You ain't wrong, I'm from Michigan in the place where all the American automakers except for Tesla are headquartered, and our roads are like what would happen if the surface of the Moon could get snow.
@@AlRoderick Americans are people who think the roads in Belgium are good. (You can always tell the border from Netherlands to Belgium by the sounds your wheels suddenly start making)
The 1940's was basically when the American motor industry grew big enough to buy the political clout necessary to direct government policies regarding urban development in their favour.
Years ago I started to wonder why "They", whoever the heck "They" are, keep building new roads when we can't even pay for the roads we have now. I work for a city and can tell you that the administration may know they have a problem and just kick the can down the road until they retire so it becomes someone else's problem. Now That's Good Government!
The problem is not being unable to pay to maintain the roads, Baltimore gets 17% of all fuel taxes from the entire state of Maryland which is multiples of what they actually pay. The problem with the cities is they are plagued by corrupt politicians who waste money to buy votes and make their friends and donors rich! I prefer to live in a nice crime free area outside of the suburbs and drive to a store over living in expensive, crowded, polluted, mismanaged cities!
Read a book called "Geography of Nowhere" that addressed this issue in the 90's. All of our sense of place and identity are being eaten up by sprawling suburbs that all look the same. I live in Phoenix AZ... probably the worst example next to LA. Phoenix has a tiny downtown and 100 miles of suburb in each direction. Driving through Phoenix is like a Flinstones cartoon where they are running and the background just keeps repeating over and over in a loop. I also lived in NYC. This is the exact opposite. The problem there is that dense cities are expensive as hell to live in. So the dense urban design is just for the wealthy. Every time the lower ranks get creative and turn old industrial areas into loft apartments... the wealthy make it trendy, the real estate tycoons buy it up, and rent goes up to $3000 per month.
I've said this for years, over and over, its not a "democrat/republican" thing, its a broken economic model. It never added up to me, now I understand why.
the thing that eats me up, is that this economic model is supposed to benefit the rich, and yet it almost seems to do just slightly less damage to them than everyone else, rather than actually benefitting the rich. so it doesn't even do the stupid part right, which is the whole point of it! i wonder why the rich are not able to do the right thing, even for themselves?
If you're assuming the video was being honest. But it isn't honest and it paints an unrealistic picture of revenue and cost that isn't borne out by fact. If it were honest they would have shown hard ledger data proving their point, but they can't, so they don't.
@@urbanistgod Dearest carbrain, i hope this letter finds you well. After marching to my internet lightbox, and doing some typing, I’ve discovered that some psychologists found that the most effective first step in brainwashing among cults, is convincing your victim they were brainwashed. As you can tell, this conflicts with your previous letter. I’d like to believe you’re doing this in good faith, but the tests, both in theory and practice show which one of us stands on the right side of science. Furthermore, I doubt anyone wants to send out upwards of $8k a year just to keep their personal blunt-force-trauma generators running, as there are far better and far cheaper alternatives to appeasing OPEC. Still, war is on the horizon. News has it that Russia is preparing to start a war. Though we may be powerless to stop it, the draft is in Uncle Sam’s hand, ready to be thrown in the name of oil, opposed to humanitarian relief. Other than that, all is well. My three thousand pound paperweight hasn’t been touched in months, and I’ve been able to afford many more luxuries in my life, despite not really wanting them.
@@urbanistgod It's allright. I have a master in urban planning and it's not brainwashing. I'm specialized in housing and financial markets and in post-suburbanization. There's evidence. Believe me not too few evidence. When there will be another serious oil crisis someday it will get quite uncomfortable in the usa my friend.
@@urbanistgod Not going to happen as fast as we need it to. There are also a bunch of other issues. Charging infra isn't there yet, not to mention power in some states, like California, can be as expensive as 35+ cents a kWh depending on where you are (in this case, gas being 4+ dollars a gallon is still cheaper than charging an electric car). Power in other states isn't generated as cleanly as it needs to be. Producing and recycling batteries will be a huge problem in the near future when electric cars do finally catch on. Also, electric cars aren't cheap enough for the average consumer yet. Electric cars are a bad answer to poor urban planning and terrible public infrastructure. Still better than ICE vehicles, but potentially not by much and has still has a lot of trade offs.
I retired to a small town in Mexico and everything is SO walkable. Whenever I come back to the US everything seems so big, flat, spread out, and sterile.
Its horrible, everything here looks the same. I’ve been all over this country and 99% of the towns I’ve been to are interchangeable square miles of dilapidated, disgusting commercial districts with illuminated plastic signs surrounded by soulless suburbs for miles and miles. “Sterile” is the perfect word for it. It’s no wonder Americans have become so materialistic, we need something to make ourselves happy while stuck in cities hopelessly deficient in community, beauty, culture, and livability.
@@josephhernandez9531 You don't have to live in the burbs if you don't want - there are many wonderful towns with a lot of charm and all of the qualities you mentioned (community, beauty, culture, etc.). You are just in the wrong place.
The main thing I've learned most from this series of videos: "Why Cities: Skylines feels so unnatural, ugly and problematic to non-American players." This unironically explains all my issues with the game; I tried to make a game focused on walking and public transport but the whole 'seperate residential and commercial areas' and all that made it really hard and ugly.
Oh wow, is that why this video was suggested to me? Just discovered Citites: Skylines about three months ago. So mad I never heard about it before. I’ve started watching Euro build vids recently which made me stop playing the game. The American cities I started to build just looked so ugly and inefficient, encapsulating so many things that are broken within our country. It bothered me, when I zoned my first commercial area, to watch McDonald’s and Taco Bell auto generate. I immediately thought that all my sims should morph into obesity. That would make the gameplay hella realistic. I want to be able to design and build an idealized city, not recreate a bloated American one. I really, really, really wish some company would create a new city builder game that surpasses the limitations of the previous ones.
@@Meitti It's pretty much because they took the zoning system from SimCity, which has no combined residential/commercial zoning. It'd be great if they could implement such a thing, who knows, maybe the game itself could serve to educate people on how our cities could be improved (just as it makes people criticize their area's traffic management, lol). Honestly, as a New Yorker I hate how other American cities are often laid out. It's just so damn inconvenient to get anywhere, and everything's so far away. This sprawling mindset is also found in places like American military bases abroad, though at least in that case you wouldn't necessarily want everything densely packed due to the risk of enemy attack. In Okinawa, it was extremely inconvenient to get anywhere on foot on-base due to how far apart everything was, which sucks because lower-ranked members were generally not allowed to have their own cars. On the other hand, the city immediately outside the gates very often combined residential and commercial spaces to create interesting, walkable areas along with handy public transit.
@@AirLancer Finnish cities are more like cities in rpg games than cities in city manager games:ruclips.net/video/feBeUJEVswA/видео.html A strange mix of cityscape, suburbs and forest wilderness.
@@mephistopheles6806 It's more that people want to live there. There are plenty of places that have more than enough water, but their weather isn't as pleasant, so people don't move there. The Great Lakes region is cheap and has amazing quality of life, but the weather is pretty bad, so people don't go there.
@@AUniqueHandleName444 you think the Great Lakes are cheap? Come to Western NY. Not cheap. Houses are cheaper but the property and sales taxes are brutal.
@@jaoh6659 thats only for 2/3 months, and it aint even that bad, ive gone on walks often here at 100degrees u get used too it, everything is really close here too
As a civil engineer, I have long suspected that our infrastructure is over-built...there is no way it is sustainable, just spend some time in the midwest or the rust belt.
@@junioradult6219 The Rust Belt... where we used to manufacture cars and export goods from. Then we kicked down the trade barriers to Japan and China, Europe recovered from bombing itself into the Stone Age, and Baby Boomers spent decades living in luxury in single income homes in the burbs. That's what was not sustainable, thinking we would be on top forever. The 70's Union Strikes, OPEC, Nixon opening China trade barriers, and Carter Stagflation ended that dream. Now Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have cities crumbling from loss of jobs overseas. No income, no taxes, no infrastructure. Simple economics. The worst infrastructure goes hand in hand with the largest city spending on pensions, still paying for votes from decades past, no longer able to pay for much else.
The rust belt is interesting and a case study of its own, where a major city can have just about any type of work force these automotive towns are all built to house majority of it's employees. Grew up in a very blue collar city right outside Detroit the auto plants are construct in a specific zone that no less than 10 mins of a drive away.
Not having a car in a Texas suburb is absolutely paralyzing. Walking to the gas station in the winter I manage to pass an old barn and pet horses meanwhile ongoing traffic to the right of me, and 30 minutes of walking past houses. Nothing but houses.
i live closer to dallas. not good!! i can walk to a few places as im fortunately close to a main road but all thats walkable is this little shopping area with a coffee shop, boutiques, antique stores, etc. otherwise my city (and every other city ive been to in texas) is not very walkable at all, which makes me quite sad as i greatly prefer walking over driving
When I was in Hong Kong or in Amsterdam, I was like. You know, let's go out, take a walk and grab something to eat nearby and I'll be at home in half an hour In Denver, everything seems so goddamm FAR away and everything is so car dependent
It's so sad...I've been living in Europe for a couple years and can't believe how well designed and walkable most cities are. Coming back to Canada and the idea of walking to the store is just unheard of because the suburbs are so massive it would take over an hour just to get there without a car. I have a car back in Europe but only use it for road trips on the weekend and for large grocery trips. Otherwise it's actually more efficient to walk or bike into town.
@@lukasrojko5455 Yes, driving a car with 10k of other cars, thus creating traffic. Yes, and while you stay in traffic, a guy with a bike is beating you, laughing you. Who gets the last laugh?
As a german who lived in the us, ca and many other places i must say i never noticed how well designed europe is until i watched this channel. One of my dreams was always to someday move to canada bc of many reasons. Now i know better than that, its rlly sad seeing how the us and ca are screwing themselves over with this scam growth scheme.. as someone who doesnt even have a driver license i sincerly thank you for bringing these issues up as i wouldve hated it living in na!
To be fair, in the 1940s your country lent a hand and…let’s say “incentivised” so many European cities to rethink how best they could design their communities. My country did much the same in Japan and later, Korea. US cities haven’t had to completely begin from scratch all over again (yet).
Here in Chile I'd always hear that "driving is a privilege, not a right", both at driving school and taking the license exams. But now I see it's a forced right in the US and Canada.
having grown up moslty in N.America; what attributes of American 'city design' do you dislike most of? I wonder, as having family from Europe they disliked the windy bendy roads of their countries past.. me.. i prefer the quaintness, and practically of it - streets and roads, as opposed to "stroads". :)
Conveniently, the typical length of a home loan is equal to that of the average service life of a new road. So by the time you've paid off your home, you're so frustrated about the state of your current neighborhood infrastructure that you want to leave and continue the cycle.
@@dumpeeplarfunny You forgot the step where a land developer buys up a bunch of old, rented out homes and sweet-talks the local planning council into letting them evict everyone and bulldoze the building in favor of luxury apartments that provide less tax outlays, fewer units, and higher infrastructure costs... because everywhere else NIMBY'd the fuck out of his idea.
I live in India, where all cities are growing. I realized same problem here, which now results inner cities in ever poor state. What now I feel that never stay at one home for more than 10-15 years... Keep buying at newly developed location and move on, coz once the infrastructure goes to replacement mode it becomes hell.... A full redevelopment of locality takes at least a generation time.
Nobody in America ever actually lives in a house long enough to pay off their whole mortgage. Like 15 years tops, usually more like 7-10 though. You just roll the equity into a new mortgage over and over until you retire and go fuck off to an 80k condo in Florida.
@@hibiskus828 only to realize that florida is exactly the same as the rest of america in this regard, only somehow its more... cursed? unappealing? shit? i dunno the word to describe it other than a pile of shit... thats been poorly spraypainted with, like, not gold... maybe a shade of bronze that _almost_ looks like gold? tl:dr florida is like the rest of america, only somehow its just way shittier
@@Rexini_Kobalt The fact that most people are envious of Florida in America makes me loose hope in humanity as a whole. The place is bad but the people make it so much worse.
The planning time horizon for most politicians ends abruptly at their next date for reelection. If a major problem is looming, but will not manifest itself until after that date, then the attitude of most politicians is "not my problem."
@@fisherfriendman Yes, the constituents have to care about the future. In a democracy the people get the politicians they deserve. May God help us all, because we have done an excellent job of demonstrating our incapability of governing ourselves.
I think "buying on credit" it's very much built into the North American culture. It's the danger of growing up with credit cards rather than debit cards. You get so used to actually paying for your stuff 'after the fact' that you become numb to the dangers of doing so. I'm not sure how much worse the "U.S. debt" is compared the the "Dutch debt" as far as the country as a whole goes, but when you've been raised to believe in growth and past generations always managed to pay off their debts (or they thought they did, anyway), you loose track of the debt and you become convinced a 'solution will come along in due time'. Until it doesn't... The problem is that far too many regions on earth are suffering the same. China has a massive real estate bubble, the shape Russia's in is no better and the U.S. I am sorry to say is also teetering on the brink. And when any one of these big three falls... I fear they'll pull down the rest with them because investments are so interwoven and international now... And adding covid to the mix...
Suburbs was built to keep a certain demographic out of the burbs. Now, the children of their grand and great grand parents are trying to move back into the city limits because of the lack of public transportations, walkable cities, etc . How things have changed
roads DONT last 25 years! I have literally WATCHED a developer pave asphalt right on top of DIRT! what does he care? once they turn it over to the city - ITS YOUR PROBLEM!!!
By the books it should be re-surfaced every 10-15 years. Maybe in dry southern states it can be 25y, but in north with frost, rain, salt the surface can degrade fast.
@@Rainaman- I think you might have missed the point there. While weather and temperature can accelerate the degradation of the road surface. Therefore, resurfacing interval. The amount of traffic also play a role. The weight of every vehicle that use it. Different dirt can hold different amounts of load.
"Don't get me wrong: our cities need affordable housing" - always thought that affordable housing means apartments in multi-storey buildings, while separate houses is actually the most luxury option - just because they occupy more land and the infrastructure is naturally more expensive.
Yeah, apartment complexes is the most efficient way to provide cost-effective housing. Singapore HDB flats are exhibit A, look for polymatter's video on how Singapore solved housing
@@ironboy3245 They only solved it because their citizens are socially responsible and compliant. Would never work in the West - people would gripe that the homes were not good enough, or were in the "wrong" place etc.
My hometown of Calgary has this exact problem in a really a bad way... since the price of oil tanked developers have been pushing to build over 14 new "communities" on the outskirts of town, just for the sake of economic growth. It's worrying because the associated cost of maintaining these communities could bankrupt the city, with office towers empty and businesses closing, the city's existing tax revenue simply can't make up the difference.
Yes, this is exactly what Calgary is doing. They are the quintessential example of being in a period of decline due to the failure of an important industry. This kind of "growth" is just patching up the problem, while making it even worse for future generations.
The council voted no to 11 of these new development though, while there are lots of mixed us development being built downtown and nearby. Calgary is (slowly) getting denser and with the to be constructed Green Line, I think the city is going in the right direction?
@@CLMBRT There are certainly some positive things happening in Calgary, like increased density in the downtown core. However, the city continues to promote sprawl (I was referring to the 14 communities approved in 2018, not the 11 additional ones voted down last year). And now the provincial government seems intent on killing the Green Line...with the municipal election next year, things could go from bad to worse if this trajectory continues...
@Ikreisrond Thank you for your hard work, I'm sorry we let you down. Unfortunately, what usually happens is our leaders choose the most politically expedient plans, regardless of their negative downstream consequences, to help with their own re-election. As we all know, if you want to change things, you're going to have to risk ruffling a few feathers. Until our leaders can get beyond, we're stuck with the status quo.
@@RealisticMgmt Seen this when it comes to other problems aswell in USA. Mainly when it comes to flood and flood protection. Rebuild/build now dont worry about later seems to be a mindset that is hard to get around there a lot.
Can we also talk about how a lot of city infrastructures like roads and sidewalks don't actually need to be replaced as often as they are due to decreased production quality so that construction companies can replace them more often? Where I lived when I went to high school had an area of roads and sidewalks that were date stamped from the very early 1900s and they looked better than some of the newer roads. The same with my childhood hometown. I went back after being away for 15 years and the rock-paved road outside my old house was almost exactly the same as what was in my baby pictures give or take a small repair here and there. All the time I lived there until I moved in high school, no one ever did anything to the roads because they didn't need to. America is built on a system of waste in a misguided effort to "create" jobs. Not only do our city layouts need to change but how things get built does too.
@@Xingmey Until workers size the means of production, the wealth of a society will always flow up, and those who own much will own everything, and those who own little will own nothing at all. That's capitalism's natural trajectory, and awful city planning brought about by lobbying is a symptom of this problem.
I used to work for the state DOT in New Jersey. There are some stretches of concrete highway that were built in the '20s that are still in use today. They tend to be in more rural locations where the roads did not need to be expanded. I don't know what they did different with the concrete back then, but I wish we still used concrete like that.
@@Xingmey It is the least worst economic system, US capitalism doesn't work. A market cannot be completely free because product quality will drop and production gets so efficient that nobody can buy the products you produce. Europe is a lot better but not perfect. Pay grades have to increase almost threefold while regulation keeps improving product standards.
You raise a very good point. And the early 1900s is not even that old. I've walked on roads that were built before Christ. And not just Roman roads in Europe. I've seen some here in Asia, from China to India. Cobblestones, of course, but still fit for walking, cycling and driving.
