Not Just Bikes
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2023–2026
13:00 · 3.1M views · Jun 19, 2023
Not Just Bikes takes on the common excuse that a country is simply too big or spread out for good transit and walkable cities. The video argues that city density and short everyday trips matter, not national size or overall population density.
HN users cite it as the standard rebuttal whenever someone says that America is too big for rail or good urban design.
9 comments from Hacker News
This argument is just.... wrong. For a video describing how wrong it is, refer to Not Just Bikes: this video For text and numbers: Shenzhen urban area is 1,748 km2. Atlanta is 353.04km2. Los Angeles City is 1,299 km2 (yes the metro area is quite larger, but so is Shenzhen's). The average length of a trip in the US is 19.63 km. This is simple basic stuff. There is absolutely nothing that makes Americans uniquely need tank-sized vehicles with 1000km range, even with the uniquely terrible urban design that most American cities have.
This is irrelevant, though, since the size of the country isn’t what determines where people go. It’s not like trains got less practical when Alaska got admitted to the union. Sprawling, low density, single use zoning, combined with parking minimums, have much more to do with it. Here’s a video that explores the topic if you’re curious this video
The size of Canada really isn’t a valid excuse for Canada’s poor public transit, nor is Canada’s population. Notjustbikes posted a good video rebutting this argument a few days ago: this video
HAH that is one of the most ridiculous excuses... and is also directly refuted: this video ^^ "Not Just Bikes"
> Most American cities are built on a scale designed around human driving. That's absolutely not true. It only became true in the post-war when there was a push for suburban sprawl, lobbied by GM and all the auto industry [0] > it's pretty safe to bet that she doesn't think that she can live where she does without a car. "Where there is a will, there is a way", right? The discussion is not even if she can go by without a car, but whether she would want it. > We can't even manage the political will to build enough housing to keep people off the streets. Ok, but then don't go around trying to rationalize your bad choices and poor capacity for civic organization. [1] Don't go around saying "I lived in NYC and I thought I could live without a car, but after I had kids I realized they are not so bad", and please don't go around saying "it can't be done". Amsterdam and Rotterdam were once also car-centric cities which managed to turn themselves around in less than a generation. There is no inherit limitation in the US that forbids this change to happen. There is no amount of American Exceptionalism that can prevent people from clamoring change. Maybe it won't be done in the US, because people are lazy and not willing to sacrifice their own convenience for some communal benefit, but it's super annoying to always get in these discussions when people try to hide their preferences on external circumstances. North American cities are they way they are by choice . [0]: How The Auto Indus