Top 10 Most Urbanist Cities in North America
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2024
- What are the most “urbanist” cities in North America, the places you might gravitate to if you enjoy dense, lively, mixed-use neighbourhoods and not being required to drive? Subjective impressions are easy but building an objective ranking based on factors like density and transportation patterns is harder. In this video we’re going to score the top 10 urbanist cities in the U.S. and Canada using a method that we think lines up with how people actually experience their city, which is at the neighbourhood level.
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Great take on it, now let's see City Nerds rebuttal.
He knows the city boundary problem - there really just isn't any perfect solution to this kind of thing!
@@tristanridley1601 What’s your solution then, sweetheart
I’m just glad Toronto made it higher on this list.
@@OhTheUrbanity I could think of something that would be pretty effective, like tracking the percentage of trips originating from a given area going toward vs away from the city center. But collecting that data sounds almost impossible, unless you're a surveillance state like China.
I think citynerd will shrug and say, yeah i guess. He is a chill dude
As a resident of NYC, it's crazy to me that neighborhoods that here people think of as almost suburban (outer Queens, Staten Island) out-urban areas basically in the cores of other major American cities.
NYC is the best for living car free and having urbanist amenities.Horrible for housing affordability though
@@TheAmericanCatholic While I do think NYC could be better about building new housing, at least part of its difficulties with affordability come down to the fact that it's so far ahead of everywhere else on the continent when it comes to urbanism. If there's only 1 city in 2 countries that truly approaches European-style design, there's going to be way more people who want to live there than there are places to live.
@@blarneystone38I would say that Boston is more European
@@blarneystone38 the most European cities in America IMHO are Montreal, Boston, DC, and SF
@@TheAmericanCatholic Don't fall asleep in NY, the rats and roaches will emerge and gnaw on your extremities.
As for "North America" Mexico City and Guadalajara have pretty interesting combination of transit, density, and intensity of use at a neighborhood level. This approach is just half of the picture. ✌️
People just forget that Mexico and a few other latin american countries are north america lol.
The description of the video says they only did it for the U.S. and Canada (in fairness to them I bet it's harder to find accurate commuter data for Mexican cities). It would be interesting to see where CDMX and Guadalajara ranked in this measure, considering they beat out a lot of these cities in City Nerd's list.
@blarneystone38 then they should said either "US-Canada" or "Anglo-America". It annoying people constantly overlooked Mexico and most southern Latin Countries because of their bais. At least Ciy Nerd actually included Mexico and says why he couldn't when Mexico isn't in it.
@@loljewlol I would say I agree, it seems weird to use "North America" to describe only US/Canada when Mexico is also on the continent. Just because they speak Spanish doesn't mean they can't have good cities, and in fact I suspect Mexico City at least would fare better than most of the cities listed here.
Yeah he confused North America with the UN geoscheme definition of "Northern America". If he hadn't the top ten would've been all Mexican maybe with #9 and 10 being Havana and Santo Domingo since those cities are so much older.
I had the privilege of growing up in NYC and it has definitely made me a walkability snob. Going to San Jose after a quarter century of dense urban living was hell and I’m pretty ok with Seattle now and optimistic for its future, but I am happily settling down in my wife’s home city of Chicago. Both a chronically underrated city by outsiders and overrated by insiders, it’s an absolute gem and has very strong neighborhood communities. There’s a comfortable density in the areas that aren’t vacant lots and walking and cycling is very easy. The bus system is phenomenal and reliable but the metro is hit or miss when it comes to safety and smell. The El feels like the NYC subway in the 80s. It’s a great urbanístico city and is actually a fantastic canvas for improvement.
Yeah, I come from the Bronx in NYC and I'm big on walkability and there was a feeling I could get anywhere easily without having to drive. Then I came to Los Angeles, and while I love the culture and weather; I detest the car reliant culture and way the city is built around it. I do like the face light rail is being expanded on however, I also do get seen as weird for not having a car here or even having a license as I never learned to drive but I find my way around it all 😅
@@eddwincedeno5387 agree on LA. I love that place in spite of the city layout.
I think the weather also hurts Chicago but I personally prefer cold cities
Chicago is great, just too damn cold. 🥶
I'm American and have lived and traveled in places like Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Chongqing, and Berlin for over a decade. I dread having to come back to the US and am looking for long-term employment to keep myself in the East Asia region. Everything is just so well-connected here, it puts even the biggest of US cities to shame
I like having different urbanist takes on city tier lists because it reveals a couple of things. 1) Exact rankings of cities are sensitive to what methods one uses but 2) pretty much any half-way sensible method gives you most of the same cities competing for top spots. So my take away is that living in any of the top 10 or so cities will give a person good options for urbanist living (except maybe LA where yes, there's a lot of urbanist land in an absolute sense but its pretty small compared to the size of the city so good luck getting into that!).
And another thing that emerges from this is that urbanist cities don't all have affordability issues! Sure the west coast in general (both US and Canada) is an affordability nightmare and NYC/Toronto/Boston aren't that much better, but then you've got places like Montreal, Chicago, and Philadelphia that buck that trend and provide both urbanism and affordability. Washington kind of does too but that doesn't show up as clearly when just looking at rental/home prices because the median income in that metro is so high.
Yeah, if you look at City Nerd's list at the end, it's the exact same 10 cities (plus two Mexican cities) that make up the top 4 tiers. It's pretty clear that no matter how you cut it, these places are several steps ahead of the rest of the continent
Pretty neat that 8 of the top 20 urbanist cities are in Canada. Glad we’re making cities better!
