It's funny how this also applies to Cities Skylines. Everything is still square based and square zones. So it makes building windy roads you see in European cities difficult since it just destroys how zoning works and you end up with everything having a gap, making it impossible to make a European city since all the buildings are wall to wall.
Cities skylines are even worse with Russia - not only it is non-grid (Russian cities grow in circles, kinda like a tree trunk), but it's mostly high and medium density, while Cities Skylines causes a lot of surburbanisation. It's hilarious, but at the same time, Soviet buildings are pretty square, so buliding Russia in Minecraft is easier than in Cities Skylines.
true i personaly found it really sad they didn't add a feture like with the indutrial zones, that you can just drag, draw and customize to the road like you want, i mean they are a big studio they should be able to program the game spawning a few houses that are not in a grid shape in.
One thing European cities have over American styled cities in Minecraft is the Render Distance, you can't drive or walk in a straight line for long before you encounter a building or change in layout. For my current city it's inspired by Cyberpunk design, so Tokyo as an example with grids but hardly ever at 90 degree angles plus lots of curves & tight intersections to compact the space
@@guerreiro943 grid cities can date as old as ancient Egypt but you’re right but Barcelona super grids are more so the exception & not what people would first assume when you broadly use the term European city layout
I really appreciate videos with chill commentary as opposed to those over-the-top, high energy ones. Also the effort to add subtitles. Stellar job, sir.
Man you don't have to be that concerned about mentioning anyone as bad or something. You say once or twice it's fine. You don't have to say again and again so you don't "offend" someone. Be chill mate.
Lisbon suffered one of the worst earthquakes in 1755 and the PM was appointed by the King to rebuild the city. He used grids and many "modern" techniques long before the car was a thing, so the city center around the Commerce Square is very easy to replicate while retaining an historical feeling. Sadly Portugal being a tiny country means it doesn't get much recognition from these projects. However... It is also called the City of Seven Hills, and after a really short walk from that area, you'll encounter really steep streets, streets that are just staircases with houses on each side, and plenty of tiny streets that can't fit any cars on, so even if you looked at Lisbon from above and thought "hey, that looks easy", it would immediately turn harsh... I once tried to replicate my small neighbourhood and completely gave up on its roads (it is somewhat grid-like because only recently it expanded, it stayed a tiny town for hundreds of years, but it's still really difficult), so from now on I try to build European cities on a grid... I know, I know, I'll probably burn in hell for that, but I have no skills to even draw a Minecraft circle 😂
A good example is the differences from Chicago and Amsterdam. You can also see the grids in Amsterdam. But the grid pattern is revolving around the city center and further expanding from there. Compared to Chicago which has the same angle for each grid pattern.
This is so relatable. I'm currently building London in minecraft, and I gotta say for myself, it's quite a challenge 😅. With London, you have to focus on the road layout. Most've the road layouts is curved, therefor it's kind off hard to build buildings. With the American one, it's not as hard since the road layout is just a simple. Curves are very minimum in America, so it's alot easier.
relating to the point you brought up on public transportation here in the US, what I have heard is that a lot of the big car manufacturers such as Ford bought up a lot of the railway systems and such and demolished them, so that people would have to buy their cars. not sure if this is 100% true, that's just what I've heard for cities like LA where the public transport is absolutely abysmal
@@NatoHJ Also with intensive marketing from automakers and the urban flight phenomenon, cars are now associated with 'freedom' in the US. In lots of american and canadian cities, public transit has a very bad connotation. As a result, their systems are massively underfunded and no one apart from those who have no choice uses them.
In my history of city building course, my teatchers says that LA was build as a decentrilised city because the surounding area had cheaper plots. Transport Companys, bought big chunks of land and connected them via tram -> those trams made a loss but that was offsetted by the high price of the land. Problem, when cars became more available the streets got to busy for trams to drive, with as result the largest tram network in the world at that time just got abbandoned. -> this resulted in forcing everyone in the subburbs to buy a car to with al the negative results we still see today (Sorry for my bad English not my native language)
@@jonas....... Sounds much more interesting than I thought. I assume the trams made a loss because of how wide US cities are because they don’t have land restrictions. Don’t worry about the English, I understood fully.
4:24 not specifically poor design, but intentional design, urban designers were mostly paid by car manufacturers and basically they would get more funding if they made people more reliant on cars, thus driving up their profits crazy high... and entire nation dependent on cars...
As a builder of such a city in Minecraft, can say that building an Eastern European/former USSR city is somewhere in between Western European and USA. It still requires curving roads, for big historic cities; public transportation in form of tramways, trolleybuses, etc. But as soon as you complete the city center, you just branch smaller streets from arterial avenues and create so called "microdistricts", which typically have the same buildings in the neighbourhood, some infrastructure (schools, hospitals, malls, etc). And these then can be just copy pasted throughout the city's area. P.S I live in a European grid city myself. It isn't that old though, it was founded in 1789 and was planned with a grid that changes angles after intersections with certain streets.
@@NatoHJ american city design is messed up in general, from extreme zoning laws (endless flat residential-only suburbs, small city center with skyscrapers) to the idea that streets are for cars first and people later
Grids are nice for walking, and for navigation. Being slow for cars is a feature, and it also gives a lot of alternate routes. I love Philadelphia for this
I once tried to recreate my home-town in Minecraft. Man, what a disaster that was. Then I tried to do a small American city. Felt like a breeze. I don't think it is hyperbolic to say North American cities are the easiest to build, because they've literally been (re)constructed to be easier to build. The Americans have people like Robert Moses to "thank" for that. In the past, loads of American (mainly east coast) cities were far more European in nature, just look at the old town of Québec City for an example of that. Large swaths of those cities have been destroyed in favour of large automobile-oriented infrastructure. Things like American sub-urban sprawl lead to loads of single-family housing that necessitated copy-pasting buildings and street-layouts for quick construction. All that comes together to form the modern American city. Make no mistake, many European cities have made similar mistakes in recent years (just look at what has been done to Brussels) but it's nice to see our European cities retain much of their alluring complexity.
