I’m always blown away by how much more “urban” the main streets of little towns are in Indiana compared to vast swaths of Indianapolis.

The problem in most places is, the moment you suggest building infrastructure that doesn't completely prioritize cars, the snowflakes start claiming it's a "war on cars".

man i fuckin love you guys, not just bikes, climate town, city nerd... youre all just amazing and I wish my country could be so much better without politicians being so panderous to cars

What's really wild about not allowing apartments everywhere is just how many old 2 and 3 story apartment buildings there are in Halifax, that wouldn't be allowed today

I moved from Edmonton to Odense, Denmark population of about 250K for 2 years. It was staggering that a city that size could have a light rail and the amount of bike infrastructure. I miss it everyday, biking every where and an amazingly cute and walkable city center

As a haligonian cyclist, I have loved seeing the slow growth of urbanism around here. We can dream of rail :(. Currently the only rail link we have is a biweekly to Montreal. We really need to develop better though, with a housing crisis and a growing population we just can’t sustain the number of cars required to let everyone have one.

I was born and raised in a small village in the Netherlands, population 10.000. It was all bikable and walkable. It doesn't even need to be a city at all to achieve that

As a planner in Halifax, you guys did a really excellent job of portraying the reality of the city's past, present, and future urbanism in a short and concise video! Excellent content as always.

Already being spoiled by the great Canadian urbanist content on KZfaq, you giving smaller cities some love is quite the bonus! As a small city dweller, all this has inspired me to read up on local urban/transit planning. It's been really encouraging to see more and more reports hitting all the right points when it comes to the values you and other channels talk about.

Mixed use is so much more important than density. It doesn't matter how dense a place is if the only store is a walmart by the highway 10 miles away from town

Tell me, what's so special about Canada, that all the best urbanist KZfaqrs are from there? Mr. Slaughter of NJB, RM of RM Transit, and you two of Oh the Urbanity. Absolutely my favourite KZfaqrs. I enjoy the urbanist videos more than I enjoy watching Jackie Chan Adventures.

Nice video! I’m shocked, however, that you guys haven’t done any videos on Victoria yet. It’s about the same size as Halifax and has the highest mode share of walking and cycling trips in Canada per capita. It is also currently in the process of expanding its protected cycling infrastructure across the entire city (and other municipalities in the region are doing the same). Sadly Victoria seems to be constantly overshadowed by Vancouver even though they’re completely different cities. Edit: Victoria is also the 7th most densely populated city in the country (so better cycling and transit infra makes sense), and is currently working on an initiative to implement a blanket missing middle zoning initiative across the city.

As a European, these are nothing like smaller cities. These are still big cities. I think it's an important distinction since it can affect what transit is considered viable. Countless smaller European cities have trams, and some even have metros: Bilbao (Spain), Lausanne (Swiss), Catania (Italy), Brescia (Italy).

Excellent video!🎉

I live in “Fake London” and had a look at the cycling map recently, and was actually surprised how many protected bike lanes there are, and how many regular bike lanes there are (make them protected please!). But was not surprised that so many bike lanes don’t connect to anything… you’d be biking along on this nice protected bike lane and then come up to 2 blocks where you have to “share the road” to get to the next couple blocks where they resume. It’s a work in progress though and I’m excited to see more developments here!

north of NYC there are so many small river towns and cities along the hudson river that are great examples of small town urbanism in the US.

350,000 people, I would call that a bag city. In the Netherlands, there are only four city's bigger then that. I would say that in my experience, a city of 125,000 is much nicer to cycle than one of 500,000. I can just cycle to almost the whole city in 15 minutes, where I find it always a bit annoying to find out that even when I am already in a city, I still need to cycle for an hour to get somewhere.

So much of this can be applied to small towns too. A compact small town with everything you'd need in cycling distance could make car-free or low car living so manageable.

PEI is becoming a transit utopia, with bike infrastructure and busses across province running every day.

