urban finance

Not Just Bikes contrasts traditional and suburban development in North America. It looks at the financials behind each pattern and argues that suburban development leaves cities unable to pay for their own infrastructure.

Strong Towns explains the Growth Ponzi Scheme, in which post-war suburban growth takes on infrastructure costs that new development must keep funding. It describes why municipal finances become insolvent.

Oh The Urbanity! argues that most city dwellers live in dense residential neighbourhoods outside downtown, which can be calm and peaceful. It draws on older, denser parts of Toronto and Montreal.

Oh The Urbanity! questions the framing that urban planning reforms like bike lanes and traffic calming wage war on suburbanites. It argues that suburban and urban residents alike want less traffic on their own streets.

The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.

A recording of Andres Duany's 1991 'San Antonio By Design' seminar on suburban sprawl. He lays out how codes, zoning and policy produce sprawl and makes the case for new urbanism.

A Big Think talk in which hedge-fund manager William Ackman goes through the basics of finance and investing in under an hour. It is pitched as a crash course on the most important concepts.

Charles Marohn of Strong Towns presents, in a Talks at Google session, the ideas from his book on why many North American towns struggle financially despite decades of growth. He argues for incremental, bottom-up city building as a path to local prosperity.

Not Just Bikes explains the Strong Towns argument that car-dependent American suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes. It describes the growth Ponzi scheme that props up municipal finances.

Not Just Bikes explains how many American suburbs, built all at once rather than incrementally, cannot cover their infrastructure costs and survive on growing debt. It draws on Strong Towns' work on the growth Ponzi scheme.

Not Just Bikes explains, using Urban3's property-tax analysis, why car-dependent suburbs generate less tax revenue than they cost to maintain, so dense urban cores effectively subsidize them. It is part of a Strong Towns series.

A short documentary about Eric Maundu's Arduino-controlled aquaponics setup in West Oakland, where contaminated soil rules out ordinary farming. Fish and circulating water grow plants without soil.

A short film about the Dervaes family, who grow over 6,000 pounds of food a year on a tenth of an acre near downtown Los Angeles. They grow more than 400 plant species, keep chickens and ducks, and get most of their food from the plot.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

Tim Urban's TED talk on why people procrastinate, covering YouTube binges and Wikipedia rabbit holes. It ends with the life-calendar idea as a nudge to act before time runs out.

The first episode of a Cities: Skylines series on urban politics and planning, focused on parking. It uses the game to show how parking minimums shape cities, drawing on Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking.

First session of MIT 15.401 Finance Theory I (Fall 2008) taught by Andrew Lo, giving a course overview and introducing core finance concepts. The course ran during the 2007-08 financial crisis.

The first lesson of Martin Shkreli's introductory investing and finance course, running about two and a half hours. His related tutorials cover reading 10-K filings and building DCF models.

A Fully Charged episode where Robert Llewellyn visits an Oxford street trialling Urban Electric's pop-up chargers. These are retractable 7kW charging points built into street furniture for homes without off-street parking.

A look at Le Plessis-Robinson, a French suburb transformed from modernist urbanism into traditional mixed-use fabric with local-style architecture, green space and a more balanced housing supply.

Not Just Bikes argues that urban noise comes mostly from motor vehicles, drawing on the book Curbing Traffic and a visit to Delft, a city that takes noise seriously.

Not Just Bikes argues that the Netherlands, famed for cycling, is also the best country for drivers. It explains how prioritizing walking, cycling and transit makes driving faster and more pleasant.

Not Just Bikes takes on the common excuse that a country is simply too big or spread out for good transit and walkable cities. The video argues that city density and short everyday trips matter, not national size or overall population density.

A snarky, comedic video essay from Climate Town, with a guest appearance by Not Just Bikes, arguing that American suburban sprawl and single-family zoning are financially and environmentally unsustainable. It covers how zoning rules shape housing and what viewers can do locally, such as attending zoning meetings.

Nine minutes of unedited footage of a very busy bicycle and car crossing at Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam. Cyclists, pedestrians and cars flow through without traffic lights.

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns explains how a land value tax differs from an ordinary property tax, why it makes economic sense, and why it is rarely used. It is a short six-minute explainer.

Adam Something gives a short, tongue-in-cheek defense of Soviet-era prefab apartment blocks. He argues they offer efficient, dense housing with schools and services built nearby.

Not Just Bikes reflects on five years in the Netherlands and tours small towns and cities, from Haarlem to Veenendaal. It argues that good urbanism with walkable streets, bike infrastructure and transit is found almost everywhere there, not just in Amsterdam.

A short Vox video on Barcelona's superblocks, an urban design approach that closes interior streets to through traffic to return space to pedestrians.

A short urbanism video presenting original observations of how drivers treat stop signs, to argue that cyclists rolling through them under an Idaho stop is no different. It filmed intersections in Ottawa.

Oh The Urbanity! tests the theory that banning housing investors would fix affordability, using Rotterdam's ban as a case study. The video finds mixed results.

Not Just Bikes explains why the channel exists, through the creator's walk in suburban Houston. It shows how car-dependent design makes cities hostile to pedestrians.

Not Just Bikes explains the Downs-Thomson paradox using Amsterdam and Toronto: road widening doesn't fix congestion, and buses stuck in traffic make transit slow. It argues for giving transit its own priority infrastructure.

Not Just Bikes argues that stop signs are a poor traffic control, drawing on Dutch practice and the Idaho stop to show intersections can be safer without them, especially for cyclists.

Not Just Bikes argues that oversized American fire trucks and fire department requirements push cities toward wide roads and dangerous street design. He compares this with the Dutch approach to emergency response.

Not Just Bikes looks at the tiny microcars such as the Canta seen around Amsterdam. It discusses how they serve people with mobility issues, can use bike paths under certain rules, and where they fit in a 21st century city.

Not Just Bikes explains the Dutch concept of autoluw, or nearly car-free, streets and how it is applied across the Netherlands, with examples from Toronto and Copenhagen. It also covers Amsterdam's move toward a nearly car-free city.

Not Just Bikes explains that car-dependent suburbs are not the only option, using Toronto's Riverdale as an example of a pre-war streetcar suburb. These walkable neighborhoods are popular but are now effectively illegal to build.

A short Not Just Bikes video on the 1960s plans (Plan Jokinen) to cut highways through Amsterdam to accommodate cars. It shows how radically different the city would look had they succeeded.

A short BicycleDutch episode showing Vredenburg in Utrecht, the busiest cycle path in the Netherlands, with about 37,000 cyclists passing on a working day.