The Laziest Excuse for Bad Cities

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Relevant Videos

The Dumbest Excuse for Bad Cities
https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-the-dumbest-excuse-for-bad-cities

Why Canadians Can’t Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)
https://nebula.tv/videos/not-just-bikes-why-canadians-can-t-bike-in-the-winter-but-finnish-people-can

Are Taiwan’s Roads Still a “Living Hell”?
https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-are-taiwans-roads-still-a-living-hell

They Tore Down a Highway and Made it a River (and traffic got better)
https://nebula.tv/videos/notjustbikes-they-tore-down-a-highway-and-made-it-a-river

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References & Further Reading
Fresno: A City Reborn – rare 1968 documentary by Victor Gruen Associates

Fulton Mall

https://www.pediment.com/blogs/news/the-original-fresno-county-courthouse
https://www.kvpr.org/community/2014-09-02/fulton-mall-at-50-when-things-dont-go-according-to-plan
https://www.kvpr.org/government-politics/2014-02-11/is-it-terrible-or-a-treasure-fresnos-fulton-mall-debate-heats-up
By Bryan Harley – Own work {Bryan Harley,own work}, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91790930
By Michelle Baxter – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21664245
By David Prasad – https://www.flickr.com/photos/33671002@N00/6191573398/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=124016206
By David Prasad – https://www.flickr.com/photos/33671002@N00/6189802045/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123750104
https://esotericsurvey.blogspot.com/2024/01/fulton-mall-update-2024.html

Beaufort scale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale

NK Tegenwindfietsen
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK_Tegenwindfietsen

The Dutch headwind cycling championships are amazing (Tom Scott)

Cycling to work in 90 large American cities: new evidence on the role of bike paths and lanes
https://www.saferoutespartnership.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Lib_of_Res/SS_ST_Rutgers_impactbikepaths_bikecommutingbehavior_042012%20-%20Copy.pdf

Weather is not significantly correlated with destination-specific transport-related physical activity among adults: A large-scale temporally matched analysis
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5551438/

Weather and daily mobility in international perspective: A crosscomparison of Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish city regions
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A1343725/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Modelling the impact of weather conditions on active transportation travel behaviour
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920911001143

Promotional Umbrella SENZ wind tunnel test

Some clips of winter cycling provided by CycleYYZ
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHinhHYjd7k_K7d2lEmC73w

As usual, the YouTube Description is not nearly long enough for all of the references. You can find the full list on Nebula or at this link:
https://notjustbikes.com/references/badweather.txt

The vast majority of the content in this video was filmed on location by Not Just Bikes, with some images licensed from Getty Images and other sources.

No generative AI or AI voices were used in the making of this video.

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Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:19 Copenhagen (Strøget)
2:41 Fresno (Fulton)
3:53 The weather didn’t make the difference
5:09 The wind in the Netherlands
6:08 Sunnyvale, California
7:13 The weather isn’t a predictor of cycling
8:12 It sucks to film in bad weather
9:54 Fewer people cycle when it’s raining (surprised pikachu)
11:05 You’re not made of sugar (so quit your bitching)
12:25 It’s not all the same everywhere
13:15 Infrastructure matters even more in bad weather
15:00 It builds character (suck it up)
15:58 Winter cycling
17:51 Ughh … another requisite rant about ignorant Canadians 😫
19:59 You get used to it
21:41 Good urbanism in hot weather
24:31 The worst way to design for the heat
26:19 Concluding thoughts
27:41 Outro and Planet Wild