I appreciate seeing some urbanist channel mention this. As someone who does not like cities and also would like to live (nearly) car free, it is endlessly frustrating how often it seems like the kind of place I want to live and the kind of way I want to live are mutually exclusive. It is possible to have both but so many people think I'm insane for wanting to be able to walk to work and the grocery store while not living in a big city

I live in a city of 200k in a county of 400k, so similar in size to Halifax, and while my city is better than most it's size (low bar in America) I'm still amazed and suddenly jealous of what a city this size could be after seeing this. Your videos made me fall in love with Montreal and it might have happened again with Halifax haha

I recently moved to Halifax coming from Ottawa and before that Waterloo and London, ON. Definitely felt a big difference in density and walkability here, I am loving it.

That karate kick at 1:26 with the guy who realized he was on camera was awesome

I live in Huntsville, AL, US with a population of 215k and there have been big improvements in adding bike lanes and bus routes the past few years. Not too sure there was even a single bike lane here 5 years ago. I am now able to bike nearly everywhere I need to go in the city.

As a Haligonian and a cyclist, it's sometimes frustrating to live here. There are small, sporadic sections of great cycling infrastructure. The protected bike lane on Wyse Rd in Dartmouth is a great example. Or the Chain of Lakes trail, which is a great, long shared path that takes you all the way to Bayers Lake. Unfortunately, it's sporadic, as I said. You get some great sections of cycling infrastructure, but none of it really connects with each other. So you're treated to a good bike lane, only to have to weave through traffic when you turn onto another road.

Also crazy how your benchmark was Halifax, a city with over 300000 inhabitants. Where I live is far from a biking utopia but weirdly enough some of the best urbanism I've seen was on a beach town with less than 100000 permanent inhabitants

0:16 as a Maritimer living in BC (albeit northern BC), where I've heard Toronto and Montréal referred to as the East Coast many times, this moment was very funny.

1:27 nice kick lol

Great video! I recently travelled to Denmark, which included stay in the city of Odense, which has 180,000 inhabitants. Even as someone very familiar with the differences in transit and city design between North American and Europe, I was absolutely floored at how amazing the bike infrastructure was in a small-ish city. One can get anywhere safely and comfortably in just a few minutes, and the network connects not only the city itself, but to outlying areas as well. And with the great separation and well thought-out junctions, there are no harrowing moments of cars and trucks passing inches from you while biking, which are everyday occurrences to most bike commuters in North America.

Biking is actually more feasible for smaller cities and towns, there's more of space to build them in alternative paths, there's more space to park bicycles, and scooters. In crowded cities with many high rises, pedestrians + transit should be the priority, cycling infrastructure second.

North American cities and towns need to start emulating the European mindset of being less car centric.

Love to see you cover my home town! Definitely love to see it, especially with our massive population growth over the last few years

Look at Karlsruhe in Germany. It's smaller than Halifax and its regional tram-train network reaches 50km outside the city.

Walkable villages, in the ancient style, are nice to live in. Quiet and close to nature, yet no need to drive everywhere. Driving is only needed to reach the neighbouring village, the city, the campsite, etc. Children can also see their neighbours without relying on parents to drive them, and services such as hairdressing and groceries can be reached without driving. This combines the non-economic advantages of big city life with the advantages of rural life.

Great video. Edmonton is going through a pretty good urbanism renewal right now and they're dividing the city up into 15-minute districts (smaller than a city, larger than a neigjbourhood). These districts, which are sort of like small cities, actually make it easier and more efficient to plan walkable communities. Small cities need to become more walkable and bikeable before they become too big to walk and bike.

So cool to hear people talking about Halifax! By what I'm used to, Halifax is still big.. but they clearly have quite a good development for their size. And I've read their plans.. they're on the right path!

I was having a conversation about this on Reddit. These solutions are relatively inexpensive, cost-effective, and absolutely worth it!

I went to university in Victoria which is basically Halifax's west coast identical twin. My experience was very similar and I bring it up to people all the time. It's the perfect city for students, and there are a lot of them there but it's not a true college town either, it's a rea city in its own right. Because of the cities relative age and close together destinations it's perfect for students who can't afford a car. But nobody will even fathom the possibility of rail based transit of any kind. Seriously, never had a conversation go past a 5 sentence exchange about it.

