Oh my gosh, it happens all the time. It happened to me when I was a kid. I got threatened by a cop because I was walking outside at night. I hate it. I was completely ignorant of the problem until I saw this channel. I am learning so much here about our problems.

this channel made me realize (part) of the reason i loved venice, italy - you walk everywhere. of course, the different, pretty buildings and plazas only add to the enjoyment while walking, but man that was a nice trip!

@@moon-moth1 Why do you think Americans are so obese? We're all inside because why would you go outside? You need to drive to get to anything worth getting to. This isn't the ONLY reason, it's just one of the major contributing factors.

As you'll discover, there's a lot wrong here.

In my city the drivers are almost comical. Like they're violent about pulling into the Taco Bell before pedestrians are able to cross in front of them. lol. America sucks in a lot of ways. The only good thing about us is the natural geography, and we're even doing our best to screw that up.

Same thing happened to my English wife when she went for a walk in a suburban area of a US town. The police pulled up and asked her if everything was all right, purely because she was walking on the street.

@@kalebglenn5279 Don't robbers have cars too, though?

@@Mnnvint Cars are expected to go faster, harder to catch details when you're going 25 mph. Sidewalks (if they exist) also let robbers get closer to the houses. There was a documentary done about all this at one point, compiling a bunch of interviews and whatnot from robbers. Apparently a bunch of people here in the US don't know how to use their alarm system, so one of the robbers would look into houses while walking by, and if the alarm system was in a "Ready" state instead of "Armed" he'd just go around back and let himself in.

@@frankwales I get that all the time. I'm a Brit in Chicago and I bike everywhere, but the neighbors regard me as "that frickin foreign weirdo"!!!

You’re lucky! In America the cops harass Black people for just being black and jogging in a suburban neighborhood could get you killed by vigilantes or the cops & if you live in the urban centers you could be robbed or murdered by young knuckleheads who think they own the neighborhood or by some rando who decides robbing people is a way to earn a living! So the problem with America is to many people with guns, so it is the availability & accessibility of guns that make American cities and suburbs killing fields! Just recently in the city of Atlanta Georgia some moron tried to take a loaded gun onto an airplane and somehow between him and the TSA agent they managed to discharge the weapon and the entire airport was evacuated! So the stupidity of people today knows no bounds and when you have a group of morons who think that it’s okay to follow the machinations of a criminal president inciting an angry mob to attack the United States Capitol building because they believed his lies, that the election was stolen is beyond the pale of foolish, reckless, criminality & when you add to that the fact that an ex-president still has not been arrested and jailed for his crimes, all I can say is God help us!

it also explains malls - which are basically the places you drive to when you want to walk around and check out random small(er?) shops. malls are a funny and ironic invention. fix that doesn't work because it plays according to stupid rules which created the original problem that it fails to fix.

Happy I live in cape town

@@MidnightSt I read a article years ago where the guy who built the first shopping mall regretted it.

Makes you wonder if in NA it's lobbyists that are holding us back

@@MidnightSt Ironically Malls were originally supposed to have mini apartment complexes built in to promote more people walking.

Spread the word to more North Americans about this channel. Hopefully once everyone is outraged enough to push for change, urban development laws will pivot towards less car-centric preferences. And that will also create a domino effect for other countries because they have adapted American-style design mentality for far too long and it needs to stop.

@p p come join us in the netherlands. Our politics are nicer too 😂 (imo, because there's more to choose from. Not just "left" or "right")

@@Hannah-uv8hy What's even sadder about politics in the US is both parties in our two-party system are technically right-wing. There is no true left-wing to vote for.

@@Naitrio The left is already horrible, why would you want to go further left ????

@@thismissivemisfit What's wrong with being car centric ??

Thats the problem with many movements. Their leaders aren't looking at solutions and bringing different view points together and moving forward. The movements tend to be led by narcissistic people who use it for power and money aiming to confront, divide and conquer, looking back at the problem not looking forward at the solution, the focus is on judging not helping. They like to debate not unite. Instead of "attacking" the car users and criticising them. Maybe they should focus on why car users should want this as well. For example, if you have safe separate cycling infrastructure cyclists won't be among the cars anymore pissing them off. And with less cars on the road...thats nice for the cars as well. People that can't afford or unable to drive a car all of a sudden become mobile as well. Its good for your health, the environment, society, economy and great during corona cause you are social distancing on a bike while you work on your overall health. 👍 Why not make small changes and promote them...expand.

It's a lack of change, it's not even slow. Car manufacturing lobbyists have an invested interest in making sure none of the public knows about or support redesigning cities. It's expensive too, so politicians have no problem ignoring it entirely.

The problem is that rich people make lots of money off selling cars and gasoline to people.

Well I think there's no interest in truly changing things of zoning laws aren't really changed in the first place.

And then despite all the planning, zoning, grid systems, highways and roads - it still takes an ambulance 40mins to get through traffic in some US cities. Kind of defeats the point.

the oil and auto industry would.

We Americans are victims of our own success, unfortunately. The biggest cost in building a house is typically the price of land. In the USA, we had lots of cheap land (away from the cities) and lots of money coming out of WWII. The GI bill gave cheap loans to veterans for buying homes in the suburbs also financed by the US government. The guidelines for building our American suburbs were defined by the planning codes of the 1940s Department of Housing and it has stayed that way ever since. It was a progressive dream at the time. Building neighborhoods for the masses with no commerce or industry, every man gets a big house for his family and he commutes into the city by car. Most planners had no idea how much of a problem this would create. Our understanding of concepts like induced demand and large volumes of car traffic was limited. This is contrary to what you guys did. The Soviet Union built out Raions, communities where all necessities of life (shops, schools, hospitals, housing) could be traversed to by foot. If a job was held in a different part of the city, you'd take the metro or trolleybus to get there. Raions would usually also have a lot of green space. Unfortunately, macro-level city planning seems to have become a thing of the past in Russia. I'd say you got the better end of the deal in this area.

Don't listen to this video and assume that's how America is. All of our schools are near our homes unless you choose to bring your kids somewhere else

@@mr.balloffur I would assume that kids often have rarther long way to school simple because yellow school buses are kinda iconic american thing.

@@mr.balloffur - I've never lived in a house that was less than four miles away from the nearest high school, which on foot is about an hour's walk. In order for that to be a three or four minute walk, the school literally needs to be less than a mile away from your house. I don't think you appreciate just how insanely close that is, yet it's the norm in most of the world, and even in the United States prior to the car revolution.

Ikr! I thought it was just a mechanic!

I used to create little pockets of business inside the residential exactly for this reason. A few squares here, a few over there, etc.

@@morosis82 I do this in Cities Skylines. When I build up a "downtown", I often mix offices and high density commercial zoning

I mix a little bit of low-density commercial with residential in Cities Skylines too, and it actually seems to help with jobs and whatnot, since there is housing nearby the corner stores on the literal corners of some random intersection in otherwise-residential housing. One of the reasons I dislike living in the US, especially on the east coast, is the zoning is atrocious. I'm disabled and have no car, but thankfully do have a housing voucher to help pay rent... but trying to find something within the price limits of the voucher (and my ability to afford overpriced security deposits) and within walking distance of necessities as simple as a grocery store is a nightmare.

