A Venture into the Urban Wilderness: CityNerd's Field Guide to Stroads
I am at bike handlebar or helmet height—up close and personal—when I tour the good, the bad, and the ugly with Jason Slaughter in his Not Just Bikes YouTube series.
The vantage point is human-centered, three to six feet above the asphalt. Slaughter’s series narration, in which he tells stories of great urban planning and urban experiences, is in my earbuds, clearly enunciated above the street noise. We are in motion and engaged.
Now, shift the Not Just Bikes point of view from a helmet-mounted GoPro camera to the desktop workstation of an experienced urban transportation professional. Dive down through project documents, Google Street Maps, design criteria manuals, and blog posts with an authoritative and experienced guide. In this tour, we visit North American cities to uncover and explicate their design treasures and tragedies.
The voice is friendly, intimate, measured, detail-oriented, and humorous. There is a hint of non-venomous, non-judgmental snark. It’s your favorite, funny, smart colleague you might Slack with a couple times a week, if you’re in the business. You have found CityNerd.
This YouTube channel intersects with the Strong Towns approach to development and urbanism in the areas of walkability, car dependence, and the Suburban Experiment. Nerd out on induced demand; freeway lids, caps and decks; and the ten most walkable neighborhoods in ten unwalkable cities. Coming at you once a week.
Behind CityNerd is a Portland, Oregon-based transportation/planning project manager with some video production in his background. He took a one-year sabbatical break and found himself producing the YouTube series. He intends to get back to his real job at some point, but in the meantime he’s having too much fun publishing for a fast-growing audience of 19,000-plus subscribers.
We will be publishing CityNerd posts intermittently, when the themes connect with Strong Towns approaches. Today’s share is a “venture into the urban wilderness…a field guide to stroads,” set in Las Vegas. No Hunter S. Thompson cameos, but plenty of 45-mile per hour fear and loathing. Enjoy.
Do you want the Strong Towns movement to go viral in your community? Not Just Bikes can help.