*Sheesh*, okay guess I'll go get ice cream 🙄🍦

So happy Strong Towns gave you a shoutout. Am totally gonna binge your channel over the next little while. I want to leave a small anecdote that will hopefully make you smile: I grew up on a farm with friends in suburbia so I never really experienced Third Places growing up. When I came of age I moved to the big city nearby, though none of my friends did. Neurodiversity, stress, and a bunch of other factors made it hard for me to find community and details would be TMI, but let's just say I wasn't doing great in my early 20s and I'm very much still recovering from that. A few months back I started going to this tiny, cozy café nearby to face my social anxiety. I really started enjoying it. Taking my journal, bringing sodokus, writing postcards while there. However I've been low-income for a few years now and always felt kind of uncomfortable, like I might be unwelcome when they realize that I can't afford to buy much more than my apple juice or hot cocoa for the evening. Then, about two weeks ago I was sitting there late on a fairly empty evening and out of the blue the guy maning the counter just brought me a handfull of roasted peanuts, free of charge. It almost feels kind of idiotic but this small gesture, is the first thing that ever truly made me feel somewhat connected to this city because it showed me that I wasn't just tollerated there, but instead welcome to stay longer. Problems like urban loneliness often feel like massive structural challenges, and they are, but that often makes us underestimate just how important the things we can do actually are. It might just be a small gesture, and you might just feel like you're doing your job but do it for the right person, at the right time and you might just gift a stranger a sense of communtiy with 10 cents worth of peanuts. :)

The one thing that all of my favourite spaces have in common, (or do not have?) is Motor vehicles. Taming the motor car is often a good first step, and often the most difficult, but a simple by-pass diversion can make such a difference to a shopping street.

can't believe you only have 1.6k subscribers.... great video!

Banning cars would be a great first step towards making places great again.

I'm loving your videos, they are informative, high-quality and on top of that they feel personal. I feel like this channel will become big sooner than later.

Just watched the StrongTowns video before this one. You be gett'n some notoriety, ma'am! I shared before my recollections of Socorro N.M. on another video and how it already was very walkable and still improving in that dept. to this day. Now, quite appropos of this video about 3rd and public places, I wanna share an interesting landmark from my birth city of Córdoba, Argentina: La Peatonal. This is the name for a collection of streets in the historic part of downtown that were completely and permanently cut off to vehicle traffic (except for small service ones e.g. electric co. repair crew vehicles) all the way back in 1969 (nice! yes I'm that childish). Not the entire run of the streets mind you, just like 4-6 blocks each in that part of the downtown area. When the project was announced it got the same criticism you'd expect if something like that were announced today, whether in the U.S. or any other country in America: "It's gonna RuIn BuSiNeSsEs!", "It'll create moar traffic coz cars can't drive thru!", "Loud, loud, noises!", and "Yadda-yadda-yadda!". So it went thru anyway and opened a year later. And guess what? All those complaints turned out to me completely unfounded! Yeah, outta left field, I know. It instantly became a destination for people to hang out, relax, enjoy themselves, AND also shop. Turns out people passing by storefronts at much lower speeds, as in the case of walking instead of driving, increases the probability of them entering them and shopping there. Who wudda thunk, huh? As for traffic the streets surrounding this area do not resemble any L.A. highway. In fact, it only gets congested WITHIN that area, on weekends. This is because that's the time of the week most people have off and what do you know, want to go there. It was such a success after opening that other cities around the country implemented this concept. But it's so synonymous with Córdoba, and we're so proud of it. Go ahead and look it up on google maps street view. A good place to start is the corner of 27 De Abril and Buenos Aires. The 2 streets there are bordering it, and not pedestrian. But they're very narrow and you can see they've been recently (last few years) been implementing street dieting there. The block is a plaza which in colonial times was the Plaza Mayor, and thus had government and church buildings there. The Córdoba Basilica is still there, on the other side of the plaza if you walked down. The building next to it is the Cabildo, formerly the seat of the colonial government, now turned into a historical landmark with some provincial government offices there. But it really gets good if you go to the diagonally opposite corner of the plaza, now fully within the pedestrian area (all 4 blocks of the intersection are blocked off to traffic). Along one of the streets, Independencia, they lined the center with permanent planters growing vines. They offer great shade in the spring and summer. And between the planters are tables with parasols shared by all the local shops so people can sit and have a coffee, snack, ice cream, whatever. Or just sit there or on the planters and hang out with friends. Go ahead walk around. I guarantee you'll love it! Another way is youtube "walking down/thru" videos, there's plenty of those. Just look up "area peatonal cordoba argentina". I'm bringing this up because this is something any U.S. city and town can implement as a starter. It's both a public 3rd place AS WELL AS a "petri dish" for private 3rd places. All they need to do is cut off all vehicle traffic in several adjacent blocks and lift any detached, single family, residential-only restrictions, while implementing regulations to encourage mixed commercial/residential building/remodeling of the area. You can't just replace one segregated zone with another and expect it to just work. Then, if not initially, down the line, remove the asphalt, raise the car-only lane to be flush with the sidewalks, and remove any distinction between the two. And add planters, maybe start with movable ones and move on to permanent ones once you've figured out where they would fit best, where people like them. Add tables, and chairs for outdoor eating, drinking, hanging out, maybe with friends and/or family, maybe on your own. Benches too. And AVOID HOSTILE DESIGN. That's very important. I'm sharing this 'cause of a little guilt: we argentinians gave you USians the cloverleaf intersection, contributing to your detrimental car culture. So the least I could do is offer this much healthier urban planning suggestion. So, uh...happy urbaning! 😁

