Sneak Peek: Wednesday March 20, 2024
Added 2024-03-20 13:05:19 +0000 UTCFor today's YouTube upload, I'm going back to a topic I haven't touched in a year and a half: pickup trucks. The comment shown above is...I don't want to say typical, but one theme of today's video is the surprising number of comments I got from "pickup truck guys" who actually agree that the sheer size -- the height and weight in particular -- of the pickup trucks being sold today is ridiculous and out of control.
(Note for Nebula subscribers -- I'm now a full week ahead, so the new NEW video will also be up there at noon Eastern today.)
One thing I've been thinking more about, partly from making today's video, which required me to read over 4,000 comments on my LAST pickup truck video (from summer 2022) -- how do we find common ground with people who, superficially, SEEM like they wouldn't care about urbanist principles, but when you dig a little deeper, actually do care about things like street safety, a clean environment, and living a healthier life? I'm convinced there are massive swaths of the US population who would care more about walkability, efficient use of resources, etc., if they were presented the case in a clear way and they spent time really thinking about it. Even former (and current!) pickup truck drivers.
Have you had success getting people interested or engaged on this stuff -- people who had otherwise not thought much about it before? I realize it's funny for the Urbanism YouTube Guy to be asking this question, but I think there's a vast difference between putting a video out in the world and hoping it has some sort of modest impact, and having direct conversations with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. What are your thoughts? I do see this as a political movement -- what do you see as successful ways to engage people on a personal level and get them involved?
Comments
Oh man, thanks for bringing up my LA video! I really think the image/reputation of LA as car-dependent and unwalkable is so lazy. There are amazingly walkable neighborhoods there, it's just that they're often kind of far from each other! And yeah, the Venn diagram of "places where it's easy to park" and "places that are worth going to in the first place" has almost no overlap. I will probably come back to the idea of streetcar-era legacy urban form fairly soon, there's so much to say about it and I think it's so important. Thanks for wrangling captive audiences together!
Ray Delahanty
2024-03-21 11:59:50 +0000 UTCWell, one way I love to get people hooked on urbanism is by recommending your videos. It's a underrated conversation-starter. But in seriousness (well... I do seriously recommend your videos a lot and occasionally force captive audiences to watch one and get them hooked) I reflect a lot on the deep dive you did on LA and how you pointed out how the streetcars really left us an amazing legacy within our urban fabric to where all of the great, picturesque areas of interest in the city are all so walkable. When my girlfriends make a comment to the effect of "I don't want to go to X-area because there's just no parking." I really try to take that as an opportunity to bring up how walking those areas is even better. I haven't quite convinced them to ditch their cars and take public transit (I certainly haven't; we all have our hesitations when it comes to LA Metro, though I'm really trying to get over mine and use it more) but I've convinced more than a few to move to more walkable, public-transit-accessible areas. Here in LA, we just spend so much time in our cars, it just gets ridiculous. Seeing the city from the freeway is no way to view it. So my go-to is often "I mean, wouldn't you prefer to not have to drive to everywhere you needed to go? To not have to worry about parking fees or parking tickets? Isn't it just worth the money to live right in the areas you like and you can just walk over to the grocery or your favorite cafe or whatever?" Most people are very receptive to that, even the "I WANNA HOUSE!!" crowd.
Shannon St. Claire
2024-03-21 04:37:56 +0000 UTCOne way I think would resonate with lots of people would be to point out that all the (literal) madness and boredom with sitting in gridlock, trying in vain to find parking, having to consider routes and rush hour whenever you travel by car, lane closures, accidents, road construction etc. doesn't have to be this way if we just had good transit infrastructure. This came about to me while I was traveling for work and had to fly into San Diego to grab a rental car, and couldn't find a parking spot to have lunch at one of the many fantastic places in SD. Car dependency creates issues where everyone suffers, but the root cause of it is like this insulated bubble that keeps people from connecting the dots.
BT
2024-03-20 23:42:34 +0000 UTC
