City Beautiful

City Beautiful on Discord!

Hi everyone! I've thought about creating a Discord for the channel for awhile now, and I thought now's the time to give it a try! I didn't realize that creating the integration with Patreon would automatically put you into the Discord, so I apologize for how sudden that was.

I'm hoping the Discord can be a way for you to provide feedback and suggestions on the channel, but also to talk about cities and city planning in a civil, kind environment.

I'll be opening the Discord up to t...

New Video: How to Fix America's Worst Streets

This one was fun to make because I show you how I prototype corridor redesigns using some basic information, Google Maps, and Streetmix. I hope this is interesting/helpful to people!

Early Access: Are the suburbs getting worse?*

This is an exciting video for me to share because it's based on my dissertation research, which I recently got published in the journal "Urban Morphology." It's always fun for me to make a video about original research I did, in part because the script is really easy to write! I literally know this topic better than anyone!

I hope you are all enjoying "Suburbs Spring" on the channel! I've been on a roll with videos about how to make the suburbs better, and it's been fun to stick to a t...

Early Access: How to Remove a Highway

Next video is up early on YouTube! I really enjoyed making this one because I got to check up on lots of the endangered highways here in the U.S. and check on their status. Unfortunately, not enough of them are truly endangered just yet. But I was heartened to see how many organizations exist to tear them down!

Traveling to Japan -- Need Ideas!

Hi Patreon folks! 

I'm taking a 13-day trip to Tokyo and Kyoto in June. I'm looking for video topic ideas from you all. What kind of videos would you like to see? Here are some ideas I have:

- How zoning works in Japan

- Yokocho (those little alleys with bars and restaurants in Tokyo)

- History of the Tokyo metro system

- ???

Also -- I've revived a Patreon tier: "Send me somewhere!". I did this a few years back and some awesome person actually paid for...

Early Access: Should Cities Be Circles?

Here's my latest, which will go live on YouTube tomorrow! This is a fun video, meant to be a sequel of sorts to my hexagon video. I've also been wanting to tell the story of Circleville, Ohio for a long time. I first heard about it in one of my favorite books of urban history, The Making of Urban America by John Reps. Hope you enjoy and thanks for your support!

End of Year Review!

It's the end of my seventh year on YouTube! I like to wrap up every year with a video to my Patrons about how the previous year went and what to expect next year. This is that video. Thank you for all of your support! It means so much! Happy New Year!

Early Access: History of Paris

I love doing big history videos, so this was fun. And it was a chance for my writing/research assistant Hannah Woolsey to end her run with the channel in style. She took the lead writing and directing this one. She was a graduate student of mine and worked for me during her last year in the program. She just graduated and will be a real city planner! Thanks Hannah!

Early access: Can U.S. Cities Build Narrow European Streets?

This was a fun video to make, in part because I got to wander around some narrow Philadelphia streets to film it! This is a rare video that's not based on any existing knowledge about planning, but is more just an idea I had and wanted to share. Hope you enjoy!

Early access: Can we fix the suburbs?

This is my first of two videos that came from a recent trip to Philadelphia. I was there at the end of March for the national conference for the American Planning Association. It's the biggest annual conference of U.S.-based planners, and it was my first time attending. It was not my first time to the Philly area, though the last time I was there was 20 years ago. I knew right away that I wanted to do a video that featured Levittown, if for no other reason than I wanted to an excuse to see it...

Early Access: Why Are College Towns So Great?

This is sort of early access, because in like 12 hours it will go live on YouTube. Sorry about that! I'm entering the busiest time of the year for me, as I'm in the final quarter of the academic year. I'm temporarily taking my posting schedule down from twice a month to once every three weeks. It's a small change but it gives me some breathing room! Therefore, I'll only post once in May, but twice again in June.

This video was a fun one for me personally, as I've lived in four different...

Early Access: Why Did Humans Invent Cities?

I've always enjoyed Spiro Kostof's book "The City Shaped," particularly the first chapters on the designs of early cities. He also has a nice discussion of different definitions of "city" that helps to frame the discussion of what the first cities were and what were they like. This video is inspired by that book, though surprisingly little of Kostof made its way into the final script. I found the discussion of the Neolithic Era and the agricultural revolution to be very interesting, and he on...

Early Access: Why Nobody Lives in Venice

The concept for this video has been floating around in my head since before YouTube existed. I visited Venice in 2004 and was amazed that I could walk through Venice at night and not see a single soul. The tourists were gone and very few people lived in the historic center. I found out then that most Venetians lived on the mainland. I wanted to visit and see where the "real" Venetians lived, but I was on a university field trip and it wasn't on the agenda. I still haven't visited Mestre, but ...