The other issue is how the streets are built..aka, super cheaply. Germany builds roads that have very small maintenance costs over time. This isn't difficult..you use better process and materials designed to last 50 years without maintenance. I mean...there are Roman roads which are still usable. It is perfectly feasible to build roads that can last hundreds of years.
You forget one VERY important thing: many of Europe's roads are built on top of old Roman roads, and the other thing you're forgetting is that suburban sprawl *just doesn't happen* on the level that it happens here in America. You're not even comparing Apples to Oranges; you're comparing Apples to Almonds while forgetting massive leaps in timelines are happening.
I want to agree on principle, but not all roads lead to Rome. In my shithole, roads are terrible because I live in a swamp. It's also terrible because your most pertinent point is correct: my local government doesn't envision roads that last forever, much less for a few years.
I look at aerial shots like 0:52, 3:28 and 6:12 and what I mostly see is parking lot. It really seems built for cars, not for people. Ugh, what an utter waste of space :/
It is because everything is about money in the US. The politicians are bribed by big oil, automakers, insurance companies to create need for cars. That's why the US grants driving licenses the easiest in the world from senior to youth. More car, more oil, more insurance, more driver license and car registration fees -- hence urban sprawl and suburbs.
True, especially when they lay flat and not stacked or underground. But hey, at least that space might someday be used for future, denser developments.
I've been binging these videos recently, and it always surprises me how similar American suburbs are. Every time I see footage of a suburban sprawl, it looks like my hometown. Same asphalt desert with nothing but a shit fast-food restraunt, a supermarket, and a shady bar to entertain you.
So true, I'm from Australia, and drove 12,000klms (8000miles) across America from New Orleans, Austin, Mississippi area, Memphis, Nashville, St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, (Toronto, Montreal), Boston and New York, doing music-y things in 2017... and did a lot of small towns, festivals in other areas, and side adventures along the way. Major highways, byways, and tiny country roads for nearly 4 months, spent time in lots of places and drove around the cities and suburbs and got to chatting to lots of people in music bars all over... and the thing that struck me the most about all over America was... it definitely wasn't as prosperous as it's made out to be. The infrastructure was definitely bad in a lot of places, roads were particularly bad in places, I also saw cement bridges, and highway overpasses that had concrete falling away with the steel reinforcing showing and rusting... It was like a lot of what you see on TV, the places that were significant, the big highways / important ones, main streets / tourist streets etc, were well maintained... but you could go 2 blocks over and they were in a terrible state of repair, pot holes, cracks, surfaces that were falling apart. And there definitely was a cookie-cutter vibe to what was available n the suburbs, deadend places with a Sonic/MacDonalds/KFC/Wendys and a gas station, then a strip mall with all the same outlets. Only some of the more important cities had managed to hold onto some of their own flavour/culture/individuality ... Some of the bigger cities the more poorer areas the streets looked like some of the destroyed, war torn eastern block European countries I have been to. It was an eye opener for what is supposed to be 'America'... it definitely had a facade feeling to it
John Steinbeck described it perfectly. Roughly paraphrased, he said "The trouble with Americans is they don't know they're poor. They all believe they are temporarily embarrassed rich..."
@@thevisitor784 Steinbeck wrote that a long time ago. A looong time ago. He is mostly talking about people that are dead. If you talk to your average American this is not a notion they harbor. It is a very simple, superficial way of dismissing American's though.
@@justleaveit1557 People who think they are "free" because they don't have to spend 4% of their income to support free healthcare for all, while spending 20% of their income on health insurance, are operating under the same delusion. The symptoms may have changed a little, but the propagandized culture of loving your abusers and believing in the myth of upward mobility as tirelessly advertised by popular culture has not changed at all in 100 years.
@@thevisitor784 You talk like nobody knows this. That was my point. Steinbeck was talking about different people. We know dude. We know what you are saying, we're not all just a bunch of walking nationalist zombies thinking we're going to be billionaires. That is superficial at best. Your point is meaningless, Steinbeck is talking about other people. If you think that's what all American's have as the foundation of their psyche, that helps us know more about your psyche, not American's.
@@justleaveit1557 At least 50% of Americans have no idea. The point in quoting the past is that human attitudes can remain terribly constant. That's why we have this thing called "history". Read about it and while you're at it fix your grammar: it's not " American's " - a singular possessive, but " Americans' " that you're trying to write. The fascist colonialism that started picking up serious speed with Reagan selling drugs and defunding public education has had a profound impact, and the result is that the average American today is not only poorly educated compared to other wealthy nations, but also much less well-off relative to the country's GDP, more like in the dust-bowl years than in the '60s. What is called "middle class" in the US today has a lot of similarities to dust-bowl sharecroppers, esp. when it comes to existential insecurity: Almost 10% of all Americans are at risk of eviction right now. "We know dude" is not true. Nor is "Steinbeck is talking about other people". Try going to California's central valley. It got popular on social media to recognize how capitalism is screwing people in the past 5 years, but it it still a minority. The truth is that the average working-Joe believes that working harder will remove the insecurity, that there is some sort of "meritocracy". In reality the only merit that capitalism really rewards is the ability to help separate other people form their capital, and most working people don't realize that they're merely trying to earn enough to die while working in an idiotic Ponzi scheme, and believe they will eventually strike some sort of motherlode.
the good news is - the vast majority (I've seen ~99%) of asphalt is recycled. It's probably the #1 most recycled material in the world. In Russia, somebody literally stole a road to sell the asphalt.
This explains so much. It really feels like America is in decline and why being a millennial feels like you're getting screwed. It explains why many Rust belt and North Eastern cities look so dilapidated, neighborhoods in terrible shape, population decline, and no money to fix it. California is so expensive, rents and taxes are ridiculous, but what you get in services are hardly worth it. California is nearing at the end of its cycle. Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Idaho are booming with low taxes because they're in the early stages of this Ponzi scheme.
The North East and Rust belt have taxed residents into submission to pay for insane programs. Social programs and wasteful spending will kill anything.
Florida is part of cuba an I can assume since the Republicans don't see that but do say Nevada an Texas *is* becoming part of another nation; that its worse there
@@rjacobherman The west coast is herion needles an feces everywhere; just describing the landscape. An every building has a needle deposit box. Grocery stores, churches, etc
There's a layer of taxation irony that comes with this narrative as well. That is to say that urban dwellers who live in towers, and who are not contributing to the sprawl, pay way more property taxes per acre, even though they aren't contributing to the ponzi scheme. Even at the individual unit level, they are often also paying more property taxes per square foot of living area within their homes, despite not having a plot of land under them that they individually own.
I was actually having a conversation with my roommate about how infrastructure and urban planning were a root cause for a lot of American problems just before this video came out. thanks for the strong evidence for my point.
There's way more than this when it comes to the cause of American problems. Watch this playlist from donoteat01: ruclips.net/video/0lvUByM-fZk/видео.html
Who cares if its cause for a problem. I don't want to live in an apartment my entire life, I would much rather own some land & have a house & some privacy. Have some trees between myself & the neighbour's.
@@zaptowee6625 And you have that right, but governments need to make fully informed decisions before allowing suburbs to be built. That means the cost of such houses should go up, which raises their property tax, which makes them sustainable economically. In Economics terms this means you pay the full cost including all externalities, instead of being subsidized by the government like houses are now.
@@EmperorNefarious1 Yeah, people in their neighborhood should be responsible for their own roads. Also developers should be allowed to build as much as they want. Housing is a matter of supply & demand like anything else, if the big problem & not affordable housing then increase supply. If there is financial incentive for devs to build then let them. But then communities should be on the hook for maintenance but now this presents an issue. What about lower class communities who cant afford to pay their own maintenance, well its gotta be subsidized. But is that fair for the people who have to pay a higher property tax, why should they pay a higher tax if their not getting anything in return for it? See now it's too complex, are places now suppose to privatize road maintenance to avoid this? I think the current system is actually pretty good as is. Year crap roads suck but that's one of the tradeoffs we have to make. Also worse roads lead to worse properity prices. It's all supply & demand.
@@zaptowee6625 The problem is housing really isn't just a matter of supply and demand. if Local governments knew the true cost of a development they would go back to the developer and say "We did a cost analysis for the next 30 years and it looks like we're going to be up to our ears in debts in the long run with this deal. So give us a better one or no permit." then they would reach a good deal and the houses are built, or they don't make a deal and other developers get a chance to bid for the land. Or even a private individual, or group might want to buy the land and create actual sustainable communities that people want to live in, instead of the dead cookie cutter developments. It is an extremely complex problem, and the only solution to complex problems is information. With out it any answer people find is always going to be wrong or incomplete. My comment on property taxes is related to land value, if it costs a developer more to build the houses, they will charge more to sell them; Property tax is usually a percent of land value with some adjustment. Oh and thanks Not Just Bikes for the playlist, it was very informative. My roommate will be pleased to know I have even more facts to drown our discussions with.
I used to think that old buildings in European cities are old... but I couldn't be more wrong. The facade are old, centuries old, the inside however, are air-conditioned, cellular network, wi-fi, fire alarm, adjustable LED lights, smart building systems... it makes them very desireable. These old European city buildings can be repurposed for anything. In Rome, I encountered a Carrefour express supermarket build into an old semi building-part cave systems. The roof are still rough patch of cave rocks, probably dating back to Roman empire era. It is fascinating. Next to it is a trendy Italian cafe. Bright Sun Films has a large compilations of video exploring abandoned American malls and suburban mega store buildings that is practically useless after being abandoned. That unique Taco building, the uniquely designed Toys-R-Us themed building facade might be affable for McDonald's or other business franchise looking for their own "branding" and that's the massive problem. Suburban decay is a blight and left a plainly visible mark, urban decay can heal and re-transform itself.
As an American we like things shiny and new. Although I feel that desire is now fading with the younger generation more into repurposing and reusing to avoid creating waste
I have traveled to Europe since the 60s and also used to marvel over the beautiful old buildings however, then I re learned about the Marshall Act which reconstructed Europe. Many of the buildings were actually reconstructed as they were originally to keep the illusion of old Europe alive, so they were not as old as they seemed. One example is the parliament building in Budapest and the original construction plans, which were used to rebuild that building which in fact was bombarded during WWII.
@@ipodtouchfreak100 Nah it's mostly cause the younger generation is too poor for things like new houses and new cars. Young people definitely purchase other goods brand new, they're just cheaper than cars or a house.
@@NickRoman Can confirm last time I was in New Delhi the tuk tuk driver insisted on driving on the wrong side of the road. Still don't know how I didn't shit myself....
Once you see how the profitability runs out at end-of-life, the Ponzi scheme analogy makes sense. Basically, the cycle of promised revenue and temporary gains digs the hole deeper and deeper till it crashes. At this point, I've lost track of all the self-defeating and self-destuctive practices that take place in the US.
"Every year we just build a bigger suburb to pay for the maintenance costs of all of our previous suburbs, _thus solving the problem once and for all!"_ "But..." *"ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!"*
All my favorite city planning channels always call out my hometown metro of Kansas City. Which makes sense, we got duped into removing all our streetcars in order to get a car factory. Hey, you should do a video in that!
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley nah, it's an updated paraphrased adage from when they tore down 'THE' original enchanted forest to build the colosseum in Rome. The name literally translated to enchanted forest more or less. It was something like mystical arborium or whatever. Anyway, can you beleive they had the nerve to save one tree as an homage no less. A reminder of how beautiful it WAS. Like that makes it okay. That's apparently the origin story of ygdrasil too. Shit's fucked up man. Real fucked up... Guess it just goes to show: You dont know what you've got, till it's gone.
I lived in Phoenix AZ for most of 1968-1981. It was obvious that it's own sprawling growth was a major industry and basis for the local economy. It was also obvious that someday the music had to stop. Not sorry I left. I now live in a densely populated old city and take rapid transit almost everywhere.
What most watching won't realize is that it goes a lot deeper than just the basic ponzi scheme talked about here. It's one thing to say "it happened after WW2" and quite another to actually name names and look at the connections and motivations of those who led the charge.
can we get a video of comparing north america "mindset" vs dutch "mindset" when it comes to this? roads/building houses . i mean this is super interesting and would like to hear your toughts about our dutch "problem" ( housing problem )
@@LoneAmbientWanderer while most "nature" in the Netherlands has essentially been built, I do agree with your point that we should make efficient use of the limited space the country has. We don't want to turn it into one big city after all.
@@LoneAmbientWanderer problem with highrise in the Netherlands is mainly the composition of our soil. In most areas our soil is polder or veengrond which has a lot of water in it. That makes for a terrible base to build skyscrapers on because they have lots of weight on a relatively small footprint.
60s/70s galerijflat habitant here, please dont dress them up a bit, they did that here, living hasnt inproved, but the cost of living is increased from a total of 450 euro to 690 euro a month, and i'm in the ''social'' section. Government needs to build durable modern galerijflatten, its great for ''sociale huurwoningen'' but the current privatised owners of that market will never do that because they want profit each year, so renovation & building cant cost a lot. Dutch politics have to effectively ''socialize'' the social market again but with them spending so much on saving the climate and other invisible problems like cow farts i dont see that happening anytime soon, they will just build more rijtjeshuizen tot de weilanden en parken op zijn. because thats profitable.
@@LoneAmbientWanderer Building higher isn't necessary for sustaining housing. 4-6 floor buildings are just fine, it's just that there needs to be more of them. Vienna has almost no high rise buildings but the cost of living there is considerably cheaper than Amsterdam at around 2.5 times the population
I live in Denmark, and I love that I have a 5 to 20 minute walk (depending on which store) to like 10 grocery stores and a shopping center. Have access to around 7 bus lines within a 5 minute walk and a city rail system that drives directly to the central intercity train station in the city center, that also doubles as a shopping center. If I don’t want to walk I just use my electric bike. I will be investing in an electric scooter soon, that can ride on bike lanes, for longer trips as well.
Sounds wonderful. I just moved to Denver, Colorado and incredibly I can walk to two grocery stores in shopping centers. A park with a 16 mile trail that leads to downtown is right there. I will never move back to "the burbs".
@@UnknownUser.ar1 Universally compared to what? Most people live in cities, and if cities are designed properly, then there is no reason why it shouldn't be possible in a lot, if not most cities. My city has almost 300,000 people, it's not like it's a small, close knit village with 10k people. It's the same in capital Copenhagen, where 1.3 million people live.
When I became a citizen planning commissioner, one of the truisms I learned fairly quickly was that suburban residential development NEVER pays for itself (taxed on a fraction of actual value). Another problem that the Chamber of Commerce always fails to mention because it's related to the ever-increasing debt of the municipality in question is that the higher tax rates on commercial and industrial development are also based on a fraction of actual value, and that new commercial and industrial development is often partially financed through tax breaks, which further reduce municipal revenue. "Tax incentives" offered to businesses are essentially bribes, paid to the business in question by the city, and paid for by the other residents of the city.
What do you mean taxed on a fraction of actual value? I always found the city tax assessor to value property much higher than what the market calls for. What developments pay for themselves in your experience? I also dont understand how a city trying to secure buisnesses by offering lower tax rates hurts if sales tax and additional income from workers offsets it. If you look at Texas and California as examples you can see how at the state level at least Texas is doing much better at the moment. Why dont we just privatize education and have property taxes go solely into infastructure.
@@johnnyistoc5051 Your city assessor might err on the side of higher value, and thus higher taxes, but if so, your city is very much the exception. The most recent assessment for my house was about 55% of what realtors are telling me it's worth. "House flippers" routinely offer far more than the city-assessed value, and they intend to put a little money into it and make a nice profit on the resale. Undervaluing residential real estate has been the standard practice in each of the three metro areas I've lived in over the past 75 years. Why? Because NO ONE likes paying taxes. We all (including businesses) want the mythical "free lunch" of streets that don't cost anything, schools that are free, clean water we don't have to pay for, parks at no cost to ourselves, etc. Commercial development comes much closer to paying its own way - one of the primary reasons why cities fall over themselves trying to attract commercial businesses, and perhaps THE primary reason why suburbs fight tooth-and-nail to have the latest/newest shopping area in THEIR suburb rather than the neighboring one. Alas, too often, the same suburb will shoot itself in the foot by offering tax breaks to the developer in the hope that, over the long term, taxes collected will be far more than taxes given up. That's a significant gamble that doesn't always work to the benefit of the city. Even without tax breaks, relying on sales taxes can become catastrophic if/when the economy goes south and people stop spending, as nearly happened in the pandemic. Privatizing education puts us back to the days of the country's founding, when the only people with an education were the relatively wealthy who could afford to hire teachers/tutors. Everyone else largely remained ignorant and illiterate. Good luck maintaining a technological society on that basis…
Anyone ever calculate what fraction of inefficiencies are responsible for the high costs of maintaining infrastructure. You don't have an unlimited amount of money to waste as a city. It wouldn't matter how much they get it will never be enough because in most cases they are incompetent idiots.
@@rayschoch5882 Back in the day many children attended Catholic schools which were very cheap. I am aware of 2 private religious schools around a 15 mile radius of where I live that costs around 5000 a year to attend. It's not cheap but when you consider property taxes in my area are around 6 to 9 thousand it makes you wonder why you cant opt out of public education and simply deduct whatever private tuition would be from property taxes. There could still be public schools but it would give parents more choice. The current system as it is, is doing a very poor job of educating children for today's technical society.