You know much more than me. I’m glad I was correct on most of the video, I don’t want to be lying to the audience. If I had a choice to visit New York or London I would always go for the European option as I think they are so much more interesting to look around with their unpredictable layout and unique roads.
I've been building a city since late 2015 on ps4 and upgraded to ps5 6 months ago at first I came with an American design but since I watch the youtuber "NotJustBikes" a youtuber mostly comparing Dutch and American urban design and I'm also myself French I started deviating from American design while keeping the aspect of what is already built so I started replacing most of the traffic lights with roundabouts if there is enough space to do so, an extension of a tram line and replacing a four lane road to just a two lane sperated by the tramline, adding a bunch of speedbumps and replacing a lot of stop signs by yield signs. Its not a very big city especially being 9yo old but it became a hybrid European-American styled city with American styled skyscrapers on one spot and older European syled buildings on an other. Keep in mind that the city exists on a normal generated world with minimal terraforming apart from the skyscrapers district which I decided to make a land extensions towards the sea.
Good content, the topic is great. Use further shots of of cities in Minecraft and real cities. Put a bit more info and reach the 10-12 min mark for videos. That's the sweet spot. :)
Thank you for the support! I will definitely do that. Do you know where the best place to get city shots from without them being copywrited, because I probably shouldn't, but I screen record other people's videos. But thank you for the help it is very valuable to me : )
@@NatoHJ I understand. Although at some point you have to quit doing that but it's totally fine right now. Not even a issue. And unfortunately I don't know where to but couldn't you just search like copyright free shots or something and take those.🤔 Just manage it to 10mins and done. New sub from me ;) keep it up!! Hope you will get recognised just needs to be polished more but you are on right track 👍
Just because grids look repetitive, doesn't mean people get lost all the time. I could say the same for cities with random street patterns. Cities with grids are just as tedious to drive in as any other city. Once you get familiar with a grid city, they're very easy to navigate. Even if you're unfamiliar of the city, you can still pick a road and be certain of the direction that it's heading. Your assumption that most public transport users use the subway is wrong. Only the largest cities have subways and they often don't extend very far. Cities do have suburban bus routes, they're just unreliable and underfunded. There's a mentality here that people only use the bus when they can't afford a car. I'd say so few people use public transport over here is because it's perceived as for poor people and the service is unreliable and has poor coverage. An advantage of grids that you probably didn't know about is that the addresses are synced with each other. For example, in my city all buildings on a North-South road have an address from 500 to 4000. All buildings on an East-West road have an address from 5000 to 7500. This means that just by having an address, you know the direction of the road it's on and how far along the road it is. You could always build a European style city with a grid pattern. Barcelona, Glasgow and Turin already have grids.
Grids sound easy to navigate although when there are almost thousands of them in one city, surely they will become difficult to get around. It’s also boring in terms of urban design. I am thankful for the public transport in the UK : ) I also see that they are exceptions to the classic styles of the two continents but I was just generally comparing the two areas. Thanks for the information though!
You can have an interesting, high-quality, and walkable city even if it follows a grid layout. Using your example of San Francisco; it's a grid city, yet it stands out as a unique and attractive city with excellent public transit and pedestrian infrastructure.
@@NatoHJI feel like this is very hypocritical though for no reason. Bc most Europeans cities are not iconic bc they have amazing road layouts and how walkable they are. You can’t belittle American cities then say European cities are this because of that. The OP gave an amazing example. San Francisco is NOT iconic bc of its buildings and the tourist attractions. That was very respectfully ignorant. San Fran is a big LGBTQ+ hub bc it has a lot of history and culture for it there. Which relates to the iconicness of the city. It’s also very unique to other American cities bc of the hilly land and how the city flows with it. Which many architecture and geography nerds love to research. Along with the transportation that many other American cities lack. Not to mention the bay etc. The topic wasn’t how pretty it is or how pleasing it is. Yet your response is “it’s boring, the bridge is why it’s iconic” like you can clearly see what I’m talking about. I am so tired of people trashing American cities just to hype up European cities… like they’re perfect. It’s not the matter of opinion/fact (because I could care less if you like this or hate that) but it’s the fact I see other Europeans trash their own horrible cities and nuanced icks yet become hypocritical and belittle everything else vice versa. Someone just gave you examples of how San Fran is walkable, transportation this and that… then you belittle it by saying it’s only known for buildings, the bridge, and it’s freaking “boring.” LMFAOO. Same can be said for London, Rome, Monaco, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, etc. yet I bet you 100 times out off 100 y’all wouldn’t belittle them to just being iconic bc of their buildings and landmarks. But yes they’re so ironic bc of their road layouts. (Obviously Venice is bc that’s the iconic part of the darn place) I love you but you’re falling into the hypocritical European bias bs. Don’t be a hypocrite smh. Much love respectfully.
I wish cities would extend their public transportation networks without doing shit like closing existing roads to personal vehicles or charging fees for existing somewhere inside of a vehicle like london has done
Woah this is a super well made video! Ive looked on your channel and you have inspired me to start building minecraft cities (Or at least try) Thank you so much!
Nice to see someone give credits to some popular places in the UK ❤ I use us and any other amazing buildings and I use uk roads 😊 People who build us builds they hate uk it’s kinda sad we got amazing greenery and Mountains and a lot of beaches 😞 And amazing video nato ❤
Thank you for the support! I think that the UK is a lovely country and it doesn't get its recognition from Americans sometimes. I'm glad we share the same views.
Well, I mean, the US (ignoring the suburbs, cuz noone wants to build those) is basically just a bunch of blocks. Also worth mentioning that european houses are generally more detailed and are thus harder to build with the large blocks in minecraft.
