The Worst type of Urban Sprawl

It's almost universally agreed upon in the urban planning community that suburban sprawl is bad for cities, transit, and the people in them. But there's something much worst than good ole suburban sprawl - let's find out in today's video.

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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[psychic_beth]

Job sprawl is Canberra in a nutshell. People often haven't even heard of the place or know that it's the Australian capital, but the whole city is basically one giant job sprawling monster.

[frafraplanner]

This is why I think American cities allowing their downtowns to have visible signs of decay is a terrible thing. It drives people away from downtown, increasing demand for suburban jobs

[aapjeaaron]

It used to be the case that massive industrial sites had their own bus service that picked up workers around town coinciding with the shifts. It's how my grandfather used to commute to work.

[Antizyr]

This actually reminds me of the situation my mom had to go through living and working in Madrid, we lived in the suburbs and she'd commute to central Madrid by train to work at one of the largest banks in the country: BBVA. Sadly, this company, along with many others, have bought massive swathes of land in the outskirts of the city (especially in the district of Las Tablas), and built huge offices to centralize all of their workers in just one building. For my mom (and I'd guess many others) this meant that she had to start commuting by car for the first time in her life, since it was incredibly inconvenient to do it with public transport. And sadly it seems like it's a trend, and there's giant office buildings outside Madrid for all the biggest companies like Santander, Movistar, Iberdrola, and a long etc. Such a shame that Madrid's amazing public transport is being completely ignored by these companies...

[LiteBulb]

Perhaps the worst "job sprawl" in the US is in Atlanta. They used to have everything clustered around downtown and then built Interstate 285 around the city hoping to attract more businesses. The good news is that lots of businesses moved out to the I-285 ring. The bad news is that they weren't new businesses, but ones that came from downtown. So now Atlanta traffic is a mess and their metro system was built around the idea that everyone wanted to go downtown, so it's not very helpful and there's no great solution to it.

[diedampfbrasse]

decent cities just have ring lines which remove the need to enter the city centers when making the transit to work or schools ... supporting a much more flexible sprawl of the city and avoiding bottlenecks in public transportation.

[Hogtownboy]

I did my MBA on plant relocation. The number one deciding factor is, no surprise here, how close to the bosses home. So Mississaga exists because the bosses moved to Oakville and moved their factories and office to Huronatio and Dundas.

[haydenlee]

as someone who majored in Chemistry, I hate it that virtually no Chemistry jobs are acessible via some kind of transit and require driving. I don’t even have my own car and it’s sad

[markvogel]

I thought the photo was cities skylines 2!

[bearcubdaycare]

I question this. Paris seemed very decentralized, but worked very well as a city, with great transit, long arcs that covered everywhere, and intersected every other line two places, for easy connections. Bringing everyone into a center just creates congestion, and honestly an unpleasant place people have to be, rather than want to be. The Borg cube is the wrong model of urbanism. There are more pleasant middle density ways, which still support plentiful metros.

[mukundbalasubramanian]

I believe concentrating office/commercial space into one or two downtowns is a good model for small cities. But bigger cities can have a sizeable amount of medium-scale businesses and industries that cannot afford to be in the city centre, both due to sky high prices in the downtown as well as worse competition. A multi-centred city served by loop as well as branch lines is a better model imo to accomodate more kinds of business without a job sprawl.

[atmly]

100% this is a huge problem in the Bay. I had a recruiter contact me about a job yesterday and he couldn't understand why I wasn't interested in a job that was hybrid with three days in office that was over an hour commute. So many tech jobs especially are in random office parks next to a highway exit somewhere.

[jerredhamann]

A lot of european cities are basically a sea of 4-7 story rowhouse type buildings and have job centers spattered and distributed all over and have high quality transit. basically everyone lives in a 15 min city then therefore only nonlocal trips which tend to be work school are typically end up being served by mass transit since most people will walk, bike or take a local street car or bus

[circumflex]

Great Video. I think the most important aspect really is the fact, that you would travel across the city to get to work, because the office or industry building has exactly the type of work, that you have qualifications for. Same goes for universities or even things as landmarks and tourist attractions. But you wouldnt drive through town to get to a specific supermarket kilometers away, when there is a grocery store right around the corner.

[thundergun]

This was well underway before Covid in the SF Bay area and is an underrated cause of the SF Downtown's slow recovery. Insane demand for office space in Downtown SF led to Big investment in new office space on the penninsula and in the East Bay. This is on top of many of the region's biggest employers being located in Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, Mountainview, Cupertino etc. Even before the Pandemic the tech companies (including biotech like Genentech) would operate private busses from residences in the City to offices in the Suburbs.

When the pandemic ended newer, cheaper Suburban office space ate up a lot of the return in demand. Downtown businesses are struggling and transit ridership is way down

[cameronbest]

Good video overall, you summarized a lot of thoughts I've been struggling to put together about why many suburbs are so hard to serve!
One thing to add - it might be worth making a video about some of the more "inherently" low density land/job uses and how they can be served by transit. For example, warehouses, manufacturing, and other more industrial uses that are much harder to build with density.

[HipsterShiningArmor]

Im glad you're talking about this. As a Sauga resident, theres this massive office park in the northwestern side of the city (around Derry/Mississauga Rd area) and it drives me absolutely crazy every time i see it. Its nowhere near downtown Toronto or downtown Mississauga for that matter, every office tower is surrounded by a parking crater, its in a super inconvenient location for transit (there is a close-ish commuter rail station, Meadowvale GO, but its at the fringes of the area, not the centre of it), and was very obviously built for proximity to highway 401 and absolutely no other reason. Supposedly the city of Mississauga wants to move these offices to Square One (which, ehhh, but better than its current location at least), but RBC and the other corporations that own offices there are resistant to it, as are supposedly the workers themselves.

[veronikakerman]

Thank you for pointing out another problem of transportation design. One, that is not talked about often. It sucks, that new job spaces are built near highway intersections. I guess it is logical, due to land value being lower there. The problem really should be solved by requiring developers to plan, and (partly) finance, transit infrastructure.

[eCitaroFan]

A few years ago, the Rhode Island government subsidized the development of a major office space for Citizens Bank in Johnston, a suburban town west of Providence, not close to any sort of frequent transit but next to a highway interchange with a spur RIDOT specifically built for Citizens Bank and I'm still so bitter and ashamed my state government did that.

[branniganification]

I've just got my first job in Toronto after moving from Wellington NZ (would love a video on that!), and this precisely describes my situation. The lack of an east-west rail/metro link along the 401 makes driving the only serious option. My employer's office lease is up and hopefully there is a small chance they'll move to somewhere close to a metro or rail link... luckily I can work remotely, but I prefer the office interaction.