragoza or Periferico Oriente).
Unfortunately this push means that, since the early 2000s, new transit projects have mostly been confined to new BRT lines, the fateful Metro Line 12, and, until more recently, a few cable car lines and purchasing of new trolleybuses. The Metro was pride and glory of the city, but now it's just an afterthought, and you won't hear many politicians supporting it because it is more closely associated withpoor service, overcrowding, decay and ugly neighborhoods around its stations, instead of its citywide benefits if service was improved and expanded.
Since 1997, when the city first gained home-rule (being previously a federally-controlled district), and until 2018, the local and federal governments were always of different colors, and thus willingness to collaborate in expensive, long-term projects like rapid transit wasn't common. The only such case, Line 12, opened in 2012, but was born plagued with technical problems and accusations of corruption, and soon major repairs and closures had to be undertaken.
Even if in 2018 both federal and local governments were again of the same color, the mindset had already changed deeply and the Metro was not a priority anymore. Later, the collapse of a section of line 12 in 2021 has, in my view, completely erradicated the possibility of any new Metro construction in the 2020s.
Sorry, rant over.
Thanks for your videos and for including Mexico in your analysis.
"They do have a ring road, but it just has trains on it"
What a line!
There are actually things Chicagoans are rightfully proud of! The cheese/sauce casserole they mistakenly call "pizza" just isn't one of them.
@@CityNerd Nobody in Chicago is proud of deep dish pizza. The Italian beef sandwich on the other hand... ;)
Is that what they call the "El"?
@@swinde yep short for elevated
> 5:30 < ring road Loop
Yes, please include Mexico! We need more content where we compare the big three North American countries and not just Canada and USA.
i have made this comment on so many other urban planning channels. why are the examples always the outlier countries of usa canada or australia? from mexico to argentina youll see cities that are both older and newer as those in those countries with other unique and sometimes troubling design. im sure the same could be said for africa and southeast asia!
@@BobG15 not saying it’s right but a lot of the time Mexico is considered Latin American.
@@cjoutright9255 Yes, México is a latin american country located in North America
@@cjoutright9255 Mexico is part of Latin American 😵💫
@@cjoutright9255 Correct. DO NOT confuse a cultural and geographical region. Latin America is a CULTURAL region where languages that come from Latin are spoken, such as french, Spanish, and Portuguese. On the other hand, north and south America are GEOGRAPHIC regions that rely on factors such as size and the tectonic plates, and divisions. North and South America are divided at the Panama channel. From this, Mexico is a Latin American country located in North America, the same for Guatemala, Honduras, etc...
P:D. Some people may even divie the Americas further and classify the countries between Guatemala and Panama as Central America.
Mexican viewer here, I remember first time visiting the US and thinking, how tf do people get around without cars, people from there actually looked weird at us for walking.
I'm from Puebla and we used to have a nice grid structure in the city center, but with time they've been adopting a more US-like approach, and I hate it
I think in order to live comfortably in some major mexican cities adjacent to the us border a car is necessary eg tijuana and juarez. google maps doesn't even provide navigation of public transport in those cities! idk why but that's pretty sad. definitely not the case in cdmx.
I'm an American and I went to Puebla to study in college. It was so interesting being able to have public transportation everywhere and not need a car. I lived in Mexico City over the summer and loved being able to take a metro. Don't get me wrong, I love owning a car and driving, but I want to be able to have other options too and not always have to worry about traffic or gas.
Your comment about people looking weird to other people, walking on the sidewalk in the US, is spot on! Some people even call the police on them. And woe betide you if you're non-white or match the description of a wanted violent felon! ☹️
@@edwardmiessner6502 I'm from Germany and visited friends in LA. I walked to the grocery store and people stared at me from the cars. It was hot as hell, too.
I also used the metro in DC and people avoided eye contact as hard as they could. Way different than in Germany, where people tend to look at other people in order to acknowledge them. The dualism was interesting to me.
I enjoyed DC way more than in LA, but I wasn't interested im urban planning back then and couldn't put it into words. Now I know, it was walkability and scale that made DC more fun.
First of all, congratulations on the 1k subscriber milestone 🎉. Regarding the question, most of the highways in Mexico were built in the other municipalities of the metropolitan areas during the years of rapid expansion (which would count as American and Canadian suburbs, but much denser). For example, Guadalajara's ringroad is practically uninterrupted from Zapopan to Tlaquepaque (~35km), or Monterrey having most of them to connect San Pedro Garza, Apodaca, Guadalupe, and more with Monterrey proper. The central parts of most mexican cities were spared from highway construction (laws regarding protection of historical heritage), and the ones that were built were located in the outskirts at the time.
Thanks for the great background. I actually became annoyed while making this video that I didn't really know enough about the history of highway building in Mexico (or at least not as much as I know about US and Canada), so I've been reading up on it more. (Slightly difficult because my Spanish is a work in progress.) Now that you mention it, I want to learn more about the history of municipal boundaries in the big Mexican cities and interface with suburbs.
damn, he was at 1k 2 years ago? it's 10 times that now!
I am one of those Mexican viewers and I'm very happy to see my beautiful Mexico city in the top 3 :D
me too !!!
I live in the medium sized city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, in northwestern México, (fairly dense city, quickly approaching 1M inhabitants) and we don't have anything like a freeway or similar, just some recent under and overpasses. But there has been some talks about a peripheral ring that could surround the city in the coming years, it would relief traffic issues that are becoming a problem. The reasons we don't have freeways are because mass car adoption came later in time, around 70s and 80s, cultural site protection laws and generally not having the same car culture as in the US. My city in particular has been heavily investing in pedestrian and bike safety, so, there's that at least, even thought we have one of the top car ownership percentage in the country. Cheers, new sub!
Thanks for the great comment! I see a lot of Mexican cities making moves with pedestrians and bike infrastructure that put most US cities to shame. I'll keep an eye out for Culiacán!
Its definitely okay to include Mexico in these videos! I think its ok to compare to them to US/C cities it terms of population and maybe size in some instances. But at the same time you are right about the part where you compare the Mexican cities to old European cities, as in keeping it a bit historic and not wanting to have many highways through the city. On top of what these fellow commenters have been saying already, but we for sure love to see Mexico included so we can all see the difference in the Mex/Can/US civil structure
There were plans to put in freeways through downtown Vancouver in the early 70s that would have wiped out Chinatown, but public pressure put an end to that. It now has one of the best transit systems in North America.