@@bondjames652 in the South before the Civil War the people living here wer some of the most educated people on planet Earth and there were no Public Schools. It takes very little money to educate someone correctly. The government forces the parent to put their children in school or go to prison that should be your first clue. Them the government schools poison the children's mine with a bunch of crap and that takes a lot of money to do.
@@AhhhhMyLeg amazon and tesla end up costing cities money in the long run rather than producing. Increased strain on infrastructure and demands for cities provide extra services or else "they'll pack up and leave".
@@AhhhhMyLeg damn that's a much different situation than in my city of 4 million where I sit in traffic for 1.5 hours each day. Suburbs, parking lots, crime, and traffic.
@@AhhhhMyLeg big business tends to bring the low wages with them, making it even more difficult for the working class to be the economic driving force necessary for a modern world.
@@AhhhhMyLeg no they haven’t, wages have only risen due to people leaving for unionized jobs or threatening to unionize their current jobs, prior to unionization the “precious” big businesses were basically enslaving workers by paying them in a currency only accepted at the company store.
@@duckhuntergaming4713 when you deposit money in a fractional reserve bank, they only keep some of the money in the vault. the rest is given to other people when they withdraw money. this is similar to a ponzi scheme. the two big differences between the two are that banks give loans while scammers take loans, and that fractional reserve banks create money in the form of tradeable IOUs. this puts more money into circulation and allows a bank to functuon even when people are withdrawing money faster than theyre depositing.
@@lotionman1507 I know how it works, I still don't see the resemblance, when you add everything up including debt, the bank hasn't created any money at all, it has found a way to rip everyone off with interest, but that's it.
@@duckhuntergaming4713 thats true, no net money has been created since its balanced by debt, but theres more money in circulation, and that stays the case until the debt is repaid. but thats beside the point. the connection is that both take your money and give it to someone else.
Upstate, downstate (NYC)? That's such a broad statement it really does sound like you just didn't make the right moves there....Healthy food and scenery are choices IMO
This makes so much sense. In my city, all of the credible shopping areas, restaurants, and malls are in the suburbs. They seem to be well off, but they are struggling just like the rest of us. They opened a new mall 10 years ago, but they built the newer 3 miles down the same street. It takes all of 7 to 10 years for the original mall to be filled with Dollar Trees, antique stores, and the newest hair salon. None of which revenue goes into the main city.
The solution is to stop worrying about 'revenue into the main city'. Private industries should be allowed to thrive regardless of how the government is doing. Believe it or not, we'd do just fine if the government stopped maintaining infrastructure and handed it off to private industry.
if you want to see smooth, fresh (Darker black) Asphalt (we use less concrete), you should visit the Netherlands. We do pay higher bills, but when it has rained and frozen, our streets are so smooth we can ice skate on them!
I work in a community that is far below the poverty line and possesses the largest trailer park in Indiana. Personally, I think the roads were more drivable before the state gave the county a multi-million dollar grant to improve the roads in 1996... Dirt and gravel roads are more drivable than crumbling asphalt without the funding to repair it.
This is why whenever there is a boom in a small town, the people that have lived in it, hate when new wealthy out of state people move in. Where I live they have Mostly moved from California and Washington, and especially the clueless Texas. It is so bad that if you have lived and worked here. You can not afford to live here. They have killed our markets and all the natives are hoping and praying they all go Broke and lose everything. Lots of hate.
@@darrynfrost3401 there is a difference between a slower natural growth and what is happening now. When wages can't match the increase in the cost of living it has massive problems. I get it you guys got your money. But you miss or ignored so many problems that are created just because of greed. For one instance where I live. The county wanted more tax money. So they Used eminent domain took land that wasn't for sale.. Put cheap houses on it.. Sold those houses for way way more than they were worth. Small town wages can't afford new buffet economics. This house are built by unskilled workers. Who will work for less. Now the houses are made cheap and at t times unsafe. Not enough insulation, bad wiring and bad plumbing. Septic systems leak into water tables. Or to many people drill wells to close and dry them up. That's just one aspect. Local wildlife to local small businesses all get killed off. Less jobs. Less choice. More government. If everything came up slowly and matched its normal and good usually. Last time we had this senerios happen it led to a giant Recession. Bad for everyone except those at the very top.
@@Jasondirt Thats not the problem of the citizens who leave though. Its the problem because of the American Monetary system that mostly affected cities, but now is affecting suburbs. Everything becomes more expensive, but the wages stay relatively the same as they were, because America is build on a money making society rather than taking care of the citizens. Its only getting worse if America doesn't change their ways. What Americans don't realize, is that most European countries look down upon America (And the USA specifcally) as if its a third-world country and start to not take USA seriously anymore due to all their problems. Basically, the USA us devolving instead of evolving, which is a problem, because its entirely focus on its industry rather than the people living in the country. A lot of Americans are also Brainwashed (If that is the right word even), in thinking American Way is the best way, until they go abroad to Europe (If they can even afford to do so, which is the other issue, due to the wage issue), which then opens their eyes the American Way isn't the best way.
I live in Charleston SC and we just moved to the suburbs 4 years ago in March. I hate it so much. The traffic is horrible. You have to drive everywhere. It’s so boring. No bus system comes this far. And they are building more of them and our main road is a 2 lane highway🤦🏾♀️. I’m already planning my move in 1 to 2 years.
The urban core of pre-WWII Charleston looks like a rather fine place to live, walkable/bikeable. I've semi considered moving there. Brings up another good point made by strongtowns, most Americans see "traditional city development" as a tourist attraction not "how things should be done" (like historic Charleston, historic St. Augistine, the French Quarter, etc)
@Safwaan It's not suburbs per se that are the bad thing and not all suburbs are exactly alike, but what is disliked is the specific sprawling design and strict separation of uses that gives many such suburbs a negative feel to a lot of people.
@@3of11 yes, the old town of Charleston is great. Very walkable and would be an awesome place to live. Some parts are bike-unfriendly due to the very bumpy cobblestones! But once you know which streets you can avoid them. Also the drivers tend to be very patient, there are always slow-moving vehicles around (like horse and carriage tours) so drivers don't expect to get anywhere in a hurry! Unfortunately that part of town is very expensive to live in. You can find more affordable housing outside the old downtown but then you lose a lot of the walkability.
@Safwaan illinois has great roads. you know that?missouri sucks ohio is terrible. indiana is ok but getting ragged around the edges. i dont know a state that knows how to patch roads as seamlessly as illinois.
Pretty much the case everywhere I see. I moved to a small rural town that didn’t even have a police department. Now people found out about the cheap houses here, and immediately there’s so much traffic here. Our roads were not made to handle all this new traffic.
I read Strong Towns: A bottom-up revolution to build American prosperity after one of your previous videos. I now see that Strong Towns is also one of your Train patreons, so it seems like there is some mutualistic symbiosis going on there ;) I really enjoyed this video and I feel like it did a great job of explaining the American suburban ponzi problem,
Yes, Strong Towns came in as a patron *just* as I was finalizing the Patreon graphic for this video. It is a bit weird as it makes it look like they sponsored this video, but of course they didn't: they've just found my content (and not just the Strong Towns videos) good at getting out their message. I've been a big fan of Strong Towns for a long time, and I've been promoting them on reddit for at least 6 years already. I'm just glad that I have a platform here to share their content as well, because I think it's really important. You can't make a city truly great if it's financially insolvent.
I honestly love suburban environments, but maybe not typical ones that are in most of the US, rather, ones that actually have dramatic variety between home appearances and layouts. Suburban communities can seriously be beautiful and wonderful places to live, but there’s a lot of obstacles in the way of that most of the time. Usually American suburban areas built within the last 40 years are hot garbage though with those things in mind; no creativity or thought to the home or who would be living there. Literally my home is a suburban house from 1955, it’s pretty modest compared to new suburban ones, being at only about 1200 sq-ft and with just one bathroom. But it was built with great attention to detail and regard to who would be living there, and looks completely different from the houses surrounding it, despite being built at the same time by the same developers. Although suburban areas may not be as efficient, I personally would shoot myself if I had to live in a home attached to someone else’s for my whole life.
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago that wasn’t expensive when I was a kid but got gentrification within the last 20 or so years. But it was always very walkable. Seems like a lot of the older suburbs that developed along the railroad lines are that way. People all over town walk or bike to the train and are downtown in 20 minutes or so. You could live without a car. Property taxes all over Illinois are insane. But because of gentrification I couldn’t afford to live in the town I grew up in. Moved to a modern sub-division ex-urb semi-rural. It’s quiet. Got a house twice the size of the house I grew up in for half the price. The new suburbs are growing along the interstate rather than the railroad. Can’t walk anywhere in a short time. But with remote work and door delivery it’s kind of irrelevant and I’ve rarely gone back to the city for anything. I got used to it. But give it 10 years it might get congested out here too. The problem is AFFORDABLE HOUSING. That pushes people out of cities even if they want to live somewhere walkable. Doesn’t Matter how you design it if working people can’t afford it.
Agenda/ideal driven people always create new problems with their solutions... to which they'll be there with NEW solutions... that then beget new problems and so forth. For example, their plan to push people back to urban areas will result in rapidly increasing housing costs, which they'll then subsidize... that subsidization will then increase taxes and/or debt and reduce homeownership... which they'll then have an expensive program to address... which will result in higher taxes... which will eventually result in people at the higher end of the income scale and their businesses fleeing to lower tax suburbs (or states)... which will result in reduced tax revenue and blight... which the people who made this video will then blame on capitalists and people who want a better life rather than bloated, inefficient government, high taxes and the results of their own crappy and short-sighted plans.
@@derekrichards2859 Worse, as you see with college in the US, subsidies raise the cost because these crooked parties figure they can charge even more than any reasonable, non-subsidized market would allow.
@@cabron247 the only thing wrong with southern IL is lack of jobs. But also when population increases the taxes get raised to put in infrastructure that people want that wasn’t there before. Remote working might allow more people to live out there though.
Good points. I think remote working is going to change this whole debate. People will be able to choose to live further from big cities, but not have to commute back to them for work, reducing the strain on infrastructure.
@@Professor_Utonium_ Carlin was a pessimist through and through, he'd probably say we're f$cked either way, so stop whining, or something to that effect. I like to be a little more hopeful, but honestly, I understad why he thought it's all going to ruin.
@@barvdw I can accept that "so stop whining" part of it. Complaining just drains effort from doing more practical stuff. I also understand my hypocrisy here complaining, myself, so I'll see my way out now lol
My dad had a friend take a job with his small town (~13,000 pop.) as department head of public works. The friend found that, despite his reports reporting ample funds, he could not buy a new front loader. He was told that, despite what what was on paper, all the accounts had been raided. He had no money. He resigned soon there after.
Well, it took me years playing SimCity to realize that the game solution is similar to the real world, you tax the poor and the rich will come, then your city will eventually fail, because rich people will occupy all of the space and pay proportionally less money, then your city starts to run out of money, you tax the rich, they leave, and their property decay, making the value of the city decay, so you have to bulldoze everything, and rezone in a way that the city will be denser again.
When I was a kid I had a nintendo game about city development and in retrospect it was racist but also this was the case. The poorest people (there were 4 tiers: black, blue/red, light blue/pink, white) paid very few taxes but they would live basically anywhere. Average people were probably the best people to have in retrospect: They worked at businesses that earned quite some money for you, paid a bit of taxes, and they wanted maybe a restaurant that lost you a tiny bit on money. But rich people! They paid twice as much as the high average people, but they needed parks, restaurants, jewelry shops, nothing polluting anywhere nearby, and more fancy shops! And they also wanted more police presence and firemen to feel safe.
I think in reality at least in the US it is impossible to levy in reasonable amount of taxes on lower incomes and hence persons over $250k annually pay almost all taxes in the USA. As a persons who lives in a top 15 population city in the US it is very difficult to have adequate city services as the more wealthy tend to live in smaller wealthier satellite communities. Every city in the USA however is falling farther and farther behind with n real solutions.
I love all of the stock footage of Kansas City. As a citizen of Kansas City, I can say that it really is much worse on a bike. Heaven forbid you try and actually walk!
@@NotJustBikes However, Dutch apple pie is not like American apple pie. At the risk of offending Dutchies.,not only do I prefer American apple pie, I dislike Dutch apple pie. (Ducks as chairs/ pie are thrown my way) /:
Urban sprawl is the scourge of mankind. This is a great video. Having said that, I recently retired from working in the engineering department of a suburban city of Vancouver, BC. City finances were in great shape and I worked under the infrastructure planning section. We had sophisticated detection methods and software to optimize spending on roads, water and sewers. Not all cities are in dire deficit spending situation on infrastructure.
Most of Rome, Italy is small neighborhoods that have pretty much all you need within a short walk. A backpack is handy. If for some reason you need something from farther away a cheap cab ride gets it done.
6:44 You just described fundamental economic issues being completely ignored by both political parties/axis and attributed to their top 5 favorite scapegoats... and you're right, and you might just be on the brink of solving US politics. I'd hire a bodyguard.
I happen to live in a subdivision, where the developer went to jail shortly after completing the subdivision...except, he never turned the roads over to the state. By the time homeowners realized there was a problem, the state told them that the roads had to be brought up to code before the state would take them over. Just 1 road in the subdivision, about 3/4 of a mile, needed $40k in repairs before the state would take it. And while some in the neighborhood would like to try and solve this issue, close to half the homes are rented out...and obviously they are not about to sink extra money into a place they may not live in for more than a few years. To top it all off, the state has even admitted that if they took over the roads, property taxes would be raised...but no road works would be done for several years, because the state doesn't have the money for it!
@Steve Acho You get what you pay for, i doubt the food is healthy if it's that cheap. Processed, added sugar... But it's not like you have a choice, capitalism fucks everything in our lives if left uncontrolled enough like in the US. The food, housig, work, enviroment, everything degraded and minimal maintainance and investment because profit for the rich few comes first, as they're the major shareholders and wealthy people who have the power.
I would love to see a cities’ profit and lost statement. Theoretically what you are saying makes sense, but it is hard to trust it without seeing those revenues and costs.
Government finances are public, as far as I know. Go to your city's website & you will be able to find financial statements. But unless you've had some finance training, they won't be too easy to read.
@@toddpick8007 True, and so following the logic of the video, that would explain why infrastructure continues to deteriorate. Cities have only two ways to pay for it: 1) taxes from existing residents, or 2) growth to bring in additional tax-paying residents. But growth brings more roads and sewers that will one day also need repair, until eventually the growth needed to maintain the ever-increasing backlog of deteriorating infrastructure tops out. By the same token, raising taxes the full amount needed to repair all that old infrastructure would be political suicide. So instead, each crop of politicians just prays the roads and sewers don't collapse entirely until they're retired from office, by which point the unavoidable day of reckoning will be somebody else's problem.
I’m surprised that ordinary road of USA is much wider than Japanese highway. Even financing small roads of Japanese standard costs so much money,and I can’t imagine how vast amount of money is required for entire US roads.
I feel like Europe has an opposite problem. There's little to none high rise residential buildings in a lot of cities. Cities like Munich have insane housing prices and to no surprise tons of suburban sprawl around the city. All because the city wants to have perfect views of the historic building from ALL sides of the city, which is a bit of an overkill
It is. And most Americans are so ignorant about the outside world that they have absolutely no idea. They think the only type of place you can live in is this car-dependant sprawl or a cramped apartment tower in a city.
@@NotJustBikes ‘I’m sure that there are nice things aa well’ I was going to say. And it took me way too long to think of an example, but the one thing that is probably better is freedom in nature. The netherlands is really (understandable) restrictive on camping and stuff. Other places in Europe are better but still, North America might just win it there. But yeah it’s hard to think of societal benefits from what I know.
@@NotJustBikes Or you know they could also live in the middle of fucking nowhere in a town of less 100 and you closest neighbor is 20 minutes away. Unless your considering that to also somehow be urban sprawl
@se fi I've been there... Identify what's holding you back, identify what's good in your life, make achievable plans and work to get there. Escape is slow, but possible! 🙂
This video isnt entirely accurate... every state handles road funding differently. The idea that every mucipality is responsible for funding their own roads is extremely inaccurate to say the least.
@@dallashill23 I am an airport driver and I heard Oregon ,vegas, texas, LA, new york and I work in fort lauderdale , looks like is in the whole country Americans don't know how to drive .
Spoken by someone that apparently has not been on streets in many other countries to see how awful the traffic and drivers are around the world. I swear, in many places, they don’t really drive, they just sort of aim their cars and motorcycles in the direction of their destinations and hope nothing gets in the way.
Cities grow or die, they don't stay in stasis. When they do hover, they become generational mold where everything costs a lot, little gets done, and they become increasingly intolerant of change. That works in homgenous wealthy nations like Norway, but even then it breaks down eventually.
I have been thinking about this for years now, ever since I found out that banks can defer (never pay) property taxes on foreclosed houses for years. Imagine a city going through the financial collapse of 2008 and allowing all those foreclosed homes to skip out on paying property taxes as well!!! I learned that local governments depend on new development growth to raise revenue they need now. It's one of the reasons why I am beginning to question property taxes as the main revenue source for local and state governments. Property tax dependency seems to inflate property values that quickly surpass low and middle income affordability. It also discourages conservation or reclamation of natural land... in my area (south Florida), thousands of acres of old farm land sit vacant for 10-15 years and then are sold to developers to build 10-15,000 unit HOA neighborhoods. That farmland should really be restored back to the wetlands it once was.
