Not Just Bikes and how NOT to be an urbanist

As someone who works in public transportation I am very thankful for the improvements made in the last few years. I love taking transit into work and around town here in Los Angeles County. Although I am not car free, public transit has made things significantly easier. 35 years ago there was zero passenger rail besides Amtrak, it is amazing what has been accomplished in the last 30 years. Giving up completely keeps people from using transit who need it most. Especially those who cannot afford to move to the Netherlands.

I like NJB, but he has even pointed out in his city that it took the Netherlands like 40-50 years to get to this point and change the relevant laws and undo the room we make for car dependence. It didn't happen overnight, it took a lot of effort through many years of people speaking up, changing what road designers are taught and all that. Some cities are already getting better in NA and while it's far from easy, you have to fight for it to get it and keep it. Forgive the comparison, but $100 will do a lot more for a homeless guy than it will for a billionaire. So you SHOULD put effort into the cities that need it more. But it will be a lot of work, and I don't think Americans shy away from hard work. So yeah, I don't agree with his take. Seeing how it is here in the Netherlands should work as motivation for how it can be, not used as a condemnation for how it is in the US. That's Bull and I don't sign on to that.

Also, it's funny that he's such a fan of Amsterdam when it's probably our least pedestrian friendly, walkable city. Like I said, I like him, but being defeatist when you live amidst the example of what 40-50 years of concerted effort can achieve?

It's not like Netherlands has declared, "All bike commuters move here, we are giving away citizenship to everyone and relocating whoever would love to live in a livable city." In fact while NJB does say any city in the Netherlands is more livable than the best option in North America, he also decided to live in Amsterdam, the one place that's arguably the best of the lot. It's a concept no doubt but not a practical one for most urbanites in North America to move to a non-English speaking city in a different continent where they'll be immigrants. Also it's neither viable nor sustainable for Amsterdam or the Netherlands. Every bounded living area no matter how perfectly well designed and irrespective of how adaptable it may be to exceeding growth of population, eventually it will become a mess and people have to move out or the city has to grow in size to support it (and here comes suburbanism that NJB is against).

Since NJB has reached a certain level of popularity now, the channel's got many blind fanbois. The comment section here shows that much. But just as this video says, I'm also a big fan of NJB channel but not a blind one. I agree cities need to prioritize her residents over suburban dwelling passer-bys. I've learned much about the possibilities of a livable city from NJB, and my approach is going to be, to work towards making my nearest city more livable, while I enjoy living near a forest trail, complete with river and hills in my suburban utopia where I can soak in the nature away from many others of my kind (human beings).

Lastly, in the wise words of Agent Smith, we are virus. We'll continue to move to a nice place, destroy its ecosystem then move on to another nice place for survival. So, yeah eventually when our lives are threatened we'll all move, regardless of who says what. It's in our nature. That's why white immigrants came from Europe to settle down on first nation lands. Apparently at one point in our history Amsterdam and the Netherlands were not so livable. Go figure! 😂

njbs good for baby's first urbanism content. after that? time to pack it up lmao. dude's so obnoxiously smug in a redditor iamverysmart type of way it's hard to stick around.

NotJustBikes is such a great example of why non metropolitan area Canadians and Americans like me get pushed away by Urbanists. By non metropolitan I mean small cities, towns and rural areas where people don't just live to go work at the major urban center nearby.

It's just filled with so much hate towards people like me and areas like mine. This is on top of why so many urbanists being unable to disconnect their other ideological beliefs when discussing urbanism. I remember reading a comment on a video that he left on a video about Randal O'Toole on Oh the urbanity. Where he accuses libertarian funding the reason why Randal O'Toole adopted the anti planner rhetoric to push more urban sprawl and car centric development. Even though in the video, Oh the urbanity states that the Cato institute supports zoning law reform in California which aims to abolish single family home zoning and that Randal O'Toole accused the Cato institute for "selling out Californian home owners". Also from an article on planetizen which covers cato institute firing O'Toole over a zoom call:

"Randal O'Toole, who resisted contemporary progressive planning trends by supporting the unfettered expansion of automobile infrastructure and single-family residential development, is no longer employed by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute."

