The Awful Canadian Stroad Thread

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Here is an excellent YouTube video about the evils of the Stroad.

...

It does an excellent job of defining the problem, and how it can be solved.

Molson, you'll be pleased to note that even though the video was designed for a global audience, it concentrates on the woes of North America (as apposed to the Netherlands), and that London, ON received special mention on a couple of occasions (referred to as "lousy London").

I've posted his videos. He's a Canadian engineer from London, ON, who moved to Amsterdam.

And speaking of stroads, here's another video he posted today about how poorly speed limits are assigned on such, in North America:

• Video Link

[ssiguy]

Interesting and informative video but he makes absurd analogies.

He shows a lovely street in an old section of a European city and says how wonderful it is but then uses the NA example as the stroads. They are far more frequent in NA but anyone who has every been to suburban European cities knows that they too have their own and their truly gaud awful ethnic apt slums surrounding nothing but concrete.

There is also one thing that he doesn't mention..........the difference between Canada and the US. Canada also has stroads but ours tend to have better sidewalks and intersections. Most importantly, in our cities, the shops/businesses/housing along these stroads have VASTLY superior transit usage and frequency.

He loves to pick on London but there is no city in the US of similar size that comes even close to the frequency and service level that Londoners enjoy. London has the same ridership as nearby Detroit. Yes London has stroads but conversely London has them as they are needed to get across the city because the city has no freeways and had no inner city industrial areas and it didn't want to rip thru it's beautiful inner city neighbourhoods.

[Truenorth00]

He picks on London because that's where he grew up and that's his baseline. I also think criticism of smaller cities are useful. Far too often in North America, we have this idea that smaller cities can't be urban or have good urban designs. "We're not Toronto." The amount of times, I have heard that as an excuse for underinvestment in transit or just terrible design. Incidentally, it's why most of our smaller metros all look like versions of 905 suburbs, especially in their newer parts. Also, a convenient excuse for these smaller cities absolutely destroying commercial activity in their older areas.

Indeed, Jason Slaughter points out in his first video that it was a visit to a town that was half the population of London, ON that first showed him that population had nothing to do with liveliness and good urban form:

• Video Link

[doldrum]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

A place to post pictures and to discuss Stroads.



The most (in)famous stroad in London, Ontario is Wonderland (St)Road. there is nothing wonderful about it. I hate driving on it. I hate biking on it. I hate walking along it. I hate the view from it.

It is so ugly, that it is almost impossible to find pictures of it (I think it would crack most lenses with its sheer ugliness)



https://www.google.ca/maps/search/Wo...3.35z?hl=en-GB


Is that Siberia? No, it's London Ontario!
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.98424...i8192?hl=en-GB

Irkutsk? Nyet. London, Ontario.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.98392...i8192?hl=en-GB

Ahh!! My eyes!!
https://www.google.ca/maps/@42.93260...i8192?hl=en-GB

This is something that I've been meaning to comment it...

These locations look very car-dependent, but I've seen Canadians and a few others arguing throughout this forum and others that the mere presence of a handful of high-rise apartment buildings in areas like these means that Canada is "more walkable" than the US.

Many of Canada's suburban residential areas seem like they're rammed up against what looks like any major arterial roadway bordering an interstate in the US, which is supposed to serve as a retail corridor to "walk on", but the design of the area looks like a major commercial auto route.

Canada's east is better for "main street"-culture, yet for obvious historical and cultural reasons, it appears that Canada's residential areas are less well-served by aesthetic, walkable historic main streets than America's are, by far.

We've seen examples of that contrast all over this forum, yet the whole "America is sprawling and unwalkable" circle-jerk still gets bandied about incessantly here, despite the fact that a much larger % of America's urban and suburban landscape is pre-automobile than Canada's.