It's been years since I've spent any time in BC, but I loved being able to walk from my friend's apartment in Van to a sky train station, to a bus terminal to the ferry, then catch another bus on the island to downtown Victoria all in a reasonable time period. Plus you get the amazing scenery on the ferry on the way over.
I live in Vancouver and the city is horribly difficult to get around and the lack of good highways and exorbitant land prices are causing logistics companies to move to Alberta. So now goods come off the boat in Vancouver, get out on a train to Calgary and go back to Vancouver on truck. Some basic connections would be good
Chinatown in Vancouver B.C. is almost as good as China. West Coast Chinatowns are great.
@@letitiajeavons6333 you must not have been there in a long time. Central Vancouver Chinatown is dead and has moved out to Richmond.
@@reccilake7912 I live in Vancouver too, I sold my car after moving here. I hate driving in this city, its an utter disaster unless you're driving in the middle of the night. I looked back at some old pictures of Vancouver from the 1800's, it's funny seeing the rigid grid still in place today, it was never intended to deal with the vast amount of people and trips it has today. Hell, the Granville street bridge was a massive accomplishment because it removed a bridge with a pivoting function for ships. The city has exploded in population in such a short period of time.
You have one mexican that sees your videos
I grew up in Vancouver, so it definitely wasn't a surprise for me to see us top the list! I grew up traversing up and down Granville St daily, and having a tree lined arterial is so much more pleasing than would a freeway. The potential time savings in having a freeway isn't that great anyways, so I'm happy with not having any.
The only real drawback of not having a freeway is that industrial traffic is dumped through residential districts - Knight St in the east is a major arterial through residential areas that sees a lot of large trucks and 18-wheelers as it's the most direct route and largest road from the Port of Vancouver to points south.
Industrial traffic is a very valid point that politicians often overlook when criticizing highways. Knight Street is an excellent example of what can go wrong. If a highway is removed, or never built, alternative routes and transport options should be incorporated into the plans, otherwise the end result will be a traffic chaos. It seems that in many cities the most important thing is that highways have to go, with little thought placed on how the city and its businesses continue to function after they're gone. Politicians simply expect everyone to just jump on their bicycles. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but trying to deliver concrete with a bicycle trailer is impractical.
the problem I have with vancouver bc is that although it has very few freeways, the public transportation isn't as good as many european major cities or cdmx or nyc. many residents still drive a lot anyways...
@@Tuppoo94 Knight Street ended up as it is with the growth of container shipping. The Clarke/Knight corridor links the Port of Vancouver with I-5 in Washington because US West Coast ports can't handle all of the American traffic.
@@Tuppoo94 I honestly think Knight street is fine the way it is. Yes it technically goes through a residential area, but it's a hell of a lot better than a highway through the same area, and Knight St still moves a lot of traffic despite not being a freeway
@@katiebrown5185 Interestingly, Knight Street is a short freeway in Richmond to the south, terminating at the northern end of the bridge where Vancouver proper starts. It has historically been the most dangerous intersection in the region for crashes so there have been improvements in recent years.
Mexican here, I'm glad you included our cities in your video. I'm from a medium sized city called Tampico, in the Gulf of Mexico, and the closest thing to a freeway here would be a four lane road, it has controlled access but it's small and only conects to the neighboring city, also it's in the outskirts of the city.
Definitely glad to see some representation of Mexican cities on these lists, though I completely agree that they are so different to their American and Canadian counterparts, it almost doesn't make sense to compare them with. In my case, I lived in Guadalajara for 8 years and then moved to Phoenix a few years ago. And let me say... boy do I miss the walkability of Mexican cities. Sure, they aren't the best, and infrastructure can be messy. But there is a much higher level of social cohesion I think because of how much people walk or use public transportation.
Everyone here talking about Mexican infrastructure bring up great points, though one thing I can add is I think there's also a large amount of opposition to car centric infrastructure in many Mexican cities. Guadalajara for example was starting to invest heavily on car-centric infrastructure in the early 2000s but has slowly reversed that course and has been building really good segregated bike paths, improved the bus system, and has been expanding the metro system.
When Mexican cities do work on car-centric infrastructure, there's never talk of creating a "freeway", but rather just creating grade separations on busy interchanges, but without full access control. An avenue will just have a bridge to cross over a major signalized crossing and then continue being an avenue along the way. I don't think I've heard anyone mention "autopistas" in cities in Mexico at all. If anything, governments will use words like "via rapida" or "flujo libre".
Mexican cities are basically bad copies of American cities (with tons of big box stores in dense urban areas) and bad copies of European cities (there's somewhat of a density but without the fantastic public transport to back it).
Fun fact, after Jane Jacobs had successfully organized against Robert Moses in NYC and helped get the Lower Manhattan Expressway cancelled, she moved to Toronto only to find it had its own massive urban highway plans. The Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway were built without opposition because they went through an industrial rail corridor and a river valley respectively. It wasn't until the Spadina Expressway was started that opposition was galvanized. With Jacob's help the highway opposition movement successfully halted construction on the Spadina Expressway, which ultimately killed the rest of the urban highways. The short 4 mile section that got built before cancellation lives on as Allen Road (but it's really an expressway).
"The Death and Life of Great Canadian Cities." I'm slightly embarrassed I didn't even mention Jane Jacobs in this video (after I mentioned Moses), but I already spent more time talking about NYC than I should've. Maybe it warrants its own video. Thanks for the additional background on Toronto -- didn't know that!
She denied NYC an important, and badly needed, highway... and then left NYC to go cause trouble somewhere else. Typical leftist.
@@johnathin0061892 lol she's literally a libertarian who constantly argues that the market can plan better than the state.
@@johnathin0061892 Typical ass republican who hates walkable cities.
@@CityNerd I grew up on a section of the St. Lawrence River that got dammed and flooded in the late 50s to supply electricity to New York. The power dam is named The Moses-Saunders Dam, and where I lived in Ontario is the Lost Villages Region. Flooding the river also eliminated some rapids that prevented modern ships from reaching the Great Lakes.
The navigational canals around the Great Lakes in both countries might be interesting to you.
I watched most of the video thinking that you had 50-100k subs, blown away that you didn't have more. I really like how you kind of talked through the metrics you used, as it shows how you really though through the best way to analyze this.
