Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto)

if you've watched pretty much anything on this channel you'll know that i hate car dependent suburbia the oversized roads the car traffic parking lots that are bigger than the shops they service being unable to even buy food without getting in a car constantly needing to pass through depressing landscapes where nobody wants to be just in order to get anywhere financially insolvent places that need subsidies to stay afloat asphalt as far as the eye can see this awful view from my cousin's balcony that i keep showing in almost every video because i mean just look at this everything about this is terrible why do we keep building places like this more importantly why is it impossible to build almost anything other than places like this anymore incidentally when selling this apartment the real estate agent walked onto the balcony and introduced this as the million dollar view my cousin literally broke out laughing he only bought this apartment so that he could be close to his cannabis testing facility but time and time again people misunderstand the issue i like the suburbs they'll claim i want a backyard they'll say not everyone can live in cities this completely and utterly misses the point there is not a problem with suburbs suburbs have existed almost as long as cities have existed and there is nothing inherently wrong with them the problem is car dependent suburbs and that's what i mean when i talk about suburbia of course the confusion is understandable because for about the last 60 years or so car dependent suburbs have been the only suburbs that were legal to build in most places in the united states canada and some other countries like australia which means there are entire generations literally hundreds of millions of people who have no concept of a suburb except that of a car dependent suburb talk to a typical american and they'll probably tell you you can only live in one of two places a busy city or a car dependent suburb because almost nothing has been built in between those two extremes for as long as they've been alive but it doesn't have to be this way it is possible to build suburbs that don't suck now personally i love cities but that's not for everyone they might want to live somewhere quieter they might want a house with a yard or maybe they just want cheaper housing unlike most not just bikes videos i'm not going to focus too much on the netherlands here even though there are some great suburbs here because the truth is while the us and canada were the ones that invented and perfected depressing car dependent suburbia it didn't used to be this way before the second world war it was easy to find suburbs that don't suck before car dependency suburbs were walkable a walkable suburb may have been built around a train station or other public transit alan fisher aka the armchair urbanist made a great video about pittman a nice pre-war railroad suburb in new jersey a nice suburb should surround every suburban rail station instead of a sea of asphalt and parking like this one in this video however i want to specifically talk about a development pattern that was very common throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries the streetcar suburb as the name suggests streetcar suburbs are suburbs built around streetcar lines these were designed as self-contained places mixed-use neighborhoods with residential commercial and offices in the same area and although they are suburbs where you can drive if you want to they also have just about everything you could need within walking distance streetcar suburbs are found all over the us and canada though in most cases the streetcar tracks were torn up long ago toronto canada is one of the very few exceptions when we lived in toronto we lived in riverdale which is a fantastic streetcar suburb on the east side of town it's interesting to compare street car suburbs like this one with modern car dependent suburbia because it provides an insight into where we've gone wrong with suburban design riverdale is well connected by several streetcar lines one of which was converted into a subway in the 1960s unfortunately when the subway was completed the streetcar line was removed and the street was turned into a strode thankfully over 50 years later the strode is slowly being turned back into a street these bicycle lanes were installed last year for example riverdale is a neighborhood full of beautiful streets with a mix of detached and semi-detached houses as well as apartments and townhomes and even a housing co-op this provided a variety of housing options and a variety of housing prices more on that later the neighborhood is centered around a park that has become a regular meeting space for families there's a big park on the west side of the neighborhood too and there are several other small parquets sprinkled throughout the neighborhood the streets are narrow and feel comfortable to walk along there are always people out walking and children can walk to their friend's house or a park on their own too incidentally this walkability for kids means this is also one of the best neighborhoods for halloween trick-or-treating kids can hit up a lot of doors in a short distance i made a patreon bonus video about how halloween is better in walkable places the residents also closed off a street to car traffic for several days to put on a halloween show each year in general this kind of neighborhood encourages a strong sense of community unlike modern suburbia with massive schools servicing a wide area riverdale has several schools meaning that all children are within easy walking distance and most kids in the neighborhood walk to school there are several commercial streets along the periphery so it's easy to do day to day shopping without having to sit in traffic on your way to a big box store or shopping mall what's very unique though is that there aren't just shops along the commercial street but also some commercial buildings within the neighborhood this is never found in modern suburbs and i talk about this in my livable neighborhoods video these local shops are a way to buy something quick without having to go out to the main street and the cafes act as a third place for residents a place to meet outside of home or work there are multiple grocery stores as well which can be accessed not just by driving but also by walking cycling or public transit this has interesting implications for land use take for example this large grocery store chain it has a parking lot for cars but because you don't need a car to get there it doesn't have to be that big here's the size of the store and here's the size of the parking lot here's a grocery store in car dependent suburbia and here's the size of the parking lot significantly larger than the store itself which is typical for car dependent places and of course some of the grocery stores in riverdale only have street parking and there are a variety of butchers bakers vegetable stores and other places to buy food as well parking for residents is often on street but many streets have laneways behind the houses providing access to off-street parking these laneways keep the garages in the back of the house and out of sight making the neighborhood look better but they also minimize the places where cars cross the sidewalk making it safer to walk and if you don't have a car you can use the space in the laneway for something more useful the population density of riverdale is quite high with over 7000 people per square kilometer almost twice as high as the rest of the city and over six times that of the suburban hellscape where my cousin's apartment was located interestingly it's also not that different from where we currently live in amsterdam saud which looks significantly denser but despite the high population density it doesn't feel like a dense urban environment because of the parks and tree-lined streets in short riverdale