European cities have so much more character than American cities. And no I’m not talking about history, I’m talking about how the roads are different and there’s a tonne of pedestrianisation
2:41 The reason why America uses gridded cities has to do with how land claiming works in the US. Lets start with the Grid not being a rule in America and not being unseen in Europe. A list of American and European Cities that don't follow the rule off the top of my head is Nashville, Boston, Barcelona, Parts of Madrid, Mannheim, The Hague. The history of Gridded cities in the US however should be noted, as a lot of the shape of older American gridded cities like Chicago and New York are based on old Land Claiming system then shifted. In the onset of the car in the 1920s people were afraid that cars were going to go out and kill people. They designed superblocks to make driving through parts of the grid hell to deter traffic. I will say that Gridded cities could pose a challenge, look at Chicago which has several areas where smaller grids were obviously built in a different way and had to be reincorporated into the city. 4:24 Another amendment, the reason why public transit in the US is shit is because of policies in the 1940s and beyond that were designed with the car in mind. Digging up public transit infrastructure and building out large highways. I do also want to state I am doing this comment cause I thought it would be interesting to point out not that I feel your video is bad.
Wow! Thanks for the information. I’m not an American myself so it’s very cool to read this about the history of the USA. If I were to go back and do this video again I would definitely include all of this. 👍
Grids aren't inherently tedious, it depends on what they're filled with. I do gotta say that San Francisco is a beautiful place, full of gorgeous architecture as well as lots of hills, some of which are difficult to see from above on the map which makes it look flatter than it really is. Plenty of landmarks and things to take in, not at all boring to walk around and you won't get lost, as the streets here mostly do a good job of differentiating themselves from one another. Of course it all looks very similar from above, but we're not birds. I will grant you that in general, European cities are way better than US cities, as we have really fallen victim to shitty car-centric design in most of our urban areas. But I gotta defend the city where I live lol.
In our defense, European cities were developed of hundreds to almost thousands of years and were designed for horses. Meanwhile most U.S. cities (especially ones built on the west coast) only had decades to be developed and thousands of immigrants were flocking to the east and west coast cities yearly, causing them to have to develop fast, it just so happened that straight grid patterns were very convenient for trams, horse drawn carriages, and eventually cars.
Grids are very easy to travel around after a day or two of exploration and Baltimore is not as griddy as other cities and our buildings are high and take more time like yall can copy and paste yours like Paris
I wouldn’t say that you can copy and paste any buildings with out them looking bad. But I think that European cities are more challenging to build because of the roads and I understand that some US cities aren’t as griddy but they are still more geometric than most EU cities.
@@NatoHJ grinds are better imo new york is super iconic and its a old simple gride layout that you can learn all the burrows and blocks withina couple of days of walking around thats why people love the city......
@@NatoHJGrids are much easier to navigate and much easier to incorporate public transportation. Looking at European streets, they look messy, unorganized and difficult to navigate (they are) with the exception of Barcelona, which is a grid city and arguably one of the best designed cities in the world.
@@adjudicator4766 that is true but I still believe that the uniqueness of European cities makes them much more interesting. The US suburbs don’t integrate public transport because they are so wide and doing so would be useless because everyone uses cars anyway.
the public transportation argument has literally nothing to do with our roads. New York, a city made almost entirely out of grids, has the best public transportation in the country. It is roughly the same size as London, but has many more public transportation users. The NYC subway is the largest in the world by number of stops, and the eighth largest by ridership. The grids were mostly made before the advent of the car, with Manhattan's (which is the island which holds New York's downtown) grid being planned in 1811. Many other cities made grids as America urbanized. Until the 50's, most of these cities had streetcars, but they were phased out as the allure of the futuristic automobile gripped the nation.
4:22 not really, it was purpose-built to be car-reliant. At the beginning of the 20th century, the USA had the most advanced public transport system in the world. It was completely torn down between the 50's and 60's.
@@NatoHJ You can stil find fragments of the old metro lines (especially abandoned tunnels) in cities like Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, and much of it is still intact in NYC. But other than that, almost nothing is left sadly.
2:20 its not unique. Thats perfectly normal. Us grid system is very weird and its only place on earth where it is used. I think manhattan will be the only exception because its an island and its small do grid is ok there but in huge cities like chicago, detroit, la or las vegas its pointless to have one. Endless repeiting patterns, boring style of living there and many more args
You won’t find any repeating patterns in London so I would say that it is unique. Of course there will be some US cities that don’t use the grid but the vast majority of them do.
I don't think it's the only one in the world, but we also have these recurring patterns in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I think we also use the American system in road and building planning networks.
I feel bad for the people living in these labyrinthine european cities, I feel like THEY probably get lost all the time because their city isn't laid out in an easily navigable grid. Also American suburbs, which usually feature more labyrinthine streets than grided ones, are way worse in terms of everything looking copy-pasted than in the inner cities. Many US cities have labyrinthine layouts too, even most of the grided cities have parts that confusingly disrupt the grid, and I don't like that here either. I would imagine it would be more tedious to drive in a non-grided city where you might get to go all of half a mile before you have to turn onto another winding road. Grided cities should use more roundabouts though. Having to stop every half a mile for someone else to go before you is just as bad.
@@NatoHJ I think it really depends on what you grow up with. If you talk to someone that grew up in a grid city like NYC, they'll say that grids are easier to navigate, since there are only so many directions one can go, whilst if you talk to someone that grew up in a non grid city like London or even Boston, then they'll say that grid cities are harder to navigate due to their homogeneity.
seriously how do people life in chigago, i go mentaly insane from even seing the conrect hell without any trees or parks anywhere, and just road after road after road, litearly my Hell
The USA grids were designed that way for maximum density and land use I live in America and I never get lost we have street names and no building is the same also New York State is bigger than the uk so it’s a lot more difficult for bigger countries to have massive transit when it’s easier to just fly or drive also a lot of Americans prefer to drive but Europe roads are just as efficient tho because they started off going somewhere like to a school and they take the path of least resistance while a lot of American cities have grids over hills instead of zigzag Roads but I think a city is pretty boring when it’s all just one big grid unlike with a lot of New York City where you have grids colliding with each other but Europe roads are more messy but I personally like the messy sometimes cluttered look of it especially if it’s sustainable and not dystopian
Oh I think you misunderstood him! He's from the UK and most of the video was him apologising to US viewers not wanting them to think he was saying their cities were bad just because he was saying their roads were bad, the part about Europe is that our roads are just hard to replicate using straight lines because they're, well, curved 😅
It's all because of _when_ the cities were built. The European cities can be seen on the East Coast in the "New England" states. Most of the US cities were built after the industrial revolution. You call it "boring" (down vote) while we call it logical. Maybe the _European_ cities are boring and that's why Minecrafters (including those who live in Europe) don't build them that way. Why aren't you comparing European cities to Asian cities? Minecraft blocks are literally the European medieval age style. Not many "cities" during that time.
