Added: 4 years ago
From: Maxmcl
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  • Great work! Especially love the shots of Seaside - one of my favorite places. 

  • I lived in Seattle and now in Valencia, Spain. I haven't driven in five years and over the course of my adult life I have probably driven less than a lot of people do in one year. I walk out of my apartment and I have a movie theater, bars, restaurants, a grocery store, and two banks--and this is without crossing the street. My block is like a self-contained island. Suburbia for me is just horrid.

  • @rfwbuck comment of the month

  • Nice video... , but the suburban homes that were used from 0:10-0:30 were not good examples because many of those do have front porches and parked cars on the edge of the street and in the rear alley which is principle of NU.

    Please people have to inform the criticizers like Randal O Toole and Wendell Cox that they are wrong.

    They are giving misleading information about NU that sprawl gives more freedom. NOT TRUE. They are trying to benefit asphailt and big box retailers.

  • I've watched this video multiple times. It's really enjoyable & informative. Thanks

  • Comment removed

  • I 100% agree with this video. I live in florida where everything is spread out, wit a bunch of noise high ways. My license is suspended as of now, and i can't find any cheap kind of transportion. there is no such thing as public transportation in florida. I could walk 10 miles to work or a friend's house, but this is the sunshine state. I hate florida and its so called suburban life. I am moving to boston, well i guess not because it is too cold over there. Life sucks!!! Any you get the point.

  • @2771625 I'm in FL too. The sprawl sucks, being far from things suck and seems even moreso with the heat. I also come from Boston. COL is high but citywise, offers a decent quality of life.

    I live around 30-38 miles to the nearest big city. It sucks and I wanna leave as well.

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  • @Cyrus992 It has no choice but to. I dont think suburban neighborhoods will all die. I think someone has to live in them, but still awfully possible theres more abandoned homes in them.

    We still might be 5-10 yrs away from achieving urbanism the way it should be in America though.

  • @MrRuigni Well with trillions in liabilities, weak dollar, 0 interest rates... we will most likely see a collapse that will DEVASTATE all urban areas across the globe. The only areas will float will be rural and those can use some of the features mentioned in this clip for survival. When we recover, hopefullly we will build urban enviornoments more like the suburbs of the late 1800's. After all the "big box" retailers will die because the currency crisis wont let us get cheap imports!!

  • @Cyrus992 Perhaps.. It will in some form or another go back to urban living though even if we face something worse first.

    I don't think rural places will be the places to be ever though. If something happens in a city, I think a city stays strong because more people are closer if something happens and are more likely to help eachother out.

    Do you think its possible that the empire of Wal Mart will ever die, or is it too big to die now and too cheap? I think like you said..

  • ...if this country starts making their own stuff again and does not import anything, Wal Mart would be out of business at that point, but how and why would the current crisis effect getting cheap imports from China? I know it costs money to ship them if thats what you mean.

  • @MrRuigni Good points made above... Actually with the dollar getting weaker, it would be more and more difficult to buy manufactured goods from China which will escalate the prices of goods and make the empire of Wal Mart fall. Not only that, but since oil is becoming more difficult to extract, plus Middle East tensions, plus regulations and taxes, we will definetly at least see the post WWII suburbs die out. Again we do want to preserve idea of owning a home, but at least we could drive less.

  • so now its the NORTH american dream??

    canadians steal everything...

  • At least its better to live in Canda than in the US.

  • Great point about the social barriers thing. Living in suburbs also creates these social barriers in my opinion.

  • lol, why were images of south Granville in Vancouver used to illustrate a car dominated environment? Like most of Vancouver that street is high density and very pedestrian friendly. I would much rather live there than in some lame fake urban development.

  • haha yeah, I think I've said it somewhere else in the comments here that this was just a quick student film project so I didn't have time to drive out to a more suitable street that's a bit more suburban, but the streets used still represent the same thing - Extremely car dominated use, yes there's lots of pedestrian traffic in South Granville, but still much lower than it should be. So although it isn't a perfect example, it still works in concept

  • Ha Ha... I knew I recognized those images of suburban sprawl from the show "Weeds" - Love that show!