I think some people find the methodology discussion bring and skip through it. I'm always thinking about the balance between how much to say to make sure people understand my approach, and not saying so much it drags the pacing down. Glad to have your feedback.
Hello from Columbus. The city gets its borders from the fact that it controls the water and sewer service and has made annexation a condition of receiving those services since the 1950s. However there are grandfathered township areas that remain as a patchwork. Columbus has made a *lot* of progress over the past 30 years at having nice urban neighborhoods such as the Short North and German Village. In particular, a highway cap was placed over I-670 and it has made a huge difference in removing the real and perceived barrier between downtown and SN/Victorian Village. We’re fortunate that the state DOT isn’t fighting us and has agreed to build a bunch more caps over the 70/71 split as that highway is improved. Hoping to end up with something a bit like the Big Dig in Boston without the astronomical cost, although this is still a near billion dollar project all in.
Now if they would just fix that messy disaster of a stroad known as U.S. 23 north of Columbus.
This is very welcome development. I remember seeing a picture of Düsseldorf, Germany with a highway going through it in the 90s, and the same place in 2019 with a nice park. What is usually conveniently left out is that the highway wasn't simply demolished, it was moved into a tunnel. In the end everyone won. The road is still there, and the above-ground environment is much nicer. We have the means to do something nice for everyone, but rarely have the political will.
@@dannylittle6766 There are some planning studies being done now to improve the corridor and/or create a bypass that would connect 23 to 71 north of delaware. In addition, I wish that columbus would consider a regional rail system as it has many exurbs and satellite cities like delaware, marysville, lancaster, and newark
On the bright side, the city seems to be attempting to improve their biking infrastructure. They are gradually linking the Scioto River trail to the Alum Creek Trail to carry USBR-21/USBR-50/OHBR-1 through the city, and have properly linked the Ohio State University to the city via OHBR-47 (Olentangy river trail)
Several neighborhoods within Cleveland city limits were annexed the same way pre-WW1. The day Cleveland decided to sell its water/sewer access to the suburbs was the day the city stopped growing geographically. Although I doubt any of them would dream that the city population a century later would be less than half what it was then.
hey Chicago native here, I take huge pride in not needing a car except maybe to get to some places in the suburbs. love the train and bus infrastructure even if it's not as nice as DC's metro. when friends come to visit they're usually shocked by how easy it is to get around to attractions and restaurants and neighborhoods all over the city with a CTA 3-day pass!
It hurts to call Chicago underrated because Chicago natives never shut up about their city, but really, if you haven't been there, you should go! Great city.
So happy to see Vancouver as the #1 city on this list. 😀 🇨🇦 I’m curious about where Boston and Portland landed in your rankings. Big congrats on 1000 subscribers!
SPOILERS! 🙃
I looked at 39 cities (metro pop > 2M...didn't include Toluca or Puebla, which I consider too far within the Mexico City influence area, or Riverside/San Bernardino, too far within the LA influence area). Portland ranked 16th, Boston...29th. I've had a couple people ask about Boston. Keep in mind I didn't give credit for freeways that are buried in tunnels, so you can definitely quibble with that.
@@CityNerd Yeah, I kind of understand the Boston ranking, at the same time the freeways being in tunnels really do help make them far less intrusive than in some of the cities on this list. The again, that might have to do with public transport availability. For example, even though Portland is higher on the list, I've had to use my car far more than in Boston because public transportation options are much more spread out and far less convenient to use.
Just a little applause to # 10, San Francisco. Not only is it on this list, but it is the first American city ever to stop a federally funded freeway already under construction in the city and, I believe, is the first American city to reject federal funds to build a freeway. It also razed two different existing freeways damaged in the 1989 earthquake rather than rebuilt them.
I am so glad being in Austria. I bought my Klimaticket and I can use every public transportation union-wide for free (or better said for just 699EUR). The trains are fast, new, comfortable and reliable and relaxed. Love it.
For honorary mentions, it would have been nice to hear more about smaller US cities that kept the freeways out of downtown (since that is where they do the most damage), like Lexington and Madison.
Old Toronto’s only really ugly highway is the Gardiner between the Port Lands and the Humber River. All the other highways are in suburbs that were not built to be as walkable (or the Don Valley). Suburban Toronto still feels infinitely more walkable than any US city outside NYC.
Philadelphia viewer here. I often question the existence of 676. Bisects the city into two halves through potentially some of the most valuable real estate in the city. Northern Liberties and Fishtown are two growing regions of the city that may be interesting for further research!
Love that you gave Mexican cities consideration. Please include Mexico in your future videos, would love to learn more of our neighbors to the south!
I feel like the Vine St expressway is not nearly as bad as some of the other urban freeways. Every surface street has a bridge over 676, so the freeway is as unobtrusive as it could possibly be and the urban fabric is largely intact. Compare this to something like I85 in Midtown Atlanta. There are only bridges at North Ave (1st St), 5th St, 10th, 14th, and 17th. I85 completely separates the city
One per negative thing about Philly freeways is how they completely separate Philadelphia from the lovely waterfronts on both rivers.
I'm hopeful that the planned freeway cap by Chinatown is so successful that they go on to cap the whole stretch of 676 to put new buildings and green space on it.
@@HessianHunterI feel like if they actually address the capacity issues on the Schuylkill and increase SEPTA capacity/frequency they honestly can just get rid of the vine.
What about Boston? I don’t think underground freeways should be treated the same as surface/elevated freeways.
I was thinking the same thing. 1-90 is in a trench with major air rights already constructed or in the process of construction throughout the whole Boston corridor. 1-93 through the central city was submerged at a cost of 15 billion! Money very well spent in my opinion. Boston proper has very little actual freeway mileage on the surface.
Based upon City Nerd’s methodology, I’d also like to know where Boston fell on the list of all eligible cities. I agree with the two comments posted above, interstate highways that run through tunnels, or are located in trenches that are being covered by new construction should receive special attention; these solutions avoid the blight and destruction of the urban fabric caused by elevated and surface interstates.
I chuckled at your comments about the Columbus city limits. I don't know why it's like that but I remember driving through Columbus years ago from south to north and seeing lots of little green signs on the side of the freeway that said 'Enter Corp" or "Leave Corp." I must've passed a dozen of those city boundary markers.
