Is "Small City Urbanism" an Oxymoron? 10 Undervalued Cities to Ponder

big cities are great and they're really what this channel is all about but there are advantages to living in a smaller City I'm going to get into that and then we're going to count down the 10 most undervalued small cities in the U.S including a number one that's a city that I just never really talk about on this channel and honestly never thought that much about but now I can't stop thinking about it it's all coming up next this is City nerd weekly content on cities and transportation viewer suggested topics always welcome and I do get asked a lot to do something on smaller cities and this request from my patreon is a great example you can pause and read it if you want but it basically asks can you live in a smaller City and still be true to urbanist values and if so where are the best places to do that before we really get into this first of all I couldn't afford a haircut and a new hat this week and the hat was non-negotiable it turns out Sevilla is scorching hot in late March second this is a topic that probably isn't for me even being on vacation in a foreign country if I'm in a smaller City I start getting bored after a couple of days so these aren't places I would probably consider living in personally but now that I went through and analyzed everything I do think I want to visit all the ones I haven't been to yet anyway I acknowledge that everyone thinks differently about this stuff and on an abstract level it does make sense why someone would want to live in a smaller City probably a more deliberate pace of life and the math says your voice is going to carry proportionately more weight in your community so that's a plus but I do assume that if you're the type of person who watches this channel you still want to live in a place where you can enjoy proper City amenities and live true to whatever your urbanist values are decent Transit good walkability with lots of goods and services in walking distance and bikeability too so here's what I did the term small city is a bit subjective but being that I'm the totalitarian ruler of this channel I went ahead and unilaterally determined that under half a million in the urbanized area is small and over 50 000 is a city to figure out how quote unquote urbanist a city is I created per capita measures of Transit provision and ridership from the national Transit database to really capture the public transportation culture of each City I used walk score for walkability which does account for proximity and distribution of shopping services and other Urban amenities and I used bike score as well although I gave that a bit less weight another thing is I want these to be affordable cities I'm not going to try to tell you to go with of your urbanist fantasies and like Santa Cruz that would just shred whatever little credibility I've left with any of you so Zillow home value index ended up being an important part of the overall formula last thing I did apply a penalty for college towns like the proportion of the population made up by students just on the idea that the transit service and the walkability and those kinds of cities tends to be disproportionately concentrated around the universities themselves so the benefits aren't spread evenly across the city don't worry college towns still ended up with healthy representation on this list just not if the name of the town is literally State College so what I end up with here is a list of cities under a half a million population that punch well above their way in pretty much every area and where the prevailing home prices are still under four hundred thousand dollars or so and there will be a couple cities that are familiar if you're viewer of this channel but several new cities too so that's always fun good enough let's get into it number 10 is Burlington Vermont yeah it's a college town for better or worse but it's a pretty great town on its own merits downtown Burlington is legitimately nice with very active streetscapes and a really successful car free space Church Street running right down the center also highest bike score rating on this whole list and 81 which is pretty fantastic for any U.S city let alone a smaller more rural feeling one you really do get a lot for your money here and most importantly Burlington is home of the world's tallest filing cabinet number nine is a city I've talked about a few times on this channel and it's Madison Wisconsin could have been an honorable mention in my recent state capitals video it really does have one of the more unique layouts of any City in the entire us and I do mean that in a good way the University of Wisconsin is going to be a big driver of some of the urban amenities here but there are great neighborhoods all over the city so very good urbanism for its size attractive setting educated population I'm actually surprised Madison is still as affordable as it is number eight is Ann Arbor Michigan let me go ahead and assure you that this isn't going to just be a list of Big Ten college towns Ann Arbor actually is a city I have not talked about except for probably talking about Michigan Stadium aka the largest stadium in the Western World at least like five times anyway the admission from this channel is weird because this is a legitimately great town in a lot of the same ways Madison is probably a better bike City actually given the city's put a lot into infrastructure in the last few years number seven is Athens Georgia okay I swear I penalized for having a big State University presence but all of these are still great towns and I do promise I've got some non-college towns coming up I don't want to focus too much on infrastructure here housing density and mixed use is an important part of walkability too and Athens is building a lot of six story stuff downtown also I didn't give credit for proximity to bigger cities but I do think it's a selling point and I'm just going to point out that if this was Spain there would be like at least one train an hour between Athens and Atlanta and that train would take like 45 minutes okay let's get away from college towns for number six New Bedford Massachusetts yes geography nerds New Bedford is part of the Providence Metropolitan statistical area but it is its own separate urbanized area and that's the definition I was going with so you kind of get the best of both worlds close enough to be part of a metro area that's over a million and on the Acela Corridor but really its own smaller City with a distinct culture and identity and history after all New Bedford is a key location