  • Bravo Vid! I left Phoenix, AZ at 27 years of age and never looked back. I live in Jersey City,NJ, ride the train for most everything and walk everywhere. Maryvale, AZ (my old hood) is a perfect example of the eventual fate of every sprawl neighborhood. What used to be the Western Ridge of the American Dream is now a neglected, crime troubled area. You can't give homes away there & all the businesses have left & moved further west (to the Maryvales of tomorrow) This system can't sustain itself.

  • What few people realize is that more CO2 is sent into the atmosphere from concrete solidifying in the process of urbanization than cars give off each year. In the US around 4% of CO2 emissions comes from cars while around 6% comes from concrete in construction.

    New urbanization will take hold in America no doubt and I am not apposed to it, but it does not mean automatically more efficient lifestyle. I can slap sustainability next to walmart and that doesn't mean that lifestyle is sustainable.

  • America can produce a lot more oil and what is wrong with using Canadian oil?

  • We are no where near peak oil. The reason that fuel is wasted is that increased congestion means cars idle more also, we use more mass transit which is less fuel efficient and thus more expensive, and that people live in high rises which are expensive to build and maintain especially with elevators and moving water, gas, all vertically, along with complex ventilation. Building better highways means few collisions due to less congestion and faster emergency response.

  • One more reason im so glad to live in Downtown Portland Oregon. One of the most walkable pedestrian, bycicle friendly, mass transit friendly cities in America. (Some say were the most European city in America) Already the greenest!

  • I'm moving there sometime next year. Can't take the sprawl in Phoenix anymore. The urban planners here need to be taken out back and shot in the head for what they've done to this shithole of a city. I despise sprawl if you can't tell :). <3 PDX.

  • @tourdefrance PDX is also on my consideration list for cities.. Possibly Seattle or Brighton UK.

  • @tourdefrance America is crazy (and most of the UK as well) I walk everywhere where I live but why would you want everyone to drive? Its fucking bonkers!

  • nosequiters,

    "why would you want everyone to drive? Its fuckin bonkers!"

    That's because USA and UK have their Automobile Industry! USA have Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, and so forth!  UK have Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lotus, McLaren, Mini, Rolls-Royce, and so on! Unfortunately, Car Ownership is MARKETED and SOLD as some kind of BS Status Symbols, too, which isn't true if one looked at IN-DEBT PEOPLE from EASY CREDIT of HOUSING BUBBLE!! =/

    Anyhow, I do luv CARS!! >=P

  • @IronJackalTw

    I agree with you why would you want to drive.... but just a question.. How many people in the uk do you think can afford to drive Aston Martins, Land Rovers, Mclarens, Rolls and Jags..?

    With the vast majority of cars driven in the UK being Fords... who's industry do you think that's supporting..?

    Also, Jags are only put together in the UK, not built, that's done in Germany, the UK effectively does not have a car industry.

  • Things are going to be awful when all the oil is used up, but i guarantee i'll be rotflmfao. Abject dependence on the Automobile is a big mistake.

    ~

    Car free since 2002

  • Bulldozer in the countryside = book explaining the old way and why they did it. Frontline's "Polluted Waters" = Examples of US cities forced to design this way for survival and succeeding.

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  • nice, max

  • The choice lies between property on the one hand and slavery, public or private, on the other. There is no third issue. Hilaire Belloc.

  • Plow them all under and plant corn

  • You people are on dope. I would die before I would live in a "mixed use" area. I went so far as to build my new home in a sub division that dosen't even have sidewalks!

  • ...and you have 40-50 years worth of housing stock to choose from. The U.S. is your oyster!

    The avid sentiments for NU here reflect a desire for something "other" than what you clearly prefer and will continue to choose. What is so dopey about wanting something different?

  • Oh no people should live wherever they are happy. I wish I had the option of living in a very small town miles and miles from any real city. There just is no way to make a living out there. Myself, I am not the 1950's classic flee the city for the suburb guy. I am a country kid who finds suburbs to be as far as I am willing to compromise with the city to make a living. I don't blame anyone for wanting the small town life but you can't have it it AND high population concentration,

  • "Urban" is just a dirty word in any context. Cities suck. Anyplace where large numbers of people are packed together sucks. They breed crime, twist our political system. Cause special interest to run amuck. I am kind of looking forward to the time when Gas becomes too costly. Our big cities will die and blow away. I for one will not cry about it.