The lack of public transit is not due to poor planning. The ability to travel is considered a personal freedom. relying on the government to provide a means of travel for you is a dangerous proposition if the government suddenly decides they don't want you to have it anymore. They also have a reputation for being poorly maintained. You have to remember that the United States was formed by people who hated their government Because they're government abandoned them and then only came back when they started to become profitable bringing only draconian restrictions, stripping their personal freedoms and robbing them of the fruits of their labor. Americans used to Lothar the idea of relying on the government for anything. Pretty good video otherwise. Work on removing the mouth noises and this would be 10/10
That's how an American would say. It's like saying I don't believe and don't want any police. We all should have our own guns. You don't understand the greatness of public transport. It's cheap, it's better, it's organised and better for time managing, good for the country and good for environment in comparison. The reason USA is not that great in public transport cause the USA is a deeply private car oriented country. If I am not wrong car in USA is sort of a must have right?
@nmdreams8620 There are cities with public transportation, and they're known to be dirty, poorly maintained, and dangerous. Mostly, poor people here use public transit or people in big cities where traffic jams are a big problem. Yes, a car is a must-have. We have a much larger country than any of the European countries saved for Russia. Take England, for example, England is the size of, like, Texas. There's quite a lot of empty space. It would not be feasible or practical to do a way with private car ownership. Remember, the only thing foreigners ever see of America are big cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Houston, etc. 90% of our country is small towns and suburbs, not big cities. The average American citizen is expected to be more mature and self-sufficient than the average citizen of any other country. Every other government sees their citizens as unruly children.
that is the biggest europoor cope i've ever heard because it's not even true. is this how delusional you get when all your defense is handled by a foreign power?@@NatoHJ
Pin me so I can get the juice
I hope you get the juice :)
I'M HERE!
@@highqualityorangejuice420no way
It's funny how this also applies to Cities Skylines. Everything is still square based and square zones. So it makes building windy roads you see in European cities difficult since it just destroys how zoning works and you end up with everything having a gap, making it impossible to make a European city since all the buildings are wall to wall.
Yeah that’s very true
Cities skylines are even worse with Russia - not only it is non-grid (Russian cities grow in circles, kinda like a tree trunk), but it's mostly high and medium density, while Cities Skylines causes a lot of surburbanisation.
It's hilarious, but at the same time, Soviet buildings are pretty square, so buliding Russia in Minecraft is easier than in Cities Skylines.
Basically, without mod on Cities Skylines, you can't build any realistic European cities or Japanese.
true i personaly found it really sad they didn't add a feture like with the indutrial zones, that you can just drag, draw and customize to the road like you want, i mean they are a big studio they should be able to program the game spawning a few houses that are not in a grid shape in.
One thing European cities have over American styled cities in Minecraft is the Render Distance, you can't drive or walk in a straight line for long before you encounter a building or change in layout. For my current city it's inspired by Cyberpunk design, so Tokyo as an example with grids but hardly ever at 90 degree angles plus lots of curves & tight intersections to compact the space
Yeah that is very true. I don't like how boring grids are.
Plenty of European cities have grids too though. Check out Barcelona.
@@guerreiro943 But generally, Europe doesn't have many of them.
@@guerreiro943 grid cities can date as old as ancient Egypt but you’re right but Barcelona super grids are more so the exception & not what people would first assume when you broadly use the term European city layout
I really appreciate videos with chill commentary as opposed to those over-the-top, high energy ones. Also the effort to add subtitles. Stellar job, sir.
Thank you for the feedback and support mate 👍
I try and be a bit more chilled and relaxed and not shout at the microphone haha.
Its easy to build american cities, because half of the city is devoted to highways and parking lots 😂
Very true haha 😂
Extreme over exaggeration
Man you don't have to be that concerned about mentioning anyone as bad or something. You say once or twice it's fine. You don't have to say again and again so you don't "offend" someone. Be chill mate.
haha, I just don't want to be hated.
@@NatoHJ 🙌
@@NatoHJyou cant make everyone happy
@@powercore9277 I try my best to haha
Lmfao not if you’re being hypocritical
Lisbon suffered one of the worst earthquakes in 1755 and the PM was appointed by the King to rebuild the city. He used grids and many "modern" techniques long before the car was a thing, so the city center around the Commerce Square is very easy to replicate while retaining an historical feeling. Sadly Portugal being a tiny country means it doesn't get much recognition from these projects.
However... It is also called the City of Seven Hills, and after a really short walk from that area, you'll encounter really steep streets, streets that are just staircases with houses on each side, and plenty of tiny streets that can't fit any cars on, so even if you looked at Lisbon from above and thought "hey, that looks easy", it would immediately turn harsh...
I once tried to replicate my small neighbourhood and completely gave up on its roads (it is somewhat grid-like because only recently it expanded, it stayed a tiny town for hundreds of years, but it's still really difficult), so from now on I try to build European cities on a grid... I know, I know, I'll probably burn in hell for that, but I have no skills to even draw a Minecraft circle 😂
Sounds very impressive. Grids can be complicated however I do like how organic European cities are.
A good example is the differences from Chicago and Amsterdam.
You can also see the grids in Amsterdam. But the grid pattern is revolving around the city center and further expanding from there. Compared to Chicago which has the same angle for each grid pattern.
Spot on 👍
This is so relatable. I'm currently building London in minecraft, and I gotta say for myself, it's quite a challenge 😅. With London, you have to focus on the road layout. Most've the road layouts is curved, therefor it's kind off hard to build buildings. With the American one, it's not as hard since the road layout is just a simple. Curves are very minimum in America, so it's alot easier.