Pretty neat that the other 12 are in the US…glad their cities are still better…yet you’re not acknowledging them
@@VampyricNinjaXDLOLwe have way more population and 5x the amount of cities they have. By all accounts we should be dominating this list, 12/20 isn’t very good.
the pre-amble immediately told me that this was a video inspired by the shortcomings of citynerd's tier list, and i was very excited to see it. being from the GTA, i knew that toronto should not have been held liable for brampton's suburban sprawl, and i'm very happy to see this different take. similarly happy to see the acknowledgement of shortcomings within your own method as well. it's surprising that there isn't more research on these topics when living and town-alignment is something that literally every human on earth has to interact with, but i'm very happy you tried your best anyways. this has been a super interesting look into the urbanist situations across both videos.
"it's surprising that there isn't more research on these topics when living and town-alignment is something that literally every human on earth has to interact with, but i'm very happy you tried your best anyways." A cynical take is that in our capitalism-dominated economic systems there's no money in educating consumers on large scale questions like this, so the companies with the most capital for running these research projects don't have an incentive to do so. Not only this, big (and small) real estate business can charge a higher price the less consumers know about their choices. If federal governments weren't effectively the arm of big industries (nor greatly underfunded) educating consumers on these topics would be in their purview. I am a bit stump as to why academia is not more interested in topics that "literally every human on earth has to interact with," but I suspect it might be the lack of useful data (again, held by big industry or neglected by governments) like the data described in the limitations of this video.
I have to wonder why Mexico was left out of this list considering it is part of North America? Even excluding Mexico City surely there are other urbanist cities on that part of the continent? From what I hear there are some really lovely cities and my experience with Mexican transit is it has better coverage than the average US city transit, and even that was in a smaller border town.
Not to mention a lot of them tend to build higher density. This is a personal anecdote but I have memories of walking with my grandfather to the grocery store and passing so many shops and neighbors which is simply not possible anywhere I have lived in the US.
Perhaps there was a lack of data, but it seems strange to not even mention 1/3 of the continent.
Edit: I hadn't watched the CityNerd before this but even he considered Mexican cities so it does feel strange.
Racism.
Woohoo, Philadelphia at #6. Having lived in most sections of the city, and walked and taken every form of public transportation to every corner of the city the urbanist vibe is genuine. I love how Philly, like other NE older cities combines super high density high rises with an almost endless number rowhomes whose myriad styles and elevations can define a neighborhood, but also be unique, particularly the brick, brownstone or marble ones. On the other hand, the city is still full of cars and indeed has a parking problem, with folks parking in the median (!) of North or South Broad street being exhibit A.
Love to see Pittsburgh make the top 20! Happy resident of one of the urbanist areas 😊
Here are the Metropolitan Area Populations for each of the runner-up cities:
Calgary: 1,482,000
Winnipeg: 835,000
Minneapolis: 3,690,000
Pittsburg: 2,370,000
Portland: 2,511,000
Victoria: 397,000
Quebec City: 839,000
Baltimore: 2,921,000
Los Angles: 13,201,000
Ottawa: 1,488,000
Congrats to Victoria for being fairly urban while also being a pretty small city (in comparison to the others). Although, as someone from Winnipeg, I have to give ourselves a pat on the back for making it in at #19 despite the -40C winters haha.
SMSA may not give a true picture of what areas are actually part of a city. Baltimore does not have almost 3,000,000 people, maybe half of that.
I visited nearly all the top 20 cities and I liked Victoria and Quebec City the most.
Some of the others are too dense for my taste.
I live in the Netherlands where every town of more than 10,000 people has good public transport and cycle and walking infrastructure.
You don't have to be a big city to solve this problem.
@P W I don't live there, and I've never visited either, but I have a soft spot for Winnipeg. Any city that can inspire a film like "My Winnipeg" is a substantial place.
My guesses before watching (no order): NYC, Philly, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, San Fran, Seattle, DC, Boston and Chicago. Mexico s/o would be CDMX.
Edit: Lmao I got them all. I guess these Top 10 are almost a universal Top 10 for NA lol.
Love this video as a Montreal Resident who grew up in Chicago!
I live near Winnipeg and can confirm that your criteria matches pretty much exactly with which neighbourhoods are the "urbanist" ones. Exactly the areas that we are looking to move to, but also exactly the areas where housing prices skyrocketed the most. Almost like people like that style of living or something.
Wow, gotta compliment the quality of this video, just found this channel and the amount of detail, being able to see the maps and a layout of exactly where to go is really cool
Your videos are so cozy and informative. Thank yous for amazing content!
Not sure how you quantify this, but would love to know how beautification plays into urbanism. The more pretty, pleasant or nice an cityscape is the more liable people are to walk or bike there. I live in Scarborough just 10 mins walk from a subway, grocery store, pharmacy, hard ware, liquor store, etc. But the walk is ugly as hell, no trees, does not feel friendly and big busy intersections to cross. Because of this I take the car every time I need to go anywhere, which as a long time down towner (who didn't even know how to drive until moving just a little further east) causes me major existential dread and moral distress. I wonder if "prettiness" could be a criteria for urbanism...