A few years ago I made a video called, 
“the dumbest excuse for bad cities,” where I talked about how Americans and Canadians 
love to claim that good urbanism can’t work there because their countries are “too big”.
And I still think that’s probably the dumbest excuse, but the laziest 
excuse is definitely the weather. We all deal with weather on a daily basis,
it’s literally the first thing you see when you look outside,
so it’s also the most obvious objection that even idiots can immediately come up with.
But the truth is that there isn’t much of a correlation between the weather in a 
city, and how well that city is designed. And some of the world’s best cities 
have absolutely terrible weather. When developing any urban improvement, 
whether that’s bike lanes, car-free streets,
or public transit in place of cars, there are dozens of factors that will 
determine the success of that project that are way more important than the weather.
To the point where talking about the weather is at best, a distraction, and more 
likely, a complete and total waste of time. Which is why when people freak out about 
some proposed change to their city by saying, “what am I going to do if there’s 
bad weather” The correct response is, “Just put on a fucking jacket.”
[NJB Intro] In the middle of the 20th century, cities 
around the world were being overwhelmed by cars, and this was causing huge problems for air 
quality, productivity, and liveability. In an attempt to repair the city, Copenhagen 
did something that few had ever attempted: they planned to remove cars from a street where 
they were previously allowed. Shopkeepers claimed that the plan would be a disaster, and 
that the shops would go out of business if their customers couldn’t arrive by car.
But from the general public there was an even bigger objection: the weather.
Copenhagen has many dark, cold and rainy days, as well as snow in 
the winter, so this was an easy excuse. Some detractors even claimed that the 
plan was contrary to Danish culture. “This isn’t the mediterranean”, they said,
“the Danish prefer cozy meals at home, not outdoor cafés.”
But the mayor was determined to try it and in 1962, the plan went ahead …
and despite the weather, it was a massive success. Today this street, pronounced kind of like 
“Strøget” because Danish is a very silly language, has become one of the most famous and 
successful car-free streets in the world. The shops and restaurants 
are always in high demand, business is better than ever, and several 
more nearby streets have been pedestrianised. It’s also become normal across 
Denmark for cafés to have heaters and blankets when it’s cold outside.
It turns out outdoor Hygge was part of Danish culture after all.
A few years later, Fresno, California wanted to emulate that same success 
by pedestrianising this street. Here too, shopkeepers claimed that the plan would drive 
them out of business, though in this case, the weather was not a concern, as the majority 
of days in Fresno were warm and sunny. [the solution: separate]
[cars and pedestrians] [for the benefit of both]
[a one-way inner loop] [collects and distributes]
[the incoming traffic] [ample parking facilities]
[are provided] [adjoining the loop]
[streets inside the loop] [are converted into areas]
[reserved for pedestrians] So in 1964, Fresno closed off this street to cars
and re-opened as the Fulton Street Mall. And there was much rejoicing.
[Yaaaay!] [the effect on]
[downtown business] [has been dramatic]
[during the 12 months] [following the opening]
[pedestrian traffic] [in the core]
[has increased 115%] [stores reported]
[business increases] [as high as 40%]
[in the first year] The Fulton Mall saw some success, but over 
time more and more stores started closing, and the street was struggling. 
Finally, after years of debate, cars were re-introduced to the street in 2017.
It turns out that if you build a pedestrian street that most people have to drive to, few people 
will go there, no matter how sunny it might be. And this really gets to the heart of why 
I don’t often talk about the weather. It’s just so insignificant, when there 
are so many other more important things to talk about, when it comes to city design. In Copenhagen, this street was in the 
middle of a mixed-use walkable area, with thousands of people living within walking 
distance, and with easy access by public transit. This street in Fresno was in the middle of the 
city, in what used to be a mixed-use walkable neighbourhood, but by 1964 the streets 
had been widened to accommodate more cars, many of the buildings downtown had 
been demolished to build parking lots, public transit was underfunded and unreliable, 
and the majority of people arrived by car. Incidentally, I noticed while researching this 
that Fresno is almost the same physical size as Copenhagen, despite having about 
⅓ the population. That’s insane. That kind of totally unconstrained 
urban sprawl is not cheap to maintain. While we’re doing comparisons, less than 2 
percent of trips are taken by bicycle in Fresno, While Copenhagen is one of the best 
cities for cycling in the entire world. And that’s because they built an extensive network 
