Comments by "H B" (@capitalb5889) on "Not Just Bikes" channel.

  1. One thing this shows is that travelling teaches not just about foreign countries but also your own.
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  2.  @bradandrews777  says a man typing on a machine designed and manufactured by experts
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  3.  Benny Smith  I imagine that he can afford a car, as I'm sure you know despite your sarcastic comment. You don't like his message but can't articulate your response, which is basically just emotional, so resort to a fairly childish insult. Perhaps if you open your mind and wallet, you can see more of the world.
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  4.  Benny Smith  what an asinine comment. Haven't you got a more constructive comment to make?
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  5.  @bradandrews777  - people are selective in their trust of experts. When an expert notes that suburban sprawl cities are much less economically viable to run, you reject it because they are not the experts you trust.
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  6.  @bradandrews777  - they're called "experts" because they are experts. Listen to them - you might learn something, even if you don't like what they're saying.
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  7.  @thomaspaine9420  - I think that most of the large cities in Europe were built in post-feudal eras, but you are right that people in continental Europe are mostly happy about living in apartments in the cities. The UK is rather different and houses are the norm - and perhaps this is where the US gets its preference for houses from. What we don't have are the endless dreary suburbs, however. Although saying that, you get some great house for your money in the American suburbs.
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  8.  Benny Smith  I've been a number of times - there is some great stuff to see, but I think you are seeing the rest through rose tinted spectacles. You should see the toilet in my Japanese in-laws house - beats anything in America. And while the average living space is pretty good in the USA, you have to live in flimsy McMansions. American suburbia sucks. Public transport is shit. Large parts of it are virtually uninhabited. I found New York and Sanfrancisco to be very pleasant places. The suburbia of Atlanta to be very dull. And the latter is what most people experience. Of course there is some stunning scenery all over the country. It's just a bad place to have to live in.
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  9.  @thomaspaine9420  London (England) is not a high rise city. There is some high rise development but the bulk of the city is two storey housing. Europeans often mock the English unwillingness to live in apartments
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  10.  @shaungordon9737  and quite often you have to accept that it's you, not them that's the odd one.
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  11. So right. While cars are pretty important in rural Japan, it is often for the shorter journeys or when train isn't viable for that particular journey. Most rural towns in Japan are served by a station and it means that no one is imprisoned by not having a car.
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  12.  @bradandrews777  apples and wood blocks? Sorry, I don't get the reference
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  13.  The Dali Llama  - no, they become experts through years of study and having a deep understanding of s subject. As opposed to knee-jerk reactionary views by someone who takes umbrage that the awful cities of America have been described as such by someone who actually understand them relative to cities that work.
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  14.  @desertodavid  23,000 a day😯? That's 8.4m a year! In just ten years 84 million!!! How long has this been going on for?
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  15. I quite like doing Google Streetview tourism just to see what places around the world look like. I always start in any town's or city's downtown. In the US there often isn't one, just buildings randomly dumped along long straight roads.
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  16. In Europe, where cities have an advantage of being older, the suburbs always have their own centres because the were built at a time where most travel was on foot so people needed to be within half a mile of retail. London is actually two cities joined together (City of London and City of Westminster) and lots of small towns and villages absorbed into it in the inner and outer suburbs, so there are a lot of great (and not so great) suburbs.
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  17.  @bradandrews777  - ok. I've sort of forgotten where this started, but I'll take your word for it 🙂
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  18.  @matternst1442  well, everyone loves a freakshow to talk about ironically
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  19.  @V8_screw_electric_cars  "American suburbs do have schools in walking distance if your house is near." I was wondering whether you read through this before posting. And in European cities, every one is in walking distance of an elementary school - usually ten minutes top. High schools are naturally fewer and farther between.
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  20.  The Dali Llama  it's as good and explanation as I've ever heard as to why most American cities are complete shitholes. But as it is months since i saw the videos and have only three vaguest recollection, I'm not going to be able to answer you. You missed the original exchange and I'm not intending to revive it.
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  21.  @matternst1442  sorry- 139 replies on this thread now- how much what cost?
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  22.  @jims8828  one of the reasons that people could flee to the suburbs is that people could afford cars and due to the size of the USA, could afford relatively big houses in the suburbs. But zoning is what keeps the suburbs so dull.
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  23.  @grapesnackism  what you describe is why I couldn't live in most Americans cities. Almost every town or city on earth will have a clear centre where you can get a feel for the place (and many wasted but enjoyable hours on Street View), but in the US you mostly get characterless neighbourhoods with shopping malls and suburbs. Obviously there are some great cities too, but so many places seem to be utterly dull.
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  24.  @victorhopper6774  - I live in one and do most people. Nearly all houses in the UK are brick built other than modern ones, which usually have bricks on concrete blocks
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  25. No.
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  26.  @krishnan-resurrection714  -definitely London, and perhaps other big cities
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  27. Did he say socialism is the answer? I confused. I suppose what would be a bit "socialism" would be the government laying out fixed rules on where people could live and where they could open businesses. A bit like zoning.
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  28. You can't get a family of four on a bicycle but you can on petrol poweted bike.
