cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1367812
0:23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=23s
But there’s one lame excuse that is so common, so prevalent, so ubiquitous, that I want to talk about it and that’s the excuse that “My country is too big to have trains, bicycle infrastructure, walkable neighborhoods or whatever.”
1:27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=87s
So when someone new to walkable cities sees an example of a great City and they realize it’s clearly better than where they live, their first gut reaction is to grab any difference between the two and make that the reason as to why their city can’t be the same.
2:26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=146s
So why is this argument so stupid? Well, quite simply, Americans aren’t traveling from Fluffy Landing to Hump Tulips every day. Canadians aren’t traveling from Dildo to Spasm every day, and Australians aren’t traveling from Chinaman’s Knob to Useless Loop every day
2:55
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=175s
They travel within their city, so the only thing that really matters to most people is the design of that City.
3:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=185s
For example, in the United States, over 45 percent of trips - all trips - are three miles or less (that’s five kilometers for the rest of my audience). These are distances that could be easily done by walking or cycling. So despite the size of the country, and the sprawliness of the cities, Americans don’t actually travel that far for most trips, but unsurprisingly, almost all of those trips are taken by car because it’s too dangerous to walk or cycle, and public transportation is non-existent, which again is the whole point.
4:18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=258s
The problem is not cars, it’s car dependency. We need to give people the freedom to not to have to drive.
4:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=275s
This is where Americans will claim that America is too big for trains, which is absolutely comical, because America was literally built by the railroads, and so was Canada.
5:01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=301s
Nearly every town, city and village in the United States and Canada had a train station and was connected by rail, with very few exceptions. And almost every city and town had a streetcar line too, with very few exceptions. And every one of those places was built to be walkable, as every one of those places was built before automobiles were common. Again, with very few exceptions.
A hundred years ago, you could get a train from almost any city to just about any other city on the continent, and even many towns and villages, too. The reason those train stations don’t exist anymore is because they were bulldozed, often to make room for highways, along with the walkable downtowns they were connected to.
5:46
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=346s
American cities were not built for the car, they were bulldozed for the car.
6:03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=363s
There are dozens of city pairs in the U.S that are the perfect population and distance for high-speed rail or high frequency rail, and CityNerd has made a video about this if you’d like more details.
6:16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=376s
Canada may be a huge country, but about 50 percent of the entire population lives in this little area, which is literally in a line.
6:27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=387s
This is Japan to scale, the country famous for all it’s trains. So yes, Canada, you can build a high-speed train between Toronto and Montreal.
6:37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=397s
7:17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=437s
The Schengen zone is not constant and new countries are being added every few years. For example, Croatia was just added in 2023 and Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus and Montenegro plan to join in the near future. But if that happens, will Amsterdam need to tear up all their bike lanes, because the Schengen zone is too big? No, of course not, that would be stupid. Which is the same reason why saying America is too big for bike lanes is also stupid.
7:45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=465s
The fact is, it is possible to build walkable neighborhoods everywhere. They have existed in every country on Earth for thousands of years, and it is possible to connect those walkable places together by high quality public transportation, to make it so that people can go from any walkable area to any other walkable area regardless of the size of the city the country or the continent.
8:18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=498s
Even if size did matter, then why isn’t Maryland covered in bike lanes and train tracks, or Hawaii, or Prince Edward Island?
10:22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=622s
The United States destroys over 750’000 acres of natural and agricultural land every year [note: the source talks about 1,200 square miles] to build sprawling suburbs. And Ontario, Canada (where I’m from) destroys 175 acres of farmland per day to build more car-dependent suburbia. That is a choice.
10:43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=643s
When Americans say something like “U.S cities are too big and spread out to do - whatever” then yes, that’s true. But that is literally the problem that urbanists are trying to solve, so it’s not really helpful to restate the problem, and then use that as the excuse as to why it can’t be solved.
11:26
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REni8Oi1QJQ&t=686s
The Dutch make great places, while North Americans make excuses.
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His point is further underscored in the US by the fact that we actually still have large abandoned rail networks here. If the USA was “too big” for rail, why were these networks brought into existence?