I live one block from downtown, the nearest grocery store is a 25 minute walk away, or I can go in the other direction and walk 50 minutes

It is impossible to do anything without parents' help before you own a car, at least in America. I've lived in the suburbs my entire life and the nearest place I'd actually consider going just because I felt like it is more than two km from my house. Despite living around a bunch of other kids as well, I never really had an neighborhood friends while growing up. We just never had anywhere all of us wanted to go, so we never bothered. Fast forward to highschool, and the problem still persists. Sure, I got my driver's license back then but that just means I'm restricted to the amount of people I can fit in the car, plus the places I *want* to go to are usually out of the way and/or inaccessible by car. Anywhere that's only for cars is ugly and depressing, but at the same time it's the only way to actually get anywhere. I blame this primarily for how isolated I've become. I'm incredibly introverted, and I have only a couple of friends I know in person. They're scattered throughout my town and the only other human outside of my family I see regularly is my partner. We usually just stay at her place because there's nowhere to go on a date. Everywhere is just concrete and depression.

@@cozydub8613 that sounds awful - thankfully here in the UK, if I want to go across the city to a specific place I can go safely. Even going to different cities is an option thanks to England's rail system. I hope zoning in America changes, it' sounds awful to growing up in.

i can tell you from experience, growing up in USA suburbs, I couldnt go anywhere unless my parents drove me. My dad worked all day and my mom was really strict, so my brothers and I rarely left the house except to go to school. I always felt like I had no freedom and was really depressed, and now I know why, after seeing how friends/family in other countries grew up.

@@cozydub8613 The thing about childhood friends makes so much sense now that you mention it… My family knew (and still know) two families on the block with kids, and my brother and I would hang out with them sometimes, but we never developed lasting, lifelong friendships with them. We had nowhere to really go together that our parents felt was safe, and I was never a bike rider so that unfortunately limited my options as well. The friends from home I still talk to now, I met in middle or high school. And we would need to be driven to each other’s houses by our parents to hang out before we could drive ourselves, since all our houses were a long walk away. Man, I knew I hated this zoning, but never had such a concrete sense of how ridiculously separated everything is until watching this video.

Yeah when I was 16, living in a car dependent suckburb was HELL!!! I did not have a car (I had a license but we only had 1 car and since my mom had to work……yeah) so I was forced to ride on these crappy stroads that were full of idiot drivers or on poorly maintained sidewalks (if there even was one available). And even after I got a car right after I graduated high school, I hated being forced to drive everywhere and deal with horrible traffic in the process. Don’t get me wrong, I love driving but I hate being FORCED to do it for menial errands such as getting something from the grocery store or going to get coffee.

Have a look at your capital then!

I know some small towns in Brazil which are similar to the suburbia described in this video, like Riberão Preto.

@@valueinvestor77 brazilian capital is just a political thing.. Most brazilians never been there and have no reason to. It's common to still see São Paulo as the real capital, as is the biggest city in the whole South Hemisphere.

@@VitorCoelho6 more likely to be Rio de Janeiro. Não querendo começar uma discussão de "RJ vs SP" mas a cara do Brasil no exterior ainda é o RJ

@@dogameda é Rio é mais famoso mas São Paulo é mais importante

welcome to the US

There are community barbecues for that ;)

Block parties, woooooooo, time to get drunkkkkk! Yaaaay /s

@FirstEastern Perspective You can live quietly, be a knowledge worker, and still enjoy a local café or small business within walking distance as they do in the Netherlands. It has nothing to do with politics.

@FirstEastern Perspective nothing to do with profession - I'm a programmer and love a good local coffee shop, specially for programming/studying!

I haven't been to a hospital in over a decade because even specialists just have their surgery wherever. My dentist and eye doctor both just have their office in a random apartment building and my GP's office is literally the first floor of his own (detached) house.

So in the US you don't have doctor clinics or stuff? Like even when you just have a fever or cold you need to visit a hospital?

@@saaksharshah1083 Sometimes there are small clinics. They used to be much more common, but in past decades our health care system has been organized in such a way that it's now much more common for a doctor's practice to be located either inside a hospital, or in a large medical building that isn't a hospital but it is full of private practices. Most small clinics are some sort of community outreach, such as Planned Parenthood, low income clinics and the like. I'm guessing here but I suspect that it has something to do with the insurance that doctors have to pay in order to practice, or the way patient's health insurance works. Edited to add: most Americans don't go to the doctor for a fever or cold at all, because it's either ridiculously expensive or a huge pain in the butt or both. But no, if you have a small medical issue you're probably not going to be visiting anyone in your own neighborhood.

@@cianap.281 Thanks for the information.

@@saaksharshah1083 there are now urgent care clinics that can address very basic things but they were converted mainly to covid testing centers. Typically, you only find specialists with standalone clinics and even then they're usually in a mall of other offices surrounded by a giant parking lot. In suburbia, practicioners are all together in giant office complexes on big commercial strips. But that is all outpatient care, like they said, any operation takes place in a giant sprawling hospital campus. There will be a number of facilities spread out on one giant parking lot. Basically America is one big parking lot lol.

even in the city, U go 2 bar, pay alot money for drinks and no one wanna conversate ??

Yeah. The place where my grandparents live is just abysmal. They know the owners of 2 houses near them and nobody else. Compare that to when I bike in the city. I once had a nice conversation with some lady who was waiting for a bus at the top of a hill. It was about the nice views that hill had. It's always nice to see spaces that are usable by people.

If you need these things to find people then you are to blame I’m sorry but if you need businesses to actually find a group then you need to reevaluate your life there are places to go things to do you just have to push yourself

If you live in any major city there is something to do it may not be a lot but there is something to go see

@@josephfritz345 Maybe you don't need them in particular, but seeing how general connectedness of communities is a shell of what it once was, most people need these things. This line of thinking is partially to blame: "well *I* don't need __ so *YOU* have a problem for needing __."

Yes, absolutely. And because there are so few places that have relaxed zoning from single-family homes, the land is crazy expensive, so the only thing that's feasible to build is condo towers. So you get this insane situation where if you want to live in a North American city, you either have to live in a detached home, or a condo - there's almost nothing in-between anymore.

If people really had the choice, then lobbying groups wouldn’t exist.

Indeed. All economies are planned and all communities are planned, usually from the absolute top down and completely against people's wishes. How sad it is that, generations later, people have been gaslit into thinking these changes were popular - even though the historical record shows it was completely the opposite.

I don’t need a choice. Suburban living is too cramped for me. Living on top of pubs and shops would be even worse.