I worked for several banks in the home retention department during the crisis nationwide and I never saw property taxes being forgiven (sometimes they were collected later but with penalties so I would not call that "deferred"). As a matter of fact, there were many times when we could not modify a loan enough to make it affordable because of property taxes. Local governments (almost) always get their property taxes from a home or a foreclosed home because they can take ownership of it since taxes take priority over everything else (including mortgages).
Property tax doesn't inflate property values, it actually depresses property values because you're assigning a cost to owning property. It also depresses development for the same reason as well. It would be better to convert the property taxes to just a land tax so developments aren't taxed.
The first things I associate with America are not baseball, apple pie or soul-crushing traffic. Instead I associate America with obesity, children pretending to be adults and the American dream, more specifically how it was snuffed out.
Colorado Springs is a great example of this. The city bought into this idea that we needed more water for a future influx of people with growth like 20x its current size on the very outskirts of town. Then 2008 hit and all the housing developers pulled out. But they had already spent millions upon millions diverting a river uphill for the houses and not even paying for it, just giving an "IOU" to the land owners. They tried and failed to pass a tax to pay for it 3 times over the years and it only barely passed before the whole project was dropped right before it was finished.
I am personally always shocked how terrible are even extensive parts of the US downtowns. Places that could be one of the most expensives in the city are covered by ground parking lots, empty plots, etc.
Conservatives consider taxes abhorrent and always promise to reduce them. In reality, taxes are a good thing, used for the common good. The public perception of taxes needs to change, especially with resect to billionaire corporations, who avoid tax at every opportunity.
Worth remembering that StrongTowns is headed by a conservative. Keep in mind that conservatives are also concerned with fiscal ROI, which suburbia isnt great for. This isn't a defense of typical american conservatives mind you, just that it is entirely possible to be non partisan about this, useful for family dinner arguments.
I remember reading a reasearch paper that basically concluded that for future suburbs you will get the worst of both worlds. That is the crowd and crime of the city because of population density and the boredom of the suburbs as sprawling takes you far from entertainment districts.
I live in Atlanta and haven't had a car in over twenty years, but I've always lived in neighborhoods in which I can easily get around. However, to live in the suburbs here one has to have a car.
Same in Australia... sigh. And there is vocal opposition to any medium density in the inner suburbs, so we end up with ridiculous high-rises & sprawl... and little in-between.
And it's funny our cities are also so full of cars. I live in nyc and i would love to bike everywhere instead of walking but its so dangerous. The number of people dying from a car hitting them on a bike is so high its astounding. Nyc wants so bad to be like a European city but they need to remove all these cars first
I appreciate the craft that gets dedicated to this -- the sound design is underrated, knowing as we do know that drone photography has no scratch audio. Also, re suburban recalcitrance, let's not forget there becomes an identity issue for people living in suburbs. Where I grew up, in Suffolk County, Long Island, there is an antipathetic regard for the metropole of New York and its inhabitants. And you guessed it: A lot of that pivots on race, and class.
Thanks! I'm glad you noticed the sound design: about 90% of these clips had no sound with them. I'm most proud of the jackhammer at 3:33 personally. You'd never know that audio was added by me. :) I can't keep spending so much time on each of these videos though, so not every release will have this much effort put into it. And yes, it's pretty hard to separate US suburbs from race and class. That's pretty much the reason they're around. I plan to make a whole other video about that some day (add it to the list).
@@NotJustBikes I thought you had already done a video on redlining? Maybe I'm mistaken... WRT sound design, I was completely unaware, impressive work, but now I'm slightly disappointed there isn't a Wilhelm scream embedded somewhere :)
No, I have not yet done a video about redlining. I will probably do one eventually, but in general I'm trying to avoid topics that other RUclipsrs have already done well (unless I feel I have more to add), and donoteat01 has done really great videos on these topics in his "Power and Politics" series: ruclips.net/p/PLwkSQD3vqK1S1NiHIxxF2g_Uy-LbbcR84
If you respond claiming that this video is wrong without reading the extensive research and articles linked in the description, expect to be mocked for your laziness. This is, of course, not at all about *legitimate* criticism, but because I have no patience for keyboard warriors who googled the price of asphalt, write 3,000 word comments about how this is all wrong, and then demand a response. 🙄 Strong Towns was started by a transportation engineer who spent over a decade _building_ car-centric suburbs, and has spent the last decade advocating for and consulting on building financially solvent cities in America. Do some effort and read the sources. This is important. Don't brush it off.
@Not_Just_Bikes Though please, DO NOT take what I just mentioned as an insult against you or anything! Please, I am in 100% agreement with you, I just want to mention playing devils advocate would help your stance even more! Because you can flip all of the pro suburban arguments on their head! Also I noticed you used city skylines, I think it can be a powerful tool! Like for instance, one powerful way to help with traffic is making "pedestrian highways" where you have a walk way go down the spine of your city. Maybe show how mass transit is helpful to economic mobility, and therefore, able to give those who need it more freedom to enter the economic world! But yah, I mean zero insult to you as a person or your ideas, I am just trying to help give you ideas :D Cheers mate!
I am not sure what this is about but having experience doesn't always mean you got the correct answers and taking the position of i know and you are wrong for disagreeing with me is not a good one. I think your research looks credible and i can see the effort but never be overconfident you got it all right. You must not forget that equally experienced people as you created this mess. Sometimes less experienced people got better answers.
@@reconx86 if I shoot myself in the foot, you wouldn't tell the next person who witnessed it that they're only as experienced as me who made the mistake when they say they don't want to. There can only so much opinion on whether the numbers add up. American suburbs can either afford their upkeep or they can't, and they can't.
This isn't the case everywhere. The suburb I grew up in (Schaumburg, IL) saw its growth largely level off over two decades ago, and yet it still manages to maintain its infrastructure without taking on unmanageable levels of debt. It's more or less the same story for other surrounding communities as well. Meanwhile, Chicago is the butt jokes everywhere for its infamous... wait for it... corruption, waste, bloated union contracts, and inefficiency. And, no, they don't get a break on their property taxes compared to Chicago. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I’m lucky to have grown up in schaumburg too. Conant high school and the surrounding area is always developing… however it took me 2 hours to walk home from one end of town(woodfield) to the other.
@@craigwillms61 The industries don't get "chased off" because they're free to destroy everything and letting taxpayers cough up the dough. And stop acting like repubs don't have any corruption.
@@craigwillms61 🙄🙄 and there’s the idiot that has to make this political and pretend that only one group is responsible for this. If you watched the video, you’d realize “good shape” doesn’t equal “no debt.”
I have lived in the same medium sized Canadian town most of my life, and seen the sprawl lifecycle go to the crisis point... new suburban development side-by-side with earlier neighbourhoods crumbling under the residents' feet
@@safe-keeper1042 That and because Europe was *never* as car centric as the US. Quite literally the US developed a car *fetish* after world war 2, and it's only declining now with younger Americans due to knowledge of the inefficiencies, high gas prices, and concerns about climate change.
Europe might have this problem to some extent, but there's nowhere that you literally can't go to the end of your street without a car. Everywhere at least has pavements for pedestrians it's just that public transport and cycle routes can be lacking.
Where I live, southern Ontario, there is another dynamic at play: development charges. Developers pay a fee up front to build. After the subdivision is built, the taxes don't cover the costs (maintenance, water, sewer, emergency services, etc). No politician wants to raise taxes, so the town relies on ever more building.
If city taxes on a tiny urban house weren't well in excess of the income of a year for some people, than maybe some urban city growth could happen, instead of suburbia sprawl. If rent in the city wasn't locked with cartels controlling everything, than maybe affordable renting and jobs could exist and people could move back into the city.
Urban 'houses' aren't sustainable, to meet the needs of the people you would end up with 'suburban sprawl' just by having to add more houses to fit each individual or family. High density housing development comes with costs, the elevator doesn't maintain itself, a roof that covers the heads of 800 families doesn't fix itself, the plumbing doesn't construct and unclog itself.
What actually happens in Chicago is that wealthy suburban homeowners will buy 2 or 3 properties in the city to rent out to residents. Renters paying rent pay off the mortgage for the owner and when the landlord is set to retire they sell off all the properties for a quick million or two. Nobody can actually buy a house to live in because the price is so inflated by parasites looking to extract value from renters
@@andrewferguson6901 No, the price is inflated because the renters wrongly that believe supply induces demand, so they use community action to shut down developments that would ease the constrained supply and lower rents. The landlords, of course, see their property values continue to rise and behave in the exact same way as the renters, though with no illusion of righteousness.
You can really just keep going back to the depression and the formation of Fannie Mae and the rest of the government loan servicers. They have been backstopping mortgages since then and really kicked off the single family home boom by making those cheap long mortgages possible.
American's have a tradition of land ownership; people were literally given free land if they moved west. People don't want to rent land or have upstairs neighbors.
It isn't even necessary to switch to apartments, just denser single-family homes like they have in European cities. You might have a smaller yard, but how much do you use your whole yard? I certainly don't, though others do.
Even if we exclude the possibility of Americans changing their mind about any of this -- single-family homes can still be arranged in a far less sprawling way than the US suburban style. American houses also tend to be unreasonably big (which exacerbates sprawl) and very cheaply built to make that size affordable (no German would buy a house made of plywood and drywall sheets, it's all brick and concrete here). So it might be worth trying to change people's minds about that, at least.
I own land and in my village is a mainstreet, different shops, doctors and I have public transport. Even the houses are differently built. There is much more variety than in the suburbs.
That is true. However, our suburban sprawl is financed by easy credit that is not going to be sustainable forever. At some point we Americans are going have to return to economic reality and it will be painful for most people. If someone wants land they are going to have to save hard money to buy it or pay much higher interest rates for mortgages in an actual free market while putting 20% down. I predict this system will all come crashing down when the U.S. dollar loses it's reserve currency status and we can no longer print dollars at will.
![How Bankrupt American Cities Stay Alive - Debt [ST04]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XfQUOHlAocY/mqdefault.jpg)
![How Bankrupt American Cities Stay Alive - Debt [ST04]](/img/tr.png)
Watch the rest of this series here:
ruclips.net/p/PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa
77532 haha INS
can you do another one of these suburbs videos I like to watch videos on why sprawl sucks, it reaffirms my bias😁
@@tescomealdeals4613 But... there's no episode 4! :O I want mooore *mwhuuuaaaeehU* (baby noises :D )
@Corey Mcnickle bot account
@Kyle Matthew bot account
Now the rise of the SUV makes sense. The heavy duty wheels and suspension are necessary to survive the crumbling infrastructure. 😂
The suburban pothole machine.
You ain't wrong, I'm from Michigan in the place where all the American automakers except for Tesla are headquartered, and our roads are like what would happen if the surface of the Moon could get snow.
@@AlRoderick Americans are people who think the roads in Belgium are good.
(You can always tell the border from Netherlands to Belgium by the sounds your wheels suddenly start making)
And ironically due to the added weight contribute to faster deterioration of said roads 👍🏾
Also the increased obesity rate in children
I always wondered how they could afford to build the roads to every house everywhere. It turns out they couldn't afford it.
They could, if they reduced military spending a bit and put that money into infra
@@sepg5084 they can do both actually, have a high military spending and spend more in infraestructure.
without military the US is no longer US
ofcourse they can't afford it. every road has potholes 🤣
+1
The more I learn about the U.S, the more I wonder how this country has survived this long
The 1940's was basically when the American motor industry grew big enough to buy the political clout necessary to direct government policies regarding urban development in their favour.
Years ago I started to wonder why "They", whoever the heck "They" are, keep building new roads when we can't even pay for the roads we have now. I work for a city and can tell you that the administration may know they have a problem and just kick the can down the road until they retire so it becomes someone else's problem. Now That's Good Government!
The problem is not being unable to pay to maintain the roads, Baltimore gets 17% of all fuel taxes from the entire state of Maryland which is multiples of what they actually pay.
The problem with the cities is they are plagued by corrupt politicians who waste money to buy votes and make their friends and donors rich!
I prefer to live in a nice crime free area outside of the suburbs and drive to a store over living in expensive, crowded, polluted, mismanaged cities!
theft in reality
You really just described baby boomers
Happens in big business too...that resignation mindset.
@@motokenny8045 Many of us were raised by the baby boomers.
Read a book called "Geography of Nowhere" that addressed this issue in the 90's. All of our sense of place and identity are being eaten up by sprawling suburbs that all look the same. I live in Phoenix AZ... probably the worst example next to LA. Phoenix has a tiny downtown and 100 miles of suburb in each direction. Driving through Phoenix is like a Flinstones cartoon where they are running and the background just keeps repeating over and over in a loop. I also lived in NYC. This is the exact opposite. The problem there is that dense cities are expensive as hell to live in. So the dense urban design is just for the wealthy. Every time the lower ranks get creative and turn old industrial areas into loft apartments... the wealthy make it trendy, the real estate tycoons buy it up, and rent goes up to $3000 per month.
GG
Boy this guy really knows how to kill a buzz
nice descriptions.
Yeah I hate that sht. It's loathsome actually.
I read James Howard Kunstler's other books like The Long Emergency.
I've said this for years, over and over, its not a "democrat/republican" thing, its a broken economic model. It never added up to me, now I understand why.
Pretty much just capitalism
the thing that eats me up, is that this economic model is supposed to benefit the rich, and yet it almost seems to do just slightly less damage to them than everyone else, rather than actually benefitting the rich. so it doesn't even do the stupid part right, which is the whole point of it! i wonder why the rich are not able to do the right thing, even for themselves?
If you're assuming the video was being honest. But it isn't honest and it paints an unrealistic picture of revenue and cost that isn't borne out by fact. If it were honest they would have shown hard ledger data proving their point, but they can't, so they don't.
To alll the whiny internet people that thinks the "system" only benefits the rich please open a book and study the alternatives.
@@notOL01 explain
went from “America’s ok, could use a little public investment, like healthcare and busses” to “My hometown is a mess” in about a week
lol
Literally same
@@urbanistgod
Dearest carbrain, i hope this letter finds you well.
After marching to my internet lightbox, and doing some typing, I’ve discovered that some psychologists found that the most effective first step in brainwashing among cults, is convincing your victim they were brainwashed.
As you can tell, this conflicts with your previous letter. I’d like to believe you’re doing this in good faith, but the tests, both in theory and practice show which one of us stands on the right side of science.
Furthermore, I doubt anyone wants to send out upwards of $8k a year just to keep their personal blunt-force-trauma generators running, as there are far better and far cheaper alternatives to appeasing OPEC.
Still, war is on the horizon. News has it that Russia is preparing to start a war. Though we may be powerless to stop it, the draft is in Uncle Sam’s hand, ready to be thrown in the name of oil, opposed to humanitarian relief.
Other than that, all is well. My three thousand pound paperweight hasn’t been touched in months, and I’ve been able to afford many more luxuries in my life, despite not really wanting them.
@@urbanistgod It's allright. I have a master in urban planning and it's not brainwashing. I'm specialized in housing and financial markets and in post-suburbanization. There's evidence. Believe me not too few evidence. When there will be another serious oil crisis someday it will get quite uncomfortable in the usa my friend.
@@urbanistgod Not going to happen as fast as we need it to. There are also a bunch of other issues. Charging infra isn't there yet, not to mention power in some states, like California, can be as expensive as 35+ cents a kWh depending on where you are (in this case, gas being 4+ dollars a gallon is still cheaper than charging an electric car). Power in other states isn't generated as cleanly as it needs to be. Producing and recycling batteries will be a huge problem in the near future when electric cars do finally catch on. Also, electric cars aren't cheap enough for the average consumer yet.
Electric cars are a bad answer to poor urban planning and terrible public infrastructure. Still better than ICE vehicles, but potentially not by much and has still has a lot of trade offs.
I retired to a small town in Mexico and everything is SO walkable. Whenever I come back to the US everything seems so big, flat, spread out, and sterile.
Yep...
And I always thought this was just a Texas thing.
Its horrible, everything here looks the same. I’ve been all over this country and 99% of the towns I’ve been to are interchangeable square miles of dilapidated, disgusting commercial districts with illuminated plastic signs surrounded by soulless suburbs for miles and miles. “Sterile” is the perfect word for it. It’s no wonder Americans have become so materialistic, we need something to make ourselves happy while stuck in cities hopelessly deficient in community, beauty, culture, and livability.
@@josephhernandez9531 "It’s no wonder Americans have become so materialistic," Totally *Agree* With Your Statement!!
@@josephhernandez9531 You don't have to live in the burbs if you don't want - there are many wonderful towns with a lot of charm and all of the qualities you mentioned (community, beauty, culture, etc.). You are just in the wrong place.
The main thing I've learned most from this series of videos: "Why Cities: Skylines feels so unnatural, ugly and problematic to non-American players."
This unironically explains all my issues with the game; I tried to make a game focused on walking and public transport but the whole 'seperate residential and commercial areas' and all that made it really hard and ugly.
Oh wow, is that why this video was suggested to me? Just discovered Citites: Skylines about three months ago. So mad I never heard about it before. I’ve started watching Euro build vids recently which made me stop playing the game. The American cities I started to build just looked so ugly and inefficient, encapsulating so many things that are broken within our country. It bothered me, when I zoned my first commercial area, to watch McDonald’s and Taco Bell auto generate. I immediately thought that all my sims should morph into obesity. That would make the gameplay hella realistic.
