Compléter

If you've watched pretty much anything on this channel , you'll know that I hate car - " Suburbia " .
The oversized roads . The car traffic . Parking lots that are bigger than the shops they .
Being unable to even buy food without getting in a car .

Constantly needing to pass depressing where nobody wants to be just in order to get anywhere .

Constantly insolvent places that need to stay . Asphalt as far as the eye can see .
This awful view from my cousin's balcony that I keep showing in almost every video because , I mean ,
just look at this . Everything about this is !

WHY DO WE KEEP PLACES LIKE THIS ?
More importantly , why is it impossible to build almost anything other than places like this anymore ?

There is not a problem with " SUBURBS " .
Suburbs have existed almost as long as cities have existed , and there is nothing wrong with them .
The problem is car - dependent suburbs . And that ? s what I mean when I talk about " Suburbia " .

The confusion is understandable because for about the last 60 years or so ,
car - dependent suburbs have been the only suburbs that were legal to build in most places in The United States ,
and some other countries like Australia .

Which means there are entire , literally hundreds of millions of people , who have
no concept of a suburb except that of a car - dependent suburb .

Talk to a typical American , and they ? ll probably tell you that you can only live in one of two places : a city , or a - dependent suburb , because almost nothing has been built in - these two extremes for as long as they ? ve been alive .

But it doesn't have to be this way . It is possible to build suburbs that don't suck . Now , personally , I love cities .
But that's not for everyone . They might want to live somewhere . They might want a house with a yard .
Or maybe they just want cheaper . . .

Unlike most " Not Just Bikes " videos , I'm not going to focus too much on the Netherlands here , even there
are some great suburbs here .

Because the truth is , while the U . S . and Canada were the ones that invented and perfected
depressing car - dependent " suburbia " , it didn't used to be this way . . .

A suburb may have been built around a train station or other public transit .
Before the Second World War , it was easy to find suburbs that don't suck . Before car , suburbs were walkable .
Alan Fisher , a . k . a . the Armchair Urbanist , made a great video about Pitman , a nice pre - war suburb in New Jersey .
A nice suburb should surround every suburban rail station , instead of a sea of and parking like this one .

In this video , however , I want to specifically talk about a development pattern that was very common throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries : " THE SUBURB " .

As the name suggests , " Streetcar Suburbs " are suburbs built around streetcar .
These were designed as self - contained places , mixed - use neighborhoods with residential , commercial , and offices
in the same area . And although they are suburbs , where you can drive if you want to , they also have just about everything you could need within .