I grew up in NYC and nothing else has been able to measure up to it since I left
As somebody living in downtown Toronto, I really appreciated your approach, as I wouldn’t have enjoyed living in a walkable neighbourhood if I felt like I needed a car whenever I needed to leave. For example, today I have an appointment in midtown, which I can easily access by bike or transit. As much as I appreciated TOD in the suburbs in theGreater Toronto Area, those are limited and can’t beat being in a city with plenty of great neighbourhoods I can bike to.
I live in Berkeley, which (except for the industrial western edge and the UC campus) is almost entirely urbanist. As you have noted, boy have we got NIMBYs that think we are a small town and building anything would destroy the character of the neighborhood. It has gotten so bad that the state government has had to step in and require every city and county to build a proportionate share of denser housing. Hoo Boy! have some of the ritzier suburbs howled. "What do you mean we have to allow duplexes?"
Excellent video, as usual! It's really nice to see such well argued points supported by evidence. The reasoning is really nicely explained, along with the limitations of the given criteria.
two of my favorite channels!! Great stuff
Glad to see Pittsburgh get some recognition
I'd like to see how this top 10 would change if you'd factor Per Capita and/or housing prices into these rankings
Affordability is difficult to incorporate into an analysis like this, but I did also calculate what percentage of people in each metro area live in a more "urbanist" part of the city. New York dominated again, at 42%. Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver were around 22-25%. The next highest U.S. cities were San Francisco (16%) and Boston (14%).
The results would probably be quite different. Trying to find a place to live that’s affordable but also let’s you go car free… That’s a challenge.
Montreal used to be quite cheap to live in. I think it might still be cheaper than the majority on this list, you can get a decent ( but small) apartment for 1000$/month (maybe less if lucky) and be close enough to public transport that you don't need a car. 1600$/month will get you something right in the city center, or a bigger/better apartment in a nice neighborhood.
@@bellybutthole69 if you're talking CAD that seems relatively affordable ($1000 CAD is about $730 USD)
@@eCitaroFan yes in CAD. take in account that salaries might be lower here , and you will get taxed more than anywhere else as well ( hard to do the math with that many variables haha )
I like this way to approach the question. Part of what makes urbanism so great is the ability to explore many different areas and neighborhoods with urban amenities
I love the use of neighborhood by neighborhood metrics. There’s plenty of cities where it’s easy to live without a personal car if you’re in the right neighborhoods, but not nearly as many where you won’t feel incredibly limited to just a few parts of town.
CityNerd: "Less filling!
Oh The Urbanity!: "Tastes great!"
Great videos, both. More informative and thought-provoking than a beer commercial!
Wonderful video. The visualizations of the results were fantastic, and the justification for your methods were great too.
this video took a lot of work, nicely done
Obviously the most urbanist city in North America in Whittier, Alaska. It's so urban, that its entire population lives in one apartment building.
Want to browse the findings? The *gold* on this map are areas mentioned in the video with a density higher than 4,000/km2 and more than 40% of commuters getting to work using active or public transportation. There's an additional layer of *silver* showing areas with more than 3,000/km2 and more than 30% of commuters getting to work using non-car modes. Here's the map: www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/edit?mid=1w-g7HVGKhAkU8MCJeXBzAA7TyGmx7IU&usp=sharing
Keep in mind the caveats we mentioned in the video: our cut-offs are arbitrary and some data is noisy (imprecise) at the level of the census tract.
Would the list change much if including the silver areas?
@@jamescoulson7729 The top 10 stays the same but there are a few minor changes within it (most notably, DC goes from 9th to 6th)
This is phenomenal!!
Hamilton really suffering for poor transit usage, I guess (hopefully the LRT will help). Either way, good on Winnipeg, Victoria, and Quebec City getting so far ahead of *way* bigger US cities, though.
Great idea for comparison criteria. Also, pretty good evaluation and ranking, I think.
I was surprised Calgary even got number 20. We have a few great neighbourhoods for urbanism and a pretty well used LRT system, but the sprawl is still super rough.
Things are getting better here, though. And I think we have pretty good bones to work with. With a concerted effort, we can really make a difference in our cities.
(I guess the bar is pretty low in NA… so maybe 20th isn’t that surprising 🤣)
I'm frankly shocked that Ottawa ranked #11 in the runners-up. I think it's entirely based on
a) the recreational multi-use pathways, that are also used for cycle commuting, and
b) the higher than normal level of transit use - primarily by federal public service workers - for a city that is otherwise quite suburban.
Canadian cities probably also punch above their weight in general because they were spared much of the destruction of denser central neighbourhoods that the building of the Interstate system wrought on US cities.
I think Calgary got a good score because Transit is decent though it still has lots of room for improvement. I'm on the far East side of the city but the bus or BRT are far better ways to get downtown than driving. Bike paths are another pleasant option
@@LoneHowler we really do have a lot going for us. I’m in the West, and pretty close to the MAX Yellow/Teal lines. I think the MAX lines are SUPER underrated.
I've got high hopes that the University District, Currie Barracks, and Seton developments alongside activity in West Village/Sunalta could bring their neighbourhoods to at least a silver on the urbanism findings map in the near-future, and many more to come once the Green Line is complete.
Upon looking at the map, some areas that quite surprised me were:
- Bowness, Inglewood/Ramsay, and Bridgeland not making the cut as compared to Rundle, Haysboro/Acadia, and Kingsland
- Crescent Heights qualifying for gold over Kensington/Sunnyside
Overall, I'm pretty excited to see how things will turn out!
I greatly admire Calgary's transit. Best LRT north of the Rio Grande!
