TLDR: Watching Not Just Bike and other urbanist YouTube videos alone isn’t going to do anything. We actually need to advocate for this in our local communities and city councils to get stuff done.
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Isn’t it the point that urban planning media raise awareness so that people go into local governments to implement those ideas? I’m not expecting content creator to run for my city council but they convinced me to contribute to local initiatives.
Agreed, and the process of actually getting things to change can vary a lot depending on which city we’re talking about. Why should these content creator know how things work in YOUR city?
Not these content creators specifically. This guy’s just pointing at the lack of local level content creators who promote organization of such things. As he showed, it is not as easy as getting into council meetings and “doing stuff”. There are many complexities associated with this process, that could be made much easier if there were videos on this topic.
Also, the video mildly criticizes NJB for his recent doomerism. That is all.
Even people in those local governments might see some of the videos and start thinking.
A lot of people are not corrupted evil politicians, they often just don’t know any better.
I have learned a lot from those video, examples, good and bad, from around the world that I share with people around me. I hope they will share and at some point someone that has power will hear it too.
Strong towns does that.
Very presumptuous to say he knows how systematic change actually happens. In the Netherlands public anger was definitely a factor, an extremist minority started a civil disobedience campaign that got the ball rolling.
A successful urbanist movement needs a healthy ecosystem of theories of change, with the hope that one (or a combination) of them is actually successful.
A good question to ask is: would NJB be more effective if he went into the nitty gritty of municipal politics with 0.1% the views instead of what he does now? I personally don’t think so.
There’s a book called “Change: How to Make Big Things Happen” that talks about the science behind social change. Basically, a small radical core shifts social networks by reaching about 25% saturation in other networks.
Here’s a podcast that interviews the author of the book: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/the-snowball-effect/
So it starts with social networks, then it expands out to action. That escalation path generally follows the salesman principal of asking people to take progressively larger actions.
But yeah, each situation is going to be different. In some cases (I’d probably say most) direct action is the most effective first step. But civic engagement can be effective in a lot of contexts. We basically need to build a movement and have people trying everything all at once, IMHO.
Edit: I also think parking reform is one of the easiest paths available to start tackling the problem. There’s already an established group focused on it, and it focuses squarely on the monetary side of things which is critical.
That would be better than tweeting to Americans to just give up.
Thank you
Even if it’s 0.1% of views, I think having the resource available in a familiar/easier format to consume is beneficial.
Better to be looking at it than looking for it.
ZONING LAWS.
How do you actually change those, especially with NIMBYs and local politicians fighting you along the way?
Strong towns gives you all the items for step 2. It’s organize and advocate.
☭
Indeed
