An Urbanist in Manchester, Edinburgh, and London (Part 2 of my first time in the UK)

Thanks for watching!!

Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/humanecities

If you’re in Calgary, get engaged: https://engage.calgary.ca/?redirect=/engage/pages/engageportal.aspx

All right it’s time for us to continue our UK Adventure in the last video we visited reading Birmingham AIS withth and Cardiff you don’t need to watch that before this but let me tell you I loved Cardiff I mean it was all great but like Cardiff was amazing in today’s video

We’ll be visiting Manchester Edinburgh coatbridge and London I’m Alex and this is a channel about Urban spaces and how we can make them great for people I stayed in abist with Wales for about a week while there I took a of day trips taking advantage of being in the area

And our next day trip was to Manchester I took the train from aist withth to Shrewsbury and transferred to a train that take me to Manchester while my trip to Cardiff was just for the heck of it my trip to Manchester was to meet up with my friend Scott we’ve been friends

For years but we’ve never met in person the internet is pretty cool and while we’re more connected than ever I love that we’re still able to find uniqueness around the world world I felt like Manchester was a pretty good example of a place that just looks like Manchester

The buildings are mostly brick and have a very industrial vibe to them I enjoyed seeing some of the artwork around the city too and a nice looking Bike Share should I ever return I’ll give it a go you’ll also find the city logo all over

The place one thing I loved was that in every single City I visited there were things happening I didn’t plan to attend some cycling event in Manchester or a rally car race and aist with or a Motocross event in Cardiff I just happened to be there and stumbled upon

The festivities I love that cities can facilitate such random discoveries of community but they also provide quieter places for sitting chatting eating and enjoying after chatting in this very busy park for a bit I said goodbye to Scott and caught my train back to abber wrist withth back in abber I explored

The university a bit which here’s something great a gender neutral washroom here’s something kind of sad old gravestones basically used as a curb in a parking lot I took a look around the ruins and architecture before enjoying a fire on the beach at Sunset with my friends who kindly hosted me

Early in the morning I took my leave to catch the train to Edinburgh Scotland transfer for Wales got me to Wolverhampton from there I transferred to an Avanti west coast train this was probably the nicest train I rode the entire trip man I wish we could travel like this across Canada maybe someday

Again these are choices we make I arrived at a very busy Waverly station in Edinburgh and followed the crowd to escape Edinburgh being a touristy place was immediately apparent to me I’d be curious to know how many tourists there are for each resident other things I noticed were the number of buses there

Were I didn’t bother figuring out the system because there isn’t just one Transit service Apparently one is more touristy and one is better for residents too complicated didn’t bother with it instead I just walked everywhere something I liked was the park and trees built around the tracks here the

Architecture was also incredible some of the cycling infrastructure needs work though paint is not infrastructure people will park in the bike lane if they can after wandering for a bit I stumbled upon these massive Fields like huge huge Fields these seem like a great place to enjoy a sunny day like this

Which as an aside I only packed pants and wore waterproof light boots big mistake it rained only a few drops while I was on my entire trip 0 out of 10 I went to a place people always describe as cold and gloomy but instead it was hot and sunny very disappointed but at

Least my hostel was great the wave finding was a little wacky but understandable enough and kind of fun at the hostel I even made some new friends with my new friends I hiked up this quote unquote mountain and checked out the Scottish national museum which was actually really great and when I was

There they were in the process of returning some artifacts to first nation’s people in Canada obviously I loved all the walkable streets flanked with shops and stunning architecture I thought it was funny to see this attempt at traffic management I loved passing through narrow alleys you’d only find on

Foot and wanting to see something a little less touristy I wandered off I found these streets being redeveloped this time with a pretty decent bike lane but um where are the trees please tell me there are trees planned for this area another thing I found strange and maybe

Someone from the area can explain this to me the bike lane changes materials when it turns this corner and then it just rides right into parking are the cyclists meant to join traffic at this point and does the change in materials indicate this if so please let me know I