Yeah 100%
You could also use germany as a great example for this video with its large railway network and bus network
Yes, if anything I think Germany is more advanced than the UK. An amazing country.
relating to the point you brought up on public transportation here in the US, what I have heard is that a lot of the big car manufacturers such as Ford bought up a lot of the railway systems and such and demolished them, so that people would have to buy their cars. not sure if this is 100% true, that's just what I've heard for cities like LA where the public transport is absolutely abysmal
That’s very interesting. Their plan certainly worked because there are so many cars
@@NatoHJ Also with intensive marketing from automakers and the urban flight phenomenon, cars are now associated with 'freedom' in the US. In lots of american and canadian cities, public transit has a very bad connotation. As a result, their systems are massively underfunded and no one apart from those who have no choice uses them.
@@binoutech Goodness me I didn't know this! So I guess that explains it!
In my history of city building course, my teatchers says that LA was build as a decentrilised city because the surounding area had cheaper plots. Transport Companys, bought big chunks of land and connected them via tram -> those trams made a loss but that was offsetted by the high price of the land. Problem, when cars became more available the streets got to busy for trams to drive, with as result the largest tram network in the world at that time just got abbandoned. -> this resulted in forcing everyone in the subburbs to buy a car to with al the negative results we still see today
(Sorry for my bad English not my native language)
@@jonas....... Sounds much more interesting than I thought. I assume the trams made a loss because of how wide US cities are because they don’t have land restrictions. Don’t worry about the English, I understood fully.
4:24 not specifically poor design, but intentional design, urban designers were mostly paid by car manufacturers and basically they would get more funding if they made people more reliant on cars, thus driving up their profits crazy high... and entire nation dependent on cars...
Ok, good to know 👍 It's kind of a shame however because using only cars makes the cities a little less attractive for residents.
As a builder of such a city in Minecraft, can say that building an Eastern European/former USSR city is somewhere in between Western European and USA. It still requires curving roads, for big historic cities; public transportation in form of tramways, trolleybuses, etc. But as soon as you complete the city center, you just branch smaller streets from arterial avenues and create so called "microdistricts", which typically have the same buildings in the neighbourhood, some infrastructure (schools, hospitals, malls, etc). And these then can be just copy pasted throughout the city's area.
P.S I live in a European grid city myself. It isn't that old though, it was founded in 1789 and was planned with a grid that changes angles after intersections with certain streets.
Wow, very informative thank you 👍
You can have both a grid and walkable city, they not exclusive.
That is true although for some reason you often find that there aren’t any pavements in American suburbs
@@NatoHJ american city design is messed up in general, from extreme zoning laws (endless flat residential-only suburbs, small city center with skyscrapers) to the idea that streets are for cars first and people later
Grids are nice for walking, and for navigation. Being slow for cars is a feature, and it also gives a lot of alternate routes. I love Philadelphia for this
@@NatoHJthere are sidewalks everywhere in the us idk what you are talking about
I once tried to recreate my home-town in Minecraft. Man, what a disaster that was. Then I tried to do a small American city. Felt like a breeze.
I don't think it is hyperbolic to say North American cities are the easiest to build, because they've literally been (re)constructed to be easier to build. The Americans have people like Robert Moses to "thank" for that. In the past, loads of American (mainly east coast) cities were far more European in nature, just look at the old town of Québec City for an example of that. Large swaths of those cities have been destroyed in favour of large automobile-oriented infrastructure. Things like American sub-urban sprawl lead to loads of single-family housing that necessitated copy-pasting buildings and street-layouts for quick construction.
All that comes together to form the modern American city.
Make no mistake, many European cities have made similar mistakes in recent years (just look at what has been done to Brussels) but it's nice to see our European cities retain much of their alluring complexity.
You know much more than me. I’m glad I was correct on most of the video, I don’t want to be lying to the audience.
If I had a choice to visit New York or London I would always go for the European option as I think they are so much more interesting to look around with their unpredictable layout and unique roads.
I've been building a city since late 2015 on ps4 and upgraded to ps5 6 months ago at first I came with an American design but since I watch the youtuber "NotJustBikes" a youtuber mostly comparing Dutch and American urban design and I'm also myself French I started deviating from American design while keeping the aspect of what is already built so I started replacing most of the traffic lights with roundabouts if there is enough space to do so, an extension of a tram line and replacing a four lane road to just a two lane sperated by the tramline, adding a bunch of speedbumps and replacing a lot of stop signs by yield signs. Its not a very big city especially being 9yo old but it became a hybrid European-American styled city with American styled skyscrapers on one spot and older European syled buildings on an other. Keep in mind that the city exists on a normal generated world with minimal terraforming apart from the skyscrapers district which I decided to make a land extensions towards the sea.
Sounds really cool. I’m glad you have experimented with European style, it certainly brings a whole new challenge.
Good content, the topic is great. Use further shots of of cities in Minecraft and real cities. Put a bit more info and reach the 10-12 min mark for videos. That's the sweet spot. :)
Thank you for the support! I will definitely do that. Do you know where the best place to get city shots from without them being copywrited, because I probably shouldn't, but I screen record other people's videos. But thank you for the help it is very valuable to me : )
@@NatoHJ I understand. Although at some point you have to quit doing that but it's totally fine right now. Not even a issue. And unfortunately I don't know where to but couldn't you just search like copyright free shots or something and take those.🤔 Just manage it to 10mins and done. New sub from me ;) keep it up!! Hope you will get recognised just needs to be polished more but you are on right track 👍
@@nmdreams86ok thank you very much mate ❤
Just because grids look repetitive, doesn't mean people get lost all the time. I could say the same for cities with random street patterns. Cities with grids are just as tedious to drive in as any other city. Once you get familiar with a grid city, they're very easy to navigate. Even if you're unfamiliar of the city, you can still pick a road and be certain of the direction that it's heading.
Your assumption that most public transport users use the subway is wrong. Only the largest cities have subways and they often don't extend very far. Cities do have suburban bus routes, they're just unreliable and underfunded. There's a mentality here that people only use the bus when they can't afford a car. I'd say so few people use public transport over here is because it's perceived as for poor people and the service is unreliable and has poor coverage.