Also, minimum parking requirements force car dependency. There’s a libertarian case against US urban car dependency. A truly free market wouldn’t make it possible

That and we treat homelessness in the reverse way than a few European countries do. In the USA, in order for a homeless person to get housing, they have to prove they have a job, pass drug tests, etc. In places like Finland or Norway, the opposite is true; homeless people get housing first so that they can get a job, get mental help, get clean/stop drug use, etc.

@@Ryan_hey what you're talking about, although ideal, is very rare in Europe

@@veneering4128 This is true; I should've stated a few countries in Europe treat homelessness like this, not most.

And needing a car and gas money to do anything like get a job or groceries

Townhouses are garbage......living in a townhouse/apartment is like living in a rat cage.

It's so true! The other week I was cooking and realized I was out of tomatoes, so I turned the heat down, walked down to the local vegetable shop, and came back all within less than 5 minutes. I'd be lucky to even find a parking space in that time in Canada! :)

It is the same for me in Maastricht I live 15 minutes outside of the city by bike, but I have a local Jumbo store under my appartement. Just love it, I never stock on food and buy everything fresh each day!

Imagine still living in the netherlands but having to drive 10km for a bag of milk sad

I'm currently situated a bit far from my supermarket (15m by bike, trade-off for living next to the forest edge), so don't do this currently, but I remember as a kid I would run to the shop while dad was cooking if anything was missing. Yet another advantage of walkability, children can start running errands independently at about half the age where they could get a driver's licence.

@@SaraWolffs yes, the childhood independence is a really important aspect, and I plan to do a video about that soon.

That's why I love the place I am as I live at the very edge of the residential area so I literally have to walk four blocks I think to the bar and along the Main Street

In USA, we drive 25 minutes to Costco and fill up our big fat ugly SUV with stupid shit we just bought.

There’s a local park, at the local elementary, without local bathrooms. There’s also a local church that blares music late into the night. Of course my town also has some local highways with local noise pollution

And why big companies like walmart,target, and amazon are so huge. No body wants to drive every time they want to pick up stuff. So we either go for one stop shops or have it delivered by Amazon.

@@isaacho4573 Then move. Every area has a main street. Every area has a city or a old town center. Move, and walk the walk. Don't complain and then buy a SUV.

Exactly! I am from Guatemala and I had no idea about this, I knew about the bad car traffic in the US but I didn't think this was another reason for that. No wonder my grandmother who lives there is always questioning why we don't buy all the food for the month in one trip to the supermarket instead of going to la tienda everyday (which is just around the corner btw)

howd yall meet

@@randommonkey4900 in a very expensive place… A gas station!! 😂

@@fernandogil65 💀💀💀

Has Bill O'Reilly tried their falafel? :)

That last part is why it won't happen in the States.

Just curious, what is a nightshop?

@@agentchuck2 It's a shop that has a permit to run business during 'night hours'. There's very strict business hours regulations in Belgium. Shops are only allowed to be open for a set number of consecutive hours per day (plus they are required to be closed for at least 24 consecutive hours one day/week), so most shops are open between 8am-8pm. Night shops are the 'solution' to the problem of not being able to shop after business closing hours. The catch of buying at night shops is that you get the goods at upvalued prices, and are limited in choice (cause it's run by local shopkeepers instead of corporations).

@@starbuckslover005 thanks for the information. Are there small bars or pubs allowed to operate in storefronts like this as well?

I think it's a cultural problem

Welcome to the North Shore :). I moved here from GA about four years ago and have walked more here than in my entire adult life where I'm from. It makes statements like "getting my steps in for the day!" seem really silly.

I feel like he's comparing Amsterdam to like suburban cities like The Netherlands doesn't have that. I live in New York and other than the trash video, here biking is very common and almost everyone walks. Places like Toronto, Amsterdam, NYC, Tokyo, etc are metropolitan cities with public transport infrastructure. This is not true for a lot of America because the land mass is huge! Although I do think America relies on cars more than most countries. As a Kenyan, even in rural areas, people walk because there's essentially a local self-sufficient community. There's always a kiosk in very neighborhood where you can buy something if you forgot to go grocery shopping. The weekends tend to be market day, so my grandma would drag us to the local market on the weekends where we would buy groceries.

I'm in Ohio... forget Highway to Hell, Columbus could just be called the Stroad to Hell LOL. Bethel, Cleveland, East Broad, Morse, Polaris, Sawmill, 23... this city has all the Stroads 😖

@@BigWillieFreestyle lol I lived off east broad for 3 years in Blacklick like 2 minutes from that Kroger. I got so used to stroads I had to re learn how to drive when I left.

@@acuman99.9 Idk how long ago you skipped town but Sawmill is down right OFFENSIVE nowadays -- Dublin is expanding Bridge Park all the way up to the western edge of Sawmill, they're extending John Shields Pkwy all the way to Sawmill, and it's going to have housing intermixed with restaurants/bars/etc so that area won't be *terrible* -- still gonna need to drive for milk though. 🙃 The rest of Sawmill is essentially the gate to hell. How's the walkability of your neighbourhood up in Mass during winters? They do a good job with the plows and salt?

Or convince stores like circle k. And all they sell is shit. High sugar garbage. The corner shops and small supermarkets in Europe do not exist in North America. Only convince stores that don't even sell bread or milk. The area I live in a Canadian city has 1 supermarket for a large area. I'm lucky I live within walking distance of that store. Most people in my area don't. Without a car you would be lost. There are busses but the bus service is pathetic.

The craziest thing I saw in this video was that some places in a neighbourhood he was driving through didn’t even have a sidewalk. In a 50km/h zone. I live in Auckland, its one of the highest car dependent cities in the world, and even still you cant just build something that doesn’t have a sidewalk. (Unless its in the country or a 100km/h zone)

@@jackgibbons6013 I live in Seattle and the neighborhoods are like 50% sidewalk. You can be walking in a residential neighborhood and suddenly the sidewalk ends and you're walking in the street (or someone's front yard).

Uh, what? That’s a ridiculous generalization. NYC, Chicago, San Francisco - you’d have a harder time finding a convenience center / gas station than a corner shop. Or any shop for that matter.

I live near Farsta a Stockholm suburb, it had one of the first shopping malls in Sweden. It is dying like the malls in North America. The next suburbs,Hökarängen, was planned to have a walking main street, with business in the bottom floors of apartment buildings. It is thriving. I go there at least twice a week, Rarely even walk, let alone shop in the Farsta mall.

Sadly, Vancouver is one of the better planned cities in North America with lots of mixed-use developments. Although it is esteemed for its walkable, bikable, and public transportable city scape, it's human-scale still falls short of other cities in other countries.

Montreal and Quebec city are beautiful. Very cold in the winter though :(

@@divx1001 I live in Montréal, and for us we just have to think: Am I dressed properly for the weather? It's kind of like carrying an umbrella with you if it might rain during the day.

Yes, this is exactly the problem. Even rural areas of Ontario Canada (where I'm from) used to have shops nearby, buses, and train stations in the nearest town. Kids used to walk to school from a young age, too. This is something the Netherlands still has in rural communities (I was just in one yesterday), and it's something we need to go back to in North America. You might enjoy reading StrongTowns.org, as they have a lot of information about how to rebuild America this way.