The city limits expand based on where Columbus water services. It was a rule to force land annexation.
Great content. I like that you include Canada and Mexico! 🇨🇦🇺🇲🇲🇽
I've lived in both Monterrey and Guadalajara.
I didn't expect MTY to be higher in the list than GDL tbh. GDL have more Mass transit coverage, and MTY actually have a reputation of being the most car-oriented city in MX.
Perhaps the outer ring from GDL + excluding neighboring cities are doing the trick here. Mty has not only 1, but 2 massive outer semirings northside. But only crosses MTY municipality for a couple miles.
Nice content BTW, you got yourself one more Mexican suscriber.
I had someone else make a similar comment. My methodology may not have been quite right -- but at least I got them both in the top 5!
Great research! While I think it’s good to compare Mexican and Canadian cities with US cities in general, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was so prolific in development of highways, its hard to compare US cities to other North American cities. State DOTs became attached to the almost endless funding source for building highways much to the detriment of cities.
Accurate and succinctly put!
Hi! I'm a new viewer from Mexico and I'm super thrilled that you do include our cities in the comparison lists.
Regarding why the biggest mexican cities don't have highways there are some reasons:
One is that a lot of city centers in Mexico are protected by the national institucion of anthropology and history and some are UNESCO's heritage sites so that's a no go for demolition and building new stuff.
The second reason would be money, freeways and highways are very expensive to build and mantain and its just not feasible to have so many in here when it's not affordable.
And the third reason I can think of is density. While suburbs do exist they're not as widespread as they're in Canada and the US. Mexico city being the outlier, having a huge commuting time and size, even bigger then some other american cities.
Thanks! I can use all the local insight on Mexico I can get.
Also Mexico being a much poorer country means that car ownership rate is a lot lower than US and Canada
Wow. I feel like this channel was made just for me. I literally spend most of my free time on Google Earth/maps
It's a bigger club than I realized!
Something to consider for Chicago, every major rail line ends up in Chicago too. It just became a transfer and trade hub of, basically, the entire country if you're looking to ship goods, services, or people cross continent. So when a transfer was happening from less trains to more trucking, its kinda unsurprising that freeways would largely cut into and through Chicago. Even still, given that its at #8 out of NA says something on how they've focused public transit and limited their effect on the city, though the Ike displaced a lot of people. . The L and CTA is arguably one best public transit systems in the U.S.
Still don't recognize DC though. No one wants to go to DC by any method, people are forced to be in DC.
Except for 535 people who spend millions to go to D.C. (They're called Congress.)
How? If someone can afford to live in a city, they can afford to move somewhere else? And DC is cool, even if it’s home to rampant corruption.
hey man, new subscriber here, quick tip, i think the capture software you use for google maps has it's brightness or contrast dialed way too high, it's causing the images to be super washed out, thus diminishing legibility a bit,
the operations room yt channel had this problem too and they've solved it , i think you can too
love the videos , keep up the urban planning content, i love it
greetings from turkey (which probably makes me your first turkish sub i hope )
Big thanks for this comment. I'll look into it! Can't say for sure you're the first Turkish sub, but there's a good chance -- Istanbul definitely features in my Aqueducts video if you haven't seen it. 😀
Yes I thought my TV was shit haha, but the video was great anyways!
I visited San Antonio last year and their Highway situation was incredibly stressful. And the downtown area is difficult to get around to in a car or on foot unless you’re on the River walk.
Can you do a video on the top 10 worst highways for cutting through redlined districts? I feel like that would be useful information to see.
I think the two worst are the Southwest Freeway in Washington, DC and the Mulberry-Lombard Freeway in Baltimore should be mentioned. Also I-40 West in Nashville, I-277 in Charlotte, and I-95/I-395/SR-836 in Miami. The last one is the worst! The Black neighborhood of Culmer-Overtown was basically drawn and quartered.
Too bad it probably didn’t meet the minimum size, but Lexington, KY is an excellent example of a city that was spared from the urban freeway madness.
Thanks for including Mexico. I think it really should be included when talking about North America. As someone who emigrated to Europe, México has very strong US influences especially in terms of cars and infrastructure.
I grew up in Vegas and I appreciate you bringing awareness to this! I had no idea for most of my life that there was any better alternative to the endless stroad grid that the city has. Since moving to a similar sized city w transit and walkable areas it has made going home bitter sweet as all I see is how far behind my hometown is.
If you are in Vegas for a while, you should check out the water street district in Henderson. Allegedly it is going to be a more walkable/natural downtown for the city of Henderson. Or if you want to experience rage read about failed light rail plans... Ugh
As a Monterrey-based viewer, I can say that while we don't have many freeways, we do have some sort of continuous-flow roads that have spread widely in the last decades.
They're all limited to 50km/h (31mph), sometimes 60 (37) but usual speeds vary between 70-110km/h (~45-70mph), 6 to 10 lanes wide with no pedestrian crossings except at intersections with an over or underpass, some have side lanes, some don't, and they often have curbside parking and a lot of driveways.
Av. Paseo de los Leones and Av. Eugenio Garza Sada are great examples of this if you want to take a look.
I consider them to be worse than freeways because they try to be one but they're merely a nice little road that got widened at some point to turn into that atrocity and has become unsafe for all modes of transport.
So...stroads?
Im glad you're including San Juan as a candidate your lists! You should do more North American cities. Ik most your viewers are English speakers but it's nice to be included ⭐️
I consider San Juan a US city, so I'll always include it! Even if I sometimes don't include other Caribbean cities in my "North American" videos. San Juan is very cool and unique...I'll talk about it when I can!
I never understood why - after Eisenhower saw the Autobahn in Germany and brought the concept into the US as Interstates - planners really planned them through the city, sometimes even through downtown, effectively segregating both sides of the city at that freeway. I know this was often used to cut of the African American Neighborhoods from the "white ones", but in general even in the 1950ies and 1960ies everyone should have seen why that is bad.
But on the other hand, the US defined city completely different - just as an organisation level. Either single family home far out and you will never touch downtown or apartment buildings / high rises in downtown / the center....
In Europe nearly all cities have ring roads (as you showed) with exits to the various parts of the city. The notable example is Saarbrücken in the State of Saarland, Germany... The Autobahn goes through the city... (and is often flooded when the Saar reaches high levels).
