CityNerd

Sneak Peek, Wed Aug 14, 2024

Today you're getting part two of my trip to the Phoenix area. This one focuses on Tempe, home of the largest university in the United States, and a pretty good college town in its own right — but the focus of this video is really Culdesac, a privately developed "car-free" (spoiler, it isn't actually completely car-free) neighborhood a couple miles out from downtown Tempe on the light rail line.

My commentary on Culdesac, such as it is (it's only at about 15% buildout at this point), i...

Sneak Peek: Wed Aug 7, 2024

I won't say anything about today's topic in this post, other than to say: the many people who have told me, "don't talk about politics," need to take it up with the YouTube algorithm. Or maybe just take it up with...humans who click on videos and watch them, because today's YouTube release has so far piled up more views more quickly than anything I've ever released on Nebula (it was up on Nebula this past Saturday).

There is a short aside in today's video about the idea of "third places...

Sneak Peek: Wed July 31, 2024

Today is part one of my trip to the Valley of the Sun. I just had WAY too much to say about Phoenix, so you get Tempe (featuring my tour of the Culdesac car-free/car-lite development) in a couple weeks.

I cover all kinds of stuff in today's video that I thought was just fascinating, and I never quite know what's going to be of the most general interest to people, but my suspicion is it'll be the section on Waymo, the self-driving ridehail vehicles that operate all over a wide swath of t...

Sneak Peek: Wed, July 24, 2024

This last week I spent far too much time looking at train stations, and today you're going to get a bit of a different assessment of the state of passenger rail in North America than I've done before, including some global examples. Anyone know the station pictured above?

Quick note on last week's Project 2025 video. I had extraordinarily low expectations for viewership on that one because the subject and format were well out of the norm for what I typically do, and I always assume peop...

Update

Today's upload to YouTube is delayed due to unforeseen circumstances...that's all I'll say! Should be later today or tomorrow morning at the latest though.

Sneak Peek Wed July 17 2024 + Discord info

I don't want to have a discussion thread about what's actually in today's video, which was actually kind of unpleasant to make. So instead, enjoy these asters!

One thing I do mention briefly in today's video is the existence of the Patreon Discord server. Unfortunately Patreon doesn't give me a great way to permanently link this site to the server, so I have to create a temporary link every time someone inquires about it. Anyway, I'm thinking I'll get more questions about it because of ...

Sneak Peek, Wed July 10, 2024

I've got a bit of a backlog of city visit-type videos now, to the point where there's a lag of a couple weeks to go back over all the photos and video I took on a particular trip, go over all the voice memos I left for myself about what I was seeing, and assemble a narrative out of it. The plus side of this (I actually can't think of a minus) is I kind of get to relive a whole trip all over again, and it feels like the intervening couple of weeks even give me a little more perspective. So any...

Sneak Peek: Wed, July 3, 2024

This week I did a little more work with census data and the Housing Data App (housing units permitted per 1,000 residents for DC pictured above). The mission was to identify what I think of as "dynamic" cities — cities that both have strong attraction for newcomers, and offer a growing mix of housing choices for existing residents. (At least that was the hope; it's always difficult to parse these things and guess at the underlying reasons why the data say what they say.)

Yes it's a to...

Sneak Peek: Wed June 26, 2024

As I explain in today's video, I went to Winston-Salem, NC earlier this month to do an event, but I wasn't sure there would be enough stuff to film and talk about in Winston-Salem to make a full video, so I added a side trip to Durham. Of course, I ended up with way too much footage and way too many ideas, so now you're gonna get two videos. First up, today, Winston-Salem and the Piedmont Triad.

One of the really visually interesting things is the way Winston-Salem is repurposing the ol...

Sneak Peek: Wed June 19, 2024

Today's video revisits ideas around affordability and undervalued cities, using fresh data and a bit of a different approach. One thing I took a quick look at was how prices have changed in the two years since I did my "10 most undervalued cities in the U.S." video. I'm not certain exactly what lesson to take away from the fact that rents have risen faster in Chicago than in NY or SF. The joke I make in the video is that I'm at fault for this because I told everyone Chicago was America's most...