Enjoyed wandering for hours finding small seemingly hidden places looking at the variety and architecture and enjoying some cooler temperatures down by the water something I really want to highlight is this zero waste tub they’ll teach you how to repair your things make new things out of the old and more I’d

Love to learn more about this and see this sort of thing in more communities returning to the tourist area I paid my respects to a very good boy along with many other tourists before heading off to copridge I want to highlight how the old can coexist with the new in this

Interesting way I just found these buildings very fascinating before all the other tourists woke up I snuck off to coatbridge Via scotrail goldbridge isn’t far from Glasgow but I’m stopping here to look at a gravestone which okay I have a story to tell you about that but first let’s talk

Urbanism specifically that there is no substitute for Quality infrastructure this sign is kind of cute and funny but doesn’t do much to actually keep people doing the speed limit the curb is nice but apparently these folks need somewhere to park and I will say that is probably the closest I’ll ever come to

Advocating for more parking spots but really what I’m looking for is a more accessible sidewalk I don’t know where all these cars are going but I’ll bet many of them are going to the same place that’s the perfect place for a bus or a train of course I’m not from this area

So maybe there’s a better local solution a unique solution is exactly what they’ve done here this tunnel is only big enough for one vehicle at a time so a light was placed at either end to manage that there was a place like that back home in Southwest Calgary this

Bridge used to be a single lane bridge bridge over the creek we made it to the graveyard so my great great something grandfather was a groundskeeper here and apparently he got a pretty nice Rock when he died and I figured it would be easiest to find this Stone if I asked

For help so that’s exactly what I did unfortunately I was told by the folks running it that they didn’t have records that went far enough back for this specific stone is the record not right on the Rocks like in the graveyard how did they not have access to this

Information I was told to call some Scottish records department they also did not have the records so I called another records institution but they’re super busy and probably very underfunded so they took my information and said they’d get back to me a more local lady overheard me on the phone hearing my

Accent she could tell I’m definitely not from the area she warned that they would probably never get back to me and it’s been 5 months and I’m still waiting by phone every day I’m waiting for this phone call anyway it was a fun adventure either way and I will say something

Unique and interesting that I loved about this area was this kind of almost portable looking laundromat kind of interesting but that basically concludes my Scottish Adventure the next toop is London on the train I chatted with an interesting artist guy and I will say for the shy

Who are thinking maybe I shouldn’t take trains don’t worry this was mostly me instigating the conversations with people people and trying to feel out if they wanted to talk or not every person I talked to on the train was a willing participant okay so relax if you want to

Take the train but don’t want to talk to somebody I think you’ll be okay something interesting about the train was this wayfinding for the power outlet because all the other trains that I’d been on had the power outlets on the wall but this one was between the seats

So I followed the directions and found the outlet I arrived at King’s cross and loved this meeting of modern and historic architecture something else I loved about London was the bike Lanes honestly this was probably my favorite thing about London this was awesome to

See but okay we got to wrap this trip up so Tower Bridge way bigger in person walkie-talkie just as dumb as I expected though this portion of the skyline isn’t that bad I loved this park walkable Street cool 32° not cool I wanted rain I spent all summer working landscaping and

This was supposed to be a break from the hot sun London Bridge station beautiful London Bridge me Bike Share good Elizabeth line beautiful Transit Museum awesome and I wish I had more time but that’s why I bought this book now the British museum okay I knew they had like

Stolen stuff from all over the planet but I didn’t realize just how bad it was I will say though I appreciated this bit of wayfinding Shrek’s adventure I’ll admit I’m a bit curious tourism H after Edinburgh and London I might be a bit anti-tourism anyways that’s going to do it for this

Video I’m off to be a tourist in Montreal so we talked a lot about tourism in today’s video which is something I’d like to discuss more in the future it affects how we build cities and who we build cities for if you live in a touristy place especially

If it’s one of the ones that I talked about in this video let me know what you think about tourism anyways thanks for watching