1. New York City 8:06
2. Toronto 6:54
3. Chicago 6:15
4. Montreal 5:36
5. San Francisco 4:42
6. Philadelphia 4:00
7. Boston 3:36
8. Vancouver 2:54
9. Washington D.C. 2:12
10. Seattle 1:36
11. Ottawa 7:58
12. Los Angeles 7:57
13. Baltimore 7:56
14. Quebec City 7:55
15. Victoria 7:54
16. Portland 7:53
17. Pittsburgh 7:52
18. Minneapolis 7:51
19. Winnipeg 7:50
20. Calgary 7:48
Soo theives favorite cities?
San Francisco should be second
@@californiamade5608 No, it shouldn't.
@@prashnaveetprasad8339 Thieves generally target money, so yes.
I think by neighborhood is a great way to look at it, but citynerd's video was informative too
I was just searching about this
Basically, the cities with the most urbanist neighbourhoods/area:
#10: Seattle
#9: Washington DC
#8: Vancouver
#7: Boston
#6: Philadelphia
#5: San Francisco
#4: Montreal
#3: Chicago
#2: Toronto
#1: New York
Runners up (top 20):
Calgary, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Portland, Victoria, Quebec City, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Ottawa
this is a really great way to visualize things
Very cool list! I like the criteria you went with, instead of just using the city limits. I was glad/surprised to see my city (Seattle) make the list. So much of the city is still car-dominated. But those specific neighborhoods are SOO walkable.
Is Victoria the smallest metro area in the top twenty? The population is only ~400k. Anyway, nice to see my hometown make it at least into the runners-up.
I love this comparison criteria, I didn’t realize the census got that granular. Also love the map overlays, very insightful! This video adds so much perspective to the city comparisons
Yeah, the level is called the census tract. Some data is even available at smaller blocks!
Really interesting way to look at this! And ya when watching Citynerd's method put DC, SF, and Boston above Chicago and Toronto, it was pretty clear that his formula had overlooked a confounding vqriable (in this case geographic sizes of cities proper)
It’s nice to see Victoria getting some recognition despite its small size. It’s impressively dense and is doing a great job of expanding its cycling network connectivity to the surrounding municipalities. Certain areas feel much more European than other cities in NA due to the many urban villages and historical neighborhoods. They need to do more for transit, though…here’s hoping for trams being rebuilt here one day.
I have visited nearly all the top 20 cities and I liked Victoria and Quebec City the most.
I am from the Netherlands.
As someone who lives in Victoria, it basically feels like a map of where NIMBYs aren't in control. Most of the city limits are highlighted, except a few industrial areas and wealthy SFH districts. Meanwhile all the surrounding municipalities fail to meet the criteria.
Fully agree on the transit. Our system is "good" by North American standards and has decent ridership, but that almost just serves to highlight the obvious improvements it needs. I'm not even a heavy transit user, but I'd much rather navigate around a few qualified and highly accountable bus drivers than hundreds of clueless drivers on my cycling trips.
Speaking of transit, I really loved Victoria's water taxis when we visited from Oregon. A unique form of public transit.
I really likes your way of ranking, the neighborhood is definitely the most accurate way to do it! It rules out he bad areas and highlights the best parts!
As a resident of New Jersey I can't tell you how much I appreciated that you labeled it "Nork" on the map lol
Two Norks for Mustah Quork!
Thank you for this! I was literally just going thru the different metrics and comparison methods last night, hoping to uncover information about the correlations of density/practical livability of individual places and what makes great urbanism. But the way the data is aggregated makes this task surpisingly difficult. I appeciate that you guys have been able to distill a method that is able to sift thru the massive amount of information to come up with some compelling results. I came to a similar conclusion, the neighborhood is the one of the best metrics. The problem is that there isn't much data collected at the specific neighborhood level. I'd love to see this applied in a way that can uncover places with high density but low populations. I'm trying to build a case study of "dense towns", or small populations living in dense configurations both in rural, and larger more spread out metros. I'm going to use your method as a starting place. Thanks again, I really appeciate the work you guys do!
Part of the issue with Chicago is probably poverty. The South and West areas that you identified are by far the poorest areas of the city, and I wouldn't be surprised if there just wasn't an economic incentive to build up the empty lots in those areas. (Denver also has a lot of former industrial areas and empty lots near transit, and I think that might be a question of the city not having had enough time to build up, since its transit is much newer).
It's true, but doesn't tell the full picture - a lot of these neighborhoods that are quite vacant today used to be a *lot* more dense. I'm talking multiple times more in places like Bronzeville and Englewood, on levels around that of Manhattan for at least the former. Between middle to upper class families leaving as crime worsened, and government policies such as interstate construction/strict enforcement of housing capacities, they've unfortunately been hollowed out enough that not having a car is a major difficulty
@@bundevsawhney7578 weird that you didn't mention white flight and just said "as crime worsened"... as that doesn't tell the whole picture. Anyway, Chicago has been building up TOD near transit and has many more plans to continue to do so in the near future. 3- & 4-flats are constantly going up in Bronzeville and increasingly in Woodlawn as well. I hope the momentum continues in the right direction. I believe it can.
@@JacobKlippenstein bruh white flight was not a thing in Bronzeville lmao, also it's kinda patronizing but also not based in reality to assume that white people leaving a place is the most important dynamic going on within the black community of Chicago. Plenty of these communities started losing population well after there were few white people living in said areas, largely because the nature of violence become increasingly randomized and spread out to what were once strong middle class black neighborhoods
@@JacobKlippenstein It's complicated. I don't like what the white flight crowd did, but continued failure to control crime is what perpetuates the losses. And makes people uncomfortable with being on the street in something that can't speed away.