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  29.  @sultanqureshi2766  - last time I was there it was common to see a whole family on a single moped
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  30.  @sultanqureshi2766  - no, just looking around the streets of Delhi to see how a whole family could fit on a moped https://youtu.be/ojp2Z8p7MKA
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  31. Having lived in Japan, it is exactly the same - the bikes are the same, with the same features. Japan can be slightly hilly in some residential areas, so they are more commonly sold with gears.
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  32. There really is minimum risk - there are plenty of cycle lanes, drivers look out for cyclists. Japan has a similar cycling culture and also it is not common to wear helmets.
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  33. Can only be designed by an architect who actually hates people
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  34.  @thewhitefalcon8539  I would die a little every time I arrived at that house.
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  35.  @matternst1442  are you sure you haven't had one already?
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  36.  @matternst1442  yeah - you better have that ASAP
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  37.  @matternst1442  but you're right - expensive. There are cheaper alternatives, such as Fox News.
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  38.  @jims8828  Suburbs aren't in themselves bad things - every city has them. In fact, I live in an outer suburb myself of a great metropolis (London). My nearest convenience store is 30 seconds away. My nearest supermarket 8 minutes walk away. The subway and train all within ten minutes walk. We typically drive less than 5,000 miles a year. However, I was glad that the area I live in wasn't designed around the primary assumption that everyone would have a car and would drive everywhere. Even suburbs have their own "town centre" that can be navigated on foot and feel more natural. However, in the American suburbs you can get a lot of house for your money. Most houses in the UK are 1500sq feet or less, whereas the US would be 2000sq ft plus But that has a lot to do with the size of the country, I guess.
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  39.  @jims8828  I am not sure where you go your assumptions from, but house sizes have a huge amount to do with the country size. In the UK, a 1500 sq ft would be a two story house, and quite often semi-detached. There simply isn't the room for everyone to have 2000 sq ft properties with big gardens. Whereas go to somewhere like Atlanta, and despite being a big city, it is surrounded by endless forests. Where I live was developed as a suburb 90 years ago from what was then fields. It is a suburb being towards the edge of the city, but doesn't probably align to the US definition of "suburb", a concept that does not really exist in any other country other than perhaps Canada.
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  40.  @jims8828  it makes quite a bit difference - in the space you can get 15 2000 sq ft houses you can get 20 1500 sq ft houses. Remember, Texas alone has 3 times the area of the UK and has a population over twice as large as Texas.
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  41.  @jims8828  I thank you for having a look at the UK, but the reason Scotland has such a low density population is that most of it is inhabitable. It is too mountainous and the ground is not fit for building on. Most of Yorkshire is a National Park (as is Scotland). I can assure than if I had to build a 3000 sq ft home in my house I would have to start knocking down other houses.
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  42.  @jims8828  yea, you can build vertically, but there is less willingness to live on more than two levels typically. Town houses are this typically a city centre phenomenon. The building issues in Scotland and Yorkshire might be rather more complex than you give them credit for, and admittedly there are certain regulatory issues- areas of natural beauty defined as national parks. And while stunning a lot of Scotland is not even suitable for agriculture, let alone in habitation. The balance between agriculture and residential also needs to be considered. A further issue is flooding. So much new property has been built on flood planes (which may be why no one built a town there in the previous two thousand years). However, getting planning permission to convert agricultural land to residential is a struggle which limits the amount of land available for development and means smaller properties. My house has a garden with about the same footprint as the house. If it were built today, it would probably be about 100 square ft. But that what happens when you try to squeeze 67m people into a space a third the size of Texas!
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  43.  @jims8828  true that a miniscule are is covered by residential buildings, but when you include conurbations, including roads, businesses schools etc it's higher, about 2.5% IIRC. I am opposed to the current artificial limit put on London, the so called green belt. Even extending by a mile would allow a lot of much needed housing in London. But it is important to have a balance between farmland, nature etc and building on grounds of national security and bio-diversity. There is also the issue of proximity to work - most of our undeveloped land is in Scotland and other national parks. But even if you could build an enormous property in Scotland distance to anywhere useful is a massive hindrance, as well as infrastructure. Different countries work differently. There is limited planning restrictions in Japan for instance but properties tend to be smaller die to population density. Although I think that issues like heating costs encourage smaller properties (another topic that I could rant on). In summary, I'll meet you half way on this, but sadly most new build houses in the UK are 1000 sq ft, rather than a comfortable 1500.
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  44. You can get more expensive versions of them that are lighter and have more gears.
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  45.  @kamisa7362  - you are right that wood has certain advantages, but it isn't the case that concrete is the only alternative. In the UK we have both medieval wooden, brick, and stone buildings. And having spent several winters in Japan, the wooden structures do not provide the greatest of insulation, but I think that's more down to Japan's way of doing things than the quality of wood - the USA builds with wood in places with very cold winters.
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  46. One crazy rule in Japan concerns the height of houses - they can only be two storeys in height. So you end up with loads of cramped houses, right next to a twelve storey apartment building.
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  47. In Japan they have that style of bike but with gears
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  48. You can't move for bicycles today in Britain
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  49. Sounds like old England
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