of protected bicycle lanes that make it quick, efficient, and comfortable to ride a bike.
The weather is irrelevant. Of course the absolute highest level of cycling 
in any country in the world is the Netherlands, and yet the weather sucks here, too. It 
rains a lot, especially in the winter. And nearly every year we get a storm with 
“heavy winds” of over 90 kilometers per hour. Technically those serious windstorms are any 
with winds 9 or higher on the Beaufort scale, an outdated method of estimating wind speed 
based on the appearance of waves on open water, but we don’t have to go into the details of why 
the Netherlands still uses the Beaufort scale. The point is, it’s really windy here.
But people still ride bikes and the wind is sometimes referred to as “Dutch hills.”
There’s even an annual headwind cycling challenge held on the Oosterscheldekering.
Tom Scott has a video about the 2020 competition where the winds were 
9 Beaufort! Which uh, means, uhm … “High waves; dense streaks of foam along the 
direction of the wind; sea begins to roll; spray affects visibility.” That’s really windy!
In the late 90s I lived in Northern California and the weather was perfect.
I worked in Sunnyvale, a city literally named for how much sun it got.
I used to joke with my Canadian colleagues that the TV stations could just pre-record 
their weather reports because every day was 72 degrees and sunny.
I don’t even remember what 72 means because Fahrenheit is stupid, I just 
remember that it was basically perfect room-temperature weather almost every day.
And yet all of my Californian colleagues would go from their air conditioned house to their 
air conditioned car to their air conditioned office and the air conditioned shops.
Nobody rode a bicycle to work … and it sure as hell wasn’t because of the weather.
It was because you would die cycling here. This video is showing the road right 
around the corner from where I worked. I also found this clip on Getty Images, and it’s 
a timelapse for no good reason, I don’t know why people do that, but it was taken less than a 
kilometre from my old office. I had forgotten just how shitty this place was. What a complete 
waste of a city with absolutely perfect weather. When you look at the cities that have the 
highest levels of cycling in the US and Canada you’ll find Montréal and 
Minneapolis that have snowy winters as well as Seattle and 
Portland where it rains a lot. This study of 90 American cities found that 
“annual precipitation, the number of cold and hot days […] were not statistically significant 
predictors of bike commuting in large cities.” It’s not that the weather has zero 
effect on walking and cycling, it’s just that factors such as safety, 
urban sprawl, mixed-use zoning, parking prices, and the quality of the 
infrastructure are so much more important. Which are, of course, many of the things I 
talk about on this channel, and many of the problems that urbanists are trying to solve.
Like, “the weather” might partially explain why “only” 18 percent of all trips in 
Oulu, Finland are taken by bicycle, Compared to 38 percent in Amsterdam.
But when less than 2 percent of trips in your city are by bike, it’s not because of the weather.
It’s really common for someone to come across one of my YouTube videos for the first 
time and immediately comment “…but it won’t work in the rain” or “now show it 
in the winter” like it’s some kind of epic “gotcha” that invalidates everything.
Of course, I have shown bad weather many times before in my videos, but obviously 
the people making the laziest possible excuse haven’t bothered searching for those, or 
really even given it any thought at all. But I do show scenes of good weather 
more often than cold or rainy weather, and there are several good reasons for that.
For one, video filmed in bad weather looks terrible. There’s lots of footage I’ve taken that 
is unusable because there’s water on the lens, or it’s so dark that it’s hard to 
even tell what you’re looking at. Most of the time I’m trying to 
tell you about good urban design, so it helps if you can actually see it. And while my most expensive camera is much 
better in low light, it’s also not waterproof. But it wouldn’t matter if it was because 
it sucks to stand out in the rain and snow. I use a lot of original footage in my videos.
I’ll use stock footage for generic scenes, and sometimes I’ve used video filmed by others 
… and of course I never use AI generated video, which means that the vast majority 
of video you see on this channel, was filmed in person, on location, by me.
And once you include travelling, setting up, waiting, and capturing footage that I don’t 
end up using, it means that for every minute of video you see, I spent about an hour outside.
So while I’ll regularly go out in bad weather to get to where I’m going, I don’t really have 
any interest in standing outside for hours freezing my ass off, and potentially 
ruining my expensive camera gear, just to show you the same scene,
but darker, and with people wearing jackets. Nevertheless, there will be fewer people walking 