is a beautiful suburb to live in and a great place to raise a family today there's a huge demand for places like riverdale people want to live in suburbs like this even if they don't know what walkability means and have never heard the term streetcar suburb because when you come from a car dependent suburban wasteland to a place like riverdale you feel the difference this is a place designed to a human scale it has lots of houses with backyards parks and trees everywhere but it also has people instead of fast-moving cars and housing prices reflect this desire the cost of housing in riverdale has consistently outpaced the rest of the city for about the past 15 years unfortunately prices have gone up so much in riverdale that if we move back to toronto today we couldn't afford to live there anymore the average price of a home in riverdale has gone from about 170 000 in 1996 to 1.2 million in 2021. which means that if we moved to toronto and didn't want to live in an apartment we'd be forced to live in a desolate car dependent suburb we'd have no other choice but despite the very high demand for walkable neighborhoods you couldn't build another riverdale today and that scarcity is part of what's driving up prices we've effectively legislated walkability out of existence specifically here are some of the reasons why you can't build this kind of suburb anymore in the us or canada this quaint comfortable street is about six meters wide it's a two-lane road with street parking this causes drivers to slow down which makes the street less hostile to pedestrians and cyclists it's part of the reason why this street is so nice it also means the tree canopy can cover the street but these lane widths do not meet modern traffic engineering standards so in suburbia this road would have to be somewhere between 10 to 15 meters wide depending on local requirements everybody's going to drive so we're going to need to have enough room for all those cars right here's what a 15 meter wide suburban street looks like the streets of riverdale are aligned on a fine grid with alternating one-way streets to discourage through traffic while still allowing people to walk the most direct route sometimes cyclists get to take the shortest route if they're given a contraflow lane like this of course cyclists should be able to go in both directions on all residential one-way streets because bicycles are not cars but i digress our new suburb has winding streets and cul-de-sacs with large distances between blocks meaning that everyone even people walking need to take the long route so it always makes more sense to drive and of course the zoning in riverdale would never meet modern standards the hallmark of car dependent suburbia is that residential neighborhoods are completely separated from commercial uses meaning a car is required for every trip the yellow parts on this map show where you can only build houses you won't find a quaint cafe in the middle of a suburban neighborhood anymore even where the boundaries between these residential and commercial spaces meet they're usually separated by giant strodes that are uncomfortable or dangerous places to be outside of a car so even if the distances are theoretically close enough to walk nobody will actually do it in many suburbs even schools are not allowed within the neighborhood because of traffic concerns it's automatically assumed that all students will need to be driven so schools are consolidated into one large school which is located along a major arterial road that can handle all the expected traffic roads that are too dangerous for children to walk along which requires them to be driven to school talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy there's evidence suggesting that driving your child to school is one of the worst things you can do for their development and independence but i'll talk about that in more detail in a future video the houses in riverdale are mixed with detached homes coexisting with many other types this would not be permitted in a typical modern suburb as they are zoned exclusively for single family homes i talked about this before in my missing middle video toronto now even has a regulation stating that a building can only have one front door this was upheld in a recent debate by city council because it would impact the character or aesthetic of neighborhoods and as you can clearly see this house in riverdale is totally ruining the character and aesthetic of the neighborhood by having two front doors disgraceful really next the lot sizes here are too small in riverdale you'll even find some lot sizes under 1500 square feet but modern suburbia will enforce a minimum lot size of anywhere from 7 000 to over 80 000 square feet even if you want to live in a tiny home which you're also not allowed to do because there are minimum building sizes as well and there are also regulations preventing you from building a lot that's too narrow this significantly affects the density of the neighborhood and makes distances even more difficult to walk fueling more car dependents these strict requirements also mean that most suburban houses are built the same and at a very similar price point too i mean we can't have people of marginally different socioeconomic status living near each other because otherwise so anyway these houses are too close to the street too and wouldn't meet setback requirements in suburbia houses need to be set back from the road by anywhere from 10 to 20 meters or more because some 1950s planner decided that having a big front yard is the only proper way to live so everybody needs to conform to that ideal incidentally the pressure on developers to build as many houses as possible combined with a strict setback requirement is why you'll sometimes see new suburban houses with a backyard that's smaller than the front yard ugh i hate mowing the lawn i am going to make a whole video someday about how much i hate front lawns finally these homes in riverdale also don't meet minimum parking requirements a typical car dependent suburb requires at least two off-street parking spaces per house because there's an automatic assumption that every home needs to own multiple cars so of course it's enshrined by law and this is nowhere near a comprehensive list there are many other byzantine requirements embedded in suburban zoning codes that enforce a very specific style of development when you look at suburbia there's an overwhelming sameness to it and that sameness stretches across the entire continent with very few exceptions you might think that this comes from the laziness of real estate developers or market forces converging on one popular design but a lot of this really comes out of the regulations in place that make it impossible to build anything other than places that look exactly like this even if you prefer car dependent suburbia you need to justify why it should be illegal to build anything other than car dependent suburbia because clearly there are lots of people who would gladly live in another riverdale if it were possible to build it so what would a modern walkable suburb look like well that's what i'll explore in future videos in this series here in the netherlands we don't have the same car-centric policies that lead to american-style suburbia in fact over the past few decades dutch regulations have done exactly the opposite they make it extremely difficult to build car dependent places here you'll find suburbs where even if you commute by car you can still do all of your other trips without one suburbs that can financially sustain themselves suburbs that are quiet and peaceful but without the soul-crushing traffic but i'll talk about those in future videos about suburbs that don't suck i'd like to thank my supporters on patreon who pay me to read through hundreds of pages of suburban zoning codes if you'd like to support the channel and get access to bonus videos visit patreon.com not just bikes you