It's all completely unsustainable.

Yup. Pre car American small towns naturally developed within walking distance of the farmers so that any given farmer could comfortably walk to town with goods to sell and pay for goods and services and walk back in a day. That homestead model is different from the village model that was common in Europe where most farmers live in town up to a limit of being able to walk out to their fields comfortably by day. Unfortunately the car and mechanized agriculture has made the homestead model so easy to ruin and has done great damage to the village model. However, it would be much easier for new jobs to come to a small village as the farmland is condensed and a number of farmers switch employment. Not so in the homestead model.

@@TheSpecialJ11 Not sure if the homestead model is/was used in Europe a lot. At least in the Netherlands most, if not all, farmers live in a farmhouse that is right next to their fields.

oh that sounds awefull. somtimes i wake up in the morning 08:00 am and i am out of coffemilk, i walk just 5 minutes or 10 minutes to the shop. I would hate my life if i would need to drive 30+ minutes back and fort in the f*** morning to get some coffeemilk, lmao

Yeah i know what you mean! Ever since i bought my 30mph bike i get everywhere so much quicker. I never really have to spend time looking for parking space or doing annoying things like parking the car. I used to drive a big car and really didn't like having to park in narrow areas. Now get to the store in under 5 minutes too and am outside again often within another 5 minutes, it's so convenient. When i went abroad and saw the huge shopping malls that i drove 15-20 miles to reach it was usually more like a daytrip. I swear you can spend so much time walking around in big malls just to get groceries. It's also a great excuse to jump on your bike to get a few items from the grocery store, and get off your bum to get some exercise.

Yeah Arnhem is a great place, you have Sonsbeek, meinerswijk, a great central city, and a lot of bars, concerts etc.

@@ydidishitmyself353 zutphen is also a big recommend! They have an amazing italian restaurant there.. soo good!

I actually disagree with you. I think it just depends on what you want out of life. I used to love living right in the city. Now, I prefer the quiet and open space of the suburbs. You can still easily meet people by getting out and doing things.

@@CMV314 you know it IS possible to have the quiet open spaces of suburbs WITHOUT being car-dependent/car-centric, by having decent public transportation options (buses, high-speed trains, elevated light rail, underground subways, etc.) and decent sidewalks & bike paths so that people can still walk or bicycle to stores, restaurants and other places WITHOUT being forced to drive, and WITHOUT those of us who are disabled or elderly or older children (preteens and early teens) being dependent on others! @Not Just Bikes has great videos about how suburbs can be -- and are, in the Netherlands (and likely elsewhere) designed to incorporate walkability, bikeability and still have the big open spaces and peace & quiet of suburbia!

@@neutrino78x How do you know? They didn't have a choice, because of the extremely restrictive zoning laws which came about by lobbying from the auto and oil industries to make everyone car-dependent. Their only housing options (which they could afford) were suburbia or renting a small expensive apartment in a high-rise downtown. If these stupid zoning laws were abolished, people would then be able to vote with their wallets and the market would become free, and only then it would be true that the people in suburbia are there specifically because they want that lifestyle.

@@neutrino78x most Americans don't even have the choice, so how do you know what they want? Such neighbourhoods in the US are insanely expensive, and tend to only be inhabited by childless young adults, so a family might feel out of place. This isn't the case in Europe and Asia, where it's normal for families to live in such places. This was also the case in the US before WWII, and it will be again.

@@thomaspaine9420 Hahahaha. Actually, most Americans live in suburbia and have to drive to buy milk. What you're talking about are the rare exceptions.

As an Australian who sees half our new developments built in the North American style and the other developments built in a European style it worries me sometimes!

To put this in perspective, I live in NZ and I think our towns/cities are too car-centric. They're not nearly as pedestrian-friendly as they could or should be.

@@MrAatch Definitely, though I do feel it certainly varies by which city and then where in that city you are.

Yes this AND the evil duo of the mentality to finish the food on the plate/huge plates!

@@MrAatch Fair, I did spend a lot of my time in or near major cities like Auckland and Wellington. Probably not the best representation of the whole of NZ.

Same with cities skylines. The whole noise mechanic where you cant build shops close to residential areas is just insane when you think about it. My cities always end up feeling so lifeless because they follow American urban planning, and it's shit

Can't wait for the Sims to drop a "different land's zoning laws" mod

Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt that American car manufacturers lobbied the government at the time in some way in order to make things like this so they could sell more cars.

"It's seems like the extreme zoning systems are hell bend to get people into cars. To me it seems that might be a goal of upon itself boosting/sustaining car and fuel sales at the cost of and above anything else." Bingo. Big oil and car manufacturers actually had a very big finger in the whipped cream of the American zoning pie. I remember hearing about this in school back in the 1980's and thinking it was just some crackpot conspiracy theory, but it turns out that as early as the 1920's there's been "car-centric" zoning, aimed at getting as many people as possible into cars - and at times these two industries (oil and cars) would actually boast about it.

Well it generally comes down to size of the city and where you specifically live. Generally cities like New York City or Philadelphia having a car is kinda a nuisance because of public transportation or simply walking to your destination makes travel more convenient, however, in smaller more rural areas driving in probably the preferred method. I find it out when people make these types of videos, it like the united state of America is quite large as a country. Most of the MidWest isn't even that populated. Tourist from other countries typically only think about is California or NYC...completely disregarding the rest of the United States

@@Yogurt4655 Well they bought up all the streetcar systems nationwide specifically to shut them down so you're basically dead on.

Stop the conspiracy theory. There's no silly "car producers sirkit plan" to manipulate zoning. Single family housing zoning was done because in the 40-50s people were CULTURALLY inclined to belive in the "american dream", becaus eeveryone wante d asingle house and a car, so the people asked the politicians to create those zoning laws (also because it raises the value of property, and EVERYONE wants his/her property to be more valuable. There's plenty of proof of what I say. Go look at municipal zoning meetings. When they vote about new zoning..they ALWAYS vote against changing the zoning. So the PEOPLE are responsible for this. Not the "cars". it's the AMERICAN PEOPLE who created suburbia because that's what they WANTED. Now they are changing their mind, so they will start changing laws accordyingly.

In the UK I used to live a 30 second walk to the nearest corner shop, and one minute walk to the Tesco Metro. I didn't even bother stocking most food or drinks at home: Tesco's was my pantry. 😁

they do exist but really just in old neighbourhoods in big cities. New developments (if they are not single-family homes) maybe got them but only under the big condos wish comes with a big parking lot behind it. Oh and when is aw old I mean like 100 years at least because my neighbourhood was built in the 60'S-70'S and they don't exist here

@xr7fan you have them only in places that are "grandfathered in", as I said in the video. You are not building any more of them in most cities, due to euclidean zoning.

