Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)

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It’s interesting to me that two front doors is considered less aesthetically pleasing than a massive garage door that takes up the entire front of the house.

I live in an American suburb just like "Phoney London" and I have to admit that I didn't get your criticisms at first. I like having space between my neighbors homes and a nice big front yard. However when you mentioned that suburbs in Europe have pubs, shops and stores intermixed with the homes it got me thinking. It would be really nice to take a stroll to the pub without having to get in my car. Your videos have got me thinking of how much our society has sacrificed for cars and silly zoning regulations. I've been thinking about it all day! You just earned a new subscriber. Thanks for the great videos man.

When I visited my aunt in America, the thing that shocked me most was getting in a car TO GET BREAKFAST. Who drives to breakfast? What hellscape is this?

Love how you can't have two front doors because that's "ugly" but having two massive garages is the law somehow 🤔

nothing says freedom quite like "minimum building size"

Hearing him refer to Vaughn as a "suburban hellscape" developed a deep kinship that I've never had with any other creator on youtube

Grew up in Riverdale but strangely, we all moved out. I think it's perception. We are conditioned to believe that car-dependent suburbs are a step up so that's what the next generation aspires to. After watching this vid, your arguments make a lot of sense. Everything was close and we lived a 10 min walk from Gerrard Square (the nearest mall). The Gerrard streetcar was the main streetcar to get downtown. Went to Riverdale Collegiate for high school (5 min walk).

It is baffling to me that in a CLIMATE EMERGENCY we are not allowing more suburbs like Riverdale to be built. It would DRASTICALLY reduce CO2, NOx, and Methane emissions, and make our population healthier and wealthier.

I just realized why Amazon has this huge retail sales market share in the US (even selling toiletpaper etc.). In Europe ordering something online seems silly when you can walk to a shop down the street and buy the exact same thing and not pay for shipping while also getting some fresh air.

The "land of the free" sure has a lot of rules and regulations about how you should be living your life.

Funny enough as a Nigerian living in Nigeria, this is also happening here, we have new neighborhood where there are huge house and great aesthetic, asphalt everywhere, usually very quiet almost like no one lives there, the schools are far away you never see any kid in the streets, always nice cars and all that. But old neighborhood are kinda different, kids walk to school, usually public transport, not very big houses there's a huge sense of community usually loud, but it's always fun There's always something that engages you. There's a lot of diversity In taste, aesthetic, functionality but the only thing I don't like is the noise. We haven't really gotten a hang of the balance of both.

I just came to the USA with my wife, who is from abroad. She doesn't know how to drive and we didn't realize how that basically made life here impossible for her without my help. The only option is for her to learn how, buy a car, pay for insurance, gas, ect. it's a horrible system

I'm British and married to a Canadian. On one of my first trips to Ontario I noticed how unwalkable it was when we had to cross the road and my then girlfriend (now wife) wanted to drive! I laughed and said that's ridiculous, let's walk. And then we tried to cross 2 parking lots and a 6 lane road and then suddenly I understood why she wanted to drive. It's no wonder North America has an obesity issue if you can't even walk across the street!

Can I just say that it is amazing to think that Los Angeles, the city known for having awful traffic all the time, used to have a tram system the world could envy?

I think a sorta midway example of this type of decent suburb that more americans might actually recognize is the basic american college town. In these places there is usually a sort of de facto ‘student neighborhood’ which has smaller and closer together houses and apartments which aren’t super set back from their relatively small (~6-7 meters wide) roads. The entire neighborhood is usually walkable to at least whatever campus the students attend and often also are walkable and/or bikable to the ‘downtown’/‘main street’ area which will have shops and pubs and such. I lived in such a place when I went to my state school in the US and I loved it bc I always hated cars and driving and I just didn’t have a way to express why until I found your channel and those like it. These college towns aren’t perfect but they may be more recognizable to the average american as most have attended college. Might be a more effective way to graft support for our movements. Maybe you could make a video on college towns or something of the like? Either way great video and keep up the great work!

It was years ago and here online, I can’t recall where though. I read an article about how the car dealership and manufacturing industry paid city planning officials to do away with public transit.. so every home would NEED a car.. or two. It was eye opening.. and sad. It spoke of how people became suddenly less connected and helpful to one another. No daily interaction but alone in your fancy car, going places. They sold it as independence and having funds for a better lifestyle. I wish the clock could be turned back on this one. Truly.

I grew up in South Florida suburbs where the closest store was 3 miles away and I relied on my parents to take me anywhere. I had no idea what I was missing until I moved out for college. Now I live in one of the few streetcar suburbs in the state in Jacksonville FL. Because it was largely planned and built before World War I, we have over 100 businesses, parks, and other places to go within 0.5 mile walking distance and hundreds more within 3 miles on bike. I never thought I would be able to use my bicycle as a primary form of transportation in Florida. I'm so upset that I and so many other people from my generation were robbed from a better childhood and adolescence that a pre-war neighborhood would have provided.

Maybe I’m being dramatic, but I feel like suburbs subconsciously make Americans feel more isolated and divided in this country. Imagine the sense of community and unity we could have if we could gather in the center of a neighborhood at a park. Nowadays we watch the same news network, pundits, radio programs when we drive to work/school, maybe we interact with other coworkers/students, and then we go back home with our ideas unchallenged. Car-dependent suburbs normalized the echo chamber effect.

The comment about lawns struck something inside of me. My house growing up had a lawn out front that was literally three times the size as my backyard. Our backyard was literally just a sliver of concrete, literally the only game we were able to play back there was corn hole. Meanwhile our house is in California, so constant droughts coupled with gophers constantly digging everywhere made that large space unusable. Not to mention we were right next to a road that cars always flew down so our parents rarely even let us try to play on our front lawn since it wasn't safe. I'm just imagining if our house was built the opposite way, sliver of space in front, large area in backyard. We could put a basketball hoop and have room to play. We could put a sprinkler and have room to run around. We could've spent more time outside even when our parents weren't home since we'd be protected from cars by the house. We'd have more privacy when playing. And all of this literally would've taken one simple change, it infuriates me.