Not Just Bikes
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2021–2026
5:32 · 858K views · Nov 2, 2020
The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.
HN people recommend it as the best introduction to why sprawl and car dependence are fiscally unsustainable, often pointing to the whole series.
13 comments from Hacker News
I think everyone should watch the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel especially their series on Strong Towns [1]. It shows just how bad parking mandates are and just how bad American car centric city planning is. As they article pointed out, you need such vanguard cities to pave the way for better cities, with less parking and fingers crossed, fewer cars. [1] this video
I love this YouTube channel. They did a series summarizing the findings from Strong Towns - US-style suburbia is fundamentally unsustainable. this video
I think this is due to how car dependent North America is. There are so many aspects that are missed in these pictures or what you are for example experiencing. It's not that you're situation is improving, it's most likely not. But that's not due to car independent cities being bad, it's because changing from being car dependent to car independent is hard and takes time. I would recommend you have a look at Not Just Bikes on YouTube, a Canadian that moved to the Netherlands. He talks about car independent cities in Europe, more specifically The Netherlands and compares it to car dependent North America. Here is a video that talks about how these "car independent" countries are still the best to drive in compared to others: [LINK] . Regardless, I would recommend you check out a few other of his videos, most importantly his series on the US non profit organisation "Strong Towns": this video . It think it's about sharing the message that placing public transport, cyclists, and pedestrians in the forefront is better for almost everyone involved, including drivers, and especially people who live in cities and towns.
Profitable. For whom? For the municipiality a 6 lane street vs a two lane street with public transport and bicycle lanes can make the difference between neverending debt and prosperity. Places with good public transport and bicycle infrastructure and denser mixed use pay more tax revenue. Spread out urban sprawls and suburbs give the municipiality a lot of street surface to maintain, for very little tax revenue in return. A good introduction on that part is the strong towns playlist by the youtube channel Not Just Bikes: this video
If you are from the US and wonder whats up with the bike hippies: All cities you know are car-centric infrastructure, and i'd have a hard time seeing the problem also. Just watch this: this video Im dutch and despite being able to ride over in 5 minutes and park my beautiful car right behind the stores, i still prefer to use my bike for daily groceries to get there faster and easier. The cities are designed for this. A bike never has to cross a 4-lane road with homes nearby.