It’s important for a movement to have both practical, achievable goals and aspirational ones. There’s plenty of room for content from people showing us how good it can be, without really caring about how we get there.
That’s Not Just Bikes niche, and he does a good job at it.
From an outside perspective: The US can’t even agree that there’s a problem (yet). Most people will proudly defend the car dependent way of life. As soon as there is a consensus about needing to change, the process could start and then it will take 30 years. Clock hasn’t even started ticking yet, so yeah, lost cause for now.
America is too big to “fix” as a whole, you have to fix it city by city. For example, I spent about 10 years biking around Chicago mostly w/o a car, but to think that same infrastructure can expand all the way to NY is either too unrealistic or just too lofty of a goal to take on. We need to start by focusing on the largest of American cities and work our way down.
Comparing America to the Netherlands isn’t fair as the US is 237 times the size of the Netherlands, but we can start making sure that our most populous cities are bikeable/have good public transport.
It’s not about the size of the country as a whole. 99% of people aren’t making that commute from Chicago to New York, so walkability is a non-issue. Not Just Bikes actually has a recent video on this.
What you say about cities is correct though: they need to be made people-sized, not car-sized. That is, stores need to be closer together, sidewalks more spacious, much less car traffic, areas with storefronts that are easy to access without a car, and outdoor spaces for hanging out. The cities and suburbs are what need to be corrected, not the empty land between them.
Between cities are where high-speed rail would be necessary and extremely helpful in order to take cars off the road and ease traffic congestion.
This is one of the main reasons I don’t really like the channel.
I like the content, I like the ideas presented. That is why I watch it.
I kinda don’t like the guy though.
He also has major grass is greener syndrome in that he has distilled his entire life seemingly to the specific issues he talks about in the video and nothing else.
Like the Netherlands is his main place right? Well they are pretty damn racist over there. Even if it isn’t in your face, it’s always subtle. And to other white people. Romanians and Bulgarians get discriminated against all the time.
Example: My cousin gf (Romanian) applied for housing as as she now has an internship. Over email and the phone she was told yea there are many units available.
First time she goes to talk to them in person, all of a sudden nothing is available. Listings still show housing availability lol.
Her English is pretty good, but she has a clear accent.
So she makes my cousins (her bf) go in person. Except he doesn’t tell them he’s with her. He has better English, more neutral accent. There are units available of course.
Lol.
I’m glad he refers people to other resources to check out, but……I just don’t like his attitude lol.
I was literally about to bring this up. You can tell he’s a white dude with his whole “move to Europe” argument. That’s only feasible to white people. Europe is way more racist than the US. Imagine how they would react to black and brown inner city residents moving over to Europe.
