Ranking the 12 Largest American Cities on Urban Planning

"babe come quick! The top 12 cities for urban design are officially out!"

Atlanta deserves it's roast. Everyone complains about traffic, but no one votes for public transport. Instead of extending Marta northwest to the new baseball stadium/Marietta, they built a dedicated elevated 2 lane express lane for cars. The only sustainable sections of development are in Buckhead and midtown where everything is right by the Marta stations and it's a grid layout.

As an SF native, I gotta say most of the price-related problems are because of huge gentrification and nimbys blocking every attempt to build denser housing along transit corridors Edit: It’s also because the city government might as well be 3 corporate landlords in a trenchcoat

With weather it seems like you’re primarily concerned with coldness, but the heat in places like Atlanta makes biking and walking dangerous for significant portions of the year, and NYC and Philly also experience significant heat stress.

You haven't yet delved down to Denver. But there is an interesting phenomenon. One of my "bus Buddies" IE: people who frequent the same buses Made the point that she was raised in NYC and noted that Denver's bus services are great during the morning & evening rush hours, but nearly disappear in off hours. Not great when you stumble-out of your favorite bar at 0230AM. How serious are we about preventing Drunk Driving? Get this guy on a bus & on his way!

Hey everyone, this episode is a very different format. I don't have much time on my hands because of moving so I had to squeeze this video in. Its almost more of a podcast format, either way I hope y'all enjoy. Also if you want to jump to certain cities, timestamps are marked. Also if you like city lists, go check out CityNerd too: youtube.com/c/CityNerd

Can confirm Philly: $800/month studio in a safe, walkable, amenity-filled neighborhood, a block off of a lovely park with excellent transit access to literally everything. And honestly, we barely even have winter most years.

One of the issues with Miami is that many people think “Miami” is just the downtown / Brickell area. Outside of this relatively small area there is nearly zero walkability or bikeability, especially because of how far everything is. To compound this issue there is a very inefficient public transportation system, if you can even call it that. Busses are infrequent and the [sparse] light rail is built around a park-n-ride system so without a car really nothing is possible in the city. On top of this, the entire public transportation network is set up around getting you to and from the downtown area, to go anywhere else you’re stuck with an expensive Uber. Miami is a shining example of urban sprawl even within city limits. The housing market in Miami has gone up 20% in the past six months so owning any property is unrealistic for most for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, rent has also been expensive even before this issue and will surely only worsen because of it. The weather is dismal: there are approximately only 4 or 5 months where the temperature is moderate but from late March to early November is hurricane season. During this period it rains, in no insignificant amount, everyday and is accompanied by near-constant 90 plus percent humidity. The climate in Miami makes it even less walkable than it already was. The city oftentimes gets mistaken for a resort / clubbing town, which there is plenty of in the tourist-centric / downtown, but day-to-day life in what constitutes the vast majority of the city limits is far from many other cities on this list. Unless you are wealthy and can afford to live in the [tiny] downtown area: life in Miami is a flat, humid, and rainy unfortunate example of urban sprawl and increasing inequality in the US.

It's good to see a transit/ urbanism channel giving Chicago the love it deserves

Chicago's weather does suck in the winter, but as a lifelong resident I can honestly say Chicago is the greatest city to visit/live in during the summer. Chicago's lakefront, specifically the ledge, is so nice during the summer it's no surprise Chicago has the "Summer Time Chi" reputation.

I'm surprised Miami got ranked so high in walkability considering it's one of the deadliest cities in the country for pedestrians. You could say downtown Miami is walkable but the downtown is a fairly small portion of the city. Most of the city is very car dependent with no trains going west/east.

So glad you went by metro area rather than city limits when counting the populations for top 10. So many people don’t seem to understand the difference.

I have made it work in Atlanta without a car by living in Midtown. A bike is really key, and feeling comfortable riding on roads without bike lanes. Although around the core area theres usually a route that avoids the largest roads. Actually getting out to the suburbs to visit my parents requires a car though. Zipcar used to be better here. Or just ubering places is sometimes necessary. I live outside the core downtown area now, but near a MARTA train station. I share a car with my GF, and it works just fine. Biking isnt always super safe, but its doable with some planning and sometimes sidewalk riding. Being an introvert and just not going out to the suburbs also helps. Who the hell even wants to drive out to the suburbs anyways, and for what? The traffic sucks here. I'm not going to drive an hour to go to some BBQ restaurant in the burbs, when theres a BBQ place in walking distance.

One push back on housing density in Queens - while there's more lower-density development in eastern Queens, it's largely past the end of the subway. While LIRR/commuter rail covers some parts of it, that part of the city would require better public transit infrastructure to increase density to anything similar to other parts of Queens so that fewer people need cars. (Conversely, I've lived in western Queens for a decade and haven't had or wanted a car in that entire time.)

Boston has an incredible amount of transit potential with a huge transit oriented population; but as you mentioned, the biggest issue is funding that causes good transit projects to take decades. Because of this, Boston has some of the oldest and most antiquated rolling stock in North America. This may change, as there is an overwhelming amount of political backing for transit and especially for a s-bahn style rework to the regional rail

In the "other" category I'd like to include restrooms. It's part of walkability and livability. One thing NYC has never been adequate at is flush facilities, and you really notice it when you travel to some of the better cities on earth.

As a NYer, I love the MTA, but it's in desperate need of repair. There's no reason why the connectivity is so bad in Brooklyn and Queens. The problem is that everything is so expensive here, so it's impossible to build anything for a reasonable price on a reasonable timescale.

I think Boston's housing problem stems from just an insane amount of NIMBY's in a lot of the suburban towns. There aren't enough apartments in the suburbs and many are fairly spread out single family homes. In some areas very close to Boston even the density drops a lot and there is a lot of push back against any higher density.

Chicago in a decent neighborhood in the summer may as well be a utopia. Loved my years living there. Hugely underrated

I'd love to see a review on Minneapolis - when I visited recently, I wasn't quite as impressed coming in on their highway network, but absolutely amazed that they had a pretty great light rail service and a dedicated bus-only highway linking the UMN campuses. It seems like they care just a little bit more than some other mid-size American cities, and I wonder how much more there is to it.