in what's possibly the most important work of fiction in American history also I don't know if someone from the New Bedford Chamber of Commerce recently edited the Wikipedia page but it claims this was once the wealthiest city in the world per capita and the center of abolitionism and those are claims that I think need to be investigated number five is Ithaca New York the existence of Cornell does make it something of a college town but again a great Northeast small City in its own right it's funny if you street view it a lot of it has this high-end Westchester County feel to it but the prevailing home prices under three hundred thousand dollars I guess the downside is it's a community that's maybe too tight-knit and highbrow to accommodate a dining establishment that specializes in the industrial scale production of cheesecakes but don't kid yourself it's still a typical small U.S city in all the important ways so clearly there's going to be a Strode slash Power Center where you can pay like 12 bucks for a 3 000 calorie meal now number four actually surprised me it even made my minimum population threshold but apparently 56 000 people live in the Williamsport Pennsylvania urbanized area so it's small but it's got a lot of the things that are consistently good about small to medium-sized Pennsylvania cities like a lot of them the kind of industry that defined Williamsport in its boom ears which I think was Lumber is pretty much long gone but all the great pre-automobile pieces are still intact a downtown grid that spreads out into the neighborhoods great old building stock you just have to deal with the influx of professionalized 11 and 12 year olds and their awful parents every August okay top three coming up and it is a top three I feel pretty good about before that feel free to drop a like on the video and subscribe although that'll probably result in my nonsense showing up in your feed more often so tread lately all the usual ways to engage on all the usual apps and direct support on patreon is appreciated and does help keep the contents bigot turned on honorable mentions I gave you a couple at the top and also give you my number 11 City and that's Charlottesville Virginia could have ranked higher but it's getting up towards my admittedly arbitrary four hundred thousand dollar budget college town but Virginia is cool it's kind of north and south at the same time it's historic and Central and Charlottesville does have a great downtown with a car free Central spine but just a recent history that's really unfortunate okay number three has not been discussed on this channel ever as far as I can remember and it's Syracuse New York close to my half a million upper threshold and it is the biggest urbanized area on this list so you're gonna have a lot of neighborhoods to choose from so instead of focusing on quaint downtown streets let's paper proper respect to Little Italy skunk City and the historically Irish neighborhood Tipperary Hill home of what is an absolutely Preposterous piece of traffic infrastructure pause the video if you need time to figure out what I'm talking about yeah it's apparently the nation's only green on top traffic signal I'm really not sure how the state traffic engineer lets this slide like signals with green on top are cool apparently but strodes that have actual sidewalks are A Bridge Too Far like total Anarchy makes perfect sense number two is when you already know I like if you watch the channel and it does tend to fly under the radar in my opinion and it's Champaign Illinois the University of Illinois is massive for better or worse but Champaign Urbana is around 150 000 people so it is theoretically possible to live away from the main campus influence area which does include a state standard College type commercial District on Green Street where you can get the usual kind of Staples you find in places like this like way over sweetened bubble tea corporate sub sandwiches and burritos that weigh like four pounds but because it's a Twin City setup you get two reasonably Charming downtowns great Urban fabric educated population that attracts cultural events pretty good access to Chicago and the prevailing home price is under a hundred eighty thousand dollars and I know the weather isn't ideal but you can use the money you save to go live in Bora Bora or whatever for a month every year and number One never mentioned in the history of this channel but now I can't stop thinking about it it's Erie Pennsylvania again I know you're all going to say yeah but what about the weather well just to give you an indication Erie is on the lakefront it's named for roughly equidistant between clean Cleveland and buffalo I'll just read from the Wikipedia article the city experiences a full range of weather events including snow ice rain thunderstorms and fog they should have said full range of dismal weather events you know what though just dress accordingly because the prevailing home price is a hundred seventy three thousand dollars and you can use the money you save on mortgage payments to spend a couple months in say Spain every year although Valencia is actually cheaper to live in than Erie now that I think about it so maybe this whole list is pointless back to the original question though can you live the urbanist life of your dreams in Erie Pennsylvania well it does have the usual nice Urban fabric all these Pennsylvania cities seem to have as well as other crucial amenities hipster food haul check Brew Pub check Cat Cafe check so and until your Spanish proficiency improves it's just gonna have to do and that's all I've got thanks for joining today and thanks again to the patrons for helping to fund this ongoing procession of Airbnb kitchen backdrops today is Sevilla I didn't even get to film a-roll when I was in Granada earlier this week which is a shame I do have some b-roll content though top 10 medieval fortresses maybe anyway next week's video will be shot in once again a yet to be disclosed location follow on Instagram if you want sneak previews keep the great topic suggestions coming and I will see you next week

Channel: CityNerd

Views: 374,533

Keywords: urbanism, urbanist, urban, urban talk, urbanism sociology, urban exploration, urbanism as a way of life, urbanism architecture, urbanist exploring cities, urbanist session, urban planning problems, urban planning, city planning, urban design, ithaca, ithaca ny, burlington vermont, ann arbor michigan, williamsport pa, erie pa, champaign illinois, new bedford massachusetts

Id: SQRqvfqpPe4

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023