  • Many urban neighborhoods do "suck and breed crime" (or rather, concentrate the poor). But many other neighborhoods are quite excellent, attractive, and fetch unmatched price premiums. It depends upon which city you are talking about, of course. Some are dominated by poor neighborhoods; others barely have them.

    All that said, blanket statements about places sucking are simplistic and inaccurate. It'd be just as wrong for an urban elitist to make a blanket statement that all suburbs suck.

  • By my personal definition high density population = sucks. Everyone has their own preference but mine is as someone once said. "Hell = other people"

  • Something keep in mind: "urban" is an academic term - one that New Urbanists (urban researchers and academics, especially) use to describe a full range of human habitats. It can mean the urban core, farms and nature, or something in between... like suburban areas.

    Inner city crime is a function of economic abandonment and social distress exacerbated by the concentration of the poor. That's that academic take, at least.

  • ya thats pretty much horse crap. Crime is a result of people being placed in too close quarters. There are many many places where the average incomes are very low but population is 40 or 50 people per square mile and crime is nearly unheard of

  • ...and tokyo?

  • tokyo would make me kill myself

  • tokyo has one of the densest populations in the world and essentially zero crime. there are meth towns all over the country, but especially in places like montana (called MT b/c it is) where crime is rampant.

    my point is, your point is poorly thought out and invalid.

  • The problem with your example is that you take a big city in Japan and then look at a small town in the Western USA. Your results are an example of cultural issues as well as city VS country. Compair Tokyo against a small town in Japan or a small Town in Michigan Against Detroit. Cities suck, people who live in cities are often miserable, miserable people do miserable things

  • i'm only working with what you gave me! the crime rate is virtually nonexistent all over japan - urban, rural, doesn't matter. NYC, w/a population of 8.25 million and density of 27,000/sq. mi, has a violent crime rate 1/5 that of St. Petersburg Florida, w/a population of .25mil and 1/6 density of nyc. while st. pete may not be rural montana, it's a pretty typical US suburban setting. most people in US live in places like st. pete. there is no direct correlation between pop. density and crime.

  • the strongest predictor of crime is poverty. impoverished people live in some cities because they cannot afford to leave. new york is largely gentrified, hence its relative low crime rate.

  • You've got it completely backwards if you think the cities will "die" when gas becomes too costly. You people way out in the suburbs need all the gas you can get to drive your cars where you need to go since everything is so spread out. And using 18-wheelers to to deliver all the goods to the stores (Walmarts) out there uses lots of fuel as well. Being around people is a good thing. It creates community and allows us to be open to all kinds of other people, cultures, viewpoints, and ideas.

  • @tourdefrance 100% agree. If the suburbs don't totally die, then minorities will be living in them. I dont see many americans staying outside of much of the baby boomer generation. Suburbs suck, far suburbs are even worse.

  • @MrRuigni Exactly. The suburbs will not die. The city will be too expensive and the poor minorities will move in. This will turn them into some of the worst slums america has ever seen.

  • @keinaan12345 This is true I believe.

    Those ppl in there thinking the market will pick up so they stay in those exurbs I think will be the poor ones. The time to leave is now, yet they are waiting until the "values pick up".

  • @MrRuigni The people moving to the burbs will be the same people in the inner-city. For example, say Chicago gets to expensive for the poor living there, they then move to the fringes of suburbia where rents are significantly cheaper.

    The mcmansions are built poorly and within 20 years they will be falling apart.

    The suburban slums will be waaayyy worse then what we see now.

  • @keinaan12345 Yea the bright people in the burbs will leave for the city, the peasants will be taking their place as residents. I am gonna be in the bright flight movement leaving the burbs while a mexican will replace me or something.

    A guy like me does not belong in stale conservative "cheap" suburbia. Look at my vids lol.

    Also I think the stucco built places are not meant to last. I think actually that..

  • .. you could tear through stucco walls with a screwdriver and split the wall in half and then all the outside air would get in. I feel sorry for those who bought and are working real hard to keep up payments in places like this. Dude its insane.. I looked at a rent price for a house in England on Craigslist and it was only 200 more than what my mom pays on her mortgage in the exurbs here in the USA!!

    NTM train lines were right near this home in England and CITY AMENNITIES!!

    NTM pay is more. 