@@aireoteddy Yes, they are grandfathered in. It's not the *businesses* that are grandfathered in, it's the *neighbourhood.* I used to live in San Francisco. All of San Francisco was built over 100 years ago, so it's a exactly the case I describe. Almost all of the rest of the Bay Area - and all new developments - have terrible euclidean zoning. And that's the point.

You are missing the real horror of it! Also no corner pub!

Yeah, it's depressing how similar all of the US and Canada looks. Apart from a few chain stores that might be different state-to-state or between the US and Canada, it's all the same asphalt-covered garbage everywhere. This TED talk by architect James Kunstler is a really good (and funny) summary of it: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h5eKmLuf0qq-fYU.html

I don't think you have to drive to them because of zoning. Infrastructure tho, sure. It only takes a few minutes to get to them, especially on ebike. And there is a good chance you have like three of them in different directions. I think of cites as a collection of towns, which is a different attitude hold by most.

@@C0deH0wler North American cities cannot be thought of as a collection of towns. That might work where you're from, in New Zealand, but North American suburbia is different. There are car-dependant suburbs, which are attached to a city, but there are also *exurbs*, which are suburban neighbourhoods *not attached to anything*. Like just a car-dependant neighbourhood in the middle of nowhere. It's totally different than New Zealand, or most countries for that matter. Even an ebike is impractical there.

@@NotJustBikes The Ted Talk you link was actual the thing that got me into urban design here in the states a few years back, I t actually showed me how bad our situation really is and also great work I love watching your videos!

@@NotJustBikes The irony, this ted event was sponsored by BMW

It is not like districts cannot be rezoned. They do, all the time.

man do i envy you

I lived in Spanish cities, for years and miss the easy access to almost everything, on foot and bicycle. They do have an obsession with car, though.

Are you American? How did you do it??

@@ashleyromero5302 He packed his belongings and flew to CDG, after that he packed up his stuff in his new home before walking to the neighbourhood bakery

You’re so lucky! I live in a terrible area in the US where everywhere is separated by freeways so you’re forced to drive to get to some places and public transit sucks!

It's fucking terrible.

You are lucky you weren’t run over or stopped by the police.

"Literally walk" 🤨

If you’re black or brown you might even get shot simply for daring to take that miserable walk.

@@commentariat Press X to doubt

Bestemmingsplannen usually also have requirements for distance to or ease of access to shopping/cafeteria/sports etc and usually also requirements for mixing high/low income housing and environmental requirements for all these. It's still heavily regulated like in the US but at least somewhat sane (exception exist, see welstandscommissie and it's accompanying corruption).

In germany it's called Flächenplan instead of Umgebungsplan or Bestimmungsplan. Funny how it differs

I find Europeans are often confused about eastern and western North American cities lol. East Coast cities (NYC, Boston, Montreal etc) grew similarlily to the European model as they are hundreds of years old, while the west coast of the continent is very much “planned” as their development primarily occurred within the last 100 years or so.

The main rationality in designing American cities is car sale, thats it

I get why you use rational the way you do, but as a European living in a Mediterranean country which is less developed than the Central Europe ones I find this 'we only built single family homes here and nothing else' mindset terrifying and anything but rational. i am surrounded by a plethora of small, medium and large grocery stores, cafes, restaurants and shops of all other types within a short walking distance and wouldn't change it for the world.

Sure, but you're only accounting for the disturbances which would be localized to the business. Clanking ceramic and glass dishes, lively convo in the restaurant and so forth. But increased traffic in general would also be a disturbance. Trash collection would take longer (presumably) for a business with a SF home attached, than just a SF home. Which means more time for the noisy garbage truck to sit outside your house. Or... trash collection may require that you move the trash to some shared collection area rather than in front of your house... which is a "disturbance" of another kind. More people = more possibility of a fight or emergency situation. All of that is true, but I'd still love to live someplace where I can look out my window, see a friend heading to the store a block away and we can walk there together. As opposed to living 10-15 minutes away by car from the nearest store as I do now.

@@NaptownClassic I live in Vienna/ Austria and there is not really increased traffic in front of pubs or restaurants, because people walk to their nearest pub or take the underground/ bus/ tram to get there. Only the incoming goods might mean a disturbance, but there are mostly during the day and not very often. As there are so many restaurants, shops and pubs it all evens out. I don’t think trash collection takes longer, however we do have quite the recycling system and you have to carry glass, cans and plastic bottles to the nearest container yourself.

@@jokl89 Yeah, that's awesome for Vienna, but here in America people drive everywhere. I did mean "traffic" in the general sense though, which would include foot traffic.

@@NaptownClassic I think that is a problem when you have no other option than to drive

That’s also how you keep some cheap apartments even in the middle of a booming city. And who would want to live on ground level in a city? Seriously!

Being American, I'm glad I never have to walk or bike anywhere and can always take my car.

@@dandiehm8414 Excellent comment, relevant to the subject of the video and topic at hand, and making total sense in the light of recent global events. Congratulations.

@L M And you couldn't pay me to live anywhere else. To each his own. :)

@@dandiehm8414 You can still take the car, but don't have to

@@dandiehm8414 well you are dumb

@@michaelmullin3585 single family homes have roaches. And high density housing decreases car use and noise pollution.

@@michaelmullin3585 Apparently you've never owned or lived in any home. Neighbors having parties and being trashy is probably more common than a shop throwing a party and being trashy.

@@heavysystemsinc. Oh I actually thought home lovers don't realize that because otherwise, I can't get why they still are for homes.

​@@heavysystemsinc. parties don't happen every fucking day in family homes

@@aryapatel7615 And they certainly don't happen at stores and pubs. I don't understand this debate at all. I live around the corner from multiple bars and pubs and the main thing they bring is drunk drivers, not noise. And if the neighborhood is more walkable, that would be something that would go away, too. You're making it sound like a bar has the same noise pollution levels as a dance club or something.

@@neutrino78x Literally any suburb city. Downtown is fine because of decent enough walking infrastructure, but suburbs are dead outside

@@neutrino78x so it doesn't matter that people need to drive 15+ minutes through traffic just to go to the store? All the pollution that those cars bring? Driving everywhere causing obesity and other health concerns? Costing way more money to make and is not sustainable?

@@neutrino78x But as of now, its not zero emissions. If you look up data regarding average activities of americans vs dutch people, the dutch live a much more active lifestyle due to cycling everywhere rather than driving I said its not sustainable, after the road is made it doesn't generate any revenue, only costs money to upkeep, public transit generates revenue and thus IS sustainable

@@neutrino78x Your inner cities and downtowns are also fk up. So many empty buildings, boarded-up stores, closed malls, and empty parking lots.

I always used to say that I didn't want to live here when I grow up but after watching a few videos of this guy, I can't imagine living anywhere else

@@utterlyridiculous8378 I always used to say that I'd move to America asap but I think I'll stay here, America is a disaster.

+

As a Swiss person many of those things are totally normal for me too. And honestly, I don't understand how America manages to be the dream destination of so many people, when in fact it really is a shitty country. But what this channel also shows me is why the Netherlands is my #2 most loved country.

