Grid Cities are Fine, and OBF is a Copycat

Hi Alan, first of all thank you for this video. I’ll do my best to explain everything in this comment to clear some of the stuff up that you mention. The first thing is that you disagree with the video, obviously you’re quite knowledgeable about this topic and I think you presented all the points well. I’ll definitely take the criticisms to heart. I haven’t really thought much about including the sources but it makes a lot of sense to do. I’ll go back and add those. Hopefully they will bring some clarity to my points in the video. I will say though that it was an opinion piece but I could probably have done a better job making that more clear. The second thing is plagiarism. The section of my video you show where I used Vox’s words instead of my own is 100% plagiarism and I’ve cut that part out of the video. It should have never been in the video in the first place, I don't know what I was thinking and I’m truly ashamed of myself for this. I’ve always looked to Vox for inspiration because to me they are the gold standard on YouTube. I’ve developed a lot of my skills by imitating what they’ve made both in editing, animations, and scriptwriting in order to eventually figure out my own style, and I went too far. In regards to the rest of the video, it wasn't copied or plagiarised from anywhere. And I truly mean that. I should point out that the footage I used from Not Just Bikes was done so correctly and falls under fair use. I still wanted to compensate him though because I felt bad after he expressed concern over it on his Twitter even though it was fair use. The third thing is you say that I’ve copied/plagiarised 60% of my videos. This is not true. You apparently had your Discord community find the videos they believed to be copied/plagiarised from other creators. But I’m honest when I say, I haven’t even seen most of the videos you show. Nor have I copied any of them. Sometimes I do make a video on a topic that other creators have covered before, that's inevitable, but why would that make it a copy? If making a video on the same topic as another creator is considered “copying/plagiarising” we wouldn’t have many videos left on this platform that weren’t exactly that. I truly don’t wish to copy or plagiarise anyone, and since the instance with Vox I’ve made a point not to watch any other creator's video on a topic I’m going to cover until the video is finished and uploaded. (Sometimes it is unavoidable though as I might have watched a video on the topic in the past). It’s disheartening to see that you didn’t care to dig a little deeper and actually compare these videos yourself before making such a bold and hurtful claim. Lastly, the reason I deleted my community post. I must admit I was frustrated the day I deleted that post. I had just found out that some of the creators mentioned in it had instead of expressing their concerns to me, done shady things to hurt my channel. It had to do with sponsors and it had to do with their agency, you can figure the rest out for yourself. I can’t elaborate further on that. I should have just kept it up regardless but I hope actions speak louder than words. Thank you, Oliver

This is amazing, there’s actually drama in the city planning YouTube community

99% of arguments against grid designs are actually arguments against stupid zoning laws

I like how he conveniently leaves Vancouver out of "most liveable" and "grid". Vancouver's been ranked among the most liveable cities in the world for years.

As someone that lives in Chicago, I have never once thought to myself "this city is unlivable." The city has probably the second best public transportation (after NYC) and has zoning that is mixed, meaning you can go get groceries, something to eat, and walk your kids to school without having to drive 20 mins.

Thanks for making this Alan. I wasn't even aware OBF plagiarized one of my videos too. It's a really frustrating problem, and he's not the only channel guilty of it. My scripts take anywhere from 1-4 weeks of research, and rely a lot on my education as an engineer. I see channels copy my explanations frequently, and they often just completely butcher them in their attempts to mask their plagiarism. OBF is just one in a long list of content farms that just copy and riff other channels. Uploading at the frequency he does is impossible without plagiarism. Research and writing is the longest part of the process for any self respecting EDU channel. He's not even the worst of the lot though. Bright Side has 44 million subs and constantly plagiarizes other creators. It's not a new problem. I have been pushing YouTube internally to have some sort of appeal system to flag channels that do it frequently, but that's obviously a very tricky problem to solve. I don't own the information I share.

Hey, freshly graduated city planner here. Grid cities were somewhat vilified in the studies, but most arguments against them aren't so much arguments against grid cities as they are arguments against the way that we fill our cities. Keep up the work!

I would keep my eye on this dude, he seems like the kind of person that gets away with shit by being nice and non-confrontational as a defense when people call him out, but goes right back to the usual schedule after the heat dies down.

As someone from Chicago, thank you. The way the city is planned as a grid system is fucking amazing, it made it easy to get around and navigate the city, only problem was crappy public transport and dispersion of stores and residential buildings, but even then Chicago was way better than so many other places in the USA.

Damn, he really copied that shit word for word. And he literally gave the best argument for why his statements were bullshit right at the beginning.

OBF: “The Perpendicular streets of the grid disrupt airflow” Chicago Winters: “I’m about to end this man’s whole career”

There's drama in the city planning YouTube community

Really like that you called Adam Something a “smug guy”, because majority of his video are at best, just him complaining without any thoughts and factchecking the sources he use

Videos like this are really necessary. In the world of music or film or television there are critics who serve a historically important role to call out the bullshit. On YouTube you can't even see a dislike bar anymore let alone the fact that the average person wouldn't know to click it on a bad OBF video. There generally is no moderation or critiques of YouTube content. It just floats around as if it were fact.

honestly OBF to me always feels like a waste of potential as his content just feels like 15 year old me who knows some random facts about urban planning and geography by watching other channels, then rearrange them to fit the clickbait title. His editing skills makes his content more accessible and he should do better on researching in-depth topics edit: just realized that Alan also talked about this in the video and I completely missed it, guess I am the OBF now :/

Just wanted to point out that Melbourne was most liveable city for a while, and I think there’s probably a total of 5 diagonal roads in that town, probably the most gridded city to ever exist

THANK YOU! Melbourne is a very good gridded city. And it's very livable because it's gridded. It has an excellent tram network which utilises Melbourne's linear roads. And it's easy to transverse because it's gridded. I agree that gridded cities can be bad, but ungridded cities can also be bad. It's much more complicated than that.

Ironically he has a "Why London is Terribly Designed" video and that city is not a grid. He gets seriously panned in the comments section for just being wrong in his reasoning. Actually had the gall to say London's public transport system is bad, when it's one of the best in the western world.

Holy shit. I didn’t expect him to copy a video word for word

the topography argument is literally only a problem in cities skylines lmao