Baltimore has been suffering from black flight that everyone but the politicians knows is due to crime and useless schools, and likewise the city has to ineptly bribe developers to do anything in the empty areas. (Unfortunately, they also offer bribes to develop in more popular areas because they like making things harder, apparently.)
Some years ago, they removed a whole stretch of old elevated cta train line on the south side. I don't know why, but my guess is that it was rusting through and in need of repair or replacement and they just decided that because it was in such a bad neighborhood with lots of poverty, that the investment into rebuilding or replacing that long stretch of line did not make sense to them, because they probably figured the people living there had little need to get downtown for work because they either didn't have jobs or their jobs were in that neighborhood only, and it was probably just to further segregate because it would make it harder for those people to get downtown without that line there, because they would now have to trek it by foot or bike or what have you east several blocks if not miles to the nearest train stop that could take them into downtown, probably closer to the Dan Ryan Expressway. It escapes my memory what this line was called, maybe either the green or red line extension that traveled east an west from the Dan Ryan to close to the lake. But that kind of stuff still goes on there.
Great video - it must have involved a lot of work!
I wish someone would make a similar one about cities here in the UK. Outside London most places are utterly car reliant - we've had 60 years of car-centric planning and an almost total lack of investment in public transport, resulting in terrible traffic jams and very poor quality (sub)urban environments. Manchester and Nottingham with their tram/streetcar networks, Glasgow with its subway, Oxford and Cambridge with their cycling and Liverpool with its urban rail are real exceptions - even in large cities, most people have no option but to drive everywhere. That's why I love spending time in places like The Netherlands and Belgium - their cities are so much nicer!
This is an interesting way to make a ranking. As a Montrealer, I was absolutely livid after watching City Nerd's video 😹 Also, even though it was just in the honourable mentions, I never thought I'd see my hometown of Winnipeg in a list of urbanist cities 😮
Keep up the great work!
Wait, Winnipeg at number 19?? Still way better of a ranking than I would have ever expected.
I was incredibly surprised! Although, I have met a few people from Winnipeg recently who said it was underrated.
@@humanecities if I had to guess it’s probably cause those are the neighbourhoods in Winnipeg that were built around the turn of the century! They designed those areas so well before they started sprawling
@0:27 I'm trying to grasp the Houston boundaries. It makes Los Angeles look normal.
This is the 15 minute city version. Happy to see my neighborhood in Seattle made the list. I have a car, but it mostly stays in the garage.
When Citynerd did his "Ranking top 20 cities where my viewers come from" I thought it was cool to see Canada rather overrepresented compared to the US. I didn't realize Canadian cities would actually take up 8 of the top 20 spots on this list as well.
I know it's a bit of a canadian meme "hey we're doing awful, but at least we're not the US!", but it does give me a lot of hope seeing places like Winnepeg and Calgary show up on this list. Hopefully we can eventually drown out the NIMBYs with urbanist YOMBs (yes outside my balcony 😁 (i dont think this is gonna catch on))
How are Canadian cities ‘overrepresented’ when this ranking only compares two countries, the largest cities in both countries have all made the list, and there are still 4 more US cities in the top 20 than Canadian cities?
North America includes Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. If you mean to compare cities in the US and Canada, say US and Canada. Otherwise this list would have a lot more cities outside of just those two countries.
I've been to Mexico and its crazy how nearly 100% of towns are walkable with very few cars and a ton of taxis and buses
@@stewart2589 A slight more but not much
@@stewart2589 crazy how they are covering urbanist cities and not walkable towns
North America does not include Central America and the Caribbean.
@mrxman Central America and the Caribbean are part of North America.
I like it, well done. And good coverage of data limitations. Excellent work.
The big surprise to me is how many Canadian cities made the “runners up” list. Despite the small size of cities like Victoria or Winnipeg, they still made the density list above much larger American cities. This shows, despite both groups being in car-centric North America, how much more “sprawly” American cities are than their Canadian counterparts.
I think this might be because GDP per capita is lower in Canada than the US. Which makes more Canadians use transit because the financial burdens of car ownership are too high.
@@kb_100 the gdp in the usa is more concentrated in the top 1% in the USA if you look at the gdp of the bottom 99% of American vs the bottom 99% of Canadians than Canadians actually come out richer, I mean the bottom 50% of workers in the usa actually have a lower gdp per capita than the bottom 50% of workers in any other developed nation on earth.
@@jamescoulson7729 I agree. I'd argue the "bottom tier" of Canadians are likely faring better than the "bottom tier" of Americans. That said, my first guess to address the "sprawl" is moreso the lack of new city-explosions in Canada vs. America. Winnipeg has been Winnipeg for hundreds of years now... Austin, Vegas, Orlando, etc. were teenie-tiny little towns until relatively recently.
@@kb_100 Median income is higher in Canada than the US (it's possibly the highest in the world), and it's a more reliable indicator of the wealth of the middle class than GDP per capita (which shows hoarding).
@@jamescoulson7729 Agreed. Median income is higher in Canada than the US (it's possibly the highest in the world), and it's a more reliable indicator of the wealth of the middle class than GDP per capita (which shows hoarding).
I think your analysis is great- simply how much land meets a base threshold. I also agree with the specific minimum density threshold used.