[doldrum]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

He picks on London because that's where he grew up and that's his baseline. I also think criticism of smaller cities are useful. Far too often in North America, we have this idea that smaller cities can't be urban or have good urban designs. "We're not Toronto." The amount of times, I have heard that as an excuse for underinvestment in transit or just terrible design. Incidentally, it's why most of our smaller metros all look like versions of 905 suburbs, especially in their newer parts. Also, a convenient excuse for these smaller cities absolutely destroying commercial activity in their older areas.

Indeed, Jason Slaughter points out in his first video that it was a visit to a town that was half the population of London, ON that first showed him that population had nothing to do with liveliness and good urban form:

• Video Link

1) "In North America" - stupid generalization.

2) His videos are stupidly cherry-picked and have an anti-American/anti-North American/pro-European bias. Houston is a poor city design-wise, but it is newer than your average American city by quite a bit, yet this man conflates American urban development with Houston rather than Boston, or New York, or Philadelphia, or Washington DC, or San Francisco, or Chicago, or Portland, Maine, or Charleston, or Pittsburgh, or Cincinnati, or Miami, or New Orleans, etc...Americans are always told by people like this that all of these cities essentially don't count, and people like this love to declare the entirety of America's urban vernacular, historical and contemporary, inadequate by focusing on cities like Phoenix, Atlanta, and Houston (constrained by climate and/or mere historical-migratory trends) - he's cherry picking and making utterly skewed comparisons to make the US look bad.

IE, it's agenda-pushing propaganda.

Contrary to your point, many smaller cities, towns and suburbs in the US outshine their Canadian counterparts, as partially evidence by a wealth of vibrant, walkable American college and resort towns, from Ojai to Iowa City to Oxford and Columbus, Ohio, to Champaign-Urbana, to Bloomington, Indiana, Athens, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Madison, Wisconsin, Ann Arbor, New Haven, Princeton, Savannah, Galena, Cambridge, Evansville, etc...

sure, transit is touch and go in some of them, but these areas are incredibly vibrant, walkable, and often bikeable.

[Kilgore Trout]

You accuse him of cherry-picking but you're splitting hairs. The stroads and horrible suburban environments he rails against in his videos are what most North Americans live with in their daily lives. The cute college towns you mention are the exception. In Europe, they're the norm. And it's not because of history. There is sprawl in Europe, sure, but for the most part even new developments are urban. I remember visiting Spain in the mid-2000s and was surprised to see that new subdivisions built on the outskirts of minor cities were as dense and walkable as anything Canada was building right in the middle of its big cities.

[doldrum]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

You accuse him of cherry-picking but you're splitting hairs. The stroads and horrible suburban environments he rails against in his videos are what most North Americans live with in their daily lives. The cute college towns you mention are the exception. In Europe, they're the norm. And it's not because of history. There is sprawl in Europe, sure, but for the most part even new developments are urban. I remember visiting Spain in the mid-2000s and was surprised to see that new subdivisions built on the outskirts of minor cities were as dense and walkable as anything Canada was building right in the middle of its big cities.

How am I splitting hairs? And he IS cherry-picking!

I wrote a long list of major US cities and college towns that have dense, walkable urban environments unlike Houston, and the population of those cities and towns eclipses by far that of the select few brand new sunbelt cities in the country, so no, it is not what "most North Americans are living with in their daily lives", and Europe has tons of "stroads" and unwalkable suburbs as well.

New urbanist developments in the US and in Europe tend to be dense and walkable. Most American suburbs with main streets are now seeing apartment tower construction in them along with the SFH's they already have, whereas the Cotton District in Starkville, Mississippi, is an aesthetically developed, walkable, small-town slice of urbanism, and that's one tiny, rural example in the US.

How are you dismissing all the "cute college towns" I mentioned as "the exception"? See, there you go again. You erroneously dismiss anything that doesn't conform to your biases as irrelevant or "the exception" - they aren't! My point was absolutely correct, the US has tons upon tons of walkable college towns, small towns, resort destinations, etc, something that Canada has lacked. The point that "small towns in the US don't do anything to become more walkable/dense/transit-friendly" is not true.