Many inner cities neigborhoods were at the end of they "life expectancy" i.e. needed rebuilt down to sewer and water lines and many city saw building a freeway a way to get federal funds to rebuild those areas. Many of these inner city freeways went through areas of housing first built prior to 1900 and did not have internal pumping i.e. you used a communal tiolet and often hauled water from a pump. The cities knew this type of housing had to be replaced but did not have the funds to do it themselves till the Federal Government offered federal funds to build these freeways and those funds included funds tobuy up that sub sandard housing and upgrade the water and seweage systems the freeways had to go over. Racial segegation was also a factor but it was access to funds to buy up the sub standard housing that was the main reason for shifting Freeway consruction from around cities to through such cities.
Yeah, I don't like freeways in cities either, and Vancouver sounds ideal without any gashes of impassable car infrastructure cutting through its neighbourhoods. But there is a downside, given that aside from its very dense downtown and clusters of transit-oriented towers sprinkled throughout, Vancouver is in fact a sprawling city of single-family housing. It's doing a lot of things right, from changing its zoning to create more missing middle housing to building bike greenways to investing in transit and seeing its ridership go up and up and up. And it does a surprisingly good job of getting cars out of a difficult downtown that is surrounded by water on 3 sides. But until we no longer have suburbs or none of us drive, all those cars have to go somewhere before they hook up with the suburban freeways surrounding the city limits, and every arterial road, even the smaller ones like Prior/Venables or E. 12th, is hell during rush hour. Admittedly, though, the drive through Stanley Park and over the Lion's Gate bridge is absolutely beautiful, if bumper-to-bumper.
Comparing Vancouver and Phoenix in terms of highway urbanization is like comparing fresh Sicilian meats to 18-year old Spam behind a dumpster.
There are some significant differences between US and Canadian cities contrary to popular belief. It is Ontario that is almost exactly like the US. The rest of the country not quite as much.
Comparing freeways in Phoenix to 18-year old Spam behind a dumpster is an insult to 18-year old Spam behind a dumpster.
I am surprised Pittsburgh didn't make it but D.C did. I remember visiting DC, and was surprised how large the freeways were compared to what we have here. There are 279, 376 and a few others, but not many compared to other US cities I have been to.
I think he is only talking about dc proper not the dc metro area
Hi, I’m from Columbus, OH. I read that one of the reasons our city is so oddly formed is because one the mayors from the 40s had a very aggressive form of annexation. Essentially if a community wanted to use water line, gas, sewage, etc., he forced them into joining the city so that the could use. It’s called water gun diplomacy. I think it’s still somewhat practiced today only now, new sub-divisions just claim Columbus since it the largest municipality.
thanks 4 the explanation !
Have you ever looked at New Orleans. The only freeways are on the outer part of downtown. Nothing comes through the downtown area.
Hi! I am a (newly subscribed) Mexican viewer, and I appreciate you include our cities in your research! Hope to see more of them in your upcoming videos! 👏🏻
I'm glad Mexico didn't destroy their own cities for freeways but it probably wouldn't have sit well since most Mexican cities developed well before cars became popular. And since the country is poorer, it took a lot longer for cars to become popular and even today, most don't own a car. But I think the north american city with the least freeways is probably La Habana, Cuba
Yeah, at the beginning of research I was including Central American and Caribbean cities, and it just kind of became a headache of trying to figure out what qualifies as a freeway and what doesn't. Havana was definitely going to score high, and Santo Domingo and probably Guatemala City. I should've been clearer in the video that this was just Canada/USA/Mexico, if I wasn't.
I love your channel. I am an urban geographer and cartographer by trade and training. I knew before the video started that Vancouver BC would be number one and Kansas City would be last. I have spent time in both cities and I am not surprised. The interchange of 71 highway/I-470/I-435 in south Kansas City is truly mind bending. Thanks for mentioning it! There is a reason people love living in Vancouver BC., no freeways downtown!!
0:44 Honestly, I have to say that, as a driver myself who enjoys going fast from time to time, freeways aren't really that necessary for drivers who love driving fast down the open road. In fact, one could say that interstate freeways are actually detrimental to those drivers (including myself).
As an amateur review for Monterrey. I can tell you that there are definitely some ugly parts here. We don’t have highways per say, but we do have some 4 lane atrocities that try to be them while also being near buildings. They are take however, not like a 4 lane street in the US, think of it like a Boulevard but it’s chunkier. Some newer areas like San Jeronimo are great but I think San Pedro Is a better place to live. On an entrance to that city you immediately get introduced to a big center roundabout and continuous Kilometers of narrow parks that substitute lanes on streets. That is the best city in Mexico IMO
Next video: Why is it so hard for architechs and engineers can't seem to build sports stadiums that integrate with the local city? The best designs I've seen are Key Arena in Seattle and Soldier Field in Chicago.
I love your channel, but man you forgot the city that CARE always forget New Orleans. It has a small freeway footprint and currently serious talks are being made to remove half of the freeways downtown.
If Mexico city doubled down on improving mass transit (and also getting ppl to obey the frickin rules) that would make the existing "freeways" even less necessary
The "ejes" and "autopistas" really don't feel like freeways at all and they feel out of place, the city could do with fewer BUT atm mass transit (even tho it's great compared to American cities) is just not there yet
The collapse of metro line 12 made ppl realize how useful it was but also angry at how badly that investment has gone
I definitely don't see more freeways in Mexico city any time soon but also expect more investment in mass transit to be a tougher sell despite the congestion that can plague the roads
It's an award situation there
I just found this channel and I love it, been looking for channels that focus on urban design, and the likes, much like Not just bikes or city beautiful
Love those channels.
You could probably also include the Georgia/Dunsmuir viaducts and the Granville Street bridge in the calculation for Vancouver, but there are plans to tear the viaducts down and also put the Granville bridge on a road diet and make it walkable/bikeable. There is a push also to extend Skytrain to the North Shore (West and North Vancouver) which would alleviate a lot of traffic on the Second Narrows Bridge (the one attached to the Trans Canada Highway on the eastern side of Vancouver).
As someone who grew up in Vancouver, it's shocking how bad other cities are in North America w/r/t their freeway systems, and it's equally baffling why there are still people in Vancouver who clamour for freeway expansion, particularly in the suburbs. The replacement for the George Massey Tunnel (Highway 99 between Delta and Richmond) and the widening of the Trans Canada Freeway in Langley and Abbotsford (to the south west of Vancouver) come to mind. I think some of the suburbs in Vancouver are finally starting to understand how unique the region is, but it's really, really hard to fix things like broken street grid systems and acre after acre of parking lots and strip malls.