I want to be able to design and build an idealized city, not recreate a bloated American one.
I really, really, really wish some company would create a new city builder game that surpasses the limitations of the previous ones.
But Cities:Skylines is a game made in Finland, so its a european game. Granted finnish cities dont actually look like usual Cities:Skylines cities.
i guess it depends on how you play
@@Meitti It's pretty much because they took the zoning system from SimCity, which has no combined residential/commercial zoning. It'd be great if they could implement such a thing, who knows, maybe the game itself could serve to educate people on how our cities could be improved (just as it makes people criticize their area's traffic management, lol).
Honestly, as a New Yorker I hate how other American cities are often laid out. It's just so damn inconvenient to get anywhere, and everything's so far away. This sprawling mindset is also found in places like American military bases abroad, though at least in that case you wouldn't necessarily want everything densely packed due to the risk of enemy attack. In Okinawa, it was extremely inconvenient to get anywhere on foot on-base due to how far apart everything was, which sucks because lower-ranked members were generally not allowed to have their own cars. On the other hand, the city immediately outside the gates very often combined residential and commercial spaces to create interesting, walkable areas along with handy public transit.
@@AirLancer Finnish cities are more like cities in rpg games than cities in city manager games:ruclips.net/video/feBeUJEVswA/видео.html
A strange mix of cityscape, suburbs and forest wilderness.
This must be why Las Vegas is still developing communities despite the fact that there is not enough water in Lake Mead for the current population. 😒
In other words: Greed!
@@mephistopheles6806 It's more that people want to live there. There are plenty of places that have more than enough water, but their weather isn't as pleasant, so people don't move there. The Great Lakes region is cheap and has amazing quality of life, but the weather is pretty bad, so people don't go there.
@@AUniqueHandleName444 you think the Great Lakes are cheap? Come to Western NY. Not cheap. Houses are cheaper but the property and sales taxes are brutal.
@@AUniqueHandleName444 Vegas doesn't have good weather, it's in the middle of a scorching desert.
@@jaoh6659 thats only for 2/3 months, and it aint even that bad, ive gone on walks often here at 100degrees u get used too it, everything is really close here too
As a civil engineer, I have long suspected that our infrastructure is over-built...there is no way it is sustainable, just spend some time in the midwest or the rust belt.
Were in midwest? Ive seen some amazing places infastructure wise in the midwest. The worst i ever saw was on the coasts and the south
@@junioradult6219 The Rust Belt... where we used to manufacture cars and export goods from. Then we kicked down the trade barriers to Japan and China, Europe recovered from bombing itself into the Stone Age, and Baby Boomers spent decades living in luxury in single income homes in the burbs. That's what was not sustainable, thinking we would be on top forever. The 70's Union Strikes, OPEC, Nixon opening China trade barriers, and Carter Stagflation ended that dream. Now Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have cities crumbling from loss of jobs overseas. No income, no taxes, no infrastructure. Simple economics.
The worst infrastructure goes hand in hand with the largest city spending on pensions, still paying for votes from decades past, no longer able to pay for much else.
You angered one.
Do you have an opinion on why Biden is pushing hard for an infrastructure bill?
The rust belt is interesting and a case study of its own, where a major city can have just about any type of work force these automotive towns are all built to house majority of it's employees. Grew up in a very blue collar city right outside Detroit the auto plants are construct in a specific zone that no less than 10 mins of a drive away.
Not having a car in a Texas suburb is absolutely paralyzing. Walking to the gas station in the winter I manage to pass an old barn and pet horses meanwhile ongoing traffic to the right of me, and 30 minutes of walking past houses. Nothing but houses.
That's not even suburbia, you live in a rural country area and there's nothing wrong with this design.
i live closer to dallas. not good!! i can walk to a few places as im fortunately close to a main road but all thats walkable is this little shopping area with a coffee shop, boutiques, antique stores, etc. otherwise my city (and every other city ive been to in texas) is not very walkable at all, which makes me quite sad as i greatly prefer walking over driving
Probably still better than driving
When I was in Hong Kong or in Amsterdam, I was like.
You know, let's go out, take a walk and grab something to eat nearby and I'll be at home in half an hour
In Denver, everything seems so goddamm FAR away and everything is so car dependent
And thus contributing to climate change more than any other country
@@Rainaman- China is
@@Chandiop not per capita. Also China makes everything for the world while US is mostly service based.
You probably live in a suburb of Denver and not Denver itself. Saying this having lived in Denver proper my whole life, except for college years.
@@Chandiop
Nope.
The per-capita greenhouse gas emissions of the US dwarf those of China.
It's so sad...I've been living in Europe for a couple years and can't believe how well designed and walkable most cities are. Coming back to Canada and the idea of walking to the store is just unheard of because the suburbs are so massive it would take over an hour just to get there without a car. I have a car back in Europe but only use it for road trips on the weekend and for large grocery trips. Otherwise it's actually more efficient to walk or bike into town.
@@jourgil what
I don't like walking. I love driving my car. For me it's relax.
@@lukasrojko5455
Yes, driving a car with 10k of other cars, thus creating traffic. Yes, and while you stay in traffic, a guy with a bike is beating you, laughing you. Who gets the last laugh?
Where do you live exactly?
@@lukasrojko5455 You don't, but other people do. They should have the option to walk like we do to drive.
As a german who lived in the us, ca and many other places i must say i never noticed how well designed europe is until i watched this channel. One of my dreams was always to someday move to canada bc of many reasons. Now i know better than that, its rlly sad seeing how the us and ca are screwing themselves over with this scam growth scheme.. as someone who doesnt even have a driver license i sincerly thank you for bringing these issues up as i wouldve hated it living in na!
There are nice areas but sadly it's not the norm and people recognise it as nice so it's way too expensive.
To be fair, in the 1940s your country lent a hand and…let’s say “incentivised” so many European cities to rethink how best they could design their communities. My country did much the same in Japan and later, Korea. US cities haven’t had to completely begin from scratch all over again (yet).
Canada is larger than the United States with a tenth of the population. It's either drive cars or don't leave home.
Here in Chile I'd always hear that "driving is a privilege, not a right", both at driving school and taking the license exams.
But now I see it's a forced right in the US and Canada.
having grown up moslty in N.America; what attributes of American 'city design' do you dislike most of? I wonder, as having family from Europe they disliked the windy bendy roads of their countries past.. me.. i prefer the quaintness, and practically of it - streets and roads, as opposed to "stroads". :)
Conveniently, the typical length of a home loan is equal to that of the average service life of a new road. So by the time you've paid off your home, you're so frustrated about the state of your current neighborhood infrastructure that you want to leave and continue the cycle.
@@dumpeeplarfunny You forgot the step where a land developer buys up a bunch of old, rented out homes and sweet-talks the local planning council into letting them evict everyone and bulldoze the building in favor of luxury apartments that provide less tax outlays, fewer units, and higher infrastructure costs... because everywhere else NIMBY'd the fuck out of his idea.
I live in India, where all cities are growing. I realized same problem here, which now results inner cities in ever poor state. What now I feel that never stay at one home for more than 10-15 years... Keep buying at newly developed location and move on, coz once the infrastructure goes to replacement mode it becomes hell.... A full redevelopment of locality takes at least a generation time.
Nobody in America ever actually lives in a house long enough to pay off their whole mortgage. Like 15 years tops, usually more like 7-10 though. You just roll the equity into a new mortgage over and over until you retire and go fuck off to an 80k condo in Florida.
@@hibiskus828 only to realize that florida is exactly the same as the rest of america in this regard, only somehow its more... cursed? unappealing? shit? i dunno the word to describe it other than a pile of shit... thats been poorly spraypainted with, like, not gold... maybe a shade of bronze that _almost_ looks like gold?
tl:dr florida is like the rest of america, only somehow its just way shittier
@@Rexini_Kobalt The fact that most people are envious of Florida in America makes me loose hope in humanity as a whole. The place is bad but the people make it so much worse.
This really seems like a ticking time bomb ignored by almost all politicians because most regular folk don't know or care enough.
thats why there is corona. cant figure out yourself, think further.
It's worse: most regular folk want a large house in the suburbs. So any politician acting against it is going to lose a huge amount of voters.
The planning time horizon for most politicians ends abruptly at their next date for reelection. If a major problem is looming, but will not manifest itself until after that date, then the attitude of most politicians is "not my problem."
A ballot democracy ensures issues like this will never be discussed because which politician will want to upset their constituents?
@@fisherfriendman Yes, the constituents have to care about the future. In a democracy the people get the politicians they deserve. May God help us all, because we have done an excellent job of demonstrating our incapability of governing ourselves.
The one thing I really do not understand is why it is deemed acceptable to build a country, a culture on debt. How can you sleep at night like that?
Gotta beat the commies
Better debt than red! 🤣
I think "buying on credit" it's very much built into the North American culture. It's the danger of growing up with credit cards rather than debit cards. You get so used to actually paying for your stuff 'after the fact' that you become numb to the dangers of doing so.
I'm not sure how much worse the "U.S. debt" is compared the the "Dutch debt" as far as the country as a whole goes, but when you've been raised to believe in growth and past generations always managed to pay off their debts (or they thought they did, anyway), you loose track of the debt and you become convinced a 'solution will come along in due time'. Until it doesn't... The problem is that far too many regions on earth are suffering the same. China has a massive real estate bubble, the shape Russia's in is no better and the U.S. I am sorry to say is also teetering on the brink. And when any one of these big three falls... I fear they'll pull down the rest with them because investments are so interwoven and international now... And adding covid to the mix...
Debt is irrelevant. Fiat currency and MMT.
The short answer: the Petrodollar.
Suburbs was built to keep a certain demographic out of the burbs. Now, the children of their grand and great grand parents are trying to move back into the city limits because of the lack of public transportations, walkable cities, etc . How things have changed
roads DONT last 25 years! I have literally WATCHED a developer pave asphalt right on top of DIRT! what does he care? once they turn it over to the city - ITS YOUR PROBLEM!!!
By the books it should be re-surfaced every 10-15 years. Maybe in dry southern states it can be 25y, but in north with frost, rain, salt the surface can degrade fast.
@@Rainaman- I think you might have missed the point there. While weather and temperature can accelerate the degradation of the road surface. Therefore, resurfacing interval. The amount of traffic also play a role. The weight of every vehicle that use it. Different dirt can hold different amounts of load.
@@Amin.Ashraf "different dirt" roads are not built on dirt lmao. It is gravel and sand at frost level that holds it.
@@Rainaman- right, I forgot to put quotation on dirt. As long as you get what I mean, it's fine.
@@Rainaman- engineered dirt can hold a surprising amount of load.
"Don't get me wrong: our cities need affordable housing" - always thought that affordable housing means apartments in multi-storey buildings, while separate houses is actually the most luxury option - just because they occupy more land and the infrastructure is naturally more expensive.
Most Americans don’t understand this logic
Yeah, apartment complexes is the most efficient way to provide cost-effective housing. Singapore HDB flats are exhibit A, look for polymatter's video on how Singapore solved housing
@@ironboy3245 They only solved it because their citizens are socially responsible and compliant. Would never work in the West - people would gripe that the homes were not good enough, or were in the "wrong" place etc.
@@pm2886 we also have racial quotas so we have diversity in our neighbourhoods. Helps stop racism when you're neighbours with Malays and Indians
@@ironboy3245 where are they forcing non white families to move in? That’s horrible
My hometown of Calgary has this exact problem in a really a bad way... since the price of oil tanked developers have been pushing to build over 14 new "communities" on the outskirts of town, just for the sake of economic growth. It's worrying because the associated cost of maintaining these communities could bankrupt the city, with office towers empty and businesses closing, the city's existing tax revenue simply can't make up the difference.
Yes, this is exactly what Calgary is doing. They are the quintessential example of being in a period of decline due to the failure of an important industry. This kind of "growth" is just patching up the problem, while making it even worse for future generations.
The council voted no to 11 of these new development though, while there are lots of mixed us development being built downtown and nearby. Calgary is (slowly) getting denser and with the to be constructed Green Line, I think the city is going in the right direction?
@@CLMBRT There are certainly some positive things happening in Calgary, like increased density in the downtown core. However, the city continues to promote sprawl (I was referring to the 14 communities approved in 2018, not the 11 additional ones voted down last year). And now the provincial government seems intent on killing the Green Line...with the municipal election next year, things could go from bad to worse if this trajectory continues...
@Ikreisrond Thank you for your hard work, I'm sorry we let you down. Unfortunately, what usually happens is our leaders choose the most politically expedient plans, regardless of their negative downstream consequences, to help with their own re-election. As we all know, if you want to change things, you're going to have to risk ruffling a few feathers. Until our leaders can get beyond, we're stuck with the status quo.
@@RealisticMgmt Seen this when it comes to other problems aswell in USA. Mainly when it comes to flood and flood protection. Rebuild/build now dont worry about later seems to be a mindset that is hard to get around there a lot.
Can we also talk about how a lot of city infrastructures like roads and sidewalks don't actually need to be replaced as often as they are due to decreased production quality so that construction companies can replace them more often? Where I lived when I went to high school had an area of roads and sidewalks that were date stamped from the very early 1900s and they looked better than some of the newer roads. The same with my childhood hometown. I went back after being away for 15 years and the rock-paved road outside my old house was almost exactly the same as what was in my baby pictures give or take a small repair here and there. All the time I lived there until I moved in high school, no one ever did anything to the roads because they didn't need to. America is built on a system of waste in a misguided effort to "create" jobs. Not only do our city layouts need to change but how things get built does too.
This is why capitalism doesnt work
@@Xingmey Until workers size the means of production, the wealth of a society will always flow up, and those who own much will own everything, and those who own little will own nothing at all. That's capitalism's natural trajectory, and awful city planning brought about by lobbying is a symptom of this problem.
I used to work for the state DOT in New Jersey. There are some stretches of concrete highway that were built in the '20s that are still in use today. They tend to be in more rural locations where the roads did not need to be expanded. I don't know what they did different with the concrete back then, but I wish we still used concrete like that.
@@Xingmey It is the least worst economic system, US capitalism doesn't work. A market cannot be completely free because product quality will drop and production gets so efficient that nobody can buy the products you produce. Europe is a lot better but not perfect. Pay grades have to increase almost threefold while regulation keeps improving product standards.
You raise a very good point. And the early 1900s is not even that old. I've walked on roads that were built before Christ. And not just Roman roads in Europe. I've seen some here in Asia, from China to India. Cobblestones, of course, but still fit for walking, cycling and driving.
"America is one giant shopping mall." -George Carlin
Haha yeah, big malls and mini malls
Without sidewalks, so you are forced to drive to it!
That hits on a philosophic level
Come to Middle East baby 😁
Malls are awesome. If you want , you can go live somewhere else. Thought so.
The other issue is how the streets are built..aka, super cheaply.
Germany builds roads that have very small maintenance costs over time. This isn't difficult..you use better process and materials designed to last 50 years without maintenance.
I mean...there are Roman roads which are still usable. It is perfectly feasible to build roads that can last hundreds of years.
That's because all of their roads are concrete 8 inches thick
Feasible but not so profitable for governor's nephew, who is also a developer, by coincidence.
You forget one VERY important thing: many of Europe's roads are built on top of old Roman roads, and the other thing you're forgetting is that suburban sprawl *just doesn't happen* on the level that it happens here in America.
You're not even comparing Apples to Oranges; you're comparing Apples to Almonds while forgetting massive leaps in timelines are happening.
I want to agree on principle, but not all roads lead to Rome. In my shithole, roads are terrible because I live in a swamp. It's also terrible because your most pertinent point is correct: my local government doesn't envision roads that last forever, much less for a few years.
@@jacobsmithjr You mean american, roman or german streets?
I look at aerial shots like 0:52, 3:28 and 6:12 and what I mostly see is parking lot. It really seems built for cars, not for people. Ugh, what an utter waste of space :/
It is because everything is about money in the US. The politicians are bribed by big oil, automakers, insurance companies to create need for cars. That's why the US grants driving licenses the easiest in the world from senior to youth. More car, more oil, more insurance, more driver license and car registration fees -- hence urban sprawl and suburbs.
3:28 is Cleveland. We had a huge influx a while ago and COVID essentially killed it. We’re doing okay it’s just not a lot is open in downtown.
True, especially when they lay flat and not stacked or underground. But hey, at least that space might someday be used for future, denser developments.
@@HellsJerome87 - The world population will start decline within few decades. Already started in Japan, Italy, Korea, Spain,etc.
Paved paradise, put up a parking lot...
I've been binging these videos recently, and it always surprises me how similar American suburbs are. Every time I see footage of a suburban sprawl, it looks like my hometown. Same asphalt desert with nothing but a shit fast-food restraunt, a supermarket, and a shady bar to entertain you.
Beats the hell of inner city and the emptiness of anywhere rural.
