From an outside perspective: The US can’t even agree that there’s a problem (yet). Most people will proudly defend the car dependent way of life. As soon as there is a consensus about needing to change, the process could start and then it will take 30 years. Clock hasn’t even started ticking yet, so yeah, lost cause for now.

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You don’t fix a continent. And he forgot about Mexico, but whatever. You make towns and cities better, here and there, as opportunity permits. And that, my friends, is of course feasible during our lifetimes.

yeah sure dont give up. fight for people etc etc. but if i had to bet, id bet he is right. call it doomerism. id rather recognize this country has little chance of improving in my lifetime so i could escape somewhere that isn’t as terrible. is that privileged? yeah. It is also selfish. But I have one life.

The US serves capital and it is difficult to imagine any case where that changes outside of like government collapse. But then you get called an accelerationist, so lose-lose 🤷

I think what people actually have an issue with here is the bitter, almost preachy tone of these tweets. Which is also fair. I dont think its possible for everyone to be happy when sharing opinions on this topic. And people’s opinions change depending on the circumstances.

I mean, as a ‘Murica citizen, I’ve given up on the particular area that I live in. But that does not mean that other places won’t improve as more and more people advocate. I simply don’t have faith that the people in my area will advocate

It’s important for a movement to have both practical, achievable goals and aspirational ones. There’s plenty of room for content from people showing us how good it can be, without really caring about how we get there.

That’s Not Just Bikes niche, and he does a good job at it.

Incredibly based points. I live in urban hell small town Saskatchewan. I feel the same way.

If only millenials could kill the car market just like how we’re killing the {diamond, fabric softener, housing, cable tv, beer, yogurt} markets.

I was really disappointed in these comments.

NJB has been upfront consistently about how they aren’t an advocacy channel and I don’t fault them for not jumping into how to fix North America’s transit/urban planning issues. That’s simply not a focus of their content.

I also don’t blame NJB for not wanting to have that fight anymore and doing what he sees as the best move for himself and his family. Good for him.

However saying “just give up” helps absolutely no one, and completely overlooks the fact that millions of people can’t simply relocate to the Netherlands like he did whether that be for monetary or personal reasons.

It’s exceptionally callous and pessimistic reasoning.

There are lots of pockets across the US and NA where they’re getting it right, and it’s my belief there’s so many more areas where people don’t actually know an alternative actually exists.

Change can happen. As others have pointed out in this thread, compare Portland in the 70s to today, NYC is taking strides, cities across the country are revoking parking minimums, and hundreds of other examples show this to be true. NJBs success is built on this shift in thinking.

Change has to happen.

I believe NJB, and similar content, is crucial to getting people to realize how much better things can be if we want them to be. But it will be a slow process that will build momentum over time. There are no silver bullet solutions and no immediate answers.

For similar urbanist content that overlaps NJB, but from an urban planner based in the US I highly recommend City Beautiful

https://youtu.be/JcgGiHZoWBc

For inspiration

https://www.reddit.com/r/StopCarDependency/comments/vwii99/whats_been_done_can_be_undone/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

I got in a fight with somebody on Instagram who decided to do a whole reel on how this is NJB “hurting urbanism”. I disagreed with them entirely, but I’m glad to not be seeing his awful points repeated here.

Are there problems with Jason’s view? Absolutely, but he’s also not speaking on behalf of anyone other than himself. There straight up are massive amounts of the US and Canada that I don’t think are ever fixable, short of razing them and restarting. And the problem with advocacy to fix them is that there’s so many issues that compound to make them horrible places, that no advocacy group will be able to win anything. Putting in bike lanes only works when there are places to bike to (and we can’t even seem to get good bike lanes right here).

He literally closes with “it can get better, but it cannot be fixed within your children’s lifetimes”. Specifically referring to the US there. He isn’t discouraging anyone from advocating, just explaining why he himself does not for NA.

If we all adopted NJB’s mindset we’d just have our grandkids asking why WE didn’t do something.

For the most part, we win cities and towns, not countries (and especially not big countries like USA, Canada, and Mexico) and certainly not continents. It’s way easier to hear about national news than local news, and even moreso local news that isn’t from your city. Urbanist communities often portray stagnancy, but that’s often not the case, for better and worse. Houston still sucks but it’s better than it used to be. Philadelphia is still one of the better US cities for being carless but for a variety of reasons (shitty Democratic mayoral nomination that proves we need to end first past the post, crime related decline in public transit ridership) it is likely to get worse (and to be clear, Houston and Philadelphia are both relatively low-income cities. They do not have the money to make the big transformation Paris did, and that’s in spite of Philly literally being designed to be like Paris) Neither of these facts should have the response of “give up.”

I think he has a point that fixing the US is somewhat hopeless. There are many pieces that go into the puzzle that is the United States and its citizens and together they create such a hostile and undesirable place that is adamantly resistent to change. Not only were our cities literally demolished to make way for the car, the whole idea of driving and what that means is deeply engrained in our culture and identity.

This isn’t just about removing stroads and designing some cutesy livable spaces and parks in cities. This is about changing the identity of what it means to be an American. Do you think you could convince even a portion of Americans that the European old way of living is better than the American way?

No, Americans are watching the right channel. It is easy to ignore a problem, and to give up on it when you see no alternative. It is much harder to see what could be and then be like: nahhhh, that’ll be impossible to achieve, i’ll just suffer.

Thats not how humans work!

I bicycled on a fixed gear brakeless bike for four years in Los Angeles during the mid 2010s. The cycling culture there at the time was very anti authoritarian. Very anti car. I got back in a car after realizing my whole life and identity was caught up in the bicycle, which wouldn’t have been the case had infrastructure made it feasible for me to not spend most of my time planning around basic trips to see friends and grabbing groceries.

That time in my life made me realize how car centric the US is even with having never biked in other countries. That said, I’d say even if it takes 2 or 3 generations for US infrastructure to change for the better for pedestrians, cyclists, and other forms of public transportation, then the US should push in that direction. It is dire in the US regarding this topic, but the fight needs to continue on.

I agreed with every point, and that was before I realized OP’s rant was limited in scope to commuting.