An advantage of grids that you probably didn't know about is that the addresses are synced with each other. For example, in my city all buildings on a North-South road have an address from 500 to 4000. All buildings on an East-West road have an address from 5000 to 7500. This means that just by having an address, you know the direction of the road it's on and how far along the road it is.
You could always build a European style city with a grid pattern. Barcelona, Glasgow and Turin already have grids.
Grids sound easy to navigate although when there are almost thousands of them in one city, surely they will become difficult to get around. It’s also boring in terms of urban design.
I am thankful for the public transport in the UK : )
I also see that they are exceptions to the classic styles of the two continents but I was just generally comparing the two areas.
Thanks for the information though!
European cities is just better...
I wish you were a big RUclipsr right now, but I think you might be able to get there eventually. Good luck.
Thank you mate! I hope so too
this video had been in my recommended for a week now! just now watched it, and am chuffed that i did
You can have an interesting, high-quality, and walkable city even if it follows a grid layout. Using your example of San Francisco; it's a grid city, yet it stands out as a unique and attractive city with excellent public transit and pedestrian infrastructure.
However it is still very repetitive and boring. It’s iconic because of the buildings and obviously the bridge, not the road structure.
@@NatoHJI feel like this is very hypocritical though for no reason. Bc most Europeans cities are not iconic bc they have amazing road layouts and how walkable they are. You can’t belittle American cities then say European cities are this because of that. The OP gave an amazing example. San Francisco is NOT iconic bc of its buildings and the tourist attractions. That was very respectfully ignorant. San Fran is a big LGBTQ+ hub bc it has a lot of history and culture for it there. Which relates to the iconicness of the city. It’s also very unique to other American cities bc of the hilly land and how the city flows with it. Which many architecture and geography nerds love to research. Along with the transportation that many other American cities lack. Not to mention the bay etc. The topic wasn’t how pretty it is or how pleasing it is. Yet your response is “it’s boring, the bridge is why it’s iconic” like you can clearly see what I’m talking about.
I am so tired of people trashing American cities just to hype up European cities… like they’re perfect. It’s not the matter of opinion/fact (because I could care less if you like this or hate that) but it’s the fact I see other Europeans trash their own horrible cities and nuanced icks yet become hypocritical and belittle everything else vice versa. Someone just gave you examples of how San Fran is walkable, transportation this and that… then you belittle it by saying it’s only known for buildings, the bridge, and it’s freaking “boring.” LMFAOO. Same can be said for London, Rome, Monaco, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, etc. yet I bet you 100 times out off 100 y’all wouldn’t belittle them to just being iconic bc of their buildings and landmarks. But yes they’re so ironic bc of their road layouts. (Obviously Venice is bc that’s the iconic part of the darn place) I love you but you’re falling into the hypocritical European bias bs. Don’t be a hypocrite smh. Much love respectfully.
I wish cities would extend their public transportation networks without doing shit like closing existing roads to personal vehicles or charging fees for existing somewhere inside of a vehicle like london has done
Yeah, the London Underground is literally the best thing to exist
Woah this is a super well made video! Ive looked on your channel and you have inspired me to start building minecraft cities (Or at least try) Thank you so much!
I'm glad you have started! Thank you for the support.
Nice to see someone give credits to some popular places in the UK ❤
I use us and any other amazing buildings and I use uk roads 😊
People who build us builds they hate uk it’s kinda sad we got amazing greenery and Mountains and a lot of beaches 😞
And amazing video nato ❤
Thank you for the support! I think that the UK is a lovely country and it doesn't get its recognition from Americans sometimes. I'm glad we share the same views.
@@NatoHJ 💯
Brazil is both grid and irregular roads
A good mix.
Well, I mean, the US (ignoring the suburbs, cuz noone wants to build those) is basically just a bunch of blocks. Also worth mentioning that european houses are generally more detailed and are thus harder to build with the large blocks in minecraft.
Yes you’re right. I love the German suburbs they are so tranquil and pretty.
European cities have so much more character than American cities. And no I’m not talking about history, I’m talking about how the roads are different and there’s a tonne of pedestrianisation
5:06 damn and keeping in mind that we have one of the worst rail in Europe
British rail is really good though!
As an SF Bay Area native, yeah it IS horrible to dive around in and I DO constantly get lost.
It seems so repetitive 😂
Build the earth when actual urbanism shows up
4:20 that is actually the result of the automobile industry lobbying
I’ve heard lots about that since making this video. It sounds much more interesting than my assumption that turned out not be true.
great vid bro, love the Teesside reference lol
Teeside just for you mate
really good video, i thought i was watching someone with over 100k subs for a minute
Thank you! I spent a long time making this video. Hopefully one day.
2:41 The reason why America uses gridded cities has to do with how land claiming works in the US. Lets start with the Grid not being a rule in America and not being unseen in Europe. A list of American and European Cities that don't follow the rule off the top of my head is Nashville, Boston, Barcelona, Parts of Madrid, Mannheim, The Hague.
The history of Gridded cities in the US however should be noted, as a lot of the shape of older American gridded cities like Chicago and New York are based on old Land Claiming system then shifted. In the onset of the car in the 1920s people were afraid that cars were going to go out and kill people. They designed superblocks to make driving through parts of the grid hell to deter traffic.
I will say that Gridded cities could pose a challenge, look at Chicago which has several areas where smaller grids were obviously built in a different way and had to be reincorporated into the city.
4:24 Another amendment, the reason why public transit in the US is shit is because of policies in the 1940s and beyond that were designed with the car in mind. Digging up public transit infrastructure and building out large highways.
I do also want to state I am doing this comment cause I thought it would be interesting to point out not that I feel your video is bad.
Wow! Thanks for the information. I’m not an American myself so it’s very cool to read this about the history of the USA. If I were to go back and do this video again I would definitely include all of this. 👍
The road structure doesn’t apply to every city since for example Madrid is also a grid city
There are always exceptions but mostly in Europe, cities with grids aren’t that common.