New subscriber here--LOL I just watched your video after coming home from my bike commute from work here in NYC.
I agree that this ranking is simplistic but I feel it's quite useful in getting the conversation started. For NYC, other factors you mentioned towards the end about pedestrian/cyclist safety, low noise and pollution, housing affordability etc. are definitely important to consider as NY would rank poorly for much of that. It's expensive, loud, and grimy out here lol
But 100% agree on the variety of options for transportation, etc.--at least in comparison to the other North American cities you listed.
Great visualizations!
We probably all knew NYC was 1. But... Crazy to see how NYC is SO far and away ahead exponentially than the next city on this list. North America is so sad compared to Europe.
I really like this methodology.
would be really cool to see this type of video for other continents!
I am proud of my city (Vancouver) not because it is perfect, but because it is trying to improve :)
I wasn't expecting to see Ottawa at 11th place, but it made me a little happy 🥰 Thank you for the video!
Genuinely awesome video! One of my favorites on your channel. I feel some hometown pride seeing Montreal at #4, yes! Out of curiosity, what were cities that barely missed the top 20 (21-30)?
Glad you liked it! From 21 to 30: Hamilton ON, Halifax NS, New Haven CT, Edmonton AB, Madison WI, Springfield MA, State College PA, Austin TX, Iowa City IA, Honolulu HI
I'm pretty surprised to see Toronto so high, considering just how stark the cutoff is between high density and low density among its neighborhoods. but i suppose it makes sense with the metrics used though.
I'd love to see a list that takes biking into account and post-covid numbers
Toronto is weird in that single family neighbourhoods are often right next to huge condo blocks, but it ends up working somehow. I think the city is an excellent case study for how cities can increase density and transit usage by incorporating those features into existing suburbs. Suburbia exists in every NA city and it isn’t going anywhere, so the best you can do in the somewhat short run is to improve it.
@@TheObiareus Don't think you understand. the selective hyper density is caused by all the restrictive zoning in every other neighborhood. the single family neighborhoods need to give way to middle density zoning.
@@jerQCote Yes of course I agree, but there’s a lot of opposition to that, and it takes much longer to convert a suburb to mid density than building huge condo blocks nearby. I think in the long run Toronto should slowly transition to middle density housing, but unless you purchase up huge swathes of suburbia to bulldoze and convert to missing middle housing, which would not be politically possible, it’s not going to be a quick process. Condos on the other hand can be built quickly to alleviate the housing crisis, help to justify large transit projects (nowhere else in North America has as many current transit projects as the GTA), and encourage mixed use zoning. It’s not an ideal solution, but it has helped greatly in making Toronto into to one of the best urbanist cities in NA.
It's important to distinguish between Toronto and the cities adjacent to it. I find many people who aren't from Toronto or live here always think Mississauga or Brampton are part of the city of Toronto, they're not. These are different and separate cities with their own mayor and municipal government with no affiliation to Toronto at all. Toronto is unfortunately beside some very suburban low density cities.. much like Montreal is next to low density parking lot infested Laval and Brossard. As far as bike use, the ridership is pretty high within the city, however probably not as much as Montreal or Vancouver, but transit ridership is much higher here than any other city in Canada, as well as people getting around just by walking, the streets in most neighbourhoods are always bustling with pedestrians.
The other issue of Toronto is the POLITICS of a conservative ONTARIO government, In order to maintain control of Toronto, suburban cities surrounding it (scarbs North York Etc) that have no character whatsoever of Toronto were amalgamated into it, I think CityNerd's list unfortunately punished a place like Toronto that historically and currently is both incredibly dense and has heavy transit. The moment I cross to the borders of Scarborough it doesn't feel anything like any of Old Toronto. What people also don't realize that old Toronto Neighbourhoods that are made up of houses are also typically quite dense, Except in the historically wealthy Neighbourhoods like Rosedale or Forest Hill. Houses are usually duplexes or very close together, even in riverdale. Anywhere that I experience in Old Toronto, I can walk, bike and take transit reliably and skip the hellhole that is traffic in Toronto, but that is not true in the amalgamated parts of Toronto. Which is another clear and obvious reason why Conservative governments are incredibly scummy and why torontonians need to stop conservative incumbents ruling this city.
Office-dominated CBDs getting dropped out due to low population isn’t a criticism of the arbitrary cutoff of the population density requirement, but a criticism of the office-dominated CBD. You can fit both massive amounts of office and commercial space AND homes for people to live in in the same space.
The vacant lots in Chicago are sadly in areas where gang violence is strong. People don’t want to develop the land their because the demand isn’t as high.
If they build there, the gang violence will go away.
I think development attitudes also lag the current reality somewhat. Bronzeville, for example, has historically been hampered by the CHA housing projects on State Street but most were torn down in the early 2000s. Now you’re seeing a lot of urban infill and even population growth again, but the scars from disinvestment / “urban renewal “ are still there
I like the approach. It shows how much range an urbanist citizen would have to roam freely.
Sort of like endangered wildlife in a protected national park. The more vast and contiguous the range, the better the experience is likely to be.
you're doing the Lord's work! I've been wanting to compare cities like this for ages and really enjoyed seeing this
Love the video as usual guys! Tiny correction for the DC section - Crystal City is a neighborhood of Arlington, not a separate city 😊
Confusingly named! Thanks.
