City Beautiful

Early access: Did pedestrian malls ruin U.S. downtowns?

This one features some original research by me! 

Early Access: How Bad Planning Makes Wildfires Worse

Here you go! This goes live tomorrow.

September Channel Update

I want to start this periodic channel update by thanking all of you who support City Beautiful, and I want to give a special shout out to all of you who started supporting the channel recently. There’s been a recent uptick in patrons and that’s awesome!

Here’s the latest on City Beautiful. Please feel free to contribute suggestions and ideas in the comment section. I want to hear from you.

1. Spending Patreon Money. I spend 100% of the money from Patreon ...
   2019-09-26 23:32:07 +0000 UTC View Post

Early Access: Is Vancouver the best city in North America?

Early access: Why is Tokyo the world's largest urban area?

This goes live tomorrow morning, but here it is a few hours early!

Early access: How Eminent Domain Destroys Neighborhoods

This is a collab video with Mr. Beat and goes live Friday morning.

Early access: The Reason Our Streets Switched to Cul-De-Sacs

This one goes live Thursday morning (PT), but you can check it out now.

Early Access: What is New Urbanism?

Learn a little about New Urbanism and its criticisms through the lens of the Disney-built community of Celebration.

Early Access: EPCOT: Walt Disney's City of the Future

Travel back to the futuristic world of the 1960s!

Early Access: Can Tourism Ruin Cities?

Tomorrow's video, today!

Early access: An Urban Planner Reviews LEGO City Sets

This video is rather silly. Back to more serious topics in two weeks.

May Channel Update

Hello everyone!

As always, thank you so much for your support. The last time I did an update the channel crossed 100,000 subscribers. About 15,000 subscribers later, I received the silver play button from YouTube. Very cool! 

Here's what has been happening at City Beautiful HQ:

1. The video "Why do countries build new capital cities?" was the first I shot with my new camera! I...

Early access: Are cities like organisms?

Sorry this is only about 12 hours early!

Early access: Why do countries build new capital cities?

I actually discuss non-US cities for a change!

Friday Trivia!

Come hang out and play some trivia on Friday, April 26 at 3:30pm PT, 6:30pm ET.

Early access: Can you build main streets in the suburbs?

Description and thumbnail coming soon!

Early access: How do I choose a school for my child?

I have until 9am PT, April 4th (tomorrow as of this posting) to come up with a better title for this video. Any ideas from those who watched it?

Early access: Bike lanes are not good enough

Brief 100,000 subscribers update

Hi Patrons!

• The channel crossed a big milestone on Monday: 100,000 subscribers! I'm very thankful to have so many people interested in cities, city planning, and the videos I make. Onward to 1,000,000! :)
• Over the past nine months, I've posted on a regular schedule of one video every three weeks. With work on my dissertation heating up and a new baby on the way, the only logical thing to do is... increase the number of videos I make! I'll be moving to an every-two-week sc...
  2019-03-13 17:02:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Early access: A Brief History of U.S. City Planning

I'm not sure 14:31 is brief, but it covers 500+ years. 

Early access: How realistic is Cities: Skylines?

This one is coming out on Thursday, but you get an early look!

Interview with Miska Fredman of Colossal Order

Here's the interview I did with a game designer at Colossal Order. Parts of this interview will be included in the upcoming Cities: Skylines video, but I thought you all might want to see the whole thing. 

Early access: Where is the densest place in the United States?

Do you have any questions for a Cities: Skylines game designer?

Hi folks! I'm setting up an interview with a game designer at Colossal Order, the studio responsible for the game Cities: Skylines. Does anyone have a question they think should be asked? The video will explore how realistically Cities: Skylines mimics real cities.

If you have any ideas for questions, leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Some changes to tiers

Hello Patreon Patrons!

As always, thank you so much for your support. This Patreon page has been here for over nine months, and I haven't changed the "perks" for patrons at all so far. Today I made some tweaks and I wanted to let you know.

1. Hamlet ($1) tier: no change.

2. Village ($2) tier: no change.

3. Town ($5) tier: these patrons now get listed in text at the end of the video! I removed the perk of getting invite...

First video ever: Why Use a Grid?

I posted this video exactly two years ago. There are definitely some technical problems with it (and a factual error or two), but it definitely has the City Beautiful DNA. 

City Beautiful Annual Report

Happy New Year! I posted my first video on December 31, 2016, so New Years is also City Beautiful’s anniversary. Double the reason to make a year-end wrap-up post. I’ll recap some of the big events of the year, give you some statistics, and discuss the coming year. I’m also planning some changes to this Patreon, but I’ll put that in a separate post. 

Here are some key City Beautiful milestones:

1. February 2018: Patreon page started. I had viewers ...
   2018-12-31 21:33:34 +0000 UTC View Post

Early access: An urban planner reviews Minecraft cities

Another gaming video! I'm not a Minecraft person, so I hope it's not to cringe-y. 

Thankful for all of you!

It's Thanksgiving here in the United States and I wanted to thank everyone here for your generous support of the channel. When I started this Patreon in the spring I didn't know if anyone would *actually* support City Beautiful, so it always blows me away when I see that currently 87 people do! Here are a few quick channel updates for you:

1. I received a $1,200 Vlogbrothers grant to support the channel! That money, combined with your support, has allowed me to buy a new video editing computer...

How do cities grow?

New video -- should go live tomorrow!