About Here has a good summary of the history of the Vancouver viaducts and their association with the racist "urban renewal" agenda: ruclips.net/video/ReDPLxaTwjI/видео.html
Yeah, I actually thought about including the viaducts -- I biked under those bad boys last time I was up there! -- but lots of cities have long viaducts over, like, railroad tracks/yards, and I just didn't want (or have the time) to get that granular. I'm excited to see those come down -- it's the least pleasant part of downtown Vancouver.
When I lived in Vancouver they were upgrading the freeway near my house near Phibbs and for what? Traffic on either side of that section was always bullshit, the worst anywhere in Van.
I reckon the real litmus test for freeways is how people who want then don’t want them near them. Yes In Someone Else’s Back Yard
Yes, Vancouver *proper* is very bicycle and transit-friendly, but many of its suburbs are a different story (and not all that different from North American norms).
@@CityNerd A street tunnel under that highway just at the Vancouver border was closed, and the skateboarding community gained permission to turn it into a skateboard park.
I gotta ask: why isn't Montreal on this list? It has one highway going through downtown, but it's totally underground with only one small trench. There is an elevated section going through a residential area, but it runs alongside an elevated rail that was built in the 1860s and predates the neighbourhoods that surround it. In the eastern part of the city it turns into a massive boulevard which did destroy an old neighbourhood and is disruptive, but there are plans to totally rip it up over the next decade.
All the other highways in the city are pretty far from the downtown core. One is a trench, one is elevated, but neither really break up the local neighbourhoods and get a lot a lot of pedestrian traffic.
Can't remember if I addressed Montreal already in response to another comment, so will do so here -- it just didn't do well on the freeway miles-to-land area measure. I mean it still ended up at #12, just outside the top ten. And I didn't count subgrade freeways any different from surface (relevant for Boston too) -- there are still emissions, the traffic still has to go somewhere. And if I give credit for underground freeways, then do I have to give credit for freeways that are below grade (but still open), but have lots of good street connectivity over the top? (Philadelphia, Portland, etc.). Didn't want to start pulling on that thread.
@@CityNerd In Montreal's case, miles-to-land-area isn't quite appropriate as the prime measure because the city's population is so densely packed into that land area. If I'm not mistaken, the turn-of-the-century residential areas inmmediately surrounding the downtown business core have a much higher population density than US cities. If you re-calculated using miles-to-thousands-population - the Greater Montreal Area is about 4 million people while the city proper is nearly 2 million - I think you'd find Montreal coming in very close to Vancouver.
BTW I drive from Montreal to my winter house in Mexico every year and am always dismayed to go through Cincinnati, Memphis, Austin, San Antonio and a chip of Dallas on their very broad and very scary Interstates. Meanwhile in Mexico I bypass Monterrey, Saltillo & San Luis Potosi on peripheral highways and only when I hit Queretaro do I have to pass through part of the city on my way to my desitnation, which is Morelia. I actually breathe a sigh of relief when I cross the border into Mexico because Texas is such a headache.
Portland went through a freeway revolt also, but unfortunately it was after most of the damage had already been done. The original plans were somehow even worse. I've always been jealous of our neighbor to the north lol.
I thought about diving into the Robert Moses Portland freeway plan and all the ghost ramps to nowhere, but maybe that's for a future video!
Great video! Glad Philly got on this list. You are right the bar is low. And Philly made some huge mistakes, especially with I-95 which destroyed an unconscionable amount of waterfront neighborhoods. But the freeway revolts made sure that this city could be on the list. Thank goodness the Crosstown Expressway and the Cobbs Creek Expressway were never built and it was all thanks to the people rising up
The history of freeway revolts is so interesting. Every city has a different story. Or, unfortunately, I guess, there are some cities that don't have a story at all, judging by what I see out there.
@@CityNerd yeah some tried and failed with their revolts, but Philly's Crosstown Expressway revolt is one of the most inspiring... Go to South Street today and it's striking just how it all could have been a highway instead of a vibrant street. I'm friends with some people who participated in it and it was truly the effort of many people.
If you build it they will come.
If you build it next to an impassable geographical feature on the edge of a continent - there will be less pedestrian through-traffic.
Mexican here (CDMX) this video appeared to me in recommendations and I am fascinated! I am also a city nerd, when I get bored I open Google Maps and see the transport systems of cities and their highways... keep it up!
Hago lo mismo jajaja, pensé que era el único que se divertía viendo los mapas... saludos desde gdl.
Love that I'm getting lots of Mexican viewers.
As often as people compare Minneapolis to Portland, we sure have a midwestern number of freeways in the city limits
I'm actually from Monterrey so yeah, this is very interesting. And yes older Mexico's cities were designed in many cases for XVI century horse carriages and walking, but there are freeways of course, many of them are toll roads too. Many cities were designed in the times we were part of Spain, you can see the historic quarters of Veracruz, Puebla, Queretaro, etc. Mexico City is just to big to say it was conceived at once, it had a main quarter designed under the New Spain era, but the city was greatly redesigned at the time of the Second Empire (Emperor Maximilian von Hapsburg) when a lot of French and Italian architects redesigned the main arteries such as Paseo de la Emperatriz (Paseo de la Reforma nowadays), and under the Porfiriato period when the French design continued (thus many turnabouts in the city, major ones like in Reforma and Insurgentes Avenue.) You can't see much of that in the north of the country where U.S. influence took over and you have a lot of grid designs.
Toronto may have looked much differently without its own inner city freeway revolt. If you look midway along the 401 you'll see a tiny expressway that runs north-south called the Alen. This was supposed to run all the way down to the Gardiner. This would have destroyed a bunch of historic and tight-nit communities. Many banded together and protested, even going so far as to claim they've seceded from Toronto as their own new city. On the East, the Gardiner ends into the Don Valley Parkway, but was actually supposed to go all the way along the lake and meet up with the 401 around Port Union Rd.
As far as a downtown freeway is concerned, the Gardiner is fairly unobtrusive. The true "core" is north of the Gardiner, and since it's an elevated and quite thin expressway, you can walk under it to the lake shore where there is a whole bustling community.
