Not Just "Not Just Bikes"

2024-11-19

I live in a city with high quality public transportation, in a dense mixed use walkable neighbourhood. London is far from perfect, mainly on two points:

Public transportation, while high quality, is expensive. We have the most expensive trains in Europe because our government doesn't subsidise them.

Bicycle infrastructure is severely lacking. While multi-billion pound rail schemes like the Elizabeth Line are great, there is a severe lack of investment into the much cheaper cycle infrastructure which is desperately needed. The failure of the "cycle superhighway" scheme seems to have spooked our government away from investing more heavily into bike infrastructure. However, improvements are being made, just very slowly.

I should also mention the insane degree to which investment in public infrastructure is focused on London, at the expense of pretty much everywhere else in the UK. I was initially very confused as to why our green party opposed the construction of a new high speed train line, but I found out their position is that the money would be better spent improving local transportation in underserved areas and I think that's quite reasonable.

Anyway, this post is not about that, this is about some issues I see with the existing "urbanist" movement, most exemplified by the youtube channel "Not Just Bikes". While I think most of what NJB talks about is pretty much common sense, I've become interested in a few things he and the urbanist movement focus on, and the things they avoid talking about.

Roads and the military

A common theme of discussion among the urbanists is lobbying from the car industry. You can pretty much blame all the problems of modern urban design on lobbying from the car industry. Now I have no doubt that this the major factor which has informed the horrible urban design of many North American cities, but there are a number of other considerations worth noting, which I almost never hear mentioned. Firstly, the strategic use of free ways to isolate low income, predominantly black neighbourhoods. I've heard this mentioned but it's rarely a major talking point. Secondly, something I've never heard any of these people mention is the military usage and motivation behind road construction and civil planning.

Since the ancient Romans, it has been the military first and foremost who have had an interest in building all-weather roads. A famous example would be the design of the Parisian road system as ordered by Napoleon III. This included bulldozing slums and winding narrow streets to replace them with the wide, straight boulevards fanning out between key areas which Paris is known for today. Why that design? Among other stated reasons, because it is optimal for marching troops through the city.

The head of the advisory committee for the planning of the interstate highway system in the US was General Lucius Clay, on appointment from Eisenhower. Clay stated, among his four reasons why the highway system was needed, national defence as a primary concern.

If I were writing a book I would go into more detail with sources and point out the repeated pattern that wide, straight, all weather roads are almost always a military project at least in part. But I am not writing a book, I am reading wikipedia and struggling through brain fog to write this post. The connection between road engineering and the military is not some controversial lefty talking point, it's so strong that it surpasses, "hardly a secret", into, "you can't really talk about one without mentioning the other". Why can't I seem to remember Not Just Bikes ever bringing it up then? It's not like the automotive industry and the military are two entirely separate, disconnected entities either. It's literally the military industrial complex. I find this omission somewhat suspicious.

Small business and the high street

Another thing I've noticed that NJB and other urbanists use as a talking point is that walkable neighbourhoods are much better for shops. They highlight examples where building "stroads" has killed off small businesses in an area, or point to pedestrianised spaces as desirable because of the customers who will come in to buy things. On this point, I'm not trying to be aggressively against them. It is convenient that I can walk a few minutes to pick up groceries rather than it having to be a car journey if I was in the US. At the same time, I find it a little at odds with their other rhetoric. The idea that good civil design gets people off the streets and into shops, turns them from pedestrians into customers. A slogan they use a lot is, "built for people, not for cars". I like this slogan. But they then seem quite quick to spin up talking points for businesses, not people.

But living in a city that with many walkable high streets, we don't get japanese style yokocho, but rather endless rows of Apple stores, money laundering candy and vape shops, and Lush. Because it doesn't matter how walkable your street is if the rent is too damn high.

So why are they like this?

Not Just Bikes is basically the PR and marketing department for Strong Towns, a non-profit who pretty much exist to lobby and advise local governments regarding urban planning. NJB mentions that sub-urban sprawl is bankrupting local government, but it's only one point among his many arguments. For Strong Towns however, their main goal is to create high-density communities specifically in order to produce higher tax revenues. Strong Towns was founded by Charles Marohn, who self identifies as "a fiscally conservative Republican". Now perhaps we can see where some of these biases come from.

They have a vested interest in coordinating movements around urban development towards what is palatable for the local governments they advise. I'm just asking you, did Amsterdam's urban structure help the peaceful protesters who were beaten with batons by riot police while they were in the process of dispersing as the police had ordered them to?

I'm not hating, I agree with most of what these people say, I enjoy the youtube videos and so on. I just want to remind people that it's not just Not Just Bikes. There's some mildly sus things afoot here.