The Urbanist Agenda
A podcast by the creator of the popular YouTube channel Not Just Bikes, The Urbanist Agenda is an exploration of the latest topics in urban planning and urban mobility from your favourite urbanist YouTubers. Each month we'll put another important topic on the agenda and pull back the curtain to discover how online urbanists plot and scheme to make cities work better for everyone.
Episodes
"If it weren't for ebikes, I'd be driving a car" says American Fietser.
American Fietser:
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/americanfietser.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanFietser
Not Just Bikes: https://youtube.com/notjustbikes
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
RMTransit has been making YouTube videos about cities and public transit for over 5 years. Now with over 750 videos on his YouTube channel, it's time to call it quits.
Reece's Mastodon: https://masto.canadiancivil.com/@reece
Reece's Transit Blog: https://reecemartin.ca/author/reecemartintransit/
Cinq Personnes: https://cinqpersonnes.substack.com/
Next Toronto: https://nexttoronto.substack.com/
Not Just Bikes: https://yo...
Pickup trucks don't belong in European cities, so let's send them to help out in Ukraine! Stef from Build the Lanes tells us about why he's driving pickup trucks from the EU to Ukraine.
Berr Battalion - https://www.help99.co/patches/nafo-berr-battalion
Berr Battalion Announcement Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7tZdrGU_2c
Help99 - https://www.help99.co/
69th Sniffing Brigade (YouTube) - https://www.youtube.co...
Sam from the YouTube channel "We're in Hell" normally makes video essays about sociology, but he recently went down the urban planning rabbit hole after Doug Ford threatened to take away his bike lanes. Learn what he learned in his research about the sociology of car-brained planning.
Why is North American Transit so Bad?
The World's Dumbest Bike Lane Law Just Passed in Canada
In 2001, Portland built the first of their new streetcar system, which was a success, especially in attracting new development to the transit corridor. This kicked off a bunch of new transit projects in other US cities, eager to bring their own new development projects, and taking advantage of transit funding from the Obama administration. But somewhere along the way they forgot that there's more to transit than just a way...
Los Angeles is (in)famous for its car-dependent sprawl, but there are pockets of good urbanism, and there are people working hard to build more of them. I talked with Ellory Smith from Streets For All Los Angeles about her outlook on where LA is going, as well as our new YouTube channel, I Love the City!
- Streets For All: https://www.streetsforall.org/
- I Love the City: https://youtube.com/@ilovethecity
Canada's housing crisis is one of the worst in the world. But why? In this episode I talk to Mike Moffatt, Canadian economist and housing expert about what's going on in the Canadian housing market, as well as the common factors that are creating a housing crisis in almost every major city in the developed world.
The Missing Middle Podcast
Trams are great. They create and enable some of the best urbanism around. And yet the streetcars in Toronto are slow and unreliable and painful to take. What is Toronto doing wrong, and what could other "streetcar" cities learn from their mistakes?
Financial capital of Canada pauses so streetcar driver can move tracks with big stick: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2016/06/financial-capital-of-canada-pauses-so-streetcar-driver...
What should you do when your city won't fix things, even after years of advocacy? The answer might be guerrilla urbanism, aka tactical urbanism. I talk to Bike Curious about the people who are tired of waiting, and just get things done by themselves. Is it legal? Well ... it's sometimes better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.
Tactical urbanism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_urbanism
New York City was about to roll out congestion charging. The cameras were up, the staff were hired, the metro projects were financed, and thousands of people were lined up to make public transit better ... and then the governor cancelled it on vibes.
Level boarding is simple enough: the floor of the train should be level with the platform. But it's not very common, is it? Why? And what can we do about it? Because once you learn the details of level boarding, you'll realise just how important it is.
The Campaign for Level Boarding: https://www.levelboarding.org.uk/
Passengers suffer serious injuries boarding Elizabeth line trains at west London station
When a bike lane was installed on Valencia Street in San Francisco, one business owner hated it so much he went on a hunger strike. Bike lanes are almost universally positive for business, so why do some business owners hate them so much? Jon from Bike Curious joins me to discuss.
San Francisco restaurant owner goes on 30-day hunger strike over new bike lane: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/18/san-francis...
As housing and transportation prices are skyrocketing around the developed world, Japan has remained (relatively) affordable. I talk to Greg from the YouTube channel Life Where I'm From about how Japan is different - from transportation to housing policy - and about what we can learn from Japanese cities.\
Relevant videos by Life Where I'm From:
- How an Average Family in Tokyo Can Buy a New Home: https://www.youtube.com/w...
For most of us, autonomous vehicles are this nebulous concept that might appear some time in our future, but there are other people living with this reality today - whether they like it or not. In this episode, I talk to Jon from the Twitch channel Bike Curious about what it's like to live in San Francisco, where autonomous vehicles are around you every single day and there's nothing you can do about it - except put a traf...
Yup. Cars are REALLY expensive, and they're getting more expensive. And yet, most car owners seem completely oblivious to it.
- Canadians estimated to pay over $1,300 a month to own a car, report finds
- Car ownership cost me a LOT of money. I'm done. (YouTube)
Directly support the production of this podcast, and listen to every episode early (and without ads!) by subscribing to Nebula: https://nebula.tv/agenda
Europe is known for its train networks, and the EU has been promoting trains as the preferred mode of travel. But the train networks are not functioning well, and it's not a coincidence that many EU countries are spending twice as much on roads than they do on rails.
It occurred to us the other day that we have lived 10 years without owning a car. This didn't happen intentionally, we just moved to a walkable neighbourhood and living car-free just made the most sense. In this episode, I talk with Mrs. NJB about what it's been like to live without a car, how it made more sense for us even with two kids, and about why we'll likely never own one.
Can rural people understand city folk and vice-versa? American Fietser thinks so. He went from being a die-hard truck driver to a cargo-bike riding urbanist, and it all started with a trip to the Netherlands.
Directly support the production of this podcast, and listen to every episode early (and without ads!) by subscribing to Nebula: https://nebula.tv/agenda
American Fietser: https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanFie...
City Simulators, such as SimCity and Cities: Skylines are very popular, both among gamers and the general public. But these are just games: they don't accurately model real cities, and that can result in misleading assumptions about what a city is, and how it functions.
Directly support the production of this podcast, and listen to every episode early (and without ads!) by subscribing to Nebula: https://nebula.tv/agenda
...
The "War on Cars" is a phrase that comes up every few years whenever some right-wing politician wants to get elected. But this phrase is nothing new, and has been around almost as long as cars themselves. In this episode, I talk to Doug Gordon from the War on Cars podcast, who has been following this phrase in the media for several years.
https://thewaroncars.org/2021/11/30/not-just-bikes-with-jason-slaughter/
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