I’m from Columbus Ohio, the city limits are insane. From my understanding it’s because the city annexed surrounding suburbs and smaller towns haphazardly several decades ago, while some neighborhoods resisted annexation
Yeah, I would guess that's what it is. Columbus isn't unique in this, just funny when I started actually trying to figure out what freeways were in the city. Beaverton, Oregon has all kinds of missing chunks for probably similar reasons...including a huge gaping hole where Nike headquarters is.
but pity the Columbus map makers!
this channel helped me decide that i want to be an urban planner. Ive started my first semester at a florida college so we'll see how much i ACTUALLY learn but, love your channel! keep it up. love earing lunch and watching you talk about the same nerdy crap i love too!
UK viewer here, love your content. London doesn't have much central motorway. There were plans to build a huge urban network but this was cancelled in the 70s after the first oil crisis and when the era of public support for motorway construction had ended. London does have chronic car congestion and very slow traffic (average speed is 8 mph, about the same as it was pre-car). But no politician who wants to be re-elected would suggest the solution is to carve new motorways through London.
Mexico City viewer here! As you correctly said, Mexico has a more "european style" cities. What I think is one of the most important things is that the block size in mexican cities is almost always less than a 100 meters (around 300 feet) which makes it very convenient for pedestrians. Also some places like Mexico City have always had a good amount of public transit such as the tranvias (streetcars) which unfortunately are no longer there. However, we have many subway lines, BRT lines, bikelanes and a good amount of pedestrian infrastructure. Public transit is incredibly cheap compared to owning a car, even more after considering that the minimum wage is very low compared to USA or Canada which does not allow many people to buy a car. Fortunately, we had the time to notice how dangerous is to dedicate too much infrastructure to cars before our minimum wages started to rise, so now that the minimum wage is rising a lot and the medium class is growing, we are building even more public transit and restricitng more and more the use of cars in order to discourage their use. For example, we have very strict emission controls so that cars need to be replaced for more efficient cars within a few years which represents a huge cost for car onwers, we are also now deleting minimum parking requirements for new constructions and implementing maximum parking laws as well. So in general I think we noticed just in time about what was going to happen and we are trying to change the perspective towards cars before it is too late. The good thing is that this growing medium class comes from a background where they always used public transit so many of them are not migrating to cars even if they could now afford them. Thanks for your great videos!!
Interesting about the parking requirements -- I'll have to learn more!
@@CityNerd Yes it's great because now you can build apartments without parking making them very affordable, and not only that, now if you build with parking you are limited on the maximum number of cars per unit and if you build more than certain number of parkings, you have to pay huge taxes for each one.
Mexico City is one of the most walkable lovely cities I've been to. I lived there for 4 months and you don't feel it is that size due to its superb metro and BRT. One of the best public transit in America (OK, the US is the US for me and America the continent, period). Great videos!.
The youtube wizard decided to promote this to me and I'm so glad. Can't wait to watch all your others. Being an American urban planner is a depressing affair. If Brooklyn were still a separate city it would have the number two or three spot. I grew up in Queens and I love transit and walkability, but if you look at the full network, Moses really just built the bare minimum of freeway miles. Most of it makes sense as we needed to keep regional traffic, especially trucks, off the streets of Queens. I live off Queens Blvd, and despite it still being an 8 laner, there is a miniscule amount of truck traffic. And where freeways were not needed, like in Southeast Queens and Central Brooklyn, they ended up far enough down the priority list that time (1960s anti-hiway activism) and money (over indebted governments and suburban competition) finally killed those, along with the cross Manhattan proposed obscenities. The highways were one of several factors that drove up car ownership. Underfunded transit, incessant propagandization via advertising and ad friendly media are examples of those factors.
You're going to enjoy this week's video....if I can get it done!
Vancouver sort of cheats by having never amalgamated with any of its surrounding municipalities. Would it still come out on top if you included Burnaby? What if New York had kept its boroughs separate, would Manhattan have less freeways than Vancouver?
Even Burnaby only has the trans Canada, Loughheed highway I wouldnt consider a highway at this point, as it has lights in plenty of locations and is more comparable to how arterials are done in Edmonton and Calgary. Delta and Surrey have more highways, but they're not that extensive when you look at the others on this list. It's mostly serviced by large arterials in the suburbs.
"Enough of Texas, I'm trying to keep things positive in this video."
You’re videos are great, love your dry humor and demeanor. I also appreciate you really taking time to make your own measurements
Just visited Kansas City for the first time. I caught myself several times asking my wife what on earth was going on with the freeways. Also pointing out so many interchanges in the middle of the city that were bigger than like 4-10 football fields. It blew my mind. I guess they just wanted to use as much space as possible. It takes more than an hour to drive across even on a freeway, and isn’t dense at all.
1k? Congrats on almost 4k just a week or so later! I love city planning stuff, thanks for being another source for me!
So glad you mentioned Kansas City as the worst. You can’t go anywhere in that city without having 4 different freeways in your route and the super tight ring road around downtown is an absolute mess of on and off ramps.
Congrats on 1k subs!
I think one thing that stuck with me from visiting the US, is not necessarily how much freeway there is, but just how much space is dedicated to roads in general: even downtown, they are so wide, with so many lanes, plus that space is practically entirely devoted to cars
I recently moved from Cleveland to Downtown Columbus. The amount of highways here is astounding, and you need a car to go anywhere. There’s absolutely no rail transit and the bus system is awful. I thought Cleveland was bad, but even in downtown, Columbus feels like one giant suburb. The city’s highway craze turned it into a Swiss cheese, making downtown a pedestrian island with few crossings. Even downtown, it’s just a smattering of buildings in a sea of parking lots. Most of the historic infill buildings present in the downtowns of Cleveland and Cincinnati have been raised in favor of parking lots in Columbus.
Although, I must admit some of the inner-ring neighborhoods in Columbus have maintained their integrity and architecture much better than downtown.
Also, I read somewhere that Columbus forced annexation upon many of its surrounding suburbs by holding hostage water and sewage connections with the city’s systems. Apparently this was a guise in order to maintain its tax base while it migrated to the newer suburbs.
I didn't want to slag on Columbus too hard. Plus, my earlier arenas video puts the Blue Jackets in the top ten. It's not all bad news!