However NotJustBikes states that it's those pesky libertarians are one of the two groups propping him up (the other being fossil fuel billionaires). I understand that he leans politically a certain way, his use of fascist might hint at it might be a little bit more than a lean. Even when people he ideologically disagrees with are united with him on an issue when it comes to urbanism, he can't let go of his other beliefs. I see this in a lot of people who are proponents of Urbanism where people like me are just treated as dumb backwater malicious actors even though we agree on many issues that exist and how we can start fixing those issues. It sadly just makes me just throw in the towel and saying something along the lines off, hey guess what, housing is cheap here, our communities are walk able and cycle-able and something something bugman. I'm not alone on this. I hope more urbanists will chose to focus on issues and solutions where there is common ground instead of acting like moral snobby elitists.

Also him calling Canada uncivilized in a recent video about trains shows how much NA bad, europe good (but not Slavic or Balkan European countries, only the ones I cherry pick can be considered europe ofc) permeates discussions on urbanism and again, pushes people like me away.

Compare NJB to the Weeb Community, many of us either travel to Japan or are living our Anime dreams in Japan, But most of us don't really shit on America much. I think it has do with just how Weeb Culture and Japanese culture tends to be more grateful, and we understand Japan has problems just different from the US

I think it would have been a better video if you had explained in what way 'Not just bikes' is wrong. It seems to me that you are just stating that you are disappointed and that NJB is defeatist and that you would like him not to be, but I am not hearing arguments why you think the US will improve its planning and infrastructure in a sigificant way within lets say two generations.

It's not bad to leave during a game, even if you miss a comeback you don't miss traffic!

The thing is that most of not just bikes is itnis very black and white. Amsterdam is good and north america is bad

I agree that a statement like 'Give up on the US', is a bit harsh. NJB himself has made the argument that America and mobility & urbanism is not so much about the US as a country, but it is much more relevant how city design is implemented on a local level, ie if it prioritizes the human scale. Giving up on the US- indicates that the whole country should be discarded and left to rot. I believe that there is plenty of room in the US for local gems that will sprout in this rotten urbanized landscape of the US nowadays. Places like Portland could develop into a European-style city design. Just like Vancouver is turning more and more car restrictive as we speak.

I do agree with NJB that the embedded car-centric culture is going to be hard to beat, especially in the US. With all the political corruption and strong lobbying by the large car manufacturers and petrol industries. It will be virtually impossible to win.

Look it will be okay, California is trying their best to fix their state.

Everyone come move to the US cities. We need more good people in our cities.

I'm sure he omitted the obvious territory argument on purpose because he wanted something to complain about

NJB is the Johnny Harris of Urbanism YouTube. 🤪

Not Just Bikes, more like Not Just Mid 💀

"Owning a car makes you evil"

Ok, but having no concern for other people safety while cycling with no brakes doesn't

Alright then..

oof, he just kept digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole 😬

Lets be clear. If activism comes at the cost of your families health and safety, you need to reconsider your priorities.

Jason has a family. I don't give a damn how important you think it is to stick around to help fight for better infrastructure. His family takes priority over passing your purity tests. Because that is all this is. A worthless purity test that does nothing more than to undermine people who are trying to show how the infrastructure in the US can be improved.

If video's with titles like this one are how you believe people should fight for improvement, you got no room to talk. Because in that case, Jason's effort are infinitely more effective that yours. He at least is smart enough to understand how stupid infighting is.

And just to clarify: no, I'm not giving you a single second of watchtime. Not my fault if the title and comments misrepresent your video. If you resort to clickbait titles, you lose the privilege to demand that I listen to all your claims.

This is a bad take.