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I think everyone should be wary that this channel is extremely biased and hands out rose tinted glasses for a lot of things. There are better channels out there

I think everyone should be wary that this channel is extremely biased and hands out rose tinted glasses for a lot of things. There are better channels out there if you truly care about planning. This one is just an emotional mess at most times.

dagurp 2y ago
Biased in what way? But I agree with you in some extent. I prefer his earlier videos because he's become very undiplomatic and I think he's alienating newer watchers.
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  He seems to have some sort of aggressive blindness to "why" these places aren't like the Netherlands. It helps sell the point and get people outraged. There are great points made but just reaches a level of absurdity by the end of the videos.
lwansbrough 2y ago
I recommend About Here. It's Vancouver based but many of the issues they discuss are not unique to Vancouver or Canada.
- dagurp 2y ago
  I second that. City Nerd is my favourite though.
andyonthewings 2y ago
You said there are better channels, please suggest a few.
iknownothow 2y ago
Nope, I disagree. It should be the first thing you watch before you move onto more technical videos. The videos are pleasant to watch and are made by a Canadian who moved to the Netherlands. They've got excellent A and B roll footage that truly shows you the contrast between American/Canadian and European cities. And it should be emotional because a commute isn't just about efficiency. One spends a sizeable portion of their life commuting. The human aspect of it can't be ignored. The depressing feeling you get while standing in the middle of a Walmart parking lot is real. At least it was for me.
- resolutebat 2y ago
  FWIW, Chris Arnade of "Walking the World" fame has a few things to say about planning in the Netherlands: There is almost a complete lack of anything that feels commercial mixing with anything that feels residential, beyond especially designated spaces, usually the very center of town. These suburbs are not conventionally pretty, certainly not in the way downtown Amsterdam, Haarlem, or Leiden are. They are both monotonous and discordant, because the Dutch have perfected an architectural style of varied repetition. They will build twenty to fifty of the exact same weird thing, then next door build a hundred to two hundred of a very different weird thing. While they can have very clashing outward appearances, they are united in a utilitarian practicality with a focus on providing almost everyone an elementary apartment. The result of this is that there are two very different urban Netherlands — the older downtowns, with exquisite row homes along canals, medieval churches, cafe-heavy central squares that are frozen into place by historical preservation, and jammed with tourists, and then there are the outer rings of bizarre Lego-like perfunctory two-story apartment complexes, with few if any shops, beyond an Aldi, a hair saloon, a weed store, and maybe a bike-repair stand. https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/walking-the-netherlands-from-amsterdam https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/walking-the-netherlan... (paywalled, alas)
  - iknownothow 2y ago
    I don't refute that things can be poorly designed in the Netherlands or in Europe in general. It is not a utopia. I'll give it a 6/10, okay on-average, can do better. The thing is that US cities and suburbs are much worse. Let me quote the title of article > Walking the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to The Hague Is walking something you can do in the US except in some rare exceptions? There are suburbs in the US i.e. residential ONLY places where there aren't any side walks. And the closest grocery store may be 10-15 minutes away by car. Doesn't that feel suffocating to have a home but not be allowed to walk out on your own two feet?