and cycling when it’s raining, and there are several good reasons for that, too.
When there’s bad weather, there will always be fewer people out 
for recreational trips. That’s obvious. There will also be people who 
take public transit instead, and there will of course be people who drive.
The Netherlands is a wealthy country with a relatively high level of car ownership.
People here aren’t cycling because they don’t own a car, they cycle because it’s often the fastest, 
cheapest, and most convenient way to get around. Which is why it’s way more important to make 
cycling fast, safe, and convenient, rather than assuming nobody will cycle because of the weather.
But it can also be misleading to just look at the number of people cycling at any one time, because 
a significant number of people here don’t stop cycling when it rains, they just delay their trip.
Where I’m from, people routinely check a traffic app, and change their 
travel times based on traffic. And here in the Netherlands people 
routinely check a weather app and change their travel times based on rain forecasts.
For the most part, these are pretty accurate, at least for the next hour or two,
so if it’s showing there’s a break in the rain coming up, then people 
will travel during that time. And if someone can’t delay 
their trip for whatever reason, then they just … go out in the rain anyway.
In the Netherlands there is a very common expression: “Je bent toch niet van suiker”, which 
basically translates as, you’re not made of sugar, right? Meaning, you won’t melt in the rain.
This is a culture that has developed because people are used to going outside in the rain.
And ultimately there are things that you can do to make bad weather less 
uncomfortable, even when cycling. You can wear a rain jacket and rain pants,
Or a rain poncho designed for cycling. Cargo bikes have rain covers to 
protect kids from getting wet. And yes, people here even cycle with umbrellas.
It’s actually much easier than you’d think, and it works pretty well in light rain.
If you want to get really fancy they even sell umbrellas that can handle hurricane-like 
winds. That’s like, 12 Beaufort. When I buy shoes, I usually 
buy a pair that’s waterproof. They’re not any more expensive than regular 
shoes, and it just means there’s one less thing I need to worry about when it rains.
This might seem weird to people who don’t live in a place like this, but it’s absolutely 
totally normal here because ultimately, people adapt to the situation they’re given, 
and it just becomes part of the culture. Just like blankets at cafés in Copenhagen.
Or having a GPS app on your phone’s homescreen in Toronto.
I’ve read studies about how and when people change their travel 
plans based on the weather, and what I find most interesting is that people respond very 
differently to the weather in different regions. This paper studied the differences in 
weather-dependent travel between Utrecht, in the Netherlands, and several cities in Norway 
and Sweden, and they found huge differences even between these cities that are relatively 
similar, culturally and geographically. For example, people here in Utrecht 
travelled shorter distances when it snowed, whereas people in Oslo and Stockholm did not.
And there’s a really simple reason for that: it snows every year in Oslo and 
Stockholm, so people are used to it, but that’s not the case in Utrecht.
Ultimately, people get accustomed to the weather they live in, and it’s only 
extreme events outside of that norm that significantly changes travel patterns.
And what’s often misunderstood is how the infrastructure, or lack thereof, also influences 
people’s travel behaviours in bad weather. For example, this paper studied the effect 
of weather on travel patterns in Toronto. Unsurprisingly they found a drop in cycling 
during cold and rainy weather, but they also found confusing differences by age and gender.
Having lived several years in both cities, I can confidently say that I have no problems riding 
a bicycle in dark, rainy weather in Amsterdam, But I will always avoid riding a bicycle 
in the exact same weather in Toronto. In Amsterdam, it’s always safe to ride a bicycle.
There are protected bicycle lanes on all major roads, most neighbourhoods have traffic calming,
and the routes taken by cars and bicycles have been separated, so there are far fewer 
interactions between cars and bicycles in general. And while it doesn’t often snow in Amsterdam, 
when it does, they clear the bike lanes at the same time or before they plow the car lanes.
In Toronto, even the best bicycle infrastructure is still of much lower quality, 
and it’s extremely inconsistent. It’s very common to end up on streets 
without any bicycle infrastructure at all, and drivers regularly speed down residential 
streets, following their GPS to avoid traffic. I know from experience just how hard 
it is to see people walking and cycling while driving when it’s dark and rainy.
and it’s already dangerous enough to cycle in Toronto in good weather. So there’s no way in 
hell I want to be out on a bike on this shitty infrastructure when it’s dark and raining.
or worse, when it’s dark and icy. But of course, people see that 