So true, I'm from Australia, and drove 12,000klms (8000miles) across America from New Orleans, Austin, Mississippi area, Memphis, Nashville, St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, (Toronto, Montreal), Boston and New York, doing music-y things in 2017... and did a lot of small towns, festivals in other areas, and side adventures along the way. Major highways, byways, and tiny country roads for nearly 4 months, spent time in lots of places and drove around the cities and suburbs and got to chatting to lots of people in music bars all over... and the thing that struck me the most about all over America was... it definitely wasn't as prosperous as it's made out to be. The infrastructure was definitely bad in a lot of places, roads were particularly bad in places, I also saw cement bridges, and highway overpasses that had concrete falling away with the steel reinforcing showing and rusting... It was like a lot of what you see on TV, the places that were significant, the big highways / important ones, main streets / tourist streets etc, were well maintained... but you could go 2 blocks over and they were in a terrible state of repair, pot holes, cracks, surfaces that were falling apart. And there definitely was a cookie-cutter vibe to what was available n the suburbs, deadend places with a Sonic/MacDonalds/KFC/Wendys and a gas station, then a strip mall with all the same outlets. Only some of the more important cities had managed to hold onto some of their own flavour/culture/individuality
... Some of the bigger cities the more poorer areas the streets looked like some of the destroyed, war torn eastern block European countries I have been to. It was an eye opener for what is supposed to be 'America'... it definitely had a facade feeling to it
John Steinbeck described it perfectly. Roughly paraphrased, he said "The trouble with Americans is they don't know they're poor. They all believe they are temporarily embarrassed rich..."
@@thevisitor784 Steinbeck wrote that a long time ago. A looong time ago. He is mostly talking about people that are dead. If you talk to your average American this is not a notion they harbor. It is a very simple, superficial way of dismissing American's though.
@@justleaveit1557 People who think they are "free" because they don't have to spend 4% of their income to support free healthcare for all, while spending 20% of their income on health insurance, are operating under the same delusion. The symptoms may have changed a little, but the propagandized culture of loving your abusers and believing in the myth of upward mobility as tirelessly advertised by popular culture has not changed at all in 100 years.
@@thevisitor784 You talk like nobody knows this. That was my point. Steinbeck was talking about different people. We know dude. We know what you are saying, we're not all just a bunch of walking nationalist zombies thinking we're going to be billionaires. That is superficial at best. Your point is meaningless, Steinbeck is talking about other people. If you think that's what all American's have as the foundation of their psyche, that helps us know more about your psyche, not American's.
@@justleaveit1557 At least 50% of Americans have no idea. The point in quoting the past is that human attitudes can remain terribly constant. That's why we have this thing called "history". Read about it and while you're at it fix your grammar: it's not " American's " - a singular possessive, but " Americans' " that you're trying to write.
The fascist colonialism that started picking up serious speed with Reagan selling drugs and defunding public education has had a profound impact, and the result is that the average American today is not only poorly educated compared to other wealthy nations, but also much less well-off relative to the country's GDP, more like in the dust-bowl years than in the '60s. What is called "middle class" in the US today has a lot of similarities to dust-bowl sharecroppers, esp. when it comes to existential insecurity: Almost 10% of all Americans are at risk of eviction right now. "We know dude" is not true. Nor is "Steinbeck is talking about other people". Try going to California's central valley. It got popular on social media to recognize how capitalism is screwing people in the past 5 years, but it it still a minority.
The truth is that the average working-Joe believes that working harder will remove the insecurity, that there is some sort of "meritocracy". In reality the only merit that capitalism really rewards is the ability to help separate other people form their capital, and most working people don't realize that they're merely trying to earn enough to die while working in an idiotic Ponzi scheme, and believe they will eventually strike some sort of motherlode.
The asfalt waste in American cities is insane.
“Spelling” in American cities is even more insane. ;-)
@@gwarlow They wizards??
America, haha...
You guys where booming,!!! 40 years ago... ;)
-Love from Amsterdam 🤣
the good news is - the vast majority (I've seen ~99%) of asphalt is recycled. It's probably the #1 most recycled material in the world. In Russia, somebody literally stole a road to sell the asphalt.
@@codyherring3895 Yeah, but the labour is still wasted. Also the shocks the potholes cause (or even accidents) are a shame to say the least.
This explains so much. It really feels like America is in decline and why being a millennial feels like you're getting screwed. It explains why many Rust belt and North Eastern cities look so dilapidated, neighborhoods in terrible shape, population decline, and no money to fix it.
California is so expensive, rents and taxes are ridiculous, but what you get in services are hardly worth it. California is nearing at the end of its cycle.
Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Idaho are booming with low taxes because they're in the early stages of this Ponzi scheme.
The North East and Rust belt have taxed residents into submission to pay for insane programs. Social programs and wasteful spending will kill anything.
florida is in the early stages? lol thats a good one...
Florida is part of cuba an I can assume since the Republicans don't see that but do say Nevada an Texas *is* becoming part of another nation; that its worse there
@@rjacobherman The west coast is herion needles an feces everywhere; just describing the landscape. An every building has a needle deposit box. Grocery stores, churches, etc
@@ShawnJonesHellion I have been there. Its a 3rd world country
There's a layer of taxation irony that comes with this narrative as well. That is to say that urban dwellers who live in towers, and who are not contributing to the sprawl, pay way more property taxes per acre, even though they aren't contributing to the ponzi scheme. Even at the individual unit level, they are often also paying more property taxes per square foot of living area within their homes, despite not having a plot of land under them that they individually own.
I was actually having a conversation with my roommate about how infrastructure and urban planning were a root cause for a lot of American problems just before this video came out. thanks for the strong evidence for my point.
There's way more than this when it comes to the cause of American problems. Watch this playlist from donoteat01:
ruclips.net/video/0lvUByM-fZk/видео.html
Who cares if its cause for a problem. I don't want to live in an apartment my entire life, I would much rather own some land & have a house & some privacy. Have some trees between myself & the neighbour's.
@@zaptowee6625 And you have that right, but governments need to make fully informed decisions before allowing suburbs to be built. That means the cost of such houses should go up, which raises their property tax, which makes them sustainable economically.
In Economics terms this means you pay the full cost including all externalities, instead of being subsidized by the government like houses are now.
@@EmperorNefarious1 Yeah, people in their neighborhood should be responsible for their own roads. Also developers should be allowed to build as much as they want. Housing is a matter of supply & demand like anything else, if the big problem & not affordable housing then increase supply. If there is financial incentive for devs to build then let them.
But then communities should be on the hook for maintenance but now this presents an issue. What about lower class communities who cant afford to pay their own maintenance, well its gotta be subsidized. But is that fair for the people who have to pay a higher property tax, why should they pay a higher tax if their not getting anything in return for it?
See now it's too complex, are places now suppose to privatize road maintenance to avoid this? I think the current system is actually pretty good as is. Year crap roads suck but that's one of the tradeoffs we have to make. Also worse roads lead to worse properity prices. It's all supply & demand.
@@zaptowee6625 The problem is housing really isn't just a matter of supply and demand. if Local governments knew the true cost of a development they would go back to the developer and say "We did a cost analysis for the next 30 years and it looks like we're going to be up to our ears in debts in the long run with this deal. So give us a better one or no permit." then they would reach a good deal and the houses are built, or they don't make a deal and other developers get a chance to bid for the land. Or even a private individual, or group might want to buy the land and create actual sustainable communities that people want to live in, instead of the dead cookie cutter developments.
It is an extremely complex problem, and the only solution to complex problems is information. With out it any answer people find is always going to be wrong or incomplete.
My comment on property taxes is related to land value, if it costs a developer more to build the houses, they will charge more to sell them; Property tax is usually a percent of land value with some adjustment.
Oh and thanks Not Just Bikes for the playlist, it was very informative. My roommate will be pleased to know I have even more facts to drown our discussions with.
I used to think that old buildings in European cities are old... but I couldn't be more wrong. The facade are old, centuries old, the inside however, are air-conditioned, cellular network, wi-fi, fire alarm, adjustable LED lights, smart building systems... it makes them very desireable.
These old European city buildings can be repurposed for anything. In Rome, I encountered a Carrefour express supermarket build into an old semi building-part cave systems. The roof are still rough patch of cave rocks, probably dating back to Roman empire era. It is fascinating. Next to it is a trendy Italian cafe.
Bright Sun Films has a large compilations of video exploring abandoned American malls and suburban mega store buildings that is practically useless after being abandoned. That unique Taco building, the uniquely designed Toys-R-Us themed building facade might be affable for McDonald's or other business franchise looking for their own "branding" and that's the massive problem. Suburban decay is a blight and left a plainly visible mark, urban decay can heal and re-transform itself.
As an American we like things shiny and new. Although I feel that desire is now fading with the younger generation more into repurposing and reusing to avoid creating waste
@@jimmybaldbird3853 lol
What is affable? The abandoned US mall?
I have traveled to Europe since the 60s and also used to marvel over the beautiful old buildings however, then I re learned about the Marshall Act which reconstructed Europe. Many of the buildings were actually reconstructed as they were originally to keep the illusion of old Europe alive, so they were not as old as they seemed. One example is the parliament building in Budapest and the original construction plans, which were used to rebuild that building which in fact was bombarded during WWII.
@@ipodtouchfreak100 Nah it's mostly cause the younger generation is too poor for things like new houses and new cars.
Young people definitely purchase other goods brand new, they're just cheaper than cars or a house.
"driving in soul crushing traffic"
Laughs in Indian.
Moscow #1 doe...
Oh my god, I've been to New Delhi; so yeah lol
@@NickRoman lmao. You don't even have to go to a big city. Go anywhere, people drive so haphazardly here omg.
@@safe-keeper1042 yeah. Vietnam is a beautiful country. They share the same problem as us Indians. Poor road ethics.
@@NickRoman Can confirm last time I was in New Delhi the tuk tuk driver insisted on driving on the wrong side of the road. Still don't know how I didn't shit myself....
Once you see how the profitability runs out at end-of-life, the Ponzi scheme analogy makes sense. Basically, the cycle of promised revenue and temporary gains digs the hole deeper and deeper till it crashes. At this point, I've lost track of all the self-defeating and self-destuctive practices that take place in the US.
"Every year we just build a bigger suburb to pay for the maintenance costs of all of our previous suburbs, _thus solving the problem once and for all!"_
"But..."
*"ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!"*
Futurama reference
We need Futurama now more than ever
All my favorite city planning channels always call out my hometown metro of Kansas City. Which makes sense, we got duped into removing all our streetcars in order to get a car factory. Hey, you should do a video in that!
As a kc native this hits hard
Damn, Judge Doom got to you, too? Condolences.
I'm so sorry.
“So they paved paradise and put up a parking lot..”
I swear I heard that as lyrics in a song a few years back...
Don't it always seem to go like that
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley nah, it's an updated paraphrased adage from when they tore down 'THE' original enchanted forest to build the colosseum in Rome. The name literally translated to enchanted forest more or less. It was something like mystical arborium or whatever. Anyway, can you beleive they had the nerve to save one tree as an homage no less. A reminder of how beautiful it WAS. Like that makes it okay. That's apparently the origin story of ygdrasil too.
Shit's fucked up man. Real fucked up...
Guess it just goes to show:
You dont know what you've got,
till it's gone.
@@kilikfanof2mrow You don't know what you got until its gone.
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley you did. Big Yellow Taxi-Joni Mitchell
I lived in Phoenix AZ for most of 1968-1981. It was obvious that it's own sprawling growth was a major industry and basis for the local economy. It was also obvious that someday the music had to stop. Not sorry I left. I now live in a densely populated old city and take rapid transit almost everywhere.
What most watching won't realize is that it goes a lot deeper than just the basic ponzi scheme talked about here. It's one thing to say "it happened after WW2" and quite another to actually name names and look at the connections and motivations of those who led the charge.
can we get a video of comparing north america "mindset" vs dutch "mindset" when it comes to this? roads/building houses . i mean this is super interesting and would like to hear your toughts about our dutch "problem" ( housing problem )
Best solution to the housing problem here? Stop building row houses (riijtjeshuizen) and start building apartment buildings again.
@@LoneAmbientWanderer while most "nature" in the Netherlands has essentially been built, I do agree with your point that we should make efficient use of the limited space the country has. We don't want to turn it into one big city after all.
@@LoneAmbientWanderer problem with highrise in the Netherlands is mainly the composition of our soil. In most areas our soil is polder or veengrond which has a lot of water in it. That makes for a terrible base to build skyscrapers on because they have lots of weight on a relatively small footprint.
60s/70s galerijflat habitant here, please dont dress them up a bit, they did that here, living hasnt inproved, but the cost of living is increased from a total of 450 euro to 690 euro a month, and i'm in the ''social'' section. Government needs to build durable modern galerijflatten, its great for ''sociale huurwoningen'' but the current privatised owners of that market will never do that because they want profit each year, so renovation & building cant cost a lot. Dutch politics have to effectively ''socialize'' the social market again but with them spending so much on saving the climate and other invisible problems like cow farts i dont see that happening anytime soon, they will just build more rijtjeshuizen tot de weilanden en parken op zijn. because thats profitable.
@@LoneAmbientWanderer Building higher isn't necessary for sustaining housing. 4-6 floor buildings are just fine, it's just that there needs to be more of them. Vienna has almost no high rise buildings but the cost of living there is considerably cheaper than Amsterdam at around 2.5 times the population
In the Netherlands we also eat a lot of apple pie, I didn't even know it was considered American lol
That's because America doesn't stand for any other values 🤣🤣🤣🤣
the saying is "as American as apple pie" so I guess we really like our pie
Because ours is different and it was also brought over by your immigrants that your government illegally brought over here
@@lying_lynx hey we gave you apple pie. So be happy 😜
In my mind the most American food are hamburgers, followed by barbecue, hot dogs, milkshakes, cornflakes, orange juice and Coca-Cola.
I live in Denmark, and I love that I have a 5 to 20 minute walk (depending on which store) to like 10 grocery stores and a shopping center. Have access to around 7 bus lines within a 5 minute walk and a city rail system that drives directly to the central intercity train station in the city center, that also doubles as a shopping center.
If I don’t want to walk I just use my electric bike. I will be investing in an electric scooter soon, that can ride on bike lanes, for longer trips as well.
Sounds wonderful. I just moved to Denver, Colorado and incredibly I can walk to two grocery stores in shopping centers. A park with a 16 mile trail that leads to downtown is right there. I will never move back to "the burbs".
I is loved being there! I walked everywhere and everything opens onto a public park with a ton of greenery.
the same in Swiss and Italy!!!
Denmarc is tiny. Your model can’t be used universally.
@@UnknownUser.ar1 Universally compared to what? Most people live in cities, and if cities are designed properly, then there is no reason why it shouldn't be possible in a lot, if not most cities. My city has almost 300,000 people, it's not like it's a small, close knit village with 10k people. It's the same in capital Copenhagen, where 1.3 million people live.
When I became a citizen planning commissioner, one of the truisms I learned fairly quickly was that suburban residential development NEVER pays for itself (taxed on a fraction of actual value). Another problem that the Chamber of Commerce always fails to mention because it's related to the ever-increasing debt of the municipality in question is that the higher tax rates on commercial and industrial development are also based on a fraction of actual value, and that new commercial and industrial development is often partially financed through tax breaks, which further reduce municipal revenue. "Tax incentives" offered to businesses are essentially bribes, paid to the business in question by the city, and paid for by the other residents of the city.
What do you mean taxed on a fraction of actual value? I always found the city tax assessor to value property much higher than what the market calls for. What developments pay for themselves in your experience?
I also dont understand how a city trying to secure buisnesses by offering lower tax rates hurts if sales tax and additional income from workers offsets it. If you look at Texas and California as examples you can see how at the state level at least Texas is doing much better at the moment.
Why dont we just privatize education and have property taxes go solely into infastructure.
@@johnnyistoc5051 Your city assessor might err on the side of higher value, and thus higher taxes, but if so, your city is very much the exception. The most recent assessment for my house was about 55% of what realtors are telling me it's worth. "House flippers" routinely offer far more than the city-assessed value, and they intend to put a little money into it and make a nice profit on the resale. Undervaluing residential real estate has been the standard practice in each of the three metro areas I've lived in over the past 75 years. Why? Because NO ONE likes paying taxes. We all (including businesses) want the mythical "free lunch" of streets that don't cost anything, schools that are free, clean water we don't have to pay for, parks at no cost to ourselves, etc.
Commercial development comes much closer to paying its own way - one of the primary reasons why cities fall over themselves trying to attract commercial businesses, and perhaps THE primary reason why suburbs fight tooth-and-nail to have the latest/newest shopping area in THEIR suburb rather than the neighboring one. Alas, too often, the same suburb will shoot itself in the foot by offering tax breaks to the developer in the hope that, over the long term, taxes collected will be far more than taxes given up. That's a significant gamble that doesn't always work to the benefit of the city. Even without tax breaks, relying on sales taxes can become catastrophic if/when the economy goes south and people stop spending, as nearly happened in the pandemic.
Privatizing education puts us back to the days of the country's founding, when the only people with an education were the relatively wealthy who could afford to hire teachers/tutors. Everyone else largely remained ignorant and illiterate. Good luck maintaining a technological society on that basis…
Anyone ever calculate what fraction of inefficiencies are responsible for the high costs of maintaining infrastructure.
You don't have an unlimited amount of money to waste as a city.
It wouldn't matter how much they get it will never be enough because in most cases they are incompetent idiots.
@@rayschoch5882 Back in the day many children attended Catholic schools which were very cheap. I am aware of 2 private religious schools around a 15 mile radius of where I live that costs around 5000 a year to attend.
It's not cheap but when you consider property taxes in my area are around 6 to 9 thousand it makes you wonder why you cant opt out of public education and simply deduct whatever private tuition would be from property taxes. There could still be public schools but it would give parents more choice. The current system as it is, is doing a very poor job of educating children for today's technical society.