    - RestlessMind 2y ago
      > Is walking something you can do in the US except in some rare exceptions? Depends on where you live > And the closest grocery store may be 10-15 minutes away by car. For some people, that's a feature and not a bug. Anecdote - I had a colleague who used to commute from nearby hills because he wanted a house where he can't even see his neighbors. > Doesn't that feel suffocating to have a home but not be allowed to walk out on your own two feet? Again, different strokes for different folks. There should be different kind of options catering to different tastes. You want density and walkable cities? Go live in NYC or Boston. You want complete rural wilderness where you don't have to see another fellow human being if you don't want to? There is Alaska or mountain West. You want a big house with a yard in a community where everyone is of the same class and all the daily needs are met (grocery, gas, schools, parks), while being close to a major city to tap into urban amenities (eg. airport)? Go live in a generic suburbia.
CalRobert 2y ago
I moved to the Netherlands for most of the reasons NJB did and it's hard not to get emotional when you're saying "I moved here so a driver wouldn't kill my daughters while they bike to school." Because at the core of it, giving my kids freedom and independence and not having a driver kill them shouldn't require moving to a tiny country below sea level.
- RestlessMind 2y ago
  It's not like Netherlands doesn't have any cars. It ranks fairly high (40 out of 196) in terms of number of motor vehicles per capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_motor_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...
  - seabass-labrax 2y ago
    According to data from 2020, the Netherlands has 30 road fatalities per million inhabitants, slightly below the EU average of 42. For comparison, the USA (when all states are considered as a whole) has 117 fatalities per million inhabitants. I'm not sure where to look for per-state statistics. Anecdotally, even though the Netherlands and my home country of the UK are just next to each other on the ranking of motor vehicle per capita (40th and 37th), during a stay in Limburg I felt that the difference was much more stark. I saw far fewer people driving than I would have done in an equivalent area of Britain. I wonder if that means that the average Dutchman is likely to have a car, but also uses it less frequently than car users in other countries. That might partly account for the low fatality rate. https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-02/erso-country-overview-2023-netherlands_0.pdf https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023... https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show...
    - RestlessMind 2y ago
      > Anecdotally, even though the Netherlands and my home country of the UK... Statistics paint a different picture. "Mobility on Dutch roads has grown continuously since the 1950s and now exceeds 200 billion km travelled per year. With a population of 16.8 million people, this comes down to an average of 32 kilometres (20 mi) per person per day" [1] Avg UK car mileage per day in 2022 was 18[2]. Given cars are fewer than people, per capita mileage driven will be even lower. That is also reflect in safety stats. Netherlands has death rates of 3.8/100K people, 4.7/1B vehicle-km. For UK, those numbers are 2.9 and 3.8 respectively [3]. So Netherlands just seems to have a reputation divergent from the actual reality? (I mean, no one talks about how awesome UK is for biking or public transport). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherla... [2] https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-car-mileage-uk https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-car... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