People have posted threads about cities across the US, and posted pictures of entire networks of walkable, old suburban and small town main streets and shopping streets, and no matter how many of these are posted, people like you keep making the obviously wrong and ridiculous claim that American cities and suburbs are mostly or entirely sprawling and un-walkable, and most closely resemble Houston - that is absolutely fucking wrong and a-historical.

The bulk of the US population resides in the northeastern megalopolis, the west coast, parts of the Great Lakes and the south Atlantic region, and these regions are full of walkable, transit-connected big cities of varying density, as well as historic, walkable small towns, college towns, resort towns and main streets. His videos are utterly biased.

[biguc]

That's a lotta words for covering your ears and "nananananananana I CAN'T HEAR YOU"


Go get laid.

[ssiguy]

It's not that Mr Not Just Bikes doesn't make some good arguments because he does but he also very much "cherry picks" his examples. Seriously he compares Amsterdam a capitol city a 1000 years old with a population of 2.5 million and 8 million in the Randstad with a city founded just 200 years ago with 440,000 and 550 in it's metro?

He shows suburban London and for downtown takes the vantage point of being in front of the railway but omits London's vibrant complete streets and beautiful inner city neighbourhoods that weren't disconnected by urban freeways. he shows the wonderful transit friendly areas of Amsterdam but omits London's new BRT just one block from the railway. You sure don't see him showing Amsterdam's lovely concrete ethnic ghettos that surround the city, the thousands of homeless drug addicts, or it's red light district which is a sex trafficking mecca.

Truth be told, Amsterdam is a rather boring city with very little pedestrian traffic, few complete streets, and a notoriously bad transit system and near non-existent inner-city rail. Of course I'm comparing it to Tokyo but according to him all's fair in love & war.

[ue]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

It's not that Mr Not Just Bikes doesn't make some good arguments because he does but he also very much "cherry picks" his examples. Seriously he compares Amsterdam a capitol city a 1000 years old with a population of 2.5 million and 8 million in the Randstad with a city founded just 200 years ago with 440,000 and 550 in it's metro?

He shows suburban London and for downtown takes the vantage point of being in front of the railway but omits London's vibrant complete streets and beautiful inner city neighbourhoods that weren't disconnected by urban freeways. he shows the wonderful transit friendly areas of Amsterdam but omits London's new BRT just one block from the railway. You sure don't see him showing Amsterdam's lovely concrete ethnic ghettos that surround the city, the thousands of homeless drug addicts, or it's red light district which is a sex trafficking mecca.

Truth be told, Amsterdam is a rather boring city with very little pedestrian traffic, few complete streets, and a notoriously bad transit system and near non-existent inner-city rail. Of course I'm comparing it to Tokyo but according to him all's fair in love & war.

The age of cities argument only goes so far. Manhattan is a lot younger than Amsterdam, but it's arguably as urban as Amsterdam. Like others have mentioned, modern suburban developments in Europe (and Japan) are far more urban than the usual North American or Australian suburban development.

Unless your city was barely a speck on a map in ~1950, there's a good chance it was extremely walkable and transit-friendly at one point. That includes sprawling cities like Houston and Atlanta. These 'young' cities were on the same level as European peers in terms of walkability, density, and transit usage. A city like London, Ontario was like this, too, and it could've continued on that path. But it, like every North American city (even New York), had a major ideological shift that began in the 1920s and became fully realized by the tail end of the 1940s. This shift also happened in Europe, but in some ways less dramatically. In others, like the lauded Dutch cities, there has been a deliberate ideological shift back to traditional ways of building cities over the past 40-50 years. Amsterdam in the 1960s imbibed the future that the car was supposed to bring just as much as St Louis or Montreal did.

