3 YouTube Channels for City Planning Nerds
YouTube is many things, but I think one of its most underrated uses is how it makes you regret your career choices. It happened to me when I stumbled across a niche I never really gave any thought to – city planning, and every day since, I have regretted not attempting to study architecture or urban planning in university.
Still, I quench my thirst with what induced it in the first place, and bring you three excellent YouTube channels for city planning enthusiasts.
City Beautiful
Dave Amos is an assistant professor at University of California, Berkeley, who runs the YouTube channel City Beautiful, named after a city planning movement that focused on making North American cities look beautiful and grand in the 1890s and 1900s. Sometimes, the channel delves into transportation, utility management, and even into philosophical questions surrounding the planning of cities.
What I enjoy most about this channel is how Dave doesn't simply make high quality videos on different topics that he is an expert in, but takes time and care to make sure all his videos string together to spell out his personal philosophy on how cities should look like, and he does a good job in making sure his audience buys into that philosophy. Key word – new urbanism. A must watch video? The one on Tokyo.
Not Just Bikes
Not Just Bikes is a unique YouTube channel. It's not about cities per se, but more about Dutch cities, and what a person who grew up in Canada, and now lives in Amsterdam, feels about Dutch cities. Jason Slaughter, the host, gives the videos a personal tone, often talking about his family and their contrasting experiences living in London, Canada (or fake London, as he calls it) and Amsterdam.
My take away from this channel is by understanding how near perfect urban environments such as Dutch cities function, we can all learn a little bit about how our own cities can be improved, and hope that someday, someone in one of our city corporation offices takes notice too. One of my favourite videos from this channel is the one that explains why Jason and his partner decided to raise their children in the Netherlands and not North American suburbia, and it made me realise how a good city is one that's safe for children.
City Planner Plays
This one's a bit different, this channel is not exactly about edutainment like the others. It's a streaming channel, and a city planner streams himself playing city builder games, mostly Cities: Skylines. What's different about him from other streamers of the same game is how he explains his decisions from a city planning perspective, and while it's not the best way to learn about city planning, it makes getting invested in the stream a lot easier. I personally love how, when he's about to make a huge change in his virtual city simulation, he develops a story around it, which just makes you care more.