4:03 yes! The lack of front car garages helps make urban places feel and look so much better.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Funny enough, I used to be a big fan of front car garages… for some reason 🤷‍♂️ Thankfully my dad pointed me how they obstruct the view of the home and garden.

@pbilk

5 ай бұрын

@@humanecities haha, interesting. Good on your dad to help you consider otherwise. I do prefer the older post-war homes with the garage set back, seperated from the home, and smaller than modern day garages that are in your face. However, in regards to parking availability, nothing beats alley way parking or physical parking zones on the street that acts like traffic calming.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

@@pbilk You're spot on with the traffic calming and benefits of alleys. I also think alleys could be a lot more interesting if we let them.

@pbilk

5 ай бұрын

@@humanecities Yes! Some in my area have community gardens and artwork.

You haven't actually been to England until you've been to Slough though. That train ride looked amazing! Which house did you get sorted into?

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

😂 As for my house: I thought it was interesting that they do that right at Heathrow now 🤔 You hop off the plane and before you can go anywhere, they sort you. Of course, I’m Ravenclaw!

Neat to see a Canadian urbanist go to my home country! The conservative tabloids in the UK always blast the railway network but I agree it really is fantastic at connecting up towns and cities. I often say to people here that since I grew up in the UK it feels so bizarre in BC that I can’t just catch the train from Vancouver to Calgary, or at least to Kelowna or Penticton. It feels like this huge omission, like a missing limb! To me that is a higher level of freedom than driving - particularly for people without cars and young people without a driving license. I remember taking the train all over the place as a kid, and it definitely helped my independence. The same goes for all the pedestrianized high streets in many UK towns and cities, without cars they are safe and accessible to all ages. I’m not sure why doing something like this it’s such an uphill battle here, like why isn’t Robson St in Vancouver pedestrianized already. They are incredibly popular with the public. Our fear of causing traffic and blocking cars paralyzes us from building people-oriented places.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

We really should be doing so much better than we are. We gotta keep pushing for these things!

The video quality is great! Your channel is way too underrated :(

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Thank you 🙏 🥹

Train good!

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Train good!

Public transport in Cardiff is generally very good by Welsh standards. There is a regional rail network, and the buses have decent coverage and frequency, though there are some outlying areas that struggle slightly. At 10:21 you're at an interesting point. You're on Bute Street, which is on one side of the railway line. On the other is Lloyd George Avenue. During the regeneration of the 1990s, a lot of this area was rebuilt, though there's a definite gentrification gap between the two. If you ride on that train you can see the stark difference between what you're seeing out of the windows on each side. If you come back, I'd definitely recommend spending £15 on a day ticket to explore the area by train, though I might wait a few months as there are some significant improvements due to hit pretty soon. From a scenery side, parts of the routes up the valleys have some interesting views, from running alongside the Taff to waterfalls beside the Rhondda. From an urbanism side, lots of stations have been getting rebuilt, and there are new trains with level boarding entering service.

Good to see some Cardiff appreciation here. It's one of the best cities in the UK.

Your trip sound so frantic and fast paced. I'm in the middle of planning a UK trip for 2025, but will probably only go a couple of different places.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

It was VERY frantic 😂 The next time I go, I plan to spend a full week in one place to get a real feel for it.

Nice travel video! I liked Cardiff a lot too when I visited, the castle was really nice and the Bay as well. Also went out to Tenby, in Pembrokeshire on that trip, such a beautiful coastline and great train ride. I loved Manchester and Liverpool as well. I am planning to go to Scotland later this year. Glad to live in the Netherlands so I can hop over to all these great places so easily 😊 Keep the great vlogs coming!

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Thank you! 🙏 The Netherlands is such a great place to live if you love travel!