I'm a Vancouverite. I have never thought of Toronto or Montreal as being on the east coast. When I refer to those two cities, I would say central Canada, or back east. I can't think of anyone I know that would say otherwise.

Halifax is an interesting subject aright now. We are experiencing immense growth at the moment, over 20,000 people moved into the city last year alone, and there are plans for even more growth. This influx of people is almost forcing the city to pick up urbanist planning unintentionally in order to attempt to house the new people arriving and provide them ways to get around without clogging up existing roadways. Almost every development that is coming up lately is mixed use residential towers with commercial ground level spaces. Bike lanes and transit improvements are happening because they know damn well what tens of thousands more motorists would do to the city. Problem is this is still only really happening in the core (and a couple popular suburbs) and the rest of the city is kind of being ignored. Transit "fixes" improved service among busy corridors, but they left those in areas off the core routes often in worse conditions, with service levels reduced in frequency and sometimes ending earlier in the day than before the changes. Bike infrastructure is certainly improving on the peninsula and in downtown Dartmouth, but outlying areas like Spryfield are woefully unserviced. A "safe" bike trip downtown from Spryfield requires using painted bike gutters on a dangerous road (at least one notable bike accident sent someone to the trauma ward recently) and sidewalks, or if you want to take a more protected way, you have to bike completely out of your way to Fairview and then use the meandering infrastructure and back streets from that direction, turning a 20 minute bike ride into around 40 minutes. That same influx of population that is driving more urbanist development though is also massively driving up our cost of housing due to lack of it available, and also contributing to a massive health crisis as we do not have nearly enough doctors, nurses, and paramedics to serve the existing population, never mind the massive growth. This is causing a major backlash against the urbanist developments as people are rightfully concerned about where government priorities are lying.

thanks for doing this. Here in NJ, we have lots of small municipalities. My town has a population of about 12,000. BUT, the density in NJ is on a par with the Netherlands. My town has a higher population density than Atlanta and many other American cities. But when you talk about things related to "urbanism" people in my town immediately assume it's not for the us. "That might work in NY, but not in our small town". That's an incorrect understanding.

Hey guys, I grew up in London, moved to Toronto (years I can never get back), then to Halifax and am now in Montreal. No wonder I like this channel!

one other thing I wanted to mention is how good Halifax does with mixed use neighborhoods(on the peninsula anyways) even really residential areas usually will have a corner store or two, a pharmacy or a coffee shop or a market or something like that, especially in the North end. Its something I love about this city that I find we do better than even most bigger cities, were I often find myself walking for 15 minutes just to get a bag of chips from a convenience store in some places!

That Uytae Lee cameo at 1:27 from his time in Montreal!

Looking forward to watching this! Love your content. Now I'm going to watch.

The required density for walkability and for transit to be economically viable is laughably low. The current number is around 25 people per acre. Considering the fact that the average US household in 2022 had 2.5 people and 1/10th acre lots are not uncommon in urban areas, you can theoretically achieve that density with just detached single family housing (not that I prefer that). I think walking/cycling/transit infrastructure is totally possible in most cities, as long as the city makes a commitment to it.

Halifax has always been such a beautifully walkable city (at least downtown). I'm thrilled to see them getting some bike infra.

Really happy to see a video on Halifax :) I think you guys did a great job explaining the kind of attitude Halifax has toward urbanism - we have a fairly progressive council and we are slowly moving in the right direction, but it seems like we’re too scared to really make big changes to break away from the status quo. Our provincial government also loves to get in the way of good things. For example, council has approved a really nice-looking plan for a proper BRT system, but the province is unwilling to do their part in funding it. (Not to mention that the province is now fast-tracking a bunch of sprawl developments on the edges of the city). Not to put all the blame on the province - council could also do things better - but NS doesn’t make it any easier. Basically, there are lots of plans to do really great things but it seems like we have issues with actually getting anything done. It’s the same thing with bike infrastructure - we were supposed to have a lot more than we do by now.