far fewer people are cycling, and immediately assume it’s 
only because of the weather. Is the weather sometimes terrible 
when I need to go somewhere? Yes. Do I go outside anyway? Also yes.
Does it suck? Absolutely. But it’s fine, and I’m not bragging here. There’s 
nothing particularly special about going out in bad weather, it’s just a part of life.
And apologies for my boomer-ass take, but I think it’s a good thing to have a 
little bit of discomfort in our lives. It makes us better prepared to deal 
with the other shit life throws at us, and it makes us really appreciate 
the good weather when we have it. There is nothing better than the happy 
energy of the people out on café patios on the first sunny day of spring. 
Even if it is only 10 degrees outside. And if YOU can’t handle the rain, OK, that’s fine.
But don’t force the rest of us to live in a dangerous asphalt-covered wasteland, 
bankrupt from building car infrastructure, just because you need to use 
two tons of steel as a raincoat. I just find the constant 
excuses to be so annoying. If I make any video about literally any 
topic related to cities and I don’t put in a lengthy discussion about snow, 
the comments section will be flooded with ignorant Canadians claiming everything 
I’ve said is impossible because of winter. Which is why one of the early videos on 
this channel was about winter cycling. Specifically about the city of Oulu, Finland, 
which has a significantly higher percentage of trips taken by bicycle than any Canadian city, 
or any other city in Finland for that matter, despite having much colder 
weather than most Canadian cities, and having an almost identical population 
density to my hometown of London, Ontario. The reason for that is because they have a 
comprehensive network of safe bicycle lanes, And they plow their bicycle paths 
very quickly after a snowstorm. Again, it’s the infrastructure 
that makes the difference, and the weather is much less important.
But even when confronted with this information, it was wild how many Canadians dug 
their heels into snow, and insisted that it was still due to the weather.
I literally had people arguing that because Oulu stays consistently cold 
all winter it’s easier to cycle there, than in cities where it sometimes goes above zero.
Like, are we seriously going to ignore the infrastructure and plowing and say,
oh yeah, sure you can cycle in Amsterdam where it rarely snows,
and you can cycle in Oulu where it always snows, but cycling is impossible in Canadian 
cities, because it snows inconsistently. Sorry, it’s not the infrastructure, it’s 
just a different type of snow, you see. So us snowflake Canadians can’t bike here.
And I get Canadians saying ridiculous things like “we can’t remove cars because old 
people need to drive in the winter!” And then I go to Norway and see lots of seniors 
out for a casual stroll on pedestrianised streets when it’s absolutely freezing outside
So, I think you can start to understand why I have lost all patience for 
any discussions about the weather. Also, and I’m really sorry to have to 
do this, but Canadians just outright lie about how cold it gets in the winter.
They’ll take the lowest temperature they can remember seeing, round down, and claim 
that it’s like that six months of the year. But it’s even worse, because Canadians 
are also starting from a fake temperature. When you ask someone from Scandinavia or 
Finland how cold it is on a winter day, they’ll tell you the air temperature.
But Canadians will always quote the “wind chill” temperature, which is a different number.
In the winter, skin will lose heat faster when there is a cold wind.
The scientists that originally calculated this effect would typically report the amount of heat 
loss in watts per square meter of exposed skin. But this was considered too obscure for 
weather reporting to the general public and so there was a mix of different ways that this 
information was presented in weather reports. So in 2001 the Meteorological Services of Canada 
and the National Weather Service in the US worked together to develop a standardized method of 
reporting the “wind chill” as a temperature. The goal of this was to reduce the occurrence of 
hypothermia, with the logic that if the general public saw a lower number, they were 
more likely to dress in warmer clothes. But of course, you only feel that wind chill 
temperature if your skin is exposed to the cold. The majority of people in Canada put on what 
are called “clothes” when they go outside, they don’t walk around with a lot of exposed skin.
So the “wind chill” temperature was never the real temperature outside,
and if you’re wearing a scarf and a tuque, like you should be, then the 
wind-chill temperature is even less relevant. Which is why people say, “there’s no such 
thing as bad weather, just incorrect clothes.” Many European countries report a similar kind 
of “perceived temperature” in the winter, but it’s a much more advanced calculation 
that also takes into account other factors such as solar radiation and humidity.
So when I say that lots of people were cycling when it was -26 in Oulu, Finland, 