I'm from Vancouver and am currently on exchange in Cardiff and I agree that North Road needs a full dedicated bike lane. Just further up from where you were there is one, and just further back towards the Welsh College of Music there is also one. But there is just this glaring gap that causes lots of conflicts with pedestrians/cyclists. I've also found that car drivers are a lot less patient with pedestrians here when crossing crosswalks, and although the law was changed recently to give pedestrians right of way in most situations, cars fail to follow this and will honk, curse and yell at you for having the audacity to cross the street on a crossing that is not explicitly a zebra crossing. I found this odd when compared to Vancouver where cars will almost always stop for you if they see you about to cross somewhere that pedestrians would likely cross.

My grandma's grandma was a Welsh speaker from Cardiff. I've been studying Welsh for a couple of years and have always wanted to visit. Great video! Subscribed.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

You should absolutely do it! It’s a beautiful place and the people will adore you!

Im from the uk and have recently started bingeing urbanist KZread stuff but there is a serious lack of uk or European content. We have different issues to North America but we still have work we can do. Especially as cities like Birmingham and Nottingham are suffering financially and how to dig ourselves out of that hole.

@humanecities

3 ай бұрын

I’d love to see more urbanist content from the UK. Seeing your unique issues - as well as the great solutions - would be awesome!

Keep up the great content! I am enjoying it a lot!

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Thank you 🙏 Always more on the way!

Birmingham is the most underrated city in the UK. Its the second biggest city after London but often gets over looked.

If you come back, come down southwest! Maybe Exeter :P

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

I will!

Nice video! Next time you're here maybe consider coming to the Northeast of England. We have a lot of exciting upcoming transport projects and are home to the Stockton and Darlington railway! 😃

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

That’s really exciting to hear! I’ll have to visit!!

The UK has a weird mix of good and bad urbanism. Birmingham for example is brilliant in the city centre, but the rest of the city is a car infested hell hole. London has a very good public transport network, but this isn't often the case in the rest of the country. The train network, though good compared to North America, could still be a lot better, and is also overpriced and overcrowded. A lot of places in Wales don't have access to the railway network, and those that are connected often have very roundabout routes. Many routes by train take at least twice as long (and often are more expensive) than the same route by car, because you often have to travel 2 sides of a triangle by train. Sadly the current government seem to be doing everything they can to halt improvements (cancellation of HS2, the PM declaring the 'war on cars' being over etc.)

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Perhaps next time, I should pick a city (like Birmingham) and dig a little deeper, exploring a little further out. It’d be great to get a better contrast. And yeah… the stuff going on with the gov is wild… 😞

Hi Alex, I'm glad that you travel to Europe or internationally more. Maybe one day you'll leave Canada like Jason in Not Just Bikes!

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

It's fun to visit other places, but I don't think I could ever move from Calgary!

Thanks for the quick reconnaissance, nice work. I'm going to hang on to Shake Shack though. To be fair I've only been to the original Shake Shack in Madison Square Park in NYC.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

Also to be fair… I’ve only been to the one at LAX 🤣 So that could have influenced my feelings about it…

@AustinSersen

5 ай бұрын

@@humanecities and I've only had it at JFK's airport (NYC), and I also wasn't impressed. I wonder if the airports had anything to do with the experience?

10:10 Can confirm.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

I can confirm that you can confirm.

Harassed ? What line/train was that and about what time ? Please give details.

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

🤣 It was later evening, going from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth on a TfW train. They made some funny jokes when I got on the train because apparently I looked like a ticket checker 😂 Then offered me booze and made many more jokes… Perhaps I’ll give a full account in a future bonus video. Very funny, but also, very awkward…

Fun fact , British railway system is one of the worst of western Europe but still better in North America

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

It’s truly heartbreaking for us all 💔

"Edin-bra" not "Edin-borro." Does it make sense? No. But the UK never names anything to make sense, they name things to use letters that have no business being there!

Sorry, just you saying "Birmingham is somewhere I'd like to return to" just makes me laugh - it is a good city with an undeserved reputation.

Honestly impressed you managed to put up with those terrible accents for so long

@humanecities

5 ай бұрын

The US was worse 🤮 😘