Sneak Peek Wed June 12, 2024

New video on YouTube today! This one's a bit of a case study on what I call "simulated urbanism" -- basically, places people go to experience an active, walkable and/or bikeable environment even though, for some reason, they often don't choose to live their day-to-day lives in places that have those qualities.

I won't say more about the specifics of the video, but I do want to talk about the whole idea of "vacations." The US really lags behind most other economically developed nations i...

Sneak Peek: Wed June 5, 2024

OK so this terrible event that happened in Redwood City isn't actually part of today's video (which has been up on Nebula for a few days). But if you didn't see it in Monday's news, 104 units that were under construction went up in a blaze. And when you watch today's video you're going to realize 104 units is...a pretty high proportion of the amount of housing that gets built in Redwood City in any given year. Actually, it's a high proportion of the housing that gets built in just about ANY B...

Wednesday update: No video this week

Hey, so I did decide to take Memorial Day weekend/week off to focus on some non-YouTube stuff, so no video today. A couple other notes --

Durham event (with Bike Durham) coming up on Monday, June 10 at Fullsteam Brewing. Link here -- https://www.fullsteam.ag/event/citynerd-bike-activism-workshop/

Phoenix event (with the Urban Phoenix Project) coming Thursday, June 27. I believe ...

Sneak Peek: Wed May 22, 2024

OK, I realize the chart in the picture is slightly graph crime-y in that I don't show the zero/origin line. But I like it anyway. The answer to what these two metro areas are and why I'm comparing them is in today's video and I don't want to spoil it!

It's a BIT tangential to today's topic, but I spent a lot of time this week thinking about the varying growth trajectories of different metro areas, and cities as well. I recently saw a news item that the population of Detroit (city) ticke...

Sneak Peek: Wed May 15, 2024

I still can't get over this picture I found of Route 66 (now Central Avenue) through the Nob Hill neighborhood of my current hometown, Albuquerque. I mean I'm kind of aware that, at the height of the highway building era (1950s-1970s), much, much more of our built environment used to look like Breezewood, Pennsylvania, where the entire landscape is filled with structures and signage that's designed to catch the attention of drivers. This image is bordering on the vertiginous, though. (But I k...

Late Peek: Wed May 8, 2024

Man, what a week! I meant to get a Patreon post up earlier, but there's a lot going on -- mostly stuff that should be good for the channel!

So today is the video I shot while I was in Minneapolis in mid-April. It's primarily about I-94, a freeway that cuts a wide, extremely unpleasant path between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. And it's also about the planning process (and competing ideas) around a potential reconstruction or "rethinking."

One of the points I make in ...

ABQ RSVP link and channel schedule update

For my viewers in the Land of Enchantment, the RSVP link for my May 22 event is now live: https://www.fusionnm.org/upcoming/2024/5/22/urbanism-in-albuquerque-an-evening-with-city-nerd

Schedule update -- I'm still recovering from a little too much travel in April and some other demands on my calendar. My YouTube upload schedule will not be affected, but my...

Upcoming Event Schedule Update

I have a couple new things on the calendar since I last updated you all. Here's what I have upcoming. If you live in (or near) one of these cities, consider coming out!

Albuquerque NM. Hey, I'm finally doing an event in my hometown! This will be a Q&A and meet & greet, Wednesday, May 22 at FUSION performance space. The venue is downtown just off the railroad tracks (and future rail trail!) at 708 1st St. NW. This one's for Strong Towns ABQ, which just got starte...

Sneak Peek: Wed May 1, 2024

For today's YouTube upload, I investigated a claim that I came across when I was putting together my recent video on Car Harm: the idea that Americans spend 25% of their waking life either (1) driving their car or (2) working the hours they need to in order to own a car. The claim was made in 1974 -- 50 years ago! -- and sounds like one of those things that could either be a drastic understatement or an outlandish exaggeration. Luckily, I have a pretty good sense of where to find and how to p...

Sneak Peek: Wed April 24, 2024

New video! First of all, thanks to Cam Booth, who has had a side business making alternative universe transit maps and recreations of historic maps using a modern style, and sells prints at his site transitmap.net -- Cam and I were actually co-workers at the WSP office in Portland when I was a consultant there. (And yes, he makes fantastic proposal and report graphics, haha.)