@@thenamen935 not only that, but going straight to California of all places, in hopes to make big buck. I'd rather take Germany, Netherlands or Spain any day of the week over NA if I wanted to set my foot in other place.

It's actually depressing how the design of car-centric cities covers so much land in asphalt that's its impossible to tell the difference between cities in North America. It's just miles and miles of the same crap. The same chain stores. The same parking lots. This TED talk really sums it up: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h5eKmLuf0qq-fYU.html

It amazes me how similar Canada and the USA are. I could easily feel a sense of familiarity in a city like Toronto or Calgary, same as Atlanta or Nashville.

where's your hometown? im thinking about relocating to a pedestrian-friendly city in the usa

@@holyscience3763 then keep looking because it ain't that

aka the bible of Urban Planning. Amazing how she wrote that book in the early 60s as a layman. It is one of the first books that really opened my eyes to how poorly American cities are built and fueled my interest in urban planning in the early 2000s.

I have just started reading this book a couple of days ago.

I would rather live in the US, where I have a population density of 3200 per square mile, rather than Amsterdam, which has over 10,000 people were square mile. I can still walk if I want to and the luxury of owning my own land. I have been in those mega cities and lived in a buildings with 5,000 of my closest friends. No thanks.

First of all you don't buy your milk in a mall, that might have been your first problem 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@@richardreed6249 population density for a country isn't much of a comparison for this point: it's not like everyone has their own land in e.g. NYC and otoh you'll find lots of small towns or villages with people having their own land in Europe while still having small shops right in the neighborhood...

@@serenityf.6234 Comparing European countries against American States.. For example, for example, my state I state is larger than every Country with the exception of France, Germany, Spain, and Russia and Russia. Within that state, we typically have1/5 the total population. I have seen properties in Europe, and and in a general 1 on 1 comparison, they don't come anywhere close to what we own here in the US.

@NOWfearDon't believe everything you read.

Some bigger cities in the US are set up in this way, like Brooklyn (and technically Manhattan) in NYC, much of Philadelphia (tho it quickly switches more to residential-only outside the city center), and San Francisco to an extent. The suburbs are a different story, sprawling out and absolutely requiring a car, though many will still surround a town with nice mix of shops and homes. Like some kind of cyst, lol.

@@dvlstx This way of zoning is 100ish years old, so cities with older buildings (ironically also the places many of us foreigners see in movies) are much like the rest of the world.

It's the reason all those films about the young person wanting to leave the country town and make something of themselves in new york city exist. There is always a scene were their parents come to visit and try and convince them to come home and can't understand why they live in an apartment, but ultimately support their child's career/life decisions.

listen: Europe is 1000 of years old and was built around RAILROADS...the US is young(er) and built around CAR ROADS...go to older cities and you'll see plenty of Euro-style neighborhoods...

@@gatorbuilt I think the author is arguing that we should stop building exclusively for the CAR and go back to HUMAN scale construction. I happen to agree with them.

What you just said about you illness and not being able to drive or walk for a long distance is one of the usually overlooked benefits of our bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands. When I cycle here I always encounter older or disabled people using an electric mobility scooter on the cyclelanes. It gives them the opportunity to go anywhere, be independent. So wonderfull to see, being able to go anywhere, as long as the battery is charged ;), being outside.

A lot of the old US cities are walkable. Especially NYC

@@Lifebeam87 just spend a shit ton of money and live in a skyscraper loooool

you mean there's privacy

@@mistersandy ?

@@mistersandy I would like to hear why you think that?

I just had the same realization. Greetings from Germany

that sounds cool to live in! My town in the state of Illinois in the USA has a single grocery store on my side of town. That store is not doing very well and if it closes there wont be another grocery store for 15-20 minutes all the way across town. That other side of town has 5 grocery stores within a 5 mile section, all of them larger ones except the Aldi. Thats if you drive, if you take a bus its more like 60 minutes with the constant stops and having to get on different bus lines to get there. Theres some food restaurants down the street but most are fast food and thats actually around a 20 minute walk from where my place is located.

How's Ireland treating you? I'm seriously considering moving from the Netherlands to another European country that isn't too hot in the summer.

This is definitely a part of the food desert problem in the US, but the number one cause is racism.

are you using a fake picture or are you really black? How come you come from Netherlands if its really your picture?

Yes, you're absolutely right on both counts, and I've seen both of these play out in Toronto city politics. That being said, the yellow belt still sucks.

NIMBYs aren’t some selfish group of assholes. They are the result of a society with mixed social courtesy values trying to share space. There are residents who try to be unobtrusive while other residents couldn’t care less about the impact they have on their neighbors. These two groups are incompatible and so the considerate neighbors do everything they can to cluster together and safeguard their neighborhoods from activities that would increase noise and environmental pollution.

@spiro Not sure I understand you correctly. Could your comment be boiled down to, if tenants don't like their neighborhood, they can just move? If so. Other places in the world, including where I live (Denmark), have Tenant organizations both for local areas, and at a state/national level. These organizations lobby for residential areas being livable, by mitigating among other things noise and environmental pollution. Areas where these organizations are successful are the most sought after, both for residential and commercial uses. I'm not saying that this would be practical or even doable in the US. But it works great here. I assume since we have a functioning democratic welfare system, and don't mind paying taxes.

Well developers share their own part of the blame, too. I live in a part of Ottawa where a community development plan was carried out in the mid-2000s with lots of community input. It did a wholesale rezoning of entire areas. The main street height allowance was raised to 6 storeys and prominent street corners were given additional storeys above that, as were sites near the transit station. And... it was never really followed (I can think of all of one redevelopment that broadly adhered to it of the dozen+ that have occurred since). Developers would acquire plots long after the CDP had been passed and would twist the CDP and other City policies into pretzels to argue for yet more height, all enabled by City planners and the OMB. When I say twisted like a pretzel, I mean it: the CDP's heights had been explicitly chosen so that they would conform to the City and Province's intensification targets, yet somehow all this extra extra height was justified on the basis of the exact same policies. You would literally have a site next to the transit station with extra height provided for explicitly in the CDP referencing other City policies then it getting extra height on top of that because it was next to the transit station citing the exact same other City policies. They didn't even make the argument that they believed the height provided for in the CDP was too little: they just straight up went and argued for still more based on the exact same rationales. One particularly grotesque example was for a site that was a block away from a "gateway" intersection. The gateway had extra height provision, so this developer argued that its site was somehow part of that gateway, and that moreover gateways deserved height over and above the extra height provided for as gateways. This site was developed at about twice the height originally allowed for. And... yes, when a site at the actual gateway later went for rezoning, they made the now not-unreasonable argument that since their site was the actual gateway that they should get extra height to create the gateway that had been intended originally. That one seems to have stalled for now. Additionally, each re-rezoning was amazingly specific so now when you look at the zoning of sites that have been redeveloped, they're basically "tailored" to the building that was ultimately built, i.e. certain setbacks at each storey on each street front rather than following the general guideline that still exists "on paper" for adjacent, yet-to-be-redeveloped parcels.

