Hate the sprawl. Build connected neighborhoods that are walkable! Return to tradition!

man i just wanna be able to bike a short distance to anything I need and not nearly get hit by cars going 50mph+ on every road.

1:14 my mom's neighborhood is typical suburban sprawl. The developer scraped thousands of acres of forest bare and flattened it. To avoid catastrophic flooding the local regulations require them to add massive drainage ponds. However the homeowners are required to pay to maintain these ponds. So the homeowners have to pay $300/month for HOA dues, most of which is to hire experts for hydrology studies and engineers to maintain these ponds. The ponds legally cannot have anything within hundreds of feet, no tree, no walkways, nothing. They're sterile. So the developer got to maximize the number of homes they built for profit and passed off the problems to the homeowners to maintain in perpetuity at the homeowners expense. All of this could be avoided by not scraping forests bare. Suburbanites seem to think they're the last bastion of nature because they occasionally seed deer and squirrels. It's weird. Higher density *saves* the wilderness and leaves it untouched and you won't have to pay for drainage ponds.

grew up in urban sprawl in townsville australia, I just thought thats how the world lived, I didnt know any different. Needed the car to drive to the shops, to the pub, football training. whatever it was you needed to drive. Live in Cologne germany now and to be able to walk to a supermarket, bakery, few restaurants, other little things, bus stops, train stops. Its like a movie where you open a door and the other side is full of colour and unicorns and what not.

Walkscore thinks I live in a very car dependent neighbourhood. Yet, I'm less than a 5 minute bike ride away from two grocery stores/15-20 minute walk. Decent transit options a 7 minute walk away (bus), or 20 minute walk away (LRT). And I've been car free with ease for the entire 7 years I've lived here. Relative to the several US cities I've lived in before, Calgary's so much more livable.

I'm only a couple minutes in, and FINALLY someone put into words the issues with destroying natural wetlands for suburban sprawl!

Very good summary. You hit a lot of great points in a very short video. One thing I don't hear people in the urbanism space talking about yet is the projected population decline coming soon. If we build too much sprawl and then the population declines, you're going to have a lot of empty houses and a lot of empty roads and unused utilities out of the edges of cities that will need to be maintained with a smaller and smaller tax pool, or just demolished, which is a lot of wasted carbon.

I think some suburbs are great for some people and can be walkable but the mass produced sprawl stuff especially here in Houston suburbs is RIDICULOUS even for driving. Something physically 4 miles away could be an 8 miles drive because of the windy roads. For no reason, mind you, it’s flat terrain here 😂 Glad I live in the city

This is why I say Republican fiscal conservatism is only limited to taking away SNAP benefits for people in the inner city. More suburbs mean more road maintenance and more subsidies for utilities.

Online urbanism induced demand: Some people make some videos about it, creating supply for demand that wasn't there They become popular, so there's a A LOT of demand So A LOT more people start making urbanism content Then our current time comes where various urbanist concepts (mostly transportation but also city financing) are important to many people Now it's kicking off with lots of people addressing the demand for urbanist content I love this!

OK, actual comment: I grew up in a much more car-dependent suburb than I live in now. I'm now a short walk from a Bart station, and I'm right next to a park that's has the main tri-valley area regional rail trail passing through it. But I still have to get across a nine-lane stroad to get to the transit station, and that rail trail is getting a bridge connection over that stroad, but I've lived here for almost two years now and it's been under construction literally that entire time. A fucking footbridge! How long does it take to build a fucking footbridge?! Supposedly lots of Bart stations are getting TODs built around them in the next couple of years, including a truly massive one at West Oakland. What we really need is to demolish the 580 from Livermore to the Bay Bridge and replace it with a huge transit-optimized mixed-use corridor through Dublin/Pleasanton and Livermore, as well as Castro Valley. But that's a long time away.

Just came from Our Changing Climate. This is CULTURAL. Urbanists don't talk about cultural things enough. Some cultural things are illogical. Like suburbs, which radicalized me on urbanism. But this video says all the right things so keep up the great work!

To the economic and environmental argument we need to add health - physical, mental and social health. Car dependency exacerbates health issues like obesity, loneliness and depression, along social polarization. People who live in urban areas are healthier, more active and more engaged socially.

I live in a car dependent suburb and it's just unsustainable. If you keep building further and further out, eventually there won't even be useful rural areas left. Look at what Georgia looks like with how far Atlanta has sprawled out! It has to end at some point. It's absolutely possible to start doing infill development and densifying with missing middle housing in suburban areas, especially ones closer to the urban core that are more likely to have good transit access. Roads are actually driving our local governments bankrupt. There is so much pavement damage from heavy car and especially truck traffic that roads have to be repaved constantly and are always in poor condition. The amount of infrastructure repair many cities have to do to repair all the potholes is sometimes more than their entire infrastructure budget for multiple years! When does it end?