Nice video, loved your work and the effort put in, you got yourself a new subscriber
Thank you very much!
Grids aren't inherently tedious, it depends on what they're filled with. I do gotta say that San Francisco is a beautiful place, full of gorgeous architecture as well as lots of hills, some of which are difficult to see from above on the map which makes it look flatter than it really is. Plenty of landmarks and things to take in, not at all boring to walk around and you won't get lost, as the streets here mostly do a good job of differentiating themselves from one another. Of course it all looks very similar from above, but we're not birds. I will grant you that in general, European cities are way better than US cities, as we have really fallen victim to shitty car-centric design in most of our urban areas. But I gotta defend the city where I live lol.
Fair play. It’s often that in minecraft people build really repetitive cities unlike real life.
Building in minecraft is a challenge
Agreed 😂
This video was awesome, god job man!
Thank you! I will start posting again in the new year
In our defense, European cities were developed of hundreds to almost thousands of years and were designed for horses. Meanwhile most U.S. cities (especially ones built on the west coast) only had decades to be developed and thousands of immigrants were flocking to the east and west coast cities yearly, causing them to have to develop fast, it just so happened that straight grid patterns were very convenient for trams, horse drawn carriages, and eventually cars.
Yeah I mean it’s the same with most things urban. It all comes down to the history of the area.
There are many types of cities not only american and euoropean
Indeed but for the purpose of this video I chose to use American and European
@@NatoHJ i’m planing to build European city but with modern skyscraper like in the asian or north american cities
@@محمدالقحطاني-س1ق4ف good luck, sounds good
W video, keep up the good work!
Cheers mate!
It is kinda hard to replicate Paris 😭, I will finish it one day!
I can’t think of many Minecraft cities which are completed.
Grids are very easy to travel around after a day or two of exploration and Baltimore is not as griddy as other cities and our buildings are high and take more time like yall can copy and paste yours like Paris
I wouldn’t say that you can copy and paste any buildings with out them looking bad. But I think that European cities are more challenging to build because of the roads and I understand that some US cities aren’t as griddy but they are still more geometric than most EU cities.
@@NatoHJ grinds are better imo new york is super iconic and its a old simple gride layout that you can learn all the burrows and blocks withina couple of days of walking around thats why people love the city......
@@TiggaTrey they aren’t very exciting in terms of originality however. And they get repetitive very quickly
0:30 STOCKTON MENTIONED 📣📣📣 WHAT THE FUCK IS A HOME SECRETARY 🙏🙏
😂😂
This only goes for old, like 800>yrs, huge cities. Looking at all the cities around me (
Grids are so common in the US and o think they are kinda ugly too
@@NatoHJGrids are much easier to navigate and much easier to incorporate public transportation. Looking at European streets, they look messy, unorganized and difficult to navigate (they are) with the exception of Barcelona, which is a grid city and arguably one of the best designed cities in the world.
@@adjudicator4766 that is true but I still believe that the uniqueness of European cities makes them much more interesting. The US suburbs don’t integrate public transport because they are so wide and doing so would be useless because everyone uses cars anyway.
zoning laws were made with the high capital in mind, from the housing development and automobile industries and even segregationism.
Yeah it’s all to do with the history and I guess the USA hasn’t had the best one
YOU WANNA GO BRUV WHY YOU DISSING ME LIKE THAT BLUD IM A SHANK YOU IN MINECRAFT FOR THAT MATE
the public transportation argument has literally nothing to do with our roads. New York, a city made almost entirely out of grids, has the best public transportation in the country. It is roughly the same size as London, but has many more public transportation users. The NYC subway is the largest in the world by number of stops, and the eighth largest by ridership. The grids were mostly made before the advent of the car, with Manhattan's (which is the island which holds New York's downtown) grid being planned in 1811. Many other cities made grids as America urbanized. Until the 50's, most of these cities had streetcars, but they were phased out as the allure of the futuristic automobile gripped the nation.
It may have the subway but almost all the other cities in the USA do not and they don’t have things like buses and trains.
lol uhhh shoutout to detroit in the first 3 seconds fire up
😂
I'm so cringing right now... 5:06 - ruclips.net/video/REni8Oi1QJQ/видео.html
But look how it haa changed. It is no longer like that.
4:22
not really, it was purpose-built to be car-reliant.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the USA had the most advanced public transport system in the world. It was completely torn down between the 50's and 60's.
I wish it still stood today. If so USA’s cities would be much better.
@@NatoHJ You can stil find fragments of the old metro lines (especially abandoned tunnels) in cities like Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, and much of it is still intact in NYC. But other than that, almost nothing is left sadly.
Great video! I wanted to ask Andea's Dynmap is available in public.
beta.cubed.community/
Thank you! ^ That is the Dynmap ^
bruh why does san fransisco look like my suburban area in cities skylines 💀
😂😂
Barcelona: *allow me to introduce myself*
Barcelona is obviously an exception, however only the real centre of the city uses grids. It’s not all the way throughout like most American cities.
2:20 its not unique. Thats perfectly normal. Us grid system is very weird and its only place on earth where it is used. I think manhattan will be the only exception because its an island and its small do grid is ok there but in huge cities like chicago, detroit, la or las vegas its pointless to have one. Endless repeiting patterns, boring style of living there and many more args
You won’t find any repeating patterns in London so I would say that it is unique. Of course there will be some US cities that don’t use the grid but the vast majority of them do.
I don't think it's the only one in the world, but we also have these recurring patterns in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I think we also use the American system in road and building planning networks.
Love the vid bro ❤
thanks josh
It's weird to see an european brag about how inefficient their roads are
I would say our roads are more efficient with roundabouts rather than intersections
American road😊
European road😢
South/ south East Asian road💀
that doge challenger tho
We call highways highways lol
He cook again 😊
I feel bad for the people living in these labyrinthine european cities, I feel like THEY probably get lost all the time because their city isn't laid out in an easily navigable grid. Also American suburbs, which usually feature more labyrinthine streets than grided ones, are way worse in terms of everything looking copy-pasted than in the inner cities. Many US cities have labyrinthine layouts too, even most of the grided cities have parts that confusingly disrupt the grid, and I don't like that here either. I would imagine it would be more tedious to drive in a non-grided city where you might get to go all of half a mile before you have to turn onto another winding road. Grided cities should use more roundabouts though. Having to stop every half a mile for someone else to go before you is just as bad.