So no, it isn't as simple as "oh London, Ontario or Dallas was too young to have people-oriented urbanism" because at one point their entire fabric was basically built as such. It was just ripped apart, while new development eschewed that ideology, and the shift back to traditional people-oriented cities has been half-assed at best. And unfortunately now we have the sunk cost of so much car-centric infrastructure that it's going to be really expensive retrofitting it.

[TownGuy]

I'm really curious to see how this new urbanism boulevard progresses in Cobourg. These buildings below are kind of stand alone right now, examples if you were. As it progresses the boulevard is also supposed to be lined with the traditional mixed use shops at the bottom, residential up top.





The rest of the neighborhood is pretty damn solid examples of how we can still build quality walkable neighborhoods if we want to

[MolsonExport]

^much better than the carpet bombing of snouthouses (with the mandatory prickup trucks in the unidriveways) that makes up 60% of suburban development.



GTA special (posted by Doady on UrbanToronto):

urbantoronto

Garageland. Stroadsville. Asphalt Empire. Banal Big Box Barf. Ugliness incorporated.

[ssiguy]

I never said the guy didn't make some very valid points because he most certainly does. The US & Canada are full of "stroads" and they are indeed a blight on the urban fabric.

All I am saying is that if you are going to make comparisons then at least make them relatively fair ones and when you do so you don't cherry pick the horrible developments of one city to the nirvana areas of the other but never vice-versa. When you do this you go from being an informative blog to a condescending bitch forum.

[Kilgore Trout]

He's not making direct comparisons, he is explaining why Dutch urbanism works well and why the baseline North American style of development is so horrendous. If all you got out of his videos was some kind of "fake London vs. Amsterdam" battle you need to watch them again. He even has a video extolling the virtues of Toronto's downtown neighbourhoods.

I live in one of the most lively and walkable cities in North America but I'm not deluded. I know 75% of greater Montreal is horrible suburban sprawl. There's about a million people in this entire metropolitan area who live in dense, pedestrian-oriented environments and 3.5 million who live in car-dependent suburbia. The only reason the proportion is the opposite in the Netherlands and in some other parts of Europe is because of policy decisions made in the last 30-40 years.

[doldrum]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

It's not that Mr Not Just Bikes doesn't make some good arguments because he does but he also very much "cherry picks" his examples. Seriously he compares Amsterdam a capitol city a 1000 years old with a population of 2.5 million and 8 million in the Randstad with a city founded just 200 years ago with 440,000 and 550 in it's metro?

He shows suburban London and for downtown takes the vantage point of being in front of the railway but omits London's vibrant complete streets and beautiful inner city neighbourhoods that weren't disconnected by urban freeways. he shows the wonderful transit friendly areas of Amsterdam but omits London's new BRT just one block from the railway. You sure don't see him showing Amsterdam's lovely concrete ethnic ghettos that surround the city, the thousands of homeless drug addicts, or it's red light district which is a sex trafficking mecca.

Truth be told, Amsterdam is a rather boring city with very little pedestrian traffic, few complete streets, and a notoriously bad transit system and near non-existent inner-city rail. Of course I'm comparing it to Tokyo but according to him all's fair in love & war.

But Europeans always do this to American cities when comparing them to European ones.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making cities like Houston and Atlanta denser and more aesthetic, which they are heading towards becoming - but the constant anti-American generalizations smother the positive aspects about American cities and towns, and it's frustrating that people are so dismissive and eager to stereotype and generalize about a nation of 330 million spread across the third largest land area on earth.

Like, the US has TONS of significant cities and small towns of appreciable density and historic quality. It would be nice if people on these forums didn't just pretend like they don't exist. How would Canadians feel if I made stupid generalizations about Canada having no historic cities, or claimed that ALL of their cities were unwalkable and horribly designed?

[doldrum]

Originally Posted by biguc

That's a lotta words for covering your ears and "nananananananana I CAN'T HEAR YOU"


Go get laid.