Halifax was the second city I visited in Canada, first one was Truro! Those two cities made me fall in love with the country.

We may never pedestrianize every road and stroad in every city and town, but some cities are better than none.

I lived in Londonontario (that's how people pronounce it) for years and biked to work downtown a lot. There were fantastic multi-use pathways along the river, but there were missing safe links to get from the river paths to the actual core. Before I moved away I was chatting with the deputy mayor about the need to protect some corridors for future transit right-of-ways. His response was "There's no need. We'll never be big enough for a subway." Sigh.

Oh my goodness please come to Winnipeg. We are so stuck here. Rampant NIMBYism, short term mindset, half-ass everything. We dig ourselves a little deeper every year.

1:10 I think anyone that has seen any video from the NotJustBikes channel, has heard about this city. He is responsible for many views changing on how infrastructure should be, and opened the door for people to be interested on knowing and researching more about this topic. I (personally) got interested on the content of this channel, because of all the changes on my personal perspective, after watching the videos from NotJustBikes. 🙂

So surreal to see my home on your channel! I thought you did a great job with this video! I agree, we've got a long way to go but it really feels like we've been making big steps in the past 5 years and we have plans laid out to continue. Wish we were seeing bigger changes faster, but sometimes you have to take what you can get...

You can really see the decades in Halifax's street design. Having grown up in downtown and later moving to Dartmouth, I have to say the difference was painful and had severe negative impacts on my development. That being said, Dartmouth was still somehow nicer than the suburbs where I live now, because for all the cul de sacs and bizarrely aligned streets, there was also an incredible system of walking paths to help me get around. Even when my school was on the other side of a lake, there were forest shortcuts I could take, or at the very least a decent sidewalk on the regular route, and a nearby bus terminal with an express bus to Dalhousie and St Marys (which had signal priority). Of course, it was still completely unwalkable, and ridiculously hilly to the point that biking was just not an option, and the isolation of being in a suburb did take its toll on me compared to the connectivity of downtown.

"Kids deserve to be able to walk or ride bikes to school." Please say that louder for the country on your southern border.

I think smaller cities can learn a few lessons from Emmen, the Netherlands. It's a city of ~100k people and essentially the answer to "what if the Dutch had more space?" For Dutch metrics, it's very car friendly, and does have lots of visitors from the rural areas around it. In terms of flats and towers, there are only a few. However, it still has fully separated bicycle infrastructure, and cycling is generally safe anywhere.

I still see people crying online over not having Harbour Drive, saying that the resistance to it was an example of elitist south-enders blocking the utility of poor suburbanites who need to drive from Dartmouth to Spryfield. As someone who wants to destroy the South End mcmansions and install dense public housing, I would rather that area still be free from a highway disconnecting Point Pleasant Park from the rest of the city!

I was just thinking about this yesterday! What a great video. There can be places which are bike friendly, walkable, with high density condos/apartments with quality amenities that aren't always mega-cities. Great work! I can think of multiple off the top of my head here in the lower 48.

In March of last year I had to move away from Halifax, the city I grew up in, because it was too expensive for me to live there. As someone who doesn't drive it that city is still very unfriendly unless you are actually downtown. I live in Vancouver now and have a one bedroom that is only $100 more than my bachelor in Halifax, and my wage is half again higher. The large population growth people champion in Halifax over the last few years have left a lot of us native Haligonians in the dust. I'm always sad to see videos about one of my favourite cities I'll never live in again.

And just a short boat ride away from Halifax is the coastal town of Portland, Maine, which also has fabulous (and very similar looking) urbanism for a small city.

Great video. Smaller cities should dream bigger.

Two of my favorite missing middle fairly dense cities in America are Lancaster PA and Frederick MD. Absolutely gorgeous architecture and walkable historic districts.

Wow, how much digging did you guys do to find that radio recording? Strange how many of his points still echo and resonate today.