and a bunch of Canadians respond with “that’s nothing! It was -35 every day 
here last winter!” just understand that they are completely full of shit.
A lot of this comes from people who drive everywhere.
If you spend all of your day in a heated house, and travel in 
your heated car to your heated office, and your only exposure to the cold is the time 
it takes you to scrape the ice off of your SUV, then yeah, it feels really cold outside.
Winter weather can be mitigated by wearing proper clothing, but the fact is that the more often you 
go outside, the more you get used to the weather. Your body has several mechanisms 
to regulate temperature. With consistent cold exposure, your body adjusts 
blood flow to extremities, alters your shivering threshold, and modifies metabolism and hormone 
levels for more efficient heat production. Which is why when I lived in Canada 
it would feel absolutely freezing when it was minus 10 in December,
But after getting used to the cold all winter I’d be wearing my jacket 
open when it was minus 10 in March. Similarly, when you’re regularly exposed 
to the heat, your body also adapts. This involves changes in hormone levels and 
metabolism as well, but also changes in the electrolyte concentration of your sweat, 
your blood plasma volume, your skin blood vessel dilation, and even when you sweat.
People who are regularly exposed to warm weather will start sweating earlier, and will 
maintain a lower core body temperature than people who haven’t acclimatised to the heat.
Which is one of the many reasons why the British are insufferable while on vacation in Spain,
Yet they were somehow able to colonise India. The human race has managed to 
inhabit and thrive in a staggeringly diverse variety of different climates,
From our origins on the African savannah, To the permafrost of Siberia.
I just refuse to believe that, as a species, we can no longer travel 
without climate-controlled boxes, unless it’s literally 72 degrees and sunny outside.
On the opposite end of the weather spectrum, I also get people telling me that good 
urbanism could never work in hot places. And the people saying that usually 
live in some car-infested wasteland like Phoenix, Arizona.
Now, let me be clear. Phoenix is a terrible place …
[this city should not exist] [it is monument]
[to Man’s arrogance] But I used to live in Taipei, where 
it’s really hot and humid in the summer. Air conditioning is very common 
indoors for obvious reasons. But the city is also designed to 
make that heat more tolerable, too. The arterial roads are lined with 
shops, but they’re set back to provide shelter from the sun and the rain.
There are also lots of trees to provide shade, especially on smaller streets.
And there are little parkettes in residential areas.
The metro system is air-conditioned, and it’s very extensive.
They never stop building new metro lines, so there’s a new one opening every couple 
years, and it’s always getting better. And the city has a really strong nighttime 
culture, as it’s cooler outside at night. Taipei still has lots of issues, and 
I’ve made a previous video about that, but when it’s hot outside it is so much 
nicer to travel around without a car here, than anywhere in the US or Canada.
Just like with the cold, people always overestimate the effects of the heat. If 
you regularly go outside in hot weather, you get used to it.
But if you spend all of your time in an air conditioned box
and only experience the heat while walking between your car and the Walmart, then yeah, 
it’s going to feel insanely hot by comparison. People also underestimate how just how much 
of a difference trees can cool down a city. The most obvious benefit is shade, and I tested 
the difference during a heatwave a few years ago. The sidewalk was 48 degrees in the sun
And only 30 degrees in the shade of the trees, just a few metres away.
Plus any buildings in the shade of trees will be cooler and will require less air conditioning.
Which means that less heat will be released into the surrounding environment by the outdoor unit.
But trees also cool down the air in other ways, like by releasing moisture, a 
process called evapotranspiration. And several species of tree cool down 
the air as it passes across their leaves. If there’s enough shade and trees,
public transit has air conditioning, distances to major destinations 
aren’t too far away, and there isn’t a lot of asphalt, then 
hot weather is much less of a problem. I’ve also cycled when it’s 40 
degrees outside, and y’know what? It’s actually way easier than walking, 
because the wind cools you down, and you get there in one third the time.
Get an ebike and it’s even better. And yes, I know that when it’s extremely humid and 
above the “wet bulb temperature” it’s genuinely dangerous to be outside, because your body 
can no longer cool itself down by sweating. But even in the world’s hottest cities 
that’s not an everyday occurrence, climate change permitting, of course.
I’ve driven across North America eight times, and I’ve mentioned before what surprised me 
the most is how – outside of a few historic regions – the US and Canada basically 