Hey! I live in columbus and the downtown Highway ring totally pisses me off. Not only does it constrain the downtown and make it inaccessible, its also super confusing to drive on. There are interchanges literally everywhere. AND THEY ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON ONE RIGHT NOW THAT HAD NO REASON TO BE CHANGED OTHER THAN ITS CAPACITY SIZE. And of course over half of our highways jut straight thru historically nonwhite neighborhoods. And one of our highways was built on top of our olentangy river. The highway design here in columbus is truly disgusting and evident of how little these politicians cared about any part of our city.
Loved your channel! Subscribed already, congrats on the Subs milestones. Seems like you are heading towards 10k.
To your point about Mexican cities, I know that even Brazilian (my country) cities could be analysed in a similar list.
We didn't have a highlighted decade of freeways like the US did, but we certainly copied a lot from that decade into our countries in Latin America when started having more motor vehicle usage.
Thank you for including Mexican cities I really enjoy your videos and the way you analyze North America as a
region, we have lots of differences but we’re also neighbors and have cultural and economic ties
I cannot fathom how my personal heritage is both rated as a top 3 place (Monterrey) yet also a dishonorable mention (Columbus, where I was born). What a journey
There’s now a plan to dismantle the western I-45 Freeway noose strangling Houston. The land is already being bought and buildings razed in hopes of having the best spots to build on. These will be either skyscrapers, residential mid rises or high rises. This would also connect Midtown with downtown. There’s also talk of leaving part of the freeway intact for pedestrian recreational use like New York’s Highline. I realize every city reinvents itself over time, but Houston does seem to want a much better urban fabric downtown these days with new bike lanes and nice pedestrian makeovers like you find on McKinney Street. Glad you enjoyed biking here. We bike downtown as a special treat coming from the White Oak Trail….just like you discovered on your recent video.
I am not as familiar with the cities south on the mainland. However, I do know a bit about Tijuana and Baja. There are some highways, but in Tijuana in particular, the infrastructure hasn't kept up with the exponential growth of the region. But even the highways north-south along the peninsula are not designed for 65mph. There are definitely more and more suburbs, but recently there has also been more vertical development in Tijuana.
Mexico is so different developmentally from the US and Canada that I find its inclusion in these videos unhelpful when we are trying to track urbanism in English North America. It is clearly more comparable to other Latin American countries than the US or Canada.
Yes to Washington DC. Don't get me wrong.. There are tons of freeways there, but not going all thru the city. There are more parks department (Rock Creek Park and Memorial area ) divided highways and main drags more that entering the city than anything... Outside the perifery of DC and between the suburbs, then there are lots of freeways
Good stuff. As a transit nerd of Mexican descent (here in the USA) I appreciate immensely your inclusion of Mexico in your videos. All too often Mexico is left our of the conversation. Even in fútbol, the English language media ignore the most popular teams/league in the US (per TV ratings)... unless the US beats Mexico in WCQ 😭😭😭. Seem like Mexico is excluded unless the conversation has to do with something challenging or nefarious, like immigration or drugs. Please continue the great work!
Yeah, this is very intentional. I have noticed when a lot of people in transit and urban planning talk about North America, they're really just talking abut the US and Canada. It's kind of stupid. I mean, any way you slice it, Mexico is part of North America. The only defense I can think of is that the primary language is different, so maybe it's harder to research information on Mexican transportation and planning...but come on, people, put in some effort.
Oh, and also...2-0
Hello, Mexican here, I've worked wirh Mexican city and state governments.
We do have proper freeway mirroring Canada and the US cities.
They are called periféricos or anillos.
And most metro areas are designed that way.
One of the examples should be The Puebla Metro Área made of 4-5 cities.
It is a continuous, non interrupted 8 lane highway with only interchanges.
The Guadalajara one used to be like that but some cities in Mexico have had reorganizations and freeways have been modified to work lile arterial roads such as tbe Guadalajara one.
Another very important thing to understand is that there are two types of Mexican cities.
Spanish-founded (following euro mixed with North American zoning codes but mostly Euro)
And Modern cities, relatively Young suburbs connected by freeway's that evolved into cities totally reliant on North American zoning codes, same minimum parking requirements, minimum parking slot size, minimum lane size, etc.
My city is a huge offender with 18 lanes!
I live in the Vancouver area and I can confirm this is video is accurate regarding Vancouver!
You glossed over Chicago way too quickly. It should be closer to the top because of its walkability and bikeability. Bicycles were invented here
Please do a video about the history of freeway revolts!
I have an explanation for Columbus's city limits! Back in the 70s/80s, the city saw the fate of older cities such as Cleveland who lost all their tax base to the suburbs. This led Columbus, which was a largely new city, to aggressively annex existing suburbs and rural areas for future development. This was a good idea but sadly it left the city with hideous borders. When I drive around town, I'll go through like 3 different "welcome to Columbus" signs each time even if I'm right in the middle of the city. Mostly because there's still several really weird tiny and disjointed townships that exist - Clinton Township for example is made up of two tiny non-contiguous parts located about 15 minutes from eachother!
Popped up in my recommended videos, probably due to my city beautiful subscription, and loved the video! I also liked the other videos you posted, really interesting content. I have a feeling that you're going to get bigger quickly.
I'm Mexican and I been in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Mexico City, the reason we don't have freeways is because sadly Mexican cities grow without any urbanism plan, and to resolve this we do have a lot of stroads( which I don't like) that can be quite wide like Lazaro Cardenas in Guadalajara that have 10 lanes, in this case in big intersections with a lot of traffic we just do overpasses and over the years we have stroads without any traffic lights.
Via Rapida in TJ is another example of this
So cool you included Mexican cities. Every time someone makes a video about city planning in North America it seems like they forget Mexico is here too lol
The 401 and gardener expressway are terrible. I’ve been wanting to take a train but it’s more expensive than even flying from the us.
Interesting thing about Kansas City is that it has so many freeways due to the population in the early 1900's being so spread out. Why was the population so spread out? Because KC used to have one of the most extensive streetcar networks in the world🤷🏻♂️
Oooooffff -- Streetcar Suburb video incoming!
The 401 is a monstrosity. What, 10-18 lanes and ALWAYS congested. The true poster child of not basing your urban planning around cars
Although Tucson is well below your 2 million cutoff it should get a honorable mention for being one of the largest if not the largest cities in the US that has made the decision rely almost entirely on surface streets.