Can North America Have Walkable Cities? | Responding to Linus Tech Tips

Also, interesting how Linus mentioned "displacement" and "tearing apart neighborhoods" as justifications against switching from cars to transit+bike+walk models. Because guess what the fuck also displaces people and destroys community? Highways and viaducts! A single highway interchange can destroy an entire small town, while a single train station takes up the space of maybe two suburban houses. And a double track rail line is narrower than many laneways and suburban streets, while having more capacity than ten lanes of highway. You're in Vancouver, Linus, ever heard of the Georgia Viaduct and its effects on causing the creation of the Downtown East Side slums?

Also, just a nagging thought in the back of my mind, is he only concerned about displacement because the places that most need to be redeveloped for walk ability, the single family suburbs, are majority white residents while BIPOC residents tend to live in denser areas? Hmm... You're also living on land where Indigenous populations were displaced by the way (the ones that were merely displaced got off lucky, actually, most were murdered).

Why does anyone watch Linus Tech Tips? I watched his hot takes videos for context and he comes off as such an idiot. Last time his name made the rounds was when he was surprised deleting his desktop graphics makes the computer start up in text mode. (In that video, he had to dismiss several warnings, including one that made him type out with words exactly what he wanted to happen, and then complained he wasn't warned...) But he has like 5 million subscribers.

I also didn't really think RMTransit's rebuttal was very strong. He barely addressed the main issue of Klanadian cities being too spread out and lacking in services and destination density.

One thing he said is that if you build a bike network, people will start using it, and the quality of the individual bike paths is something that should be addressed afterwards. But I disagree strongly, if the bike path is unsafe or unpleasant, it doesn't matter how theoretically complete the network is, no one will want to use it twice. In Europe, we don't have bike networks. We have safe streets and pleasant streets. People try really hard to avoid biking next to car traffic. Car noise is probably the main reason anyone has to avoid biking.

The main point of it not being too late stands. But again, he argues this by talking about Amsterdam (one globally small city) in the 60s and contrasting it to today. But he characterises that comparison as a 30 year project. It isn't, it's 50 years, and in the 50 years that have elapsed, Vancouver has continued to develop towards cars. Amsterdam in the 60s had fewer giant viaducts, it had denser neighbourhoods, more corner stores, it didn't have any massive urban sprawl. It does get harder if you pivot later. Just because they managed in 30 years doesn't mean the same effort and approaches would fix Vancouver in 30 years. Not to mention Amsterdam is very far from good right now.

I feel a lot of western-left, liberal YouTubers are very afraid of rallying behind new technology and radical redevelopment. It makes sense, because if you live in a capitalist country, a massive redevelopment project will inevitably be usurped by capital interest. But asking for smaller and smaller concessions isn't a solution either.