  • @tourdefrance Slums will be in the burbs. The rich will be in the cities. What about the poor? There isnt any room for them in this new order. The suburbs will be full of guns,drugs,violence,shootings,­stabbings,rapes,etc while the cities flourish and the burbs continue to deteriorate. More poor minorities will be displaced and the city will have no diversity whatsoever. Do you really want housing projects in your new urban landscape?

  • @keinaan12345 That is why building suburbs in the first place was a no-win situation. It has been an enormous waste of resources, energy, and money. Even in it's origins it separated people by income, class, and sometimes race. They will deteriorate, and fixing them is not possible unless we literally bulldoze these so-called "communities" - a word developers spew incessantly when trying to sell property, without the slightest clue of what it means.

  • @keinaan12345 Also, you wont necessarily have to be rich to live in the city. You can rent a 2,500sqft house in the suburbs for $1,200/month, or rent a 800sqft apartment in the city for the same price. It's about scaling down. Downsizing. Living practically and responsibly. You don't need a 3-car garage and a massive living room while living in the city, because the city itself is a large outdoor living room. There are poor/middle/rich class people living in all of the great cities of the world.

  • @tourdefrance Look at SF,Boston,NYC,or L.A.

    Look at the cost of living there. When everyone wants to move to the city prices will skyrocket. Im from NY and back in the 80s and 90s you could rent a huge apartment for $300 a month or buy a huge rowhouse for 60k,now those same apartments are $3000 a month and that same house is 1.5 million or more.

    The only people able to live in a active/vibrant area are the rich or wealthy.

  • @keinaan12345 It's a supply and demand issue. There aren't enough places to live in the city, and many people wish to live in the city... thus creating the inflated prices that you see (per square foot). If every metropolis was built with density in mind, the prices wouldn't be as high - living that way would just be the norm. If you don't believe that people of all classes can live in vibrant, densified areas, take a look at Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

  • @tourdefrance so for you it would be okay to live next to a drug dealer?

    Its different in America. Look at Manhattan. Most of it was a crime ridden cesspool, now it is gentrified full of only the rich. No middle class,no poor. Im sure it will be possible to live in a city if your single but with kids forget about it.

  • @keinaan12345

    Look at the other 5 boroughs of New York, or Pittsburgh and Seattle. Traditional compact city design full of lower and middle class people m8.

  • Respond to this video... Sure, lets take a look at the other boroughs. The Bronx is largely full of poor minorities. Queens is largely full of lower-class immigrants. Brooklyn is a mixture of both rich areas and poor areas. Staten Island is still mainly White.

  • @keinaan12345 Not true.

  • @SniperViper1000 Actually, I was a bit off. There are poor people in Manhattan, but they live in the numerous housing projects or in the less-popular uptown neighborhoods.

  • @keinaan12345

    That's exactly why more dense neighborhoods need to be build nationwide. It's a high demand short supply issue.

  • @RomanV101 well no, it's generally the reverse.

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  • @rfwbuck

    Then the other 95% of American's are uncivilized apes.

  • DONT LISTEN TO SCOTTIT!!!! (Messages Below)HE IS A MADMAN!!!!!

    HIS POINTS MAKE LITTLE SENSE, HE PROVIDES LITTLE SOULTIONS TO GROWTH, AND IGNORES HOW BAD SUBURBAN SPRAWL IS!!!

    Lets bring the death of that UGLY suburban sprawl and make NEW URBANISM DOMINANT!!!!!!!!

  • good video. 5 stars for you.

  • Transit Oriented Development will hopefully solve this issue

  • Good video, new urbanism is a great idea, wind, solar and tidal power are not great ideas, they are dumb ideas that will keep us dependent on fossil fuels, and sap our resources to build a New America.

    Solution: Tax the shit out of gas.

  • Taxing gas is great, as a user fee to pay for more roads.

    Public transit has enough money, currently getting about 5-12 times more funding per passenger mile.

    When more people choose to live & work near a transit route, the farebox revenue percent will go up.

    It's going towards that will gas price up.

    Is transit taking 2-3 times as long, due to multiple destinations a factor?

    CBDs have not had a majority of jobs for decades.

  • the stretch of housing near the start is absolutely horrible. They did have sidewalks and people parking on the street.

  • people parking on the street is no different that in a garage or a back alley if you are still dependant on the vehicle to get to your amenities. The vehicles shown at the beginning of the video are clearly being used dependantly as there are no amenities whatsoever in the area as the street continues on. Please don't jump to ridiculous conclusions on topics you know little about...

