Modern Public Spaces Suck, But They Didn't Have To

Honestly, this channel is what made me realise that cities didn't need to be like this. The car has killed the city.

I want to put giant reflective beans everywhere

Another opportunity to clearly say: cars aren't evil, car dependency is.

Genuine car enthusiast here. A few years back I moved into a city centre; for the lifestyle, the convenience, the culture and the vibrancy. Over that time I’ve come to the realisation that I would gladly give up my car if it meant I didn’t have to put up with the noise, pollution and cost to my local authority of accommodating car transport. I look at my local street and think of how nice it would be to take my dog for a walk and not have the threat of him being knocked down almost every day by some dingbat in a Tesla/BMW/Mercedes. I’d pay it just to NOT have to tell my kids to watch themselves every single time they cross the street. I’ll remind you, I love the automobile. Nothing I love more than taking a nice car and hustling it along a backroad, getting my hands dirty doing an oil change or just sitting and reading a Haynes manual for a couple of hours with a nice cup of tea. But city driving, in fact most driving is not what makes cars enjoyable. It’s drudgery; probably something that someone else should be doing. That’s why I take the bus. Nice video Adam.

Most foreigners: OMG, Prague is so beautiful, so good public transport! Adam Something: It's but a death and dismay.

I live in a small college town in indiana. The city had blocked off one street with a lot of shops and restaurants during covid, to allow for outdoor dining. After covid, I guess they decided to keep it pedestrian only. That was probably the best decision I’ve seen our city make, it’s now my favorite part of town.

Even the Unicef ‘Building a Child Friendly City’ programme has minimal mention of cars.

When I visited Prague few years ago I was shocked by the exactly this same discrepancy between pleasant walkable districts and horrible traffic zones around them. Just a remark from a fellow architect. Greetings from Zagreb!

Montreal's mayor just proposed a bunch of new pedestrianized areas in the downtown area, a great feature to complement the new regional light rail system.

As an immigrant in Singapore, just walking along the streets and riverside paths gives me so much pleasure. Singapore is extremely well designed in terms of 1. Each area is self sufficient and has it's own "center", where people hang out in the evenings, there's usually some musicians around too. On sundays you can see people chilling out at public parks all day. 2. Most of the people live in public housing 3. Cars are highly disincentivized, most people use public transport which is amazing. Cycling is being encouraged and cycling paths are being expanded.

The picture of Svoboda (current carbrain mayor of Prague) at the end of the video just nailed it

I think one of the reasons the streets shown in the video are so lifeless is the lack of trees.

I was walking down a busy road a few months ago. For some reason, the traffic starting thinning out and for around 30 seconds there was zero cars within sight. And for that brief period, everything became way more quiet and I could actually hear something other than engines for once. People walking, trees in the wind and some birds. It was quite calming. It's insane just how much noise pollution is caused by cars.

One of the biggest mistakes we ever made was allowing modernists to design buildings as objects instead of placemakers. I would LOVE a video about this specific concept and how destroying our sense of place has had very negative consequences on our mental health and behaviors.

I like how in Barcelona they’ve taken some small steps to reclaim city space from cars. I recognize most shots in this video pretty cool.

If America can remove the car lobby, they should force them to pay up for all the towns and cities they demolished.

5:31 This is the key here. Viable alternatives. In a city like London where public transport is a joke (we have signs discouraging people from travelling during rush hour because our network can't handle it. You know, the period that is defined by everyone needing to travel at that time) and the city is built almost entirely around the car, it is practically impossible to imagine any other way of moving large numbers of people any more efficiently. But I realised something walking through my town during the early afternoon. How empty the roads were. The hoardes of people driving were those going to and from work, or ferrying their children to school. These are the people mass transit is supposed to serve. I couldn't help but wonder what their lives would be like had we a comprehensive, functional, reliable mass transit system.

The places he calls dull areas in Europe would be like the most beautiful places ever built if they were in the US. I'm jealous.

Adam, as an activist dealing with sustainable transportation in Prague, I really love that you are targeting our local mindset, which is damaging our city so much. The city even has strategic aims to decrease amount of traffic (as a transportation and climate policy), but politicians NEVER allow to do any significant steps towards it; Regardless on coalition in the city council, the majority in the city parliament is always car-centric and the shift is not to be foreseen. So they actually overvote anything which would significantly harm "freedom" of car use in Prague. Even people who are aware of problems caused by cars in Prague will not accept increase of street parking fees, which is the only usable tool that Czech legislation provides to regulate cars, and whose are actually laughably low. So this is some kind of guilty pleasure to see places we are trying to change towards more livable and pleasant state, as an example of dull neglection shown to your international audience. Maybe, this is also way how to put a mirror to our city officials.

Yup, Prague, the medieval parking lot :-)