@@bondjames652 in the South before the Civil War the people living here wer some of the most educated people on planet Earth and there were no Public Schools. It takes very little money to educate someone correctly. The government forces the parent to put their children in school or go to prison that should be your first clue. Them the government schools poison the children's mine with a bunch of crap and that takes a lot of money to do.
Cities tend to cut their own throat when they are forced to give tax incentives just so corporate companies will open shop in their communities.
@@AhhhhMyLeg amazon and tesla end up costing cities money in the long run rather than producing. Increased strain on infrastructure and demands for cities provide extra services or else "they'll pack up and leave".
@@AhhhhMyLeg damn that's a much different situation than in my city of 4 million where I sit in traffic for 1.5 hours each day. Suburbs, parking lots, crime, and traffic.
@@AhhhhMyLeg big business tends to bring the low wages with them, making it even more difficult for the working class to be the economic driving force necessary for a modern world.
@@AhhhhMyLeg if that were true, Worker Unions would not have been necessary for wage bargaining or worker protections.
@@AhhhhMyLeg no they haven’t, wages have only risen due to people leaving for unionized jobs or threatening to unionize their current jobs, prior to unionization the “precious” big businesses were basically enslaving workers by paying them in a currency only accepted at the company store.
Kind of strange how close Ponzi schemes are to fractional reserve banking.
Because of the debt based system it is. Fractional reserve banking isn’t when Money is used and not fiat currency.
I don't see the resemblance
@@duckhuntergaming4713 when you deposit money in a fractional reserve bank, they only keep some of the money in the vault. the rest is given to other people when they withdraw money. this is similar to a ponzi scheme. the two big differences between the two are that banks give loans while scammers take loans, and that fractional reserve banks create money in the form of tradeable IOUs. this puts more money into circulation and allows a bank to functuon even when people are withdrawing money faster than theyre depositing.
@@lotionman1507 I know how it works, I still don't see the resemblance, when you add everything up including debt, the bank hasn't created any money at all, it has found a way to rip everyone off with interest, but that's it.
@@duckhuntergaming4713 thats true, no net money has been created since its balanced by debt, but theres more money in circulation, and that stays the case until the debt is repaid. but thats beside the point. the connection is that both take your money and give it to someone else.
Almost the entirety of NJ is suburbia for NYC, and I think that this really illustrates why the taxes are so high here.
Fascinating video, I'm so glad I left New York and returned to the west of Ireland 🇮🇪 . Healthier food, easier lifestyle and astounding scenery.
NYC is worse then ever now !
Plus the lovely Irish women of Ireland are the best women to be around with in the world 👌🏼
Well....you lived in new york lol. What's not even America, really.
Upstate, downstate (NYC)? That's such a broad statement it really does sound like you just didn't make the right moves there....Healthy food and scenery are choices IMO
@@artemiscool67 Born in Baltimore lived in Brooklyn for 10 years. Now I live in Houston. NYC is the greatest city on earth.
This makes so much sense. In my city, all of the credible shopping areas, restaurants, and malls are in the suburbs. They seem to be well off, but they are struggling just like the rest of us. They opened a new mall 10 years ago, but they built the newer 3 miles down the same street. It takes all of 7 to 10 years for the original mall to be filled with Dollar Trees, antique stores, and the newest hair salon. None of which revenue goes into the main city.
The solution is to stop worrying about 'revenue into the main city'. Private industries should be allowed to thrive regardless of how the government is doing. Believe it or not, we'd do just fine if the government stopped maintaining infrastructure and handed it off to private industry.
All this asphalt/concrete everywhere is so ugly as well.
if you want to see smooth, fresh (Darker black) Asphalt (we use less concrete), you should visit the Netherlands. We do pay higher bills, but when it has rained and frozen, our streets are so smooth we can ice skate on them!
Bad thing is concrete roads are cheaper and last longer.
@@ingmarsteenbergen2619 Dutch asfalt roads are ugly to and need also to go just like the rest of the system gartbadge.
I see those smooth concrete driveways in the suburban american homes and think they look amazing.
It's not just ugly, it's an environmental catastrophe.
I work in a community that is far below the poverty line and possesses the largest trailer park in Indiana. Personally, I think the roads were more drivable before the state gave the county a multi-million dollar grant to improve the roads in 1996... Dirt and gravel roads are more drivable than crumbling asphalt without the funding to repair it.
This is why whenever there is a boom in a small town, the people that have lived in it, hate when new wealthy out of state people move in. Where I live they have Mostly moved from California and Washington, and especially the clueless Texas. It is so bad that if you have lived and worked here. You can not afford to live here. They have killed our markets and all the natives are hoping and praying they all go Broke and lose everything. Lots of hate.
@@impeach4666 yeah
It's pretty sad. They are all pretty clueless to themselves and their actions.
Gentrification
@@Jasondirt It is simple economics. The prices go up much more in the big cities, so people leave to cheaper areas.
@@darrynfrost3401 there is a difference between a slower natural growth and what is happening now. When wages can't match the increase in the cost of living it has massive problems. I get it you guys got your money. But you miss or ignored so many problems that are created just because of greed. For one instance where I live. The county wanted more tax money. So they Used eminent domain took land that wasn't for sale.. Put cheap houses on it.. Sold those houses for way way more than they were worth. Small town wages can't afford new buffet economics. This house are built by unskilled workers. Who will work for less. Now the houses are made cheap and at t times unsafe. Not enough insulation, bad wiring and bad plumbing. Septic systems leak into water tables. Or to many people drill wells to close and dry them up. That's just one aspect. Local wildlife to local small businesses all get killed off. Less jobs. Less choice. More government. If everything came up slowly and matched its normal and good usually. Last time we had this senerios happen it led to a giant Recession. Bad for everyone except those at the very top.
@@Jasondirt Thats not the problem of the citizens who leave though. Its the problem because of the American Monetary system that mostly affected cities, but now is affecting suburbs. Everything becomes more expensive, but the wages stay relatively the same as they were, because America is build on a money making society rather than taking care of the citizens. Its only getting worse if America doesn't change their ways. What Americans don't realize, is that most European countries look down upon America (And the USA specifcally) as if its a third-world country and start to not take USA seriously anymore due to all their problems.
Basically, the USA us devolving instead of evolving, which is a problem, because its entirely focus on its industry rather than the people living in the country.
A lot of Americans are also Brainwashed (If that is the right word even), in thinking American Way is the best way, until they go abroad to Europe (If they can even afford to do so, which is the other issue, due to the wage issue), which then opens their eyes the American Way isn't the best way.
I live in Charleston SC and we just moved to the suburbs 4 years ago in March. I hate it so much. The traffic is horrible. You have to drive everywhere. It’s so boring. No bus system comes this far. And they are building more of them and our main road is a 2 lane highway🤦🏾♀️. I’m already planning my move in 1 to 2 years.
The urban core of pre-WWII Charleston looks like a rather fine place to live, walkable/bikeable. I've semi considered moving there. Brings up another good point made by strongtowns, most Americans see "traditional city development" as a tourist attraction not "how things should be done" (like historic Charleston, historic St. Augistine, the French Quarter, etc)
@Safwaan It's not suburbs per se that are the bad thing and not all suburbs are exactly alike, but what is disliked is the specific sprawling design and strict separation of uses that gives many such suburbs a negative feel to a lot of people.
@@3of11 yes, the old town of Charleston is great. Very walkable and would be an awesome place to live. Some parts are bike-unfriendly due to the very bumpy cobblestones! But once you know which streets you can avoid them. Also the drivers tend to be very patient, there are always slow-moving vehicles around (like horse and carriage tours) so drivers don't expect to get anywhere in a hurry! Unfortunately that part of town is very expensive to live in. You can find more affordable housing outside the old downtown but then you lose a lot of the walkability.
@Safwaan illinois has great roads. you know that?missouri sucks ohio is terrible. indiana is ok but getting ragged around the edges. i dont know a state that knows how to patch roads as seamlessly as illinois.
Pretty much the case everywhere I see. I moved to a small rural town that didn’t even have a police department. Now people found out about the cheap houses here, and immediately there’s so much traffic here. Our roads were not made to handle all this new traffic.
I read Strong Towns: A bottom-up revolution to build American prosperity after one of your previous videos. I now see that Strong Towns is also one of your Train patreons, so it seems like there is some mutualistic symbiosis going on there ;)
I really enjoyed this video and I feel like it did a great job of explaining the American suburban ponzi problem,
Yes, Strong Towns came in as a patron *just* as I was finalizing the Patreon graphic for this video. It is a bit weird as it makes it look like they sponsored this video, but of course they didn't: they've just found my content (and not just the Strong Towns videos) good at getting out their message.
I've been a big fan of Strong Towns for a long time, and I've been promoting them on reddit for at least 6 years already. I'm just glad that I have a platform here to share their content as well, because I think it's really important. You can't make a city truly great if it's financially insolvent.
how did you comment 4 days ago the video is 19 minutes old
@@Maussiegamer I think the video is released earlier for patrons
@@matthieuraynaud580 ok so you are saying that if i start a communiet revolution i would be able to see not just bikes videos earlier?
im in
@@Maussiegamer Sorry I wasn't clear enough. "Patrons" are what we usually call supporters on Patreon, the funding platform. Unless you were joking xD
I honestly love suburban environments, but maybe not typical ones that are in most of the US, rather, ones that actually have dramatic variety between home appearances and layouts. Suburban communities can seriously be beautiful and wonderful places to live, but there’s a lot of obstacles in the way of that most of the time. Usually American suburban areas built within the last 40 years are hot garbage though with those things in mind; no creativity or thought to the home or who would be living there. Literally my home is a suburban house from 1955, it’s pretty modest compared to new suburban ones, being at only about 1200 sq-ft and with just one bathroom. But it was built with great attention to detail and regard to who would be living there, and looks completely different from the houses surrounding it, despite being built at the same time by the same developers. Although suburban areas may not be as efficient, I personally would shoot myself if I had to live in a home attached to someone else’s for my whole life.
"and the same goes for Canada too" - thank you for not leaving us out, thank you
Canada is just America with Healthcare lol
Dude. He's Canadian. That's why he noticed at all.
@@gromm93 I realized it later lol Canada maintains it's boring out of the news status then.
Mexico: sad noises.
Canada is better than America.
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago that wasn’t expensive when I was a kid but got gentrification within the last 20 or so years. But it was always very walkable. Seems like a lot of the older suburbs that developed along the railroad lines are that way. People all over town walk or bike to the train and are downtown in 20 minutes or so. You could live without a car. Property taxes all over Illinois are insane. But because of gentrification I couldn’t afford to live in the town I grew up in. Moved to a modern sub-division ex-urb semi-rural. It’s quiet. Got a house twice the size of the house I grew up in for half the price. The new suburbs are growing along the interstate rather than the railroad. Can’t walk anywhere in a short time. But with remote work and door delivery it’s kind of irrelevant and I’ve rarely gone back to the city for anything. I got used to it. But give it 10 years it might get congested out here too. The problem is AFFORDABLE HOUSING. That pushes people out of cities even if they want to live somewhere walkable. Doesn’t Matter how you design it if working people can’t afford it.
Agenda/ideal driven people always create new problems with their solutions... to which they'll be there with NEW solutions... that then beget new problems and so forth. For example, their plan to push people back to urban areas will result in rapidly increasing housing costs, which they'll then subsidize... that subsidization will then increase taxes and/or debt and reduce homeownership... which they'll then have an expensive program to address... which will result in higher taxes... which will eventually result in people at the higher end of the income scale and their businesses fleeing to lower tax suburbs (or states)... which will result in reduced tax revenue and blight... which the people who made this video will then blame on capitalists and people who want a better life rather than bloated, inefficient government, high taxes and the results of their own crappy and short-sighted plans.
@@derekrichards2859 Worse, as you see with college in the US, subsidies raise the cost because these crooked parties figure they can charge even more than any reasonable, non-subsidized market would allow.
You mean property taxes around Chicagoland area... because southern Illinois has low property taxes. But why move there? Right? Lol
@@cabron247 the only thing wrong with southern IL is lack of jobs. But also when population increases the taxes get raised to put in infrastructure that people want that wasn’t there before. Remote working might allow more people to live out there though.
Good points. I think remote working is going to change this whole debate. People will be able to choose to live further from big cities, but not have to commute back to them for work, reducing the strain on infrastructure.
It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. - George Carlin
Cute quote, but largely useless for solving anything.
@@Professor_Utonium_ Carlin was a pessimist through and through, he'd probably say we're f$cked either way, so stop whining, or something to that effect. I like to be a little more hopeful, but honestly, I understad why he thought it's all going to ruin.
@@barvdw I can accept that "so stop whining" part of it. Complaining just drains effort from doing more practical stuff. I also understand my hypocrisy here complaining, myself, so I'll see my way out now lol
@@Professor_Utonium_ it isn’t meant to solve anything. And it is not useless: it makes an important point in a funny way that sticks.
A dream is unattainable usually because its a dream
My dad had a friend take a job with his small town (~13,000 pop.) as department head of public works. The friend found that, despite his reports reporting ample funds, he could not buy a new front loader. He was told that, despite what what was on paper, all the accounts had been raided. He had no money. He resigned soon there after.
Well, it took me years playing SimCity to realize that the game solution is similar to the real world, you tax the poor and the rich will come, then your city will eventually fail, because rich people will occupy all of the space and pay proportionally less money, then your city starts to run out of money, you tax the rich, they leave, and their property decay, making the value of the city decay, so you have to bulldoze everything, and rezone in a way that the city will be denser again.
When I was a kid I had a nintendo game about city development and in retrospect it was racist but also this was the case. The poorest people (there were 4 tiers: black, blue/red, light blue/pink, white) paid very few taxes but they would live basically anywhere. Average people were probably the best people to have in retrospect: They worked at businesses that earned quite some money for you, paid a bit of taxes, and they wanted maybe a restaurant that lost you a tiny bit on money. But rich people! They paid twice as much as the high average people, but they needed parks, restaurants, jewelry shops, nothing polluting anywhere nearby, and more fancy shops! And they also wanted more police presence and firemen to feel safe.
Or you can download a magical 1x1 square that gives you free money
I think in reality at least in the US it is impossible to levy in reasonable amount of taxes on lower incomes and hence persons over $250k annually pay almost all taxes in the USA. As a persons who lives in a top 15 population city in the US it is very difficult to have adequate city services as the more wealthy tend to live in smaller wealthier satellite communities. Every city in the USA however is falling farther and farther behind with n real solutions.
Great comment, I used to play Caesar a long time ago, and I know this..
This seems a lot like what is happening in California right now. Funny.
I love all of the stock footage of Kansas City. As a citizen of Kansas City, I can say that it really is much worse on a bike. Heaven forbid you try and actually walk!
Gues go to work on biky is not an option there.
I guess road bikes are not as popular in us then
@@petrfedor1851 hell no most jobs are far out anyway. 20min in cars
@@mattao313 Half of that time in trafic jam. Bikes can often take shorter road. Especialy in city.
@@petrfedor1851 nope 20min is traffic free on the highway
Noone outside of America associates apple pie with America.
Yep, that's absolutely true. But Americans have a saying, "As American as apple pie." Even though Apple pie is Dutch.
@@NotJustBikes However, Dutch apple pie is not like American apple pie. At the risk of offending Dutchies.,not only do I prefer American apple pie, I dislike Dutch apple pie. (Ducks as chairs/ pie are thrown my way) /:
@@NotJustBikes lol
@@rebeccaalbrecht771 not throwing anything...
You can't question tastes
@@NotJustBikes As a Dutchie i must pass on the honor. The first recipe for Apple pie was found in a medieval English cookbook.
Urban sprawl is the scourge of mankind. This is a great video. Having said that, I recently retired from working in the engineering department of a suburban city of Vancouver, BC. City finances were in great shape and I worked under the infrastructure planning section. We had sophisticated detection methods and software to optimize spending on roads, water and sewers. Not all cities are in dire deficit spending situation on infrastructure.
Urban sprawl is fine I guess. Suburban sprawl is the one that’s a scourge.
Ah yes. I remember playing Sim City as a kid, not knowing how to play.
My towns ended up just like these examples with roads straight up disappearing
Most of Rome, Italy is small neighborhoods that have pretty much all you need within a short walk. A backpack is handy. If for some reason you need something from farther away a cheap cab ride gets it done.
Rome is stagnant and dirty and corrupt. And you can't build in any case because the Kingdom, Republic, or Empire are under every shovel-full of dirt.
@@Peter_Schiavo And America isn't? And good, no grubby people to buy up the land and put useless shit there.
I love driving.
@@lukasrojko5455 I doubt you’d love it in places where there is grid lock.
Cheap cab @ Italy? You must be kidding.
6:44 You just described fundamental economic issues being completely ignored by both political parties/axis and attributed to their top 5 favorite scapegoats... and you're right, and you might just be on the brink of solving US politics. I'd hire a bodyguard.