  • Well street parking does provide a nice buffer between the pedestrians and the car traffic. Plus, streets lined with cars will cause the traffic to move slower which is also good for pedestrians. I did have typo on my first comment. I wanted to say it "is not horrible" compared to rows of houses with huge garages in the front and no sidewalks, but I guess that is exurban. The video is nice. I recommend you check out the the series of videos by Andres Duany if you haven't.

  • YouTube is built on a solid foundation of ridiculous conclusions, isn't it? Sarcasm aside, a random sampling of YouTube comments paints a frightening portrait of the state of modern intellectual discourse.

    I like what you have to say, thank you for posting this video.

  • Mamcxl:

    Perhaps you should read comments before commenting. No conclusions were drawn, just statement of fact.

    No amenities in the area? Unknown. The area in view was too narrow to determine that.

    It is you that knows little about urban planning. I can tell by your comments & ideas. I know a lot about the subject.

    New urbanism basically takes one idea of reducing transportation & ignores almost everything else. It goes against desires. Most people do not like high density.

    Please learn more

  • I'm not a professional filmmaker so I had trouble showing the audience exactly what I had in mind, however the sequences were filmed by me and I can assure you there are no amenities in the area. The primary method of transportation to these housing areas are cars and they are too far away from amenities to walk or bicycle easily. I studied New Urbanism in detail before making this video

    Please don't post rude and assumptive comments about me. It is unnecessary and childish

  • "there are no amenities in the area."

    I am perplexed buy this. What "amenities" do you need? A place to buy your food, police, fire, 911, internet, cable TV. I get he feeling much of the cry for this change comes from people who crave the same kinda crap people moved to the suburbs to get away from. No bars, no movie houses, no pubs, no theators, no sports areana. No public buildings or turist attractions. None of the stuff we never used anyway and served to attract unwanted traffic.

  • The idea is not to be close to useless amenities, but rather to eliminate the need to get in your car and drive in order to do anything. Having grown up in the suburbs, I know that whenever I wanted to go anywhere or do anything, vehicles were pretty much the only choice. One idea of NU is to eliminate this need and place people in efficiently spaced out neighborhoods while keeping them close to work and the amenities they need to cut down on needless driving.

  • Here is the problem. The reason people wish to live in the suburbs is because they DON'T want to be near retail and commercial property. You can put in a bus stop to give people an option to driving but adding retail or commercial to a residential area defeats the entire point. Even when people live in small towns there is the center of town and housing is around the edges. Thats why people hitched the horse to the wagon and went to town.

  • I guess in my mind the goal of being far away from the hubbub of the city and yet close to work and shopping is an Oxymoron. The real way to do this would be to move the jobs out of the city. Have a huge percent of the population work from home and order things like food over the internet and have it delivered. People would never have to leave their house. I see issues with that too

  • That stretch of housing shown at beginning is too dense to be considered suburbs. In fact, at about 1/12 of an acre per dwelling, it is near the minimum density for smart growth, which is disgusting because of it's crowdedness.

  • It should be against the law to pack homes that close together. I would never live in much less own a home that did not have at least four times that much land. Even 1/4 of an acre is pretty cramped 1/2 is really the point where, in combination with good fences and high walls, you can start to breath again.

  • Are you suggesting that people who prefer to live this way be denied? Forced into something others deem better for them?  That sounds a lot like coercion... or social engineering (take your pick).

    While it may be tempting to think your lifestyle is better for everyone - especially when you are surrounded by others who value what you do - it simply isn't true. Different people have different needs at different times in their lives. It's not our place to condemn them for pursuing happiness.

  • I don't care too much where or how they live frankly but I won't live that way. I am quite willing to let people live that way. The problem is there seems to be a movement afoot to force people into that with anti-sprawl building codes.

  • That's inaccurate. The "movement afoot" is about reforming the status quo to allow more choice for developers and buyers. It's not about "forcing" anyone out of suburban sprawl.

    Planners and ancillary development officials that codify, underwrite, service and administer suburban sprawl development can either offer offer NU as an alternative or otherwise ignore such requests and essentially codify them out of existence.

    In the end, the only forceful movement afoot is called the status quo.

  • 5 STARS I LOVE IT THIS DESERVES AN A+

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