I've been advocating for more urbanist ideas in my small city of 65,000. There are challenges that come along with it, but I see a lot of potential, the benefit of a city this size is it already isn't super spread out, sure it is for it's size, but on a human scale, you could bike from one end of the city to the other in around 30 minutes, this means fewer miles of bike infrastructure has a big impact, the city has a bus service, and I've found it's decent in many ways, but there is a lot of potential for it to be monumentally better for a very affordable cost to taxpayers. I'm working on starting a blog to discuss these issues more in detail to target at people who live here, I'm combining it with information on city services, government, things to do, and even ways to save money to attract readers to the blog, and I've been networking with some more forward thinking groups and professional organizations in the city.

Thank you so much for a video on Halifax! I’ve lived here almost my whole life and there have been major improvements lately. You mentioned the transit corridor on Spring Garden, and the main reason it failed is because they decided to start the “pilot project” at the exact time that a parallel street (the best detour route for drivers) was closed for replacing pipes. I think they have plans to return it and I really hope they do!

Lived in Halifax for 2 years in the late 80's while my wife was getting her masters at Dalhousie. Without a car, didn't even have a drivers license, we rarely even needed to leave the Halifax Peninsula with almost everything within a easy walk and occasional the bus. Still miss Halifax.

The way you always talk about Montréal one would think that it is a paradise and one would be right.

I love those old radio clips. A great reminder that people have been fighting the good fight for a long time.

Yay Halifax coverage! I do think that in certain areas on the peninsula, the 15 minute neighbourhood has properly been achieved. It is exciting to see the development of mixed zoning slowly trickle out.

Is London Ontario the same as 'Fake London'?

I live in an area where small rural towns of under 2,000 rresidents When I told a city councilmen that it would be nice to be able to walk or bike from any point in the town to any other point in the town, they balked at the idea wondering "why would anyone want to do that?" To say the least, only the "old core" of the town (build in the early 1920s) is even remotely walkable. The councilmen then went on about how adding sidewalks and dedicated bike lanes is completely impractical because the town is "too spread out".

Halifax's transit ridership numbers are awesome for such a smaller metro area, as sure the attitude towards bike lanes!

I lived in Halifax for many years and enjoyed the waterfront area. I then moved to Banff and then Calgary. While Banff is very walkable, I found downtown Calgary to be a place best to avoid if one does not work there as there is not much to do there during the day. I do miss the Halifax/Dartmouth waterfronts with its Busker Festival and other lively activities. I used to walk around Halifax a lot and it felt welcoming plus I could avoid major roads by cutting through various neighbourhoods. Here in Calgary, most neighbourhoods are cut off from each other with fences, often by major roadways that are always super busy.

Nice @AboutHere cameo at 1:27 !!

Wishing something local will happen in Hobart, but I feel like we're more likely going to need a NZ-style intervention Recently a truck stopped traffic for hours, and it brought back memories of when we could've built 1 piece of major public transport for 1/5 the cost of a single highway bridge they're building instead

As an American, y'all and NJB make what to avoid London like the Plague!

Thanks for covering Canadian city urban design and advocating for healthier, more walkable and bikable neighbourhoods. Something far too many Canadian cities seem to be going in the opposite direction with. Check out Manitoba cities for some horror stories. A big, brand new neighbourhood and not ONE grocery store within reasonable walking or biking distance. Not one STORE period within walking/biking distance. And even if you wanted to bike - very unsafe, almost no dedicated biking lanes and a big main road to go past to get to the major shopping centre. The problem is the system incentives. We live in a very anti-economical system where the healthy, just and sustainable thing to do, based on science, isn't often done because it doesn't comply with the maximize profit and competitive self-interest demand of the market system. All backwards economics. But so many people don't recognize the root problem. I still appreciate the look at these cities and showing what good urban design does look like and how it CAN be done in Canadian cities.

I saw my building!! Twice actually! And probably more since there were a few Toronto clips

1:26 I like how you chose to keep this clip and not discard it despite the guy doing a high kick. XD

Bicycle infrastucture in useful in towns of every size. Even in towns with a population of only 10,000 people, the main roads should have cycling lanes.