dagurp 2y ago

Biased in what way? But I agree with you in some extent. I prefer his earlier videos because he's become very undiplomatic and I think he's alienating newer watchers.

seoulmetro 2y ago
He seems to have some sort of aggressive blindness to "why" these places aren't like the Netherlands. It helps sell the point and get people outraged. There are great points made but just reaches a level of absurdity by the end of the videos.

lwansbrough 2y ago

I recommend About Here. It's Vancouver based but many of the issues they discuss are not unique to Vancouver or Canada.

dagurp 2y ago
I second that. City Nerd is my favourite though.

andyonthewings 2y ago

You said there are better channels, please suggest a few.

iknownothow 2y ago

Nope, I disagree. It should be the first thing you watch before you move onto more technical videos. The videos are pleasant to watch and are made by a Canadian who moved to the Netherlands. They've got excellent A and B roll footage that truly shows you the contrast between American/Canadian and European cities. And it should be emotional because a commute isn't just about efficiency. One spends a sizeable portion of their life commuting. The human aspect of it can't be ignored. The depressing feeling you get while standing in the middle of a Walmart parking lot is real. At least it was for me.

resolutebat 2y ago
FWIW, Chris Arnade of "Walking the World" fame has a few things to say about planning in the Netherlands: There is almost a complete lack of anything that feels commercial mixing with anything that feels residential, beyond especially designated spaces, usually the very center of town. These suburbs are not conventionally pretty, certainly not in the way downtown Amsterdam, Haarlem, or Leiden are. They are both monotonous and discordant, because the Dutch have perfected an architectural style of varied repetition. They will build twenty to fifty of the exact same weird thing, then next door build a hundred to two hundred of a very different weird thing. While they can have very clashing outward appearances, they are united in a utilitarian practicality with a focus on providing almost everyone an elementary apartment. The result of this is that there are two very different urban Netherlands — the older downtowns, with exquisite row homes along canals, medieval churches, cafe-heavy central squares that are frozen into place by historical preservation, and jammed with tourists, and then there are the outer rings of bizarre Lego-like perfunctory two-story apartment complexes, with few if any shops, beyond an Aldi, a hair saloon, a weed store, and maybe a bike-repair stand. https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/walking-the-netherlands-from-amsterdam https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/walking-the-netherlan... (paywalled, alas)
- iknownothow 2y ago
  I don't refute that things can be poorly designed in the Netherlands or in Europe in general. It is not a utopia. I'll give it a 6/10, okay on-average, can do better. The thing is that US cities and suburbs are much worse. Let me quote the title of article > Walking the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to The Hague Is walking something you can do in the US except in some rare exceptions? There are suburbs in the US i.e. residential ONLY places where there aren't any side walks. And the closest grocery store may be 10-15 minutes away by car. Doesn't that feel suffocating to have a home but not be allowed to walk out on your own two feet?
  - RestlessMind 2y ago
    > Is walking something you can do in the US except in some rare exceptions? Depends on where you live > And the closest grocery store may be 10-15 minutes away by car. For some people, that's a feature and not a bug. Anecdote - I had a colleague who used to commute from nearby hills because he wanted a house where he can't even see his neighbors. > Doesn't that feel suffocating to have a home but not be allowed to walk out on your own two feet? Again, different strokes for different folks. There should be different kind of options catering to different tastes. You want density and walkable cities? Go live in NYC or Boston. You want complete rural wilderness where you don't have to see another fellow human being if you don't want to? There is Alaska or mountain West. You want a big house with a yard in a community where everyone is of the same class and all the daily needs are met (grocery, gas, schools, parks), while being close to a major city to tap into urban amenities (eg. airport)? Go live in a generic suburbia.

CalRobert 2y ago

I moved to the Netherlands for most of the reasons NJB did and it's hard not to get emotional when you're saying "I moved here so a driver wouldn't kill my daughters while they bike to school." Because at the core of it, giving my kids freedom and independence and not having a driver kill them shouldn't require moving to a tiny country below sea level.

RestlessMind 2y ago
It's not like Netherlands doesn't have any cars. It ranks fairly high (40 out of 196) in terms of number of motor vehicles per capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_motor_vehicles_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...
- seabass-labrax 2y ago
  According to data from 2020, the Netherlands has 30 road fatalities per million inhabitants, slightly below the EU average of 42. For comparison, the USA (when all states are considered as a whole) has 117 fatalities per million inhabitants. I'm not sure where to look for per-state statistics. Anecdotally, even though the Netherlands and my home country of the UK are just next to each other on the ranking of motor vehicle per capita (40th and 37th), during a stay in Limburg I felt that the difference was much more stark. I saw far fewer people driving than I would have done in an equivalent area of Britain. I wonder if that means that the average Dutchman is likely to have a car, but also uses it less frequently than car users in other countries. That might partly account for the low fatality rate. https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-02/erso-country-overview-2023-netherlands_0.pdf https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023... https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show...
  - RestlessMind 2y ago
    > Anecdotally, even though the Netherlands and my home country of the UK... Statistics paint a different picture. "Mobility on Dutch roads has grown continuously since the 1950s and now exceeds 200 billion km travelled per year. With a population of 16.8 million people, this comes down to an average of 32 kilometres (20 mi) per person per day" [1] Avg UK car mileage per day in 2022 was 18[2]. Given cars are fewer than people, per capita mileage driven will be even lower. That is also reflect in safety stats. Netherlands has death rates of 3.8/100K people, 4.7/1B vehicle-km. For UK, those numbers are 2.9 and 3.8 respectively [3]. So Netherlands just seems to have a reputation divergent from the actual reality? (I mean, no one talks about how awesome UK is for biking or public transport). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_transport_in_the_Netherla... [2] https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-car-mileage-uk https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-car... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...