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 1,030,758

Keywords: urban planning, Riverdale, Riverdale Toronto, Toronto Neighbourhoods, streetcar suburbs, pre-war suburbs, railroad suburbs

Id: MWsGBRdK2N0

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/killroy200]

Having been lucky enough to grown up in a grandfathered multi-family building in a Streetcar Suburb in Atlanta (part of the City proper), I never realized just how great it was until I moved out for school and work. Walking to friends, biking to school (when I didn't take the bus), walking to the park(s), walking to corner stores, walking to festivals, taking the city bus when needed, etc. was all quite enabling. It wasn't perfect of course, but I was able to do quite a lot on my own, and on my own schedule... even if I did spend a lot of time at home on a computer.

NJB is 100% spot on when he talked to the lack of such places driving up demand, and thus prices, for them. We need so many more neighborhoods like these, but with the reintroduction of strong transit (BRT, LRT, Streetcar, Regional Rail, etc.), and a stronger emphasis on pedestrian and bike infrastructure. Even with efforts to improve things in my old neighborhood, sidewalks are still a mess, and there's barely any bike infrastructure. Not to mention the buses are very limited.

[u/irykiryk]

Submission statement:

Another great video from u/notjustbikes.

[u/mungdungus]

Yesterday, this happened in the "suburban hell-scape" referenced in this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/neic4o/child\_dies\_following\_single\_vehicle\_crash\_in/

[u/elr0nd_hubbard]

Ah yes, my daily dose of urban planning ennui.

[u/elgrecoski]

The likes of Riverdale and similar neighborhoods should be front and center when it comes to selling policy changes. Normally I like the snark from NJB but a straightforward comparison video between a prewar suburb and post car sprawl would let people make up their own minds. I suspect people would strong trend towards traditional development if actually given the choice.

[u/Sharmat_Dagoth_Ur]

The fact that growing up I had one of the nicest (but still not expensive) suburban neighborhoods I've ever seen and yet I still could not walk down the street and get a hot chocolate from the corner care is upsetting. It's so easy and builds community. The one thing we had was the community pool. Now imagine if everyone could bike there and they allowed a shaved ice cart to stick around and sell treats. So far superior and yet such small changes

[u/prosocialbehavior]

I live right on the outskirts of a more walkable neighborhood. My house is in a newer development built in the late 60’s early 70’s and the first thing I notice when I am walking and biking in my neighborhood is how freaking wide the road is and how it encourages every driver to speed up. In the walkable neighborhood across the way the streets are so narrow cars have to come to an almost complete stop to pass each other if there is a parked car on the side of the road (not to mention there are coffee shops, restaurants, and bars so close to housing, still need a little grocery store or fresh market though).

Does anyone know of cities that actually spent money to narrow their more suburban neighborhood streets in the US?

Also our city is finally starting to tackle our stupid zoning regulations and trying to implement more transit oriented mixed use development and I cannot wait.

[u/PureMichiganChip]

I am 100% behind what he is advocating for in this video, but it was bizarre to hear him keep calling Riverdale a "suburb." It may have been at one time, but in 2021 it is by no means a suburb. It's in the middle of Toronto not far from the city center. If anything, I bet people are pissed that there is so much single-family housing in such a central location.

I think mid-size cities and small towns may have provided better examples of the sort of human-scale development the video covers. He referenced Alan Fisher's video on Pitman, NJ and I think that's a great example of what a lot of places could be with some changes to zoning.

[u/numba1mrdata]

All of the most desireable neighborhoods of Seattle are like this too. Capitol Hill is super dense and walkable.