I live in a suburb that isn't car-dependent or sprawling. Single family home suburbs can still be walkable, have nice downtown with family owned businesses, and have good transit. Look at older northeastern US suburbs or European suburbs. My hometown was built up in the 1920s. But I totally agree that we need to stop building car-dependent suburbs for all these reasons. When I see images of suburbs with houses that look the same, no trees, or no shops nearby, I think they look like boring and depressing places to live. If people still think we need to build more suburbs with single family homes, build them like how they used to be built before the car lobbiests took over.

Hate the suburbs

I grew up in a car-dependent R1 suburb (Santa Clara, CA) and escaped to the land of apartments, mixed-use commercial strips and mass transportation (San Francisco). You couldn't pay me to go back.

Sprawl sucks increased density is the way to go create more tax dollars per acre is the way to deliver services more efficiently

I 100% agree, this is what South Carolina is turning into and it’s absolutely disgusting.

Why can't we just turn back to this walkable neighborhood at least in pg county we are changing our zoning laws.

Correction: San Francisco did get rid of its single family zoning a few years ago. You can now build up to four units or more anywhere in the city and they are rezoning major corridors for 4-8 story density. But none of that matters anymore because the state of California superseding state-wide laws that remove single-family zoning state-wide. They're also forcing all the cities to add about 2-3 million units over the next decade.

I currently reside in a deed restricted residence within Riverview, Florida for 6+ years. Although we have sidewalks to accommodate pedestrians and some bicyclists, private vehicles are required to travel in and out of the complex and the only means of public transit are buses that run along the main highway that borders the main entrance.

My thought always is, well if the suburbs are so great let the free market take care of it instead of forcing everyone into what the government thinks is best for them.

Great video as usual! Keep shedding light on these important issues please ⚜️💚

Increasing density also makes public transportation expansion more viable and allows for more poeple to live in vibrant, walkable neighborhoods.

I live in a single family suburb right now without access to transit, and I really wish I could live somewhere denser and good for walking and biking. I can walk and bike several places around me now, but it's not comfortable and there's lots of car danger. We ended up here because I couldn't afford a 3 bedroom in our main city, and our city also is still pretty overrun with cars. If I could find a place our family could afford in a city not overrun by cars in the US I'd move there in a heartbeat!

The new construction is almost all sprawled suburbia and almost all of the rest are 5 over 1 luxury apartments or sky rise condo tower blocks. There are still very few new walkable moderate density developments being built despite a big demand for them.

I live in one of the "older" suburbs (older for my area) and I can see the benefits of increasing density to improve these areas. One thing that does need to change and could help this process along would be to end parking minimums. I would also look at creating more bike and hike lanes in and near these streets and strategically planting trees and other plants along the way to reduce CO2 lingering at the street level. Creating low impact transit systems would also help. A softening of zoning laws to allow more mixed use low and medium rise businesses and residences would also be of benefit. Realistically, I don't see suburbs going away anytime soon (I can see limits to continued outward sprawl), but they can take on more aspects of the urban areas and lower the cost of maintaining that infrastructure and improve property tax efficiency. Oh, and did I mention the environmental benefits?

Actually the transportation part here isn't the typical induced demand, but more an even uglier sister: You put more _unavoidable_ traffic on the same roads, making the travel times worse for those currently using it. So without alternatives it basically takes away the already limited mobility freedom while still making traffic worse. If you instead densify to a level where transit can be sustainable or at least design for bike+rail (which even works with almost rural density!), you _reduce_ traffic while creating more mobility freedom for both drivers and non-drivers.

Just put a Japanese style Konbini in these sprawlburbs. That would help out immensely with walkability. People already walk their dogs and walk for health in these sorts of neighborhoods. So it would be nice if these people had a store to walk to. Dollar General is already doing that in Rural America, where my neighborhood where my camp is in northern pa used to have no stores to walk to, and you had to do a 15mi trip to walmart to buy anything, now we have a dollar general that is a half mile walk away and many people do walk to it. I have been to walkable places and lower densities than many of those suburbs in both Japan and Small Town usa.

I refer to growing out as obesity growth patterns & infill as building muscle & healthy lean mass

In the interim, would it be possible to redevelop suburban areas with as much vegetation as possible? E.g. have authorities plant as much as possible; subsidize citizens to cram as much greenery around their homes as possible? I'm guessing my idea is short-sighted but I wonder 🤔

It might make sense to introduce an incremental tax for sprawl areas. The further you are from the urban centers with the services of the city the more you have to pay. It would just make sense to breakeven fo the city otherwise it's really unsustainable. The annoying thing is is that it would be easy to get suburbia angry about it but there needs to be a strong politician to argue the case.