Great video! Appreciate the Boston love! As someone with a lot of family in Montreal, I agree that it's a sister of that city. Great pick up on the Halifax connection, too - the two cities have a long relationship. :)
This jives with a concept I proposed called “walkability critical mass” where once you have a high enough quantity of ppl living without cars even the big box stores make an effort to serve urban areas. Toronto’s area being 10x Ottawa’s explains why Toronto got a downtown Ikea while Ottawa lost its downtown Canadian Tire.
I'm not sure if Honolulu has such a critical mass, but it had a Walmart _downtown_, with parking I suppose relegated to a multi-story garage -- no vast parking lot.
You mean "jibes". "Jives" is a slang word.
I would love to see you rate/cover the cities of the Maritimes in Canada. I think Fredericton has like a 10% commuter share, Halifax is amazing, and in general the east coast has the "old bones" that a lot of Canadian cities lack.
ruclips.net/video/mxNoPe5xSQM/видео.html
The criteria you choose are really clever, and produced a good list.... but not of the most urbanist cities, but rather cities with the largest urbanist area.
Sending love from Boston. I love it here. I live a little bit outside the borders you drew to meet your criteria. However, I still use a bike as my primary form of transportation. I’ve been in a car fewer than 10 times so far this year
wish they’d make the bike lanes more protected. I don’t like risking getting run over every time I bike
7:53 Victoria is punching way above its weight. By my quick math, it’s #155 by total metro area population in the US and Canada.
It’s interesting living here as people actually live an urban lifestyle similar to what you might find in the bigger cities on this list even with the lower population. Where in the summer especially the city never sleeps and you can be walking around at 3 am and see hundreds of people going about enjoying the city and that’s pretty unique for North America cities around under 500k population
@@jamescoulson7729 I'm visiting Victoria in August, coming from Seattle. I have only been once, back in 2000. Now that I am older and have some mobility issues (walking with cane/assistive devices), I chose it because of everything I want to see being relatively close in (as opposed to Vancouver). I recall taking the bus all around town and out to a beach on the eastern part of the city and it being pretty easy. Glad to hear there is stuff happening late into the evening.
City Nerd called. He wants his listicles back. 😂
Its honestly crazy how NYC always tops these lists, and pretty always is far, far ahead of all other NA cities. Sometimes I feel like I take it for granted living here because when I travel to Europe I see much nicer urban cities.
NYC proper has most people than all but 12 US states. Individual boroughs like Brooklyn would be (and I suppose were, before amalgamation) major cities in their own right, with their own library systems and such.
they're definitely nicer but they just dont have that density or scale that nyc or chicago do.
Congrats on 50K!
Thank you!
Yay, Pittsburgh in the top 20! I’ve previously lived in one of the areas highlighted in orange, and I can confirm that they’re very walkable, transit-friendly, and they even have great urbanist access to hospitals.
The problem is that, as you said, it’s only about 3 sq mi of the city that’s like this. If you have a job or a friend’s house or a doctor’s appointment outside of that area, you might suddenly need a car to get there. At least there’s good transit access to the office buildings downtown (the V shaped area where the rivers meet).
Interesting how Philadelphia has a solid population in the "downtown" area that reaches out as a solid block reaching out from there. It doesn't have small scattered non-contiguous areas. It has the second or third largest downtown population I the US (depending on the study). Not bad for the sixth largest city.
would just like to note the Boston transit overlay was missing the green line, which while technically light rail, operates more like a subway on it’s eastern branches, central subway (literally the name for the underground portion lol), and one of it’s western branches (i.e. most of it, except the B, C, and western portion of the E branches)-which would be helpful to compare with the neighbourhoods that meet the criteria in the west especially
I would suggest looking through those criteria you listed around 9:20 and comparing it to a city’s map you provided like Baltimore. The areas highlighted for Baltimore line up closely to the food desert map of the city - as in, the places you’ve highlighted actually have *less* convenient grocery stores than those you didn’t highlight. Also comparing the map to Baltimore’s current bike lanes would also probably be intriguing.
Yeah, I think one of the biggest flaws in using non-car transit as a criteria is that it is disproportionately used by low income folks, especially in the US where there’s a much stronger stigma. Many of the highlighted areas cover denser low income neighbourhoods, basically the projects and ghettos of many cities. Good urbanism should have neighbourhoods with a good mix of income levels in each neighbourhood. Having neighbourhoods with such dense concentrated poverty should cause a city to loose points in a more comprehensive urbanist ranking system.
Baltimore's map is weird to me knowing the city, but the issue is commuting, because the city has been cheated on transit infrastructure funding for decades. Something close to 90% of people in Canton drove a car to work before the coronavirus, which seems crazy for how dense and walkable it is.
@@cinnanyan I think a lot of people who live in Canton work in the county. Pretty limited transit options to get out there depending on where you're going. Hoping to see more transit investment with the new state administration, at least north-south and east-west rails
@@SupaSupaKewl That's super interesting to me because, for Chicago, it's not nearly as much the case. Transit ridership is highest in dense neighborhood that are mostly wealthy but get mixed income as you get further north from downtown, lowest for high and middle income people on the outskirts, and somewhat high for some dense pockets in low income neighborhoods but most low income neighborhoods are too spread out at this point to rely on transit for everything. Maybe the difference comes down to Chicago's sheer size?
It might have worked well 25 years ago, before a lot of those urban areas lost their stores due to depopulation.
I’m not surprised that New York City made it to #1, but I was shocked that Winnipeg was in the top twenty.