Early Access: Does Your City Have Enough Parks?

I've been meaning to do a video on parks for a long time. I think there is even more content here that I didn't cover, but I meant for this to be a basic primer on concepts like active vs. passive recreation, persons per park acre, and distance to parks. It was also really nice to film in a park on a rare dry day in winter. We've been getting so much rain this was the only morning of the week I could have filmed and stayed dry!

Happy New Year and thanks for your support!

Thanks Patreon Patrons!

Here's a quick year-end recap. It's been a crazy six years; and I'm still doing it thanks to you all. I'll see you in the New Year!

Early Access: How We Can Make Streets Safer NOW (But Don't)

This video has been on my mind recently, as cities and planners have begun to reflect on "Vision Zero" efforts to eliminate road deaths in the United States. Many cities have not lived up to their goals. Most, really. When faced with big societal challenges, we often look for easy technological solutions. In this case, they exist, but we don't want to use them.

Anyway, I hope you like this video! I'm going to try and get out a Patreon end-of-year thank you video before January. If I don...

Early Access: The Pros and Cons of Airport Transit

This video has been a thought in my head for awhile. Jarrett Walker, the author of Human Transit, has been a critic of airport transit, and I found his arguments to be pretty convincing. But I tried to provide a more balanced take—airports CAN be good terminating stations for certain lines. But do they need to be treated differently, with express service and higher fares? Maybe not. Just my take, anyway. 

And this didn't make the cut for the video, but I wasn't picking on Denver ...

Early Access: Should Cities Get Rid of On-Street Parking?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am incredibly grateful for all of your support this past year. Your contributions have truly made these videos better. I often have to do a cost/benefit calculation when producing a video. For example: Will it be worth the editing costs to produce a more detailed graphic? Your support allows me to say yes much more often than I would otherwise.

Your support allowed me to hire students to do the little parking study featured in this video. This was a really...

Early Access: Can the Best US Bike Cities Compete with Europe?

This was a video I've been thinking about for awhile. I moved to San Luis Obispo (SLO), California two years ago, and over the past two years the city has rapidly expanded their top-notch bike facilities. While not to European standards, there are many separated bicycle lanes and paths that make using a bike feel very safe and, well, normal. I'm honestly excited to see how good the bike facilities here will get in the next few years. 

Like I mentioned in the video, SLO has some bui...

Early Access: Why is Downtown Los Angeles So Small?

This is my last video that I produced from my trip to LA at the end of June. I think the topic came from a suggestion on Twitter, and answering that question was fun for me (and hopefully fun for you to watch). This video was helpful for me to process the urban landscape of Southern California. I found the entire trip to be very frustrating. I had plans to film in all of these different locations, but I quickly realized that LA traffic had other ideas. Everything is so FAR in that area and it...

New Video: Introduction to Urban Goods Movement

This is a topic that hasn't received a lot of focus on this channel, but is critically important to cities: goods logistics! I originally thought this video would have more of a Los Angeles focus, so I actually visited the Port of Los Angeles to get some b-roll clips. I didn't end up using many in the final video, but the sped-up shot of truck traffic at the end is from a GoPro attached to my car. 

The Port of Los Angeles is on a scale I had never experienced before, and as I drove...

Can Public Transit Beat Uber?

This video was a fun one to make, because I got to do a little experiment. I found that Metro Micro was pleasant to use, and with a little pre-planning, could be a good replacement for Uber. This is particularly true if you're living a car-free lifestyle and reliant on mass transit. That can be a tricky proposition in Southern California, so MM fills a gap nicely.

Early Access: Should the U.S. Build More Public Housing?

Goes live tomorrow morning!

Early Access: The 10 Biggest Cities You've Never Heard of (Probably)

A beach read of a video just in time for summer.

New video: Urban Growth Boundaries: Effective or Worthless?

Last video from Portland. Hope you enjoy!

New Video: Transit Oriented Development, Explained

Here it is! My first of two Portland videos.

U.S. and European Zoning, Compared

Sorry for no early access on this one! 

Early Access: Delhi video!

This goes live tomorrow (Wednesday) but you get to check it out early.

Bracket Challenge Livestream!

We had a livestream this afternoon and it was a good time! If you missed it, here's a replay of the livestream—for Patreon Patrons only!

Help testing livestream!

Hi Patreon patrons, 

I'm going live next Friday to do a "Best Big City in the World" tournament bracket challenge. It's a fun, city-oriented take on March Madness. I need a little help. I want to be sure users can click through to the bracket, sign up, make a bracket, and submit it. Could you give it a try and let me know if it works? A comment on this post is fine! And I hope to see you Friday live! I'll also post the livestream recording here for those who missed it.

Thanks...