Anyway, Cam gave me permission to use his mo...

Sneak Peek: Wed April 17, 2024

Man, two weeks feels like an eternity between uploading videos to YouTube! But a video essay on my visit to Long Beach, California is coming today. Honestly, a very strange and interesting city. Maybe a bit maddening.

Overall schedule update -- this was a tough past couple of weeks, since I hadn't been back from Long Beach for much time before I turned back around and traveled for eight more days, doing multiple events in Portland and Minneapolis. I find it very unpleasant to try to do ...

Minneapolis Slow Roll

Thanks to those of you who came out to Venture Bikes on the Midtown Greenway last night! It was a packed house for the Q&A with Venture's Anthony Taylor, AND for the post-ride feast. Such a cool event! The highlight had to be the massive group ride though. Packing the Midtown Greenway, riding by the lakes, and then rolling right down Nicollet Mall in the heart of downtown Minneapolis with a huge peloton of nerds was an unforgettable experience. Hope to do similar things in other cities, b...

Happy Wednesday!

About last night! Full house at the Aladdin Theater in southeast Portland (I couldn't fit the balcony into the frame). From left to right: yours truly, Dr. Jennifer Dill (my advisor when I was a grad student at Portland State), and Oregon Public Broadcasting's Lillian Karabaic. Dr. Dill did the introductions and then Lillian interviewed me for a solid 90 minutes. Super fun, and I hope to do more events like this in the future. Well, I guess the future is Minneapolis in a couple days, now that...

Sneak Peek: Wed, April 3, 2024

In regional planning, you strive to diversify employment and housing locations. The downtown of a region's central city is almost always going to be a big employment draw, but planners look for ways to encourage development and growth of employment centers outside the central city too. A big reason is transportation. Having all the jobs in the central core and all the residential in outlying areas leads to massive inefficiencies in how limited roadway space and transit capacity get used -- un...

Portland, Minneapolis & Upload Schedule Update

Wanted to share a couple updates because the schedule is getting a bit hectic!

Video upload schedule. My aim is to have Nebula versions of my videos uploaded one week in advance. I actually hit that target last week, but I missed it badly this week due to a few days I took to unplug and focus on personal stuff. Anyway, the video that's going up on YouTube this coming Wednesday, April 3 should be up on Nebula tomorrow (Sunday March 31), or possibly late today if things f...

Twin Cities event heads-up!

It looks like we finally have an event dialed in for my Twin Cities visit, for Friday April 12. I had a call yesterday with the folks from Our Streets, streets.mn, the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota, and Anthony Taylor, the mastermind behind Slow Roll MSP. (Google it if you don't know what it is.) Anthony has generously offered the use of his space at Venture Bikes (across from Midtown Market on the Midtown Greenway) for a meetup, food, and an extremely cool mega Slow Roll ride around central ...

Sneak Peek: Wed March 27, 2024

Did you need another video about all the harms cars cause to society? Of course you did. The image above is from a paper that counts all the ways, and I've adapted it for today's video, with my usual gratuitous commentary.

(Note to Nebula subscribers: the early release of NEXT week's YouTube video probably won't come until Friday, due to a bunch of personal stuff I had going on this week. I do aim to have Nebula versions up a full week early on an ongoing basis, but occasionally I need ...

Sneak Peek: Wednesday March 20, 2024

For 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 NE...

Portland tickets available today + new Nebula release

OK, for those still looking for tickets, it looks like Jonathan Maus at BikePortland already got the scoop yesterday, which is: tickets SHOULD be available at the Eventbrite link at 9:30 am Pacific today, Thursday March 14. Check the "reserve your seat" link here:

https://trec.pdx.edu/events/ann-niles-active-transportation-lecture-2024 

I'll hold off a couple days ...

Sneak Peek: Wed March 13, 2024

Happy Wednesday! Today's upload to YouTube is about a particular type of city infrastructure that often takes up prime space in your downtown, but that you yourself probably rarely use. Convention Centers! (New York's Javits Center pictured above.)

Now, depending what you do for a living, you might go to convention centers in OTHER cities. In fact, you might do it fairly often! So this video kind of takes the perspective of: for an urbanist, what makes for a "good" convention center to ...