Urbanist Snark
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) – The last, it was time for me to leave Brussels. Sadly, I didn’t want to go. As Brussels was by far, the most accessible city I had visited to date. With public plazas in nearly every direction, ample transportation options, and extensive mixed use building infrastructure, everything was easier in Brussels. Not to mention that, but it seemed that, at the end of every street, was some beautiful architecture for me to gaze at. Ancient castles and churches and buildings in every direction. When you also take into account that Brussels has updated all of their building code to include the passive house building standard, my love affair with Brussels was solidified. As some of you might know, I’m a passive house retrofitter and designer. And walking around Brussels to see all of the retrofitting in real time, not to mention the finished buildings, was a real treat. Whether I was looking at medical centers or new construction or retrofitted construction, it was always something interesting to see in Brussels, things that we never see in North American urban health capes. From Quaint, cobblestone streets lined with mixed use brick urban fabric to strange language written on the sides of buildings. Brussels had a lot to offer. Even their governmental buildings showed great history and art. There was iron work and stone work that was hundreds of years old. And it seemed that everywhere I looked, there were improvements being made. And while there was some evidence of social decay, overall, Brussels was a fine city. And as I looked out over the skyline, something became very clear to me. Brussels is a very human scale city. It’s not cold. It’s a warm place to be and to live and to raise your family. One thing that really stood out to me was just how much fun the city wanted to be. Even if most people weren’t riding this Ferris wheel, it was still there, right outside a main government building, which was again adorned with beautiful architecture, ancient structures whose inside was even more interesting than its outside, with huge open spaces, public art, which included sculptures and paintings. And of course, convenience. It was obvious that the people of Brussels took pride in their buildings, in their urban environment, in the level of convenience that the city had to offer, and in its history and beauty. Just a five-minute walk from my front door led me to easily my favorite street in Brussels. And make no mistake, this is a street. It’s not a road, it’s not a road, it’s built for people. It even has a fun street car. That isn’t just cute, it’s not a novelty. It’s a viable transportation option to get you from A to B, which in my case, was from my front door to a sushi restaurant. One thing to notice about this street is that it’s specifically designed to be a mixed-use street. And I’m not talking about the urban fabric, I’m talking about bike lanes, motor vehicles, trolley cars or trams, but also walking infrastructure. And after a certain time every night, the tram would be retired, and a bus would come out to serve this community. As part of Brussels’ social responsibility movement, as I mentioned, they’ve updated all of their building code to the passive-house standard. And as part of maintaining that standard, they’re actually graded. Everywhere I went, but especially on public buildings, governmental buildings, transit stations, and so on, were these certificates of performance, rating these buildings. This level of commitment to efficiency improvements is unheard of in the United States. As a matter of fact, I was just talking to somebody who works in the government, who manages and maintains and improves buildings. And they told me that there was absolutely no appetite whatsoever in the current administration, and more vaguely in the previous administration, to improve buildings, to add phase-change materials, or solar arrays, or geothermal heating and cooling. And yet, in Brussels, this is the standard, the passive-house standard, which, incidentally, is the strictest energy efficiency standard in the entire world. And Brussels is ensuring that all of their building stock meets that standard. So let’s rank Brussels on the urbanist snark ranking system. As we always do, we’re going to start off with transportation. Any good, urban environment is going to have at least four viable transportation options that take you from the front door of any building to the front door of any other building, easily, cheaply, and readily. Those four options are walking, biking, motor vehicle, and trains. This infrastructure should be door-to-door throughout the entire city, meaning you can walk out the front door of any building throughout the entire city and find ample walking, biking, motor vehicle, and train infrastructure to the front door of any other building. Starting with walking, Brussels gets a seat. While it’s true that the infrastructure is door-to-door in Brussels, it is not separated in all instances. And specifically, it lacks raised crosswalks. The sidewalk space was especially narrow in the neighborhood I was in. And there was an awful lot of overflow from the restaurants and bars and so on onto the sidewalk. So as you walked down the sidewalk, you would often run into tables and chairs and so on, not a deal breaker, but not ideal. The mixed-use urban infrastructure and building stock was ample. And one of the best and most convenient places I’ve ever been, which made Brussels, despite its lack of separation and raised crosswalks and sidewalk space, highly walkable. Moving on to biking infrastructure, Brussels gets a seat. There was very little if any separated bike infrastructure. And apart from painted lines in the streets, there really wasn’t much distinction, which of course led to space restrictions. If you were riding your bike in Brussels, you would very likely find yourself competing with vehicles. Furthermore, the biking infrastructure in Brussels was not door-to-door. It was close. There were awful lot of streets that were designated mixed use, that is, between