Just let developers build based on what people demand instead of artificially limiting them to only build suburbs or skyscrapers.

Having never read the article, I can easily guess what political affiliation the author has. Not arguing in favor of more sprawl. But if we’re going to take their side for a moment, if they’re going to build their way out of the housing crisis into the exurbs, and they’re going to build single family detached, they’re not building what really is needed which is your post-war entry level Levittown-esque development. Smaller houses, smaller lots. Developers are in it for themselves and larger high-end houses are more profitable, and that’s what they’re building out there.

A lot of pro-sprawl groups who oppose zoning reform claim that "the guvment is trying to force us to live at higher density" This misses the point about zoning reform. Zoning reform is about giving people options- if people want to live at higher density then it's legally possible to build that density. Even if nobody wants to live a higher densities (even though plenty of people want to) then developers wouldn't build it since it would no longer be profitable. So zoning reform gives people choice and strict Euclidean zoning takes away choice.

It's impossible for me to take National Review seriously

3:20 SAN DIEGO SHOWN

I hate the one sized fits all approach (detached single family housing) that developers have made for us these past several decades. I didn't ask to grow up or live in a isolated pod so it makes me mad that whoever wrote the article at the beginning of your video is trying to argue for me that I wanted this kind of development. haha.... no.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Yeah blind people have a hard time out in those places. I try to avoid them suburbs whenever possible.

This pro-suburban sprawl stance is so lacking in logic, reason, and evidence, that a single critical thought makes the worldview collapse like a house of cards in a strong breeze. I'm particularly irritated by the idea that "lots of people move to the suburbs, therefore, everyone must hate living in cities" because no one capable of critical thinking would ever argue this. It's like if someone argued "The ER is always full, therefore, everyone must hate preventative medicine." Yes, the ER and the Suburbs are full, but that's not because they're the popular choice, it's because they are the option of last resort for people unable to access their preferred urban or medical amenities. That so many conservative capitalists (the same people who proclaim that money is a sign of success and demand in the marketplace) are the same people who loudly proclaim that liberal cities are wastelands filled with drug addicted zombie criminals, completely ignoring that those same communities are the most expensive urban centers in the country betrays their own hypocrisy.

If we must build suburbs build them like Washington grove Maryland. (Made a video about it earlier this year).

By any does editorial board have interest in continues USA involvement in Middle East? I rest my case.

Conservatives "keep govt spending low, balance the budget" Conservatives when low density, money hole suburbs that get numerous handouts get brought up=🤩❤ Also, I see in the comments that you attracted quite a few big car/oil bots and racist trolls, which means you're doing something right if they fesr your words, keep it up.

Why is sprawl bad: Low human density means espensive services: expensive internet, not many doctors, grocery shopping is far. Why does it matter to you: You don't get the perks others do. How about socialising with people and then just walking home? How about not having to drive 25 mknutes to the hardware store? Also, access to services: your DSL sucks, doesn't it… FTTH is atill far away, so how about DOCSIS, which is 10x faster and more stable than DSL? You like internet, don't you?

Wheelchairs are a solution to the biker problem Whether or not it's enclosed... Whether it's propelled by hands, feet, electricity, mainspring, compressed air, the road itself, etc. ... Whether it's for differences in physical mobility, posture, mentality, etc. ... They're MORE reasonable than cars Building rampways for them (not unlike those in car garages) is more reasonable too FRI MAR-8-2024CE 1737EST

Let me buy a McMansion 🥺 👉👈

The concept that cities subsidize the suburbs isn't actually true. Commuters who work in the city subsidize the suburbs as preference for where they live. Take the Boston metro area for example. Some 10% of the people live in the urban core and the other 90% live in the suburbs. The 10% aren't paying for the other 90% because taxation doesn't come from where people live. The bulk of taxation comes from income taxes at the State and Feral level. Of course 50 story office towers down town are going to bring in more money than a few houses in the burbs. However, the the people who work in the tower are suburbanites. An empty tower isn't really worth anything. It is the workers who work in the tower that create the value and the tax base. But where do those workers live? It is in the suburbs. The suburbanites working in the office tower are only subsidizing themselves.

Urban areas just need to stop being so dirty, crowded, hostile, overstimulating and expensive so people won't feel as compelled to move far away from them.

It's so strange when urbanists talk about the suburbs. Look at the map of Chicago he shows at 5:08. This is a city (like most cities) that have super majority control by the Democrats. Why are you even talk about us in the suburbs when you can't get your own cities to fix zoning. You could zone all of it for giant apartment buildings, and we couldn't care less. But you seem to want to stick your nose in the Suburbs. Fix your own house before you come for ours.

Let’s just keep legalizing crime in cities I’m sure that will help

The Google algorthm is trying to wash my Brain with this utter bs