I've always known what a ponzi scheme is, but that was easily the simplist clearest and most concise description I've ever seen.
he described all banks in a nutshell
@@eclipse369. not banks necessarily just the practice of fractional reserve banking
I happen to live in a subdivision, where the developer went to jail shortly after completing the subdivision...except, he never turned the roads over to the state. By the time homeowners realized there was a problem, the state told them that the roads had to be brought up to code before the state would take them over. Just 1 road in the subdivision, about 3/4 of a mile, needed $40k in repairs before the state would take it. And while some in the neighborhood would like to try and solve this issue, close to half the homes are rented out...and obviously they are not about to sink extra money into a place they may not live in for more than a few years. To top it all off, the state has even admitted that if they took over the roads, property taxes would be raised...but no road works would be done for several years, because the state doesn't have the money for it!
absolutely brilliant.
(this is sarcasm)
I'll bet this happens a lot more than anyone knows.
Wow
Smells like pain.
Seeing the signage for a “Flaming Hot Cheetos Burrito” is what did it to me
@Steve Acho You get what you pay for, i doubt the food is healthy if it's that cheap. Processed, added sugar... But it's not like you have a choice, capitalism fucks everything in our lives if left uncontrolled enough like in the US. The food, housig, work, enviroment, everything degraded and minimal maintainance and investment because profit for the rich few comes first, as they're the major shareholders and wealthy people who have the power.
Fire Hot Cheetos sandwiches? Yeah, that’s that classic good ol’ hood eating we did growing up as a kid in the Southeastern US states 😂
I would love to see a cities’ profit and lost statement. Theoretically what you are saying makes sense, but it is hard to trust it without seeing those revenues and costs.
Pretty sure you find can some of those statements in the articles linked in the desciption, haven't checked them myself though
Government finances are public, as far as I know. Go to your city's website & you will be able to find financial statements. But unless you've had some finance training, they won't be too easy to read.
Municipalities in Canada legally have to balance their budgets.
@@toddpick8007 True, and so following the logic of the video, that would explain why infrastructure continues to deteriorate. Cities have only two ways to pay for it: 1) taxes from existing residents, or 2) growth to bring in additional tax-paying residents. But growth brings more roads and sewers that will one day also need repair, until eventually the growth needed to maintain the ever-increasing backlog of deteriorating infrastructure tops out. By the same token, raising taxes the full amount needed to repair all that old infrastructure would be political suicide. So instead, each crop of politicians just prays the roads and sewers don't collapse entirely until they're retired from office, by which point the unavoidable day of reckoning will be somebody else's problem.
@@davidjorgensen877 Yup and they all collect their guaranteed pensions and future jobs sitting on corporate boards.
I’m surprised that ordinary road of USA is much wider than Japanese highway.
Even financing small roads of Japanese standard costs so much money,and I can’t imagine how vast amount of money is required for entire US roads.
I feel like Europe has an opposite problem. There's little to none high rise residential buildings in a lot of cities. Cities like Munich have insane housing prices and to no surprise tons of suburban sprawl around the city. All because the city wants to have perfect views of the historic building from ALL sides of the city, which is a bit of an overkill
Yes there's actually a "missing large" in some European cities.
I’ve never left Europe and your videos on north america make mee feel like it’s absolute dystopian
It is. And most Americans are so ignorant about the outside world that they have absolutely no idea. They think the only type of place you can live in is this car-dependant sprawl or a cramped apartment tower in a city.
@@NotJustBikes
‘I’m sure that there are nice things aa well’ I was going to say.
And it took me way too long to think of an example, but the one thing that is probably better is freedom in nature. The netherlands is really (understandable) restrictive on camping and stuff. Other places in Europe are better but still, North America might just win it there.
But yeah it’s hard to think of societal benefits from what I know.
@@NotJustBikes Or you know they could also live in the middle of fucking nowhere in a town of less 100 and you closest neighbor is 20 minutes away. Unless your considering that to also somehow be urban sprawl
@se fi I've been there... Identify what's holding you back, identify what's good in your life, make achievable plans and work to get there. Escape is slow, but possible! 🙂
This video isnt entirely accurate... every state handles road funding differently. The idea that every mucipality is responsible for funding their own roads is extremely inaccurate to say the least.
I’m living in a development that was developed in the early 60’s. The streets have never been resurfaced.
And are they in good shape?
@@fenrirgg horrible shape.
@@yolo_burrito oof
This thread was like a great joke. The setup, the punchline. Reminds me of the "dog with no nose" joke.
Ironic how the country that’s “built for the car,” has the worst roads and the worst drivers. 🤔
Especially those Oregon drivers 🤮
The US for the most part has well-maintained roads.
@@dallashill23 I am an airport driver and I heard Oregon ,vegas, texas, LA, new york and I work in fort lauderdale , looks like is in the whole country Americans don't know how to drive .
Spoken by someone that apparently has not been on streets in many other countries to see how awful the traffic and drivers are around the world. I swear, in many places, they don’t really drive, they just sort of aim their cars and motorcycles in the direction of their destinations and hope nothing gets in the way.
Ever been to Thailand, China, Mexico, Italy, Greece, Spain, India, . . . I guess not.
“Stability is more important than growth” - Michael Dell.
Cities grow or die, they don't stay in stasis. When they do hover, they become generational mold where everything costs a lot, little gets done, and they become increasingly intolerant of change. That works in homgenous wealthy nations like Norway, but even then it breaks down eventually.
I have been thinking about this for years now, ever since I found out that banks can defer (never pay) property taxes on foreclosed houses for years. Imagine a city going through the financial collapse of 2008 and allowing all those foreclosed homes to skip out on paying property taxes as well!!! I learned that local governments depend on new development growth to raise revenue they need now. It's one of the reasons why I am beginning to question property taxes as the main revenue source for local and state governments. Property tax dependency seems to inflate property values that quickly surpass low and middle income affordability. It also discourages conservation or reclamation of natural land... in my area (south Florida), thousands of acres of old farm land sit vacant for 10-15 years and then are sold to developers to build 10-15,000 unit HOA neighborhoods. That farmland should really be restored back to the wetlands it once was.
I worked for several banks in the home retention department during the crisis nationwide and I never saw property taxes being forgiven (sometimes they were collected later but with penalties so I would not call that "deferred"). As a matter of fact, there were many times when we could not modify a loan enough to make it affordable because of property taxes. Local governments (almost) always get their property taxes from a home or a foreclosed home because they can take ownership of it since taxes take priority over everything else (including mortgages).
Property tax doesn't inflate property values, it actually depresses property values because you're assigning a cost to owning property. It also depresses development for the same reason as well. It would be better to convert the property taxes to just a land tax so developments aren't taxed.
The first things I associate with America are not baseball, apple pie or soul-crushing traffic. Instead I associate America with obesity, children pretending to be adults and the American dream, more specifically how it was snuffed out.
The American dream exists, the immigrants are living it.
Colorado Springs is a great example of this. The city bought into this idea that we needed more water for a future influx of people with growth like 20x its current size on the very outskirts of town. Then 2008 hit and all the housing developers pulled out. But they had already spent millions upon millions diverting a river uphill for the houses and not even paying for it, just giving an "IOU" to the land owners. They tried and failed to pass a tax to pay for it 3 times over the years and it only barely passed before the whole project was dropped right before it was finished.
I am personally always shocked how terrible are even extensive parts of the US downtowns. Places that could be one of the most expensives in the city are covered by ground parking lots, empty plots, etc.
Conservatives consider taxes abhorrent and always promise to reduce them. In reality, taxes are a good thing, used for the common good. The public perception of taxes needs to change, especially with resect to billionaire corporations, who avoid tax at every opportunity.
Worth remembering that StrongTowns is headed by a conservative. Keep in mind that conservatives are also concerned with fiscal ROI, which suburbia isnt great for. This isn't a defense of typical american conservatives mind you, just that it is entirely possible to be non partisan about this, useful for family dinner arguments.
I’ve noticed our suburban towns have run out of space for homes so townhouses & apartments and CVS pharmacy keep showing up.
They are going for density now. I've noticed the same here in Houston, tx. It's been going on noticably in my part of town since 2005.
No it's not about density. USA has endless land. I think the issue is affordability. Townhouses and apartments are all American wages can afford.
I remember reading a reasearch paper that basically concluded that for future suburbs you will get the worst of both worlds.
That is the crowd and crime of the city because of population density and the boredom of the suburbs as sprawling takes you far from entertainment districts.
Your intro is so short i can't even skip it, i like that.
I live in Atlanta and haven't had a car in over twenty years, but I've always lived in neighborhoods in which I can easily get around. However, to live in the suburbs here one has to have a car.
I used to live there and we had no car, it was NICE.
That’s crazy, everytime I’ve been there. Only crackheads and people stuck in the hood didn’t have cars in the A.
@@ThisisFerrariKhan
Chapter 8 is required no car
Same in Australia... sigh. And there is vocal opposition to any medium density in the inner suburbs, so we end up with ridiculous high-rises & sprawl... and little in-between.
And it's funny our cities are also so full of cars. I live in nyc and i would love to bike everywhere instead of walking but its so dangerous. The number of people dying from a car hitting them on a bike is so high its astounding. Nyc wants so bad to be like a European city but they need to remove all these cars first
I appreciate the craft that gets dedicated to this -- the sound design is underrated, knowing as we do know that drone photography has no scratch audio. Also, re suburban recalcitrance, let's not forget there becomes an identity issue for people living in suburbs. Where I grew up, in Suffolk County, Long Island, there is an antipathetic regard for the metropole of New York and its inhabitants. And you guessed it: A lot of that pivots on race, and class.
Thanks! I'm glad you noticed the sound design: about 90% of these clips had no sound with them. I'm most proud of the jackhammer at 3:33 personally. You'd never know that audio was added by me. :) I can't keep spending so much time on each of these videos though, so not every release will have this much effort put into it.
And yes, it's pretty hard to separate US suburbs from race and class. That's pretty much the reason they're around. I plan to make a whole other video about that some day (add it to the list).
@@NotJustBikes People love to push back on the race issue here in the comments, but it's inextricable -- they don't know their Robert Moses.
@@NotJustBikes I thought you had already done a video on redlining? Maybe I'm mistaken...
WRT sound design, I was completely unaware, impressive work, but now I'm slightly disappointed there isn't a Wilhelm scream embedded somewhere :)
No, I have not yet done a video about redlining. I will probably do one eventually, but in general I'm trying to avoid topics that other RUclipsrs have already done well (unless I feel I have more to add), and donoteat01 has done really great videos on these topics in his "Power and Politics" series:
ruclips.net/p/PLwkSQD3vqK1S1NiHIxxF2g_Uy-LbbcR84
@@gwkunze there’s an Adam conover video explaining it with a monopoly simulation (sort of)
If you respond claiming that this video is wrong without reading the extensive research and articles linked in the description, expect to be mocked for your laziness.
This is, of course, not at all about *legitimate* criticism, but because I have no patience for keyboard warriors who googled the price of asphalt, write 3,000 word comments about how this is all wrong, and then demand a response. 🙄
Strong Towns was started by a transportation engineer who spent over a decade _building_ car-centric suburbs, and has spent the last decade advocating for and consulting on building financially solvent cities in America. Do some effort and read the sources. This is important. Don't brush it off.
A town is like a single person. You live within your means or you don't. If you dont, you go in debt. Very simple.
You must be real fun at parties.
@Not_Just_Bikes Though please, DO NOT take what I just mentioned as an insult against you or anything! Please, I am in 100% agreement with you, I just want to mention playing devils advocate would help your stance even more!
Because you can flip all of the pro suburban arguments on their head!
Also I noticed you used city skylines, I think it can be a powerful tool! Like for instance, one powerful way to help with traffic is making "pedestrian highways" where you have a walk way go down the spine of your city. Maybe show how mass transit is helpful to economic mobility, and therefore, able to give those who need it more freedom to enter the economic world!
But yah, I mean zero insult to you as a person or your ideas, I am just trying to help give you ideas :D Cheers mate!
I am not sure what this is about but having experience doesn't always mean you got the correct answers and taking the position of i know and you are wrong for disagreeing with me is not a good one. I think your research looks credible and i can see the effort but never be overconfident you got it all right. You must not forget that equally experienced people as you created this mess. Sometimes less experienced people got better answers.
@@reconx86 if I shoot myself in the foot, you wouldn't tell the next person who witnessed it that they're only as experienced as me who made the mistake when they say they don't want to. There can only so much opinion on whether the numbers add up. American suburbs can either afford their upkeep or they can't, and they can't.
This isn't the case everywhere. The suburb I grew up in (Schaumburg, IL) saw its growth largely level off over two decades ago, and yet it still manages to maintain its infrastructure without taking on unmanageable levels of debt. It's more or less the same story for other surrounding communities as well. Meanwhile, Chicago is the butt jokes everywhere for its infamous... wait for it... corruption, waste, bloated union contracts, and inefficiency. And, no, they don't get a break on their property taxes compared to Chicago. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I’m lucky to have grown up in schaumburg too. Conant high school and the surrounding area is always developing… however it took me 2 hours to walk home from one end of town(woodfield) to the other.
@@craigwillms61 It's not political, both sides of the bipartisan do this. It's just dependent on how corrupt the individuals in charge are.
@@craigwillms61
The industries don't get "chased off" because they're free to destroy everything and letting taxpayers cough up the dough. And stop acting like repubs don't have any corruption.
@@craigwillms61 🙄🙄 and there’s the idiot that has to make this political and pretend that only one group is responsible for this. If you watched the video, you’d realize “good shape” doesn’t equal “no debt.”
Grew up close to schaumburg, he’s right. The Chicago suburbs are thriving... idk what this bike fool is talking about
I have lived in the same medium sized Canadian town most of my life, and seen the sprawl lifecycle go to the crisis point... new suburban development side-by-side with earlier neighbourhoods crumbling under the residents' feet
More people need to see this. Even people from europe so that we wont make the same mistake.
Some parts of Europe have done this or have another area that sucks up resources.
@@safe-keeper1042 That and because Europe was *never* as car centric as the US. Quite literally the US developed a car *fetish* after world war 2, and it's only declining now with younger Americans due to knowledge of the inefficiencies, high gas prices, and concerns about climate change.
Like others wrote above: Madrid, Stockholm, Milan...
sadly, there are many European cities still building car-centric sprawl in 2021
@@-haclong2366 i thought the same thing
Europe might have this problem to some extent, but there's nowhere that you literally can't go to the end of your street without a car. Everywhere at least has pavements for pedestrians it's just that public transport and cycle routes can be lacking.
Where I live, southern Ontario, there is another dynamic at play: development charges. Developers pay a fee up front to build. After the subdivision is built, the taxes don't cover the costs (maintenance, water, sewer, emergency services, etc). No politician wants to raise taxes, so the town relies on ever more building.
If city taxes on a tiny urban house weren't well in excess of the income of a year for some people, than maybe some urban city growth could happen, instead of suburbia sprawl.
If rent in the city wasn't locked with cartels controlling everything, than maybe affordable renting and jobs could exist and people could move back into the city.
Remarkable insight
Urban 'houses' aren't sustainable, to meet the needs of the people you would end up with 'suburban sprawl' just by having to add more houses to fit each individual or family. High density housing development comes with costs, the elevator doesn't maintain itself, a roof that covers the heads of 800 families doesn't fix itself, the plumbing doesn't construct and unclog itself.
What actually happens in Chicago is that wealthy suburban homeowners will buy 2 or 3 properties in the city to rent out to residents. Renters paying rent pay off the mortgage for the owner and when the landlord is set to retire they sell off all the properties for a quick million or two.
Nobody can actually buy a house to live in because the price is so inflated by parasites looking to extract value from renters
@@andrewferguson6901 No, the price is inflated because the renters wrongly that believe supply induces demand, so they use community action to shut down developments that would ease the constrained supply and lower rents. The landlords, of course, see their property values continue to rise and behave in the exact same way as the renters, though with no illusion of righteousness.
Singapore has completely figured it out tbh
1:10 In Indonesia, this is called 'Gali Lubang, Tutup Lubang' (Dig a Hole, Cover Another Hole)
In the “How it Started” should have mentioned the new GI bill for returning WWII soldiers to get easier housing loans.
You can really just keep going back to the depression and the formation of Fannie Mae and the rest of the government loan servicers. They have been backstopping mortgages since then and really kicked off the single family home boom by making those cheap long mortgages possible.
American's have a tradition of land ownership; people were literally given free land if they moved west. People don't want to rent land or have upstairs neighbors.
Same in my countries. Apartment really unpopular, renting too.
It isn't even necessary to switch to apartments, just denser single-family homes like they have in European cities. You might have a smaller yard, but how much do you use your whole yard? I certainly don't, though others do.
Even if we exclude the possibility of Americans changing their mind about any of this -- single-family homes can still be arranged in a far less sprawling way than the US suburban style. American houses also tend to be unreasonably big (which exacerbates sprawl) and very cheaply built to make that size affordable (no German would buy a house made of plywood and drywall sheets, it's all brick and concrete here). So it might be worth trying to change people's minds about that, at least.
I own land and in my village is a mainstreet, different shops, doctors and I have public transport. Even the houses are differently built. There is much more variety than in the suburbs.
That is true. However, our suburban sprawl is financed by easy credit that is not going to be sustainable forever. At some point we Americans are going have to return to economic reality and it will be painful for most people. If someone wants land they are going to have to save hard money to buy it or pay much higher interest rates for mortgages in an actual free market while putting 20% down. I predict this system will all come crashing down when the U.S. dollar loses it's reserve currency status and we can no longer print dollars at will.
"Depends on growth."
"What if there's no money?"
The analogy makes perfect sense.
Tbe whole capitalistic system works on growth.
@@maksi781 but not land growth