motor vehicles and bikes, but there really wasn’t enough separation to make it all useful. Moving on to the motor vehicle infrastructure, Brussels gets a B. There was ample streets that are readily usable by cars, motorcycles, and buses, and they were certainly door-to-door. In the neighborhood I stayed in, they were relatively well-maintained and safe. I didn’t hear a lot of car accidents or honking, and when you’re out in the street, the cars are moving slow because the roads are narrow and cobblestone, so you feel safe. I’m not sure that I’d feel safe if I was on a bike, but certainly I felt safe walking. Now, as with any well-designed city, there were lots of options for motor vehicles, meaning if you want a car in Brussels, you can certainly have one, but there’s plenty of biking and train infrastructures so that you don’t need a car. And if you feel bold, you can ride your bike. Now, I know that Brussels has been lambasted by other urbanist content creators as being congested, and while there are certainly places in the city with high levels of congestion, the neighborhood I stayed in was minimally congested. It wasn’t overly busy or overly vacant. There were motor vehicles, they were driving around. People were going to places and doing things, but it wasn’t just constant gridlock. And that’s because Brussels understands the difference between a street and a road, and they’ve designed their city as such. If we move on to the train’s infrastructure, Brussels gets an A. Everywhere I looked, there were train stations, whether it was right outside my front door or whether I had to walk a few blocks, it seemed that every couple of blocks there was a train stop. The train frequency was more than adequate, and the trains were safe, super safe, in fact. And boy, were there options. There were metro lines. There were trolleys and trams and street cars. If there was one problem with the trains in Brussels, it’s that they were not 24/7. As I mentioned earlier, train lines would shut down at night, and they would run buses in their place. Not a deal breaker, but not ideal. Next, let’s take a look at the urban fabric. Brussels had so much mixed use building infrastructure that it easily gets an A. And if you don’t already know, having mixed use building infrastructure at your disposal makes life simple, easy, and super walkable. And this is coming from somebody who was still sick. If you’ve been following along and judging by my view counts, you haven’t, you’ll know that in Amsterdam, I got sick, and that disease carried over from Amsterdam to Brussels. And I can tell you from experience that managing being sick and needing things in the city was super easy in Brussels as compared to Amsterdam, where in Amsterdam, things were just a little bit too far apart to walk to. Everything was within just a few feet of me when I was in Brussels. There were supermarkets everywhere, pharmacies everywhere, bars and restaurants and fast food, and everything you could want was in walking distance. Brussels urban fabric was a superlative when it comes to convenience. However, if single-family homes are your thing and if you’re in North America, they probably are, Brussels gets a D. While I’m sure there are single-family homes in Brussels, I didn’t actually see many of them. Now, I didn’t get to explore quite as much as I wanted to because as I said before, I was sick, but it wasn’t as obvious that there were single-family homes around in Brussels as there were, let’s say, in London or Amsterdam. Now, single-family infrastructure and building stock is overrated by my estimation. It’s generally a money and time pit that you really don’t want, even if you think you do. But as I said before, if that’s your thing, if you have to have single-family, Brussels might not be the best pick for you. Moving on to the overall convenience score, Brussels gets an A. This is a no-brainer. With all the transportation options and all the walkable mixed-use infrastructure being an A, the overall convenience has to be an A. Now, the busing convenience was a B. There were plenty of buses around and they were around often, so their frequency was great, but the busing wasn’t quite as ubiquitous as, say, London. However, the train service was more than ample with the metro lines being pretty much everywhere and above-grade trams and trolleys and street cars being pretty much everywhere. Also, the train system easily gets an A. The bike system, as I mentioned before, gets a C. While there’s a lot of mixed-use streets in Brussels that are there for you to ride your bike on and I saw lots of people out on their bikes, it still wasn’t really quite separated enough and it wasn’t quite door-to-door enough to get a higher score than a C, which leads me to my overall ranking of Brussels, which is an A. Brussels is a fabulous city, which offers you all of the living conveniences and urbanism one could ever want. Would I live in Brussels? The answer is a definite yes. Is Brussels head and shoulders above your crappy US-urban hellscape? Yes, that’s obvious and a no-brainer. Is Brussels the best in Europe? Is it a top-tier city by European standards? And I’m gonna say no. It gets close, it’s really close, but based on the overall performance in Brussels, which would include things like crime and safety and congestion and smog and convenience and urbanism and transportation options and just everything, Brussels doesn’t quite make that top-tier. Now, should you move to Brussels? I would say yes, by any metric, Brussels is head and shoulders above any city in the United States. It’s a world-class city. It may not be the best in Europe, but that’s because the competition in Europe is so steep. Now, for those of you that are wondering, my next city is Paris and I have a ton of information to share with you because once I got to Paris, I was not sick any longer. I still had some lethargy, but I was able to get out a bit more and have some more fun. So tune in for the next episode where we’ll be wandering our way through the beautiful streets of Paris. (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