Not Just Bikes

Last updated

Not Just Bikes
Logo Not Just Bikes.svg
The channel's current logo
Jason Slaughter 2021 01.png
Slaughter in 2021
Personal information
Born
Jason Slaughter

London, Ontario, Canada
NationalityCanadian-Dutch
Occupation
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2019–present
Genres
Subscribers1.4 million [1]
Views182 million [1]
YouTube Silver Play Button 2.svg100,000 subscribers2021
YouTube Gold Play Button 2.svg1,000,000 subscribers2023
Last updated: July 3, 2025

Not Just Bikes is a YouTube channel run by Canadian-Dutch content creator Jason Slaughter. [2] [3] [4] The channel examines urbanist issues, including but not limited to cycling in the Netherlands, and contrasts the transportation, infrastructure, and built environment of the Netherlands and other countries to those of the United States and Canada. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [ excessive citations ]

Contents

Biography

Slaughter was raised in London, Ontario, Canada, [7] [3] which he has described as a "car-dependent hellscape." [11] He and his family migrated to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to move away from what he claims to be car-centric suburban sprawl. [3] He also claims that sprawl is common in Canada and the United States, and that urban sprawl, as well as laws that dictate single-family home–only zoning, make it difficult to walk or cycle to everyday destinations. [4] He also criticizes North American public transportation. [11] [4] A 2021 video titled "Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere)" helped popularize the concept of the stroad.[ citation needed ] In the video, he criticizes stroads for their cost, inefficiency, and lack of safety in the United States and Canada and how cities can improve them. [12]

Slaughter became a naturalized Dutch citizen in 2024. [13] [14]

YouTube career

Slaughter created his own YouTube channel named Not Just Bikes in mid-April 2019. On July 7, 2019, he uploaded his own first video of a POV demonstration of him using the Strawinskylaan bicycle parking garage in Amsterdam. In a series of videos titled "What Makes a City Great?" he explained his backstory, and the topic he would cover in his videos will be about the differences between transportation, infrastructure, and the built environment in the Netherlands on one side and in the United States and Canada on the other side.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "About Not Just Bikes". YouTube.
  2. ↑ "25 Political Influencers to Watch in 2024". The New Republic . 23 April 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 Khan, Imad (20 July 2022). "High Gas Prices Are Revving Up This Online Anti-Car Movement". CNET. Retrieved 22 June 2023. A few years ago, Jason Slaughter began making YouTube videos to document his family's move from Toronto to Amsterdam. That's how the 45-year-old IT professional became an inadvertent hero of the growing online anti-car movement. Posting to his orange-themed channel, Slaughter focused on the differences between transportation in North America and the Netherlands, which he chose for its car-free lifestyle.
  4. 1 2 3 Marsh, Laura; Pareene, Alex (9 March 2022). "Too Fast or Too Furious? More people are dying in traffic crashes. Is pandemic rage to blame?". The New Republic — The Politics of Everything. Retrieved 22 June 2023. We've pretty extensively covered what's wrong with American streets and American vehicles. Other countries do things very differently, and we're talking now to someone who lives in one of those countries: Jason Slaughter. His YouTube channel Not Just Bikes is about planning and urban design. He lives in the Netherlands.
  5. ↑ Zandbergen, Rebecca (15 June 2023). "Could you give up your car in London?". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved 22 June 2023. "It's much easier to go car free in a place designed for walkability than one designed only for driving," said Jason Slaughter, a popular YouTuber who runs the channel Not Just Bikes.
  6. ↑ Azran, Azmin (10 February 2022). "3 YouTube Channels for City Planning Nerds". The Daily Star . Retrieved 22 June 2023. Not Just Bikes is a unique YouTube channel. It's not about cities per se, but more about Dutch cities, and what a person who grew up in Canada, and now lives in Amsterdam, feels about Dutch cities. Jason Slaughter, the host, gives the videos a personal tone, often talking about his family and their contrasting experiences living in London, Canada (or fake London, as he calls it) and Amsterdam.
  7. 1 2 Evans, Walker (21 March 2022). "7 Urbanism YouTube Channels you Need to Follow Immediately". Columbus Underground . Retrieved 22 April 2022. Since 2019, Jason Slaughter has been documenting biking, walking, transportation and urbanism primarily as it relates to his experiences in his home country of Canada and his current home in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  8. ↑ Gordon, Doug; Goodyear, Sarah; Naparstek, Aaron (30 November 2021). "Not Just Bikes with Jason Slaughter". The War on Cars (Podcast). Retrieved 3 July 2022. Jason Slaughter is the creator of Not Just Bikes, the wildly popular YouTube channel that covers urban design and daily living in the Netherlands. Jason's videos are informative and entertaining, and whether they're about the shaky finances on which the suburbs are built or something as simple as grocery shopping, each one helps viewers understand larger concepts about building cities for people, not cars.
  9. ↑ Valiente, Tito Genova (24 February 2023). "Not Just Bikes: Documenting advocacies". BusinessMirror . Retrieved 7 March 2023. The narrator, Jason Slaughter, talks of growing up in Ontario, Canada, in what he calls Fake London with no small amount of snark. (He and his young family have relocated to the Netherlands, specifically Amsterdam.)
  10. ↑ Valiente, Tito Genova (3 March 2023). "Not Just Bikes but Humans". BusinessMirror . Retrieved 16 March 2023. Speaking of loss, Jason Slaughter reminisces how his city used to be a beautiful place because people could walk from one place to another. Until places were bulldozed to give way to roads and highways, and with them structures like old churches, schools, houses and places of business employing hundreds of people.
  11. 1 2 Pittis, Don (21 November 2022). "From 'car-dependent hellscapes' to green cities, Canadians find new ways to fight climate change". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved 22 June 2023. While written and delivered in a droll, contemptuous style, Slaughter's well-researched and well-produced videos, often in association with the U.S. non-profit Strong Towns, provide an accessible lesson in what's not working in North American cities and, using his current home in the Netherlands as a counter-example, how North American cities need to change.
  12. ↑ Shaw, Kristin V. (2 January 2022). "An Argument Against 'Stroads,' the Worst Kind of Street". The Drive. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  13. ↑ "Hallo mede-Nederlanders 🇳🇱". Not Just Bikes. Retrieved 8 October 2024– via YouTube.
  14. ↑ "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)". Not Just Bikes. 6 October 2024 – via YouTube.
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