Hey, that's where I am! It's been quite gratifying to see Halifax develop and become significantly more liveable over the last 20-30 years.

Thank you so much for covering small cities in this video! Though i do find it funny that we in North America consider a city with a population of 350k "small." In Europe that would be a major city with several regional rail connections and commuter rail, plus like 3-4 tram lines, lol. I think it's very important to highlight that urbanism is something that affects everyone, not just big cities, and I think you do a great job illustrating that with this video. In some ways, smaller cities in North America can benefit more from density and transit, because there's less pressure from state DoTs (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is) to push through massive highways to support the higher populations. I really do hope that we can expand urbanism from being only a big city concept to also covering our smaller cities. Thanks for your hard work!

Damn I have so much love for Halifax. Moving there after highschool was my first introduction to a car-free lifestyle and it had such a profound impact on me. Also lmao at my little cameo

This might be a controversial take, but I'm thinking that smaller cities might actually be places we could effect quicker and more compete change. Many times they are already more compact, and their smaller local government can be more responsive and agile in making change. Additionally lower traffic volumes and chiller drivers help make up for some amount of infrastructure deficiencies. I could really see where smaller cities lead the change; as long as there is a local will to change.

Nice video! I visited Halifax this summer and was really impressed with the walkability downtown, although I was less impressed with the roads in other parts of the city.

My only critique: The metropolitan area of Halifax is home to roughly 480,000. 13th largest municipality in Canada. (12th if you amalgamate Hamilton with the GTA)

halifax looks like such a pleasant place with much bigger bones than its population would suggest.

I grew up in Halifax. I completely agree that the municipal government should permit low-rise apartment buildings everywhere (and mixed use development on every major street), but municipal governments are too weak to resist the NIMBYs. As I am sure you are aware, the Federal government has been putting some pressure on municipalities to permit higher density. It tried to get Halifax to accept medium density housing on most of the peninsula, but the municipal government talked the Feds out of it. Likewise, here in BC, the provincial government, as as well as the federal government, has been putting pressure on municipalities to allow greater density. It seems like the tide is turning in our favor, but there will be continued resistance, that will slow things down considerably.

You should consider visiting Victoria, BC. It is pretty much a twin of Halifax but on the west coast. It is the 7th most dense city in canada, number one in mode shift away from cars in Canada, and has a walkscore of 76 and bikescore of 80. These statistics being so high are probably partly due to weird municipal boundaries, but still impressive for north america. Victoria also has a lot of nice "urban villages" which are nice walkable areas outside of downtown. There have been a lot of new protected bike lanes recently, but unfortunately the transit isn't the best.

Seems like London Ontario has traumatized a few transit minded people … 😅

Amazing video!

There are plans to create a BRT system in Hali, but it needs funding from the provincial government that is yet to come.

Just looking at the thumbnail I thought the city was Wellington, NZ, another small Anglosphere city that punches above its weight for urbanism.

This point is really important. Adding to the arguments of the video, if we think at the regional level, we need smaller city to be less car-dependant to make sure an eventual railroad network would be popular enough to justify its existence. Even though it is possible and quite easy to live car-free in Montréal for example, it's really hard to get out of the city and go visit smaller cities without using a car and folks of smaller cities are encouraged to keep their car as it is the best way to meet their transportation needs at the local and regional level.

You don't need a big city. A decently small town (lets say 500 - 1000) can survive with an hourly bus service and bike lanes only on busy roads because you wouldn't expect too much traffic in small towns.

seems like Halifax is already leaps and bounds ahead of St.John's on this stuff

Go that one guy at 1:28 !

I live in central Europe, so I was quite surprised to hear Halifax described as a small town because here in Poland that would most definitely be considered a mid-sized city and unquestionably urban (and with horrendous traffic). By the way, Halifax is actually the first place I want to visit in Canada, because as much as I love trains and bikes, I love ships more! And where else has more ship heritage?!

Small towns need to think about transit as much as any big town. It's better to begin as early as possible too if they hope to grow it.