So I’m not always the biggest fan of this channel as it can make some very lib takes from time to time, but I found this video very interesting.
I had the first meeting a while ago with the leaders of the Youth Movement I am setting up and we were discussing things that are bothering the youth in my city. One of the things that really popped out is losing the public space (or Third Place as this video calls it) to overpriced housing, privatization or whatever. Antwerp is a city that’s a real concrete jungle with very few parks or green areas, squares where locals can meet or just general free public spaces to relax. Some of you may remember it but a few months ago I protested a hotel owner that turned one of the few public parks, a botanic garden, into an inaccesible place by putting a barrier in front of the entrance. The protest was succesful, the barrier had to be removed and other building permits the guy had were cancelled as well.
Our Youth Movement has now made reclaiming public spaces and expanding public spaces a big priority on our list. It’s truly idiotic when you live in a city but you can’t really go outside to hang out in the public space because there is none.
If you throw ideology out of the window and just focus on what he says about the way we design cities, it’s a pretty decent channel. But he does have a hard on for Dutch/Scandinavian social democracy/neoliberalism. Still, it could be a gateway for people to look further into why things are the way they are.
Does Not Just Bikes talk about politics? I don’t remember him mentioning it much, I’ve only ever absorbed his infrastructure information.
Not really, they just suggest Scandinavian countries are implementing the policy he wants and his preferred things for cities are cheaper so rational people would implement them.