I think that European designers have done a very good job of making the roads into easily navigable places.
@@NatoHJ I think it really depends on what you grow up with. If you talk to someone that grew up in a grid city like NYC, they'll say that grids are easier to navigate, since there are only so many directions one can go, whilst if you talk to someone that grew up in a non grid city like London or even Boston, then they'll say that grid cities are harder to navigate due to their homogeneity.
@@realAlexChoi Yes I suppose that is a big factor although I did try and stay unbiased in the video, not sure if it came through however 😂
lol I just noticed my city was in the video W
Of course 👍
seriously how do people life in chigago, i go mentaly insane from even seing the conrect hell without any trees or parks anywhere, and just road after road after road, litearly my Hell
Too many grids!!!
Oh hey next make a GTA sv with this map :o
Oh my word that would be so difficult!
*TRY HONG KONG IT'S THE HARDEST*
Too many skyscrapers 😰
not to throw accusations or anything, but was the script or voice over done by ai? it's getting increasingly hard to tell nowadays
I wrote it on a notepad beforehand but I didn’t use AI.
what's the software being used at 1:26
Dymap - there’s many places to download it, here’s one of them dev.bukkit.org/projects/dynmap
And thats why European Cities are better
Latam Cities💀☠️
Show this man Not Just Bikes
I’ve tried to do a similar video whilst incorporating minecraft
I build Asian style road layout
The USA grids were designed that way for maximum density and land use I live in America and I never get lost we have street names and no building is the same also New York State is bigger than the uk so it’s a lot more difficult for bigger countries to have massive transit when it’s easier to just fly or drive also a lot of Americans prefer to drive but Europe roads are just as efficient tho because they started off going somewhere like to a school and they take the path of least resistance while a lot of American cities have grids over hills instead of zigzag Roads but I think a city is pretty boring when it’s all just one big grid unlike with a lot of New York City where you have grids colliding with each other but Europe roads are more messy but I personally like the messy sometimes cluttered look of it especially if it’s sustainable and not dystopian
There’s a lot to take in there but I value that feedback as I have never been to the USA so it’s always best to here from a true citizen. 👍
Detroit 🥵🥵🥵🥵
I made sure to include it I know it’s your favourite
That’s cool
Both those citys don’t got freedom like merica
God gives us free will though
Hey
Detroit? Amazing? no.
I’ve never been there but it look fairly good.
Witch is ez
I haven’t looked at Asian roads. Is it similar to USA?
Why you americans say bad things over europea I,m from there
Oh I think you misunderstood him! He's from the UK and most of the video was him apologising to US viewers not wanting them to think he was saying their cities were bad just because he was saying their roads were bad, the part about Europe is that our roads are just hard to replicate using straight lines because they're, well, curved 😅
It's all because of _when_ the cities were built. The European cities can be seen on the East Coast in the "New England" states. Most of the US cities were built after the industrial revolution. You call it "boring" (down vote) while we call it logical. Maybe the _European_ cities are boring and that's why Minecrafters (including those who live in Europe) don't build them that way. Why aren't you comparing European cities to Asian cities?
Minecraft blocks are literally the European medieval age style. Not many "cities" during that time.
European cities are generally older and that’s why they are more unique, I wouldn’t say this makes them boring, I would say the opposite.
Te pagaron por hacer eso yo me muero
I’m European so I was very happy to make this video. I wish I was payed however lol
The lack of public transit is not due to poor planning. The ability to travel is considered a personal freedom. relying on the government to provide a means of travel for you is a dangerous proposition if the government suddenly decides they don't want you to have it anymore. They also have a reputation for being poorly maintained. You have to remember that the United States was formed by people who hated their government Because they're government abandoned them and then only came back when they started to become profitable bringing only draconian restrictions, stripping their personal freedoms and robbing them of the fruits of their labor. Americans used to Lothar the idea of relying on the government for anything. Pretty good video otherwise. Work on removing the mouth noises and this would be 10/10
Ok thanks for the feedback. I’m not an American so I wasn’t 100% sure on the facts. I will try my best to get rid of the noises haha.
@NatoHJ you're doing good. Keep it up, bro.
That's how an American would say. It's like saying I don't believe and don't want any police. We all should have our own guns. You don't understand the greatness of public transport. It's cheap, it's better, it's organised and better for time managing, good for the country and good for environment in comparison. The reason USA is not that great in public transport cause the USA is a deeply private car oriented country. If I am not wrong car in USA is sort of a must have right?
@nmdreams8620 There are cities with public transportation, and they're known to be dirty, poorly maintained, and dangerous. Mostly, poor people here use public transit or people in big cities where traffic jams are a big problem.
Yes, a car is a must-have. We have a much larger country than any of the European countries saved for Russia. Take England, for example, England is the size of, like, Texas. There's quite a lot of empty space. It would not be feasible or practical to do a way with private car ownership. Remember, the only thing foreigners ever see of America are big cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Houston, etc. 90% of our country is small towns and suburbs, not big cities.
The average American citizen is expected to be more mature and self-sufficient than the average citizen of any other country. Every other government sees their citizens as unruly children.
@@MisterRose90I see your point. I guess that the difference is just how big the USA is compared to the UK. Thanks for the feedback though!!
europoor cope
A europoor country has the highest gdp per capita
@@maxzuul96 That trash ass country's economy is outdone by a 7/11 in Chicago on a saturday night.
Europe is the richest continent
that is the biggest europoor cope i've ever heard because it's not even true. is this how delusional you get when all your defense is handled by a foreign power?@@NatoHJ
@@arandomguyyoudontneedtokno5050 america is filled with poverty and he homeless no wonder so many americans move to europe