It's interesting seeing how big the jump is from 18 km2 for #11 Ottawa to 31 km2 for #10 Seattle to 64 km2 for #9 DC.
Makes me think there's sort of cut-off where cities ranked #9 through #1 are the truly urbanist cities of North America with cities lower down onto the list simply being cities with small urbanist pockets as opposed to 'urbanist cities'.
I agree with this. I live in Winnipeg and know how car dependant it is. To see it on this list shocked me. Having been to chicago, ottawa, montreal, toronto, NYC and vancouver I would say all of them are walkable but Ottawa would be the most car dependant one on that list.
This is a great video. I’d love to know the most contiguous areas of density using the same parameters. In addition, I’d love to know the most affordable rent below $1500 among those contiguous areas.
Great video! I enjoyed CityNerd's as well, but this approach is much more fair towards certain cities (*cough Toronto & Montreal) with large municipal boundaries that contain lots of post-war development. Some such cities were penalized (and those with small city propers rewarded) using his methodology, and in some cases overlooked the sheer breadth of dense, walkable urbanity regardless of where the municipal boundaries happen to be drawn out. Love both of your channels!
What are you talking aboot eh
@@JohnnyStrides I don't know what either of you are toquing aboot 🤓
I love this approach and I totally agree that living in one of a few dense neighborhoods can be frustrating.
When I lived in SF without a car I felt after a few years that I was just so limited compared to the scope of the entire metro area. I would basically only be able to go to the places highlighted on the map here unless I wanted to rent a car.
Additionally, as walkablility is in such low supply but high demand you often find in America (outside of NY) that nice walkable places are pretty gentrified which can also give a homogeneous sterile feel to them.
Your last point is so true! I live in Houston. My partner is less "into" walkability/less informed about it than me. when I try to explain it to him the only thing he really has to compare it to are the few super gentrified expensive "walkable" neighborhoods of Houston, that ppl from other parts of the city drive to in order to enjoy the shopping and walkability, creating a bunch of traffic. For many Americans it's really hard to envision a city that's actually livably walkable, because most just have little cutesy expensive walkable pockets
That’s a great point! Its important to consider how someone not already on the urbanist train feels.
Just to use my own city as an example, a smoothie in a walkable area is $10 but a strip mall smoothie is $5. A lunch in a walkable area is $20-$30, versus $10-$15 in a strip mall.
So how do you convince someone that we should redevelop when it means their neighborhood spot will be replaced with a gentrified place that costs twice as much?
The costs are mainly due to high rents, high wages and taxes not the planning itself
@8:22 Nork is actually spelled Newark! But the pronunciation is the same lol. Great video! It's nice to know that my neighborhood made the cut
Three Norks for Muster Mork!
Great contents
@7:56 one thing I noticed about Baltimore is that the urbanist areas, by their metrics, are either the lesser affluent areas or the Hopkins University. Even though neighborhoods like Fed, Locust Point, Canton, Fells, Inner Harbor, etc have the same density they don't have the same transit mode share. Which belies that in Baltimore, like in a lot of US cities, people avoid transit if they can afford a car. This isn't good, and is something we need to work on. People need to feel safe taking transit, and people need efficient transit that isn't much slower than driving.
@2:30 Also looking at DC which I'm familiar with too, the city has a great metro and great (improving) bike lanes and bikeshare. But agreed, there needs to be more TOD. Silver Spring and Bethesda are upzoning, as are the Virginia hotspots but there is a lack of upzoning at the MD blue, orange, and green line stations. Wheaton, Glenmont, Rockville, and Forest Glen on the red line could also easily see more density.
Calling this a "North America" list without including Mexico City is a bogus list at best.
It would be interesting to see how stable this ranking system is. Meaning, if you change the qualifications a bit, how much do the rankings change? If even large-ish changes result in minimal changes, then you’ve actually landed on a good ranking system. But if even small-ish changes start rearranging the rankings a lot, then the ranking system is pretty arbitrary.
I suspect they could raise their density threshold a fair with with little change; I think it's too low for good urbanism but the 40% non-car commute would require higher density anyway.
That sounds like it's inspired by some method for determining how gerrymandered voting districts are that I recently learned about.
@@Pystro It's a generally applicable principle for any kind of model or evaluation system. So yes, you can apply the same ideas to determine if district voting outcomes are highly dependent upon the specific district boundaries (whether intentionally gerrymandered or accidental). However, meteorologists use the same basic idea to model the paths of hurricanes: if the projected path doesn't change much with a small tweak to the inputs, there's a much higher likelihood the hurricane will actually go that way. You can apply the idea to pretty much anything.
@@jonathanstensberg I think "ensemble forecasting" in the weather context. I don't know if there's a more generic name, but yeah, generic technique of tweaking model parameters and seeing if that changes much.
Very interesting.
Great work. I only wonder about 3 things: 1) smashing the two different census together (any discrepancies?), b) could Mexico's census be included (they'd win a lot of top 10 spots), c) what are the lessons from this (density types, investments in non-car modes paying off, healthy walkable streets with places to walk to, social life...)?
Great approach and good to see acknowledgement of its limitations. It adds alot of integrity and value to what you're doing. My only criticism is the title. It's not North American in scope as you only covered Canada and the United States.
it would be very interesting to see a similar video on Australia, a similarly car-dependent country however with a strong rail network
I've done it. Sydney has 187sqkm, Melbourne 87sqkm and Brisbane 21sqkm.
Totally agree: Boston and Montreal feel like sister cities.. do a video about it!!