You guys wanna see some NIMBYs, watched a San Francisco City Council meeting. God it's unbearable. Worst part about it too is the council members are totally on-board with the NIMBYs. It's why nothing gets built in SF.

True! Many of our cities actually have a mix of mixed-use neighborhoods and residential-only neighborhoods.

Yep. Zoning laws are kinda like their segregation. Without a bit of shops in a suburb, it’s lifeless.Even here in the Edges of Greater London can you find shops of all types minutes of walk away.

The Loner Millionaire I get your point, however, I’m solely talking about shops. Don’t assume the UK doesn’t have rural areas as well. And even then you can find shops reasonably nearby, compared to going to a megastore an hour away. Yes I realise America is large, and I’m no stranger to their freedom and driving culture. However, my point still stands that suburban area regulations suck. You can as a child quickly go to a corner shop UK and buy a snack or drink, even if you’re not in the city limits. It’s very rare for you to do that in the Us. You ran out of things in the home? Pop down to the local corner shop, whereas with suburban regulations in the US, you’d be hard pressed to find a shop, which is quite frankly an inconvenience. I’m not talking about the freedom and privacy of rural areas, I’m talking about how the regulations inconvenience, and force many people to take a 40 minute drive just to buy an item they’re missing which they easily could’ve gotten from a small grocery store, had they been allowed by regulations.

same

@@aquillandscroll6428 US zoning laws were in fact often intended for racial segregation. Only allow expensive houses on big lots, rely on the banks to 'redline' and not lend money to black people, and voila, no black people in your cookie-cutter neighborhood. Book: _The Color of Law_.

It's all stems from outdated town planning and philosophy.

There are a million ways to meet people. There are meetups people can visit, volunteer events, even apps.

@@CMV314 It's more so about community than simply meeting people I think, though. To me it seems like there's less of a sense of local community than with many places in Europe or Asia.

@@astrahcat1212 I guess we simply have different experiences. My family lives in a car-dependent suburb, and it really feels like a sense of community. Everyone looks out for one another, and there are even people who check on the elderly lady who lives alone.

@@danielbishop1863 Yeah, and since many areas are too spread out or too hilly, it is often quite difficult to even bike places if you wanted to

@@danielbishop1863 That's just so backwards and wrong.

Was it also similar in Ireland if you’ve ever been there ?

@@lavish_1717 The Republic of Ireland's urban planning is similar to the UK, and much of Europe from what I've seen. These places developed organically around existing communities, and did so before the car and the take over of society by corporate interests.

I think you may find that the UK doesnt really have that community anymore. Ive found most local businesses are lacking and simply too expensive yet they weirdly want people to stop going to supermarkets which are often considerably cheaper and with far more choice. Thankfully I can walk into town or the local industrial estate and have much better options in terms of shopping/eating out. I think there IS a strong case to have purely residential areas provided there are amenities within 1 mile but can understand objections if there is nothing within miles

UK is building a lot of American style suburbs as it seems

@@PhilippeLarcher . The UK is building thousands of acres of new housing which discourages cars (narrow roads and garages too small for modern vehicles) , and yet offers nothing at all in the way of community services or access to town centres. The worst of all worlds in fact, because to complete the isolation and feeling of constriction the garden spaces are too small to develop into comfortable outside living space. In fact town centres seem to be becoming like America as well, with dossers sleeping everywhere.

I dunno, what do you expect from America when we still haven't adopted the much more sane and easier to follow metric system for everything. I still get pissed off when I order some hardware like screws or something only to find out they don't fit because of the metric/standard crap. And the GALL for them to use the term 'standard' when metric *is* the standard!

some are meant to lead some are meant to follow

@@mackwoodcock7484 Oh, determinism, where destiny is a thing and free will isn't. Awesome. Glad you feel satisfied in your non contribution to the conversation. Have a great day!

Americans tend to forget their country is only two-hundred-odd years old.

@@Brindlebrother And that the US is only 1.86% of the Earth's surface, and is not actually the world itself.

How long has it been since you lived in a suburb? Most people don't know _anyone_ beyond their immediate neighbors, and plenty don't know even know them (especially if the fence is tall enough). I think this is the rule more than the exception, from talking to all of my friends and coworkers over the decades. I feel our problem in America is that we don't have a happy medium. We either do super-sprawled like suburbs/big-box or super-dense like American downtowns. If the kind of zoning shown in this video was more popular, those two would average out a lot more.

The college I went to had a full blown bus network that is the 2nd largest bus operator in my state besides NJ Transit and I was used to taking the bus to and from high school. I’m sure most of the people that went to Rutgers either never took public transit or associate the bus with being commuter coaches going towards NYC or Philly. I took the bus to get to class but also to hang out with friends living in different campuses and to cover events. Age least where I live I have a bus that will take me to the city center and train station and I could walk to the other train station not far from where I’m at.

Urban planners talk about the "floor area ratio" of a business: that is, the ratio of usable floor space to the area of the lot that it's on. Since parking lots don't count as usable space, the typical FAR of a suburban shopping area is 0.25. That's a massive waste of space (and infrastructure) for every bit of usable retail space. By contrast, the FAR of most retail in Amsterdam is above 1, because there will be multiple floors, and little to no surface parking. The economic impact of this is massive, and is bankrupting US cities: www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/3/big-box-stores-are-costing-our-cities-far-more-than-we-ever-imagined And yes, suburban neighbourhoods are purposefully built to be mazes, to prevent through traffic by cars. But in doing so, it also makes it a maze for people walking and cycling, and makes what should be a 100m walk into a 2km walk because of the insane twisty streets. The subreddit "suburbanhell" shares maps of these ridiculous routes sometimes: www.reddit.com/r/Suburbanhell/comments/fuars4/six_minutes_to_drive_30_to_walk_to_a_shopping/

@@LM-dl9id of course, it's a classic! I plan to do a video about it soon.

Ah yes, the typical North American suburban neighbourhood where I lost my bearing, and it turned out it's because I was literally walking in circles... Made me carry a compass for a while.

their urban planning is built around cars, it would be a disaster if they didn't build parking lots

@@NotJustBikes "Surburban neighbourhoods are purposefully built to be mazes" - that's often also true of the UK, but we build footways between houses that link up adjacent streets, so making it easy to walk around (and out of!) the estate. Meanwhile, "local centres" often contain small shops (typically a mini supermarket, newsagents, possibly a post office, and a couple of takeaways) with one or two levels of flats above.

Move to Savannah GA! Walkable city and beach close by, no need for a car.

that's because the downtown area existed before planning laws and was grandfathered in. As soon as they started zoning, they created an America that is dull and unimaginative, as well as lonely and difficult to function in without a car.

@@MsGrandunion That's partially true. Grew up in NYC and yes it was grandfathered mix use areas but most new planning is going back to that practice. Moved to Seattle and that kind of planning is also being implemented.