Good video. We need more charming, walkable places in the US.

the late eating and time zone adherence and franco in spain is fascinating. a relatively recent phenomenon. but it is fun to have dinner at 10 every night on vacay!

Thank you. This is how we should think. Public spaces should be used as the public chooses, and that means we don't have to give in to car-dependent culture.

This is interesting because, as a geography student, we were tasked with doing field work in our first year that consisted of counting the number of people using different spaces, what they were doing, etc., like you described. We also stopped and asked people where they were going, what they liked and disliked most about the space, etc. It was part of a yearly project to 'map' how the populace used the various public spaces and publish the findings in a report (they didn't trust us first-semester students to compile the report, so we just sent our data to the municipality😅) in an effort to work out how they could be improved. It was a tedious day when we did it, but looking back, I'm proud to have been part of it.

"designs that work for me aren't necessarily the designs that work for you" It makes me think people who love their cars might use this as an argument for car-centric design. xD I've never seen a bike locker like that @6:55 cool! Excellent video, thanks for sharing!

Pamplona is a great city! Living in Madrid, urbanism is solid but a lot is held back. It’s very easy to live without a car, but many streets are still made for them. It’s also very cultural. To not have a car in the US is definitely more looked-down upon than Spain. Also, less homelessness and all that helps. I hear stories about empty NYC subway cars meaning someone homeless is there or there’s some sort of problem, and that’s not something you have to deal with in Madrid. I take the metro everyday and never have seen or experienced something out of order. There’s a lot of underlying issues that make urbanism hard in cities with cultural or societal blocks to improvement

Great ideas & love the nod to Ferris. Well done as always!

Great video! Another element of good design for public spaces that was very apparent from your visuals is that traditional architecture built with natural materials makes spaces feel more appealing and inviting

This video is amazing. Thanks for sharing. Do you have recommended books on public space? I enjoyed the ending when you said, “Join the community”. I was expecting a link or a call to join a discord server, but you called us to go out.

Your best vídeo so far🎉

I just found your content, and I love the message & vibe! I especially love the no-judgement attitude & the way you break down concepts. Would it be possible to cover green spaces? Specifically, my city in the Netherlands just approved a plan to decrease speed limits and increase walkability/green/cycling ease near the city center. The space our street has to work with isn't that large, but there are interesting design decisions that can be made (type/placement of trees, benches, beautiful walking paths, access for boats?, bike parking, etc). If you don't end up making a video on this topic, could you point me toward resources that speak to these questions? Thanks in advance!

Pretty cool!

You showed it quite nicely the examples are already there. You only need to look at Vienna, Munich, Bordeaux, other old town in Spain, Italy and Europe in general. The only question is how to direct traffic that takes up so much space without too much traffic jam.

I stayed to the end because it is a cold day in Montreal.

I feel that the surge in actively hostile architecture in the past couple of decades - ostensibly to keep homeless people from occupying a space - is also keeping everyone else from using the space as well & damages the appeal & utility of public spaces.

7:26 oh you mean like…. congestion pricing? No sorry that could never work

Also, to implement what you learn, get involved in local government

Programming is as important as design for top public spaces.

As a neurotypical white female I like nice European cities…. Everybody does. Sheeesh.

Dude, just say "as a person, what works for me doesn't neccessarily work for you". That holds true no matter your skin colour, gender, or if you're "neurotypical"