...which is what you're doing. I'm the only dissenting argument in this echo chamber, and I am, predictably, being dogpiled

[biguc]

Originally Posted by doldrum

...which is what you're doing. I'm the only dissenting argument in this echo chamber, and I am, predictably, being dogpiled

Because you aren't dissenting. You're arguing against a point that nobody ever made and being rude about it.

Kilgore Trout already covered this and you ignored him in favour of continuing your tantrum. Hence my last post. Since then, he's covered it even further and and here you are, throwing a pity party.

[jamincan]

Originally Posted by doldrum

But Europeans always do this to American cities when comparing them to European ones.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making cities like Houston and Atlanta denser and more aesthetic, which they are heading towards becoming - but the constant anti-American generalizations smother the positive aspects about American cities and towns, and it's frustrating that people are so dismissive and eager to stereotype and generalize about a nation of 330 million spread across the third largest land area on earth.

Like, the US has TONS of significant cities and small towns of appreciable density and historic quality. It would be nice if people on these forums didn't just pretend like they don't exist. How would Canadians feel if I made stupid generalizations about Canada having no historic cities, or claimed that ALL of their cities were unwalkable and horribly designed?

Is that what Not Just Bikes is claiming? I think that the author is trying to demonstrate that the built form so many of us take for granted in North America shouldn't just be accepted - there is a better way. As to why he holds up Amsterdam against London? They happen to be the two places he knows best since he lives in one and lived in the other.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout

He's not making direct comparisons, he is explaining why Dutch urbanism works well and why the baseline North American style of development is so horrendous. If all you got out of his videos was some kind of "fake London vs. Amsterdam" battle you need to watch them again. He even has a video extolling the virtues of Toronto's downtown neighbourhoods.

I live in one of the most lively and walkable cities in North America but I'm not deluded. I know 75% of greater Montreal is horrible suburban sprawl. There's about a million people in this entire metropolitan area who live in dense, pedestrian-oriented environments and 3.5 million who live in car-dependent suburbia. The only reason the proportion is the opposite in the Netherlands and in some other parts of Europe is because of policy decisions made in the last 30-40 years.

spot on.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by ue

The age of cities argument only goes so far. Manhattan is a lot younger than Amsterdam, but it's arguably as urban as Amsterdam. Like others have mentioned, modern suburban developments in Europe (and Japan) are far more urban than the usual North American or Australian suburban development.

Unless your city was barely a speck on a map in ~1950, there's a good chance it was extremely walkable and transit-friendly at one point. That includes sprawling cities like Houston and Atlanta. These 'young' cities were on the same level as European peers in terms of walkability, density, and transit usage. A city like London, Ontario was like this, too, and it could've continued on that path. But it, like every North American city (even New York), had a major ideological shift that began in the 1920s and became fully realized by the tail end of the 1940s. This shift also happened in Europe, but in some ways less dramatically. In others, like the lauded Dutch cities, there has been a deliberate ideological shift back to traditional ways of building cities over the past 40-50 years. Amsterdam in the 1960s imbibed the future that the car was supposed to bring just as much as St Louis or Montreal did.

So no, it isn't as simple as "oh London, Ontario or Dallas was too young to have people-oriented urbanism" because at one point their entire fabric was basically built as such. It was just ripped apart, while new development eschewed that ideology, and the shift back to traditional people-oriented cities has been half-assed at best. And unfortunately now we have the sunk cost of so much car-centric infrastructure that it's going to be really expensive retrofitting it.

One of the youngest cities in North America is Vancouver, and yet it has excellent walkability. And it has also avoided having an inner city freeway.

Even suburban Burnaby has long had relatively good walkability along Hastings Street and Kingsway, and New Westminster has maintained good walkability as well. It's all about priorities.

London, for its part, has some highly unwalkable areas, but it does have strong areas. In addition to Wortley Village and Richmond Row, the "downtown" area of Byron is worth mention.