Except the 'downtown' is a single half mile stretch of a road where only 60% of the buildings are in use, and of that only 30% aren't office buildings. So it still ends up being a pain in the ass/still unreachable from most of the city itself

@@MsGrandunion Plus, they can jack the rent price up in downtown areas because it's different and attractive.

@@MsGrandunion While the suburb I grew up in was car-dependent, it was not dull, unimaginative, or lonely. We played with the other neighborhood kids (this was the 90s). We also had block parties with a bouncy house frequently! Loved that bouncy house. The houses had some similarities, yes, as that street was all part of the same development, but they weren't cookie-cutter versions of each other. They still had differences in their facades, and the layout was different in each one. Even where I am now (also a suburb), some houses are similar, some are not.

Theres a lot of narrow streets lined with shops in center city that i can imagine being easily closed permanently for pedestrian use.

@@blushdog99 Chicago tried something like this with State Street in the 1980’s and 90’s. the city closed the Loop’s main retail corridor to all private cars in an effort to bring back customers who had been drawn away to suburban shopping centers and elsewhere. During the seventeen years the mall was open, seven major department stores closed. Although this was a complete failure by the urban planners it has been argued that the execution was flawed.

Most of the neighborhoods in Chicago have shops, bars, and restaurants. I haven’t had a car in over 10 years and don’t need one. When I lived in other cities, it was pretty dead on the neighborhood streets.

Absolutely- a big issue with New Towns and city planning after WWII

The comment about depression about young mothers really hit home for me. I was in a new home in a new city when I became a mom. Though I was able to make friends there was still a loneliness and since then I've always thought how much better it would have been to have a sense of community around me and with me as I cared for my baby, then babies.

Do people in Europe not hang out with their neighbors? With all those new mothers in the same neighborhood, why wouldn't they become friends and help each other?

@Kimberly Carrigan yep this is a line of support but the problem is, what else do you have to do. We can think of it in Two scenarios. First, having fun with other people with your baby. Second having fun without your baby. I don’t mean clubbing, I just mean going for a coffee or something. If the neighbourhood has no community centres were people meet, both are difficult. Also being on a big new neighbourhood where you have to drive to get out of it, young mothers were not able to see their own mothers. A line of support that can be invaluable. I know that not all people need this and sometimes can't, but if you can, its can be again a good line of support. I must say that I am a man and do not understand everything that a woman goes through, however I made the mistake of moving my wife to a bigger astates where she was out of contact with her friends and family. It was only later when she was having difficulties that I realised, I done exactly what we had studied at school.

@@katy3901I think I am right in saying that in the uk, the New Favourite form of transport before the war was the bike. New town built in the 30s had bike Lanes but still promoted the car as this was seen as the new future. After the war the bike lanes were forgotten in many places.

Agreed. Bagged milk is an important topic that needs discussion.

LMAO. It was the first thing I had to comment on and then started scrolling down the comments. Epic.

Perhaps people are put off by the resemblance to its origin. When I tell people about growing up having cereal with goats' milk so fresh that it was still warm, it's remarkable how many find the idea - just the thought of it! - revolting.

We had bags of milk in the Netherlands. I remember we had them when I was a kid in the 1970s. I was too young to know why we don't have them any longer.

A few decades ago you could buy bags of milk from Dutch supermarkets. Haven't seen them since then.

Start saving some money because a house in most of the districts shown here may easily set you back a million dollars :). Most people don't actually live like this in the Netherlands, like most Americans don't live in Manhattan.

Nah it’s 400k and above (de pijp) but you’re not wrong, this guy has a really narrow view zoomed in on inner Amsterdam. The rest of NL is suburbia hell

@@ignorantcow I think he's talking more about cities/towns. At least in France the cities and towns are like this, when u get to smaller ones or in the deep suburbs then it's a bit harder to find everything close to u (u don't need to live in the center to have this though)

@@ignorantcow It seems traffic is better in the Netherlands though. Traffic here in Atlanta is genuinely a health hazard in many ways

@Ryan Atkinson that I 100% agree with. The road infrastructure here is planned to the nines, it is amazing and it works.

@@neutrino78x erm.. ok?

No kidding!

Cars manufacturers love it. It's not profitable to let people walk after all. Capitalism at its finest!

@@Michael45007 Without capitalism you wouldn’t even have a phone or computer to type that comment on. It isn’t capitalism you hate, it’s human greed, which is even less controlled in systems like socialism or communism btw.

@@BadWolfSilence Wrong. You would still have it. In fact, DARPA invented these things. All paid by taxpayers money. Where does capitalism come into it? It's not communism or capitalism. It's the government efficiency. With that aside, unregulated capitalism ends up into crony capitalism where the few control everything. In other words, oligarchy. Which is no better than communism. What we need is a social capitalism. A social democracy. We need to eliminate extreme greed and bring the balance to the capitalism to the ordinary working men, not the elite wealthy who lobby and game the system. The world needs it.

@@BadWolfSilence Lame conservative talking point which is completely false.

Covid was just beating already half dead businesses.

Covid showed how horrible it is to open small businesses in this country

@@XKavar1 are you stupid? America is considered one of the top countries to open a business in. Yes, even small ones.

@@angadsingh9314 You're delusional! Its IMPOSSIBLE to open a small business, unless you have tons of money to rent commercial space, fill out mountains of paperwork for permits, and licenses, and other crap, even before you can or have made one cent!

@@crunchysocialisthippie so your saying overegulation is killing small business owners? Because large major cities are more difficult to open in Because of suffocating regulations. I disagree with you statement. It is possible to open a small business in the states. It depends where your located, from the center of Manhattan of course your average person can't. But other areas has better opportunities to offer your average joe.

Same, i live in a tinyyyy village in England and still we have (within walking) 4 pubs , 2 clothing shops , 3 cafes , 1 bakery , 1 greengrocers , 2 hairdressers. All independent , all small businesses that have miraculously survived covid . Also plenty of housing with flats built in an old mill , so many options in such a tiny place.

Do you even live in Seattle...? Becuase there restaurants, cafes and shops in very secluded quiet places all over.

@@EmmaGodLovesTruth95 Yes I do but Seattle is a big place so maybe i missed them.

@@neutrino78x YES!

Wij hebben dit ook erg lang gehad. We kochten dit vroeger bij de Bas ven der Heijden (Dirk)

@@ericvandenberge9767 Vroeger ja maar nu al lang niet meer...

It would be a maybe for me if it was a different kind of plastic bag. One that can stand on it's own and has a screwcap. Thesr are used for juice in restaurants, hotels and cruiseliners all over the world. But this.. What the fuck, man.

@@TrueGreenSmoker ik ben geboren in 82 maar wat ik mij herinner is gewoon een pak melk die je vandaag de dag nog koopt

@@rinus454 Ontario is weird. BC used to have bagged milk but that disappeared in the early 90s. Somehow Ontario never switched.