looks the same, almost everywhere. This applies to the terrible stroads, 
which make up huge swaths of most cities, But also to the residential 
neighbourhoods, regardless of climate. Everything is the same cut-and-paste design 
that has reduced most of the US and Canada to one homogenous sea of car-centric slop.
And yet, this is one of the absolute worst ways to design a city for hot weather.
Cars produce a lot of heat, asphalt absorbs heat from the sun and then radiates it back 
for hours, and the greenhouse gases from car exhaust heat up the atmosphere even more.
The “urban heat island” effect is a thing, and it makes asphalt-covered car-centric cities 
even hotter than they would otherwise be. In the early 2000s, Seoul 
tore down an elevated freeway, And replaced it with this beautiful stream 
that significantly improved the city. And I have a previous video about 
that if you’d like to learn more. But importantly, when the stream was opened 
the average heat island temperature dropped 9 percent, with some areas 23 percent 
lower than when it was a highway. And temperatures around the stream 
were 10 to 13 percent cooler than neighbouring streets only 400 metres away.
The stream also radiates less heat than asphalt and concrete, and even a small 
drop in radiant heat can make the street feel significantly cooler to people walking by.
So if the weather is really hot where you live, you should be making more stuff like this.
Not like this. In hot climates, the absolute last thing you want 
to be doing is encouraging more people to drive. But so many hot cities pave everything and make it 
almost impossible to get anywhere without driving. The good news is that many aspects of good urban 
design are universal. Mixed-use zoning to bring destinations closer to where people live,
more trees and greenery, extensive public transit
and with better accessibility, more car-free places,
better cycling infrastructure, routing cars onto roads and highways 
and away from neighbourhoods, and in general, devoting much less 
space to moving and storing cars, and much more space for people to live, 
work, and enjoy each other’s company. And the weather is a critically 
important part of these designs. Like providing trees for shade 
and shelter from the wind. Designing proper transit stops that shield 
people from the elements while they wait. Ensuring that sidewalks and bicycle lanes are 
properly cleared of snow as soon as possible. Turning traffic lights green for 
bicycles more often when it’s raining. And making sure the city stays accessible 
to everyone, even during bad weather. This is how the weather should 
be discussed in urban planning: as a way to make cities work better for everyone, 
instead of just a lazy excuse for inaction. There are many good reasons to build 
mixed-use walkable cities, from better livability to more financial sustainability,
but one of the major benefits of compact city design is that it significantly reduces the amount 
of natural land that’s consumed by urban sprawl. I think it’s important to conserve the 
natural environments that we have left, which is why I’m a member of Planet Wild, 
a nature protection organisation based in Germany and operating globally.
They do something really unique: Think of it as crowdfunding for nature, making 
it super easy and transparent for everyone to protect our natural environment from home.
Every month, Planet Wild selects a new project aimed at protecting animals, forests, or oceans.
And every month they document the work they’re doing on their YouTube channel.
That way, we, the community, can see where our money goes and we can see 
our positive impact on nature every month. Their latest video came across my feed the 
other day, and it legitimately impressed me. The last of Europe’s old-growth forest is at risk 
of illegal logging, so Planet Wild has partnered with Agent Green to fund a very interesting 
approach to locating chainsaws in real-time. I’ll put a link to their video in the description.
You can also follow these projects in their app, where they provide detailed information 
about each project and a link to the organisations they’re working with.
As a member of Planet Wild you can give whatever amount feels right 
to you. Every little bit counts. And you can cancel your membership 
at any time, no questions asked. I really like how Planet Wild is making 
environmental protection more accessible and highly transparent, which is why I want 
to promote the work that they’re doing. If you want to join a growing movement 
that’s making a real difference in environmental protection, then join Planet 
Wild, a community of nearly 14,000 people, including myself, who are contributing 
every month to make a real positive impact. It’s great to see what a group 
of people can achieve together. To sign up, scan the QR code, follow the 
link in the description or download the app. And if you use my code BIKES10, 
you’ll get your first month for free. And if you want to see Planet Wild in action, check out the video about saving Europe’s 
old-growth forests, link in the description. Thanks so much for watching, and thanks 
to Planet Wild for sponsoring this video.