Where you live shapes your relationships, your emotions and even how long you live, says community designer Zach DeBoer. After studying what a century of building cities around cars has done to downtowns in the US, he turned to lessons from some of the most walkable, carefully designed streets in the country: the ones inside Disney theme parks. With ideas ranging from narrower roads to buildings that pull you around the next corner, he offers a practical guide to turning ordinary downtowns into magical places people want to explore. (Recorded at TEDxSioux Falls on May 5, 2023)
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@GoldenZenith108___offficial
October 25, 2026 at 11:03 am
Another video I repeat 🔁 ❤I like your videos very much
@meanderinoranges
October 25, 2026 at 11:11 am
I agree that it would be nice if we built beautiful cities again. But I get the empression that you would like to force businesses to build the things that you want them to build. And forcing others to do things is wrong. It’s authoritarian, oppressive, and it fundamentally interferes with our freedoms.
@chrisj320ac3
October 25, 2026 at 11:14 am
@meanderinoranges lmfao 🤣
😛🥾
@Generic-v7o
October 25, 2026 at 2:36 pm
Are you okay?
@PriyaFNaz
October 25, 2026 at 11:17 am
Wow❤
@InventiveHarvest
October 25, 2026 at 11:31 am
I don’t want to wait in line to go to the library
@sheepsharp
October 25, 2026 at 2:49 pm
@InventiveHarvest get another job so you can get the fast pass. Garbage+ is also essential if you don’t want 1/2 of your bin on your lawn.
@andrewmcintyre9722
October 25, 2026 at 11:39 am
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard…. Roads got built because of cars. Cars did not force the bicyclists off the roads because there were no roads before cars not really.
@pij3333
October 25, 2026 at 11:49 am
Yeah, why don’t these idiots get it? All those roads from before cars were invented were obviously not meant to be used until the cars came around. They were just planning ahead a few hundreds/thousands of years.
@terryhopp645
October 25, 2026 at 11:44 am
These delusional techocrats are ruining the world but hey lets create an entire city and force businesses and people to move there😂
@TheTanman412
October 25, 2026 at 11:50 am
State Street in Santa Barbara, CA is a perfect example of this philosophy, especially ever since 2021 when they made an 8 block section car-free, only allowing bikes & pedestrians. Now there’s musicians busking, food, arts & craft vendors, increased foot traffic, window shopping, and farmer’s markets on Tuesdays & Saturdays. County fairs & amusement parks don’t have cars constantly driving by. Downtown areas should feel like a dense village where everyone gathers, both locals & tourists. Disneyland is not just an homage to the way American towns & cities once were, but they borrow heavily from much older European theme parks like Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark which opened in 1843.
@vijayrathod5973
October 25, 2026 at 12:10 pm
Life is not a Cartoon and fantasies
@susanmarie2231
October 25, 2026 at 12:11 pm
Denser development? If you mean Manhattan, not a lifestyle for me. But I do love Disney.
@doubleuenbeeeh
October 25, 2026 at 12:18 pm
No one wants you there anyway
@doubleuenbeeeh
October 25, 2026 at 12:16 pm
Caricature of a human voice
@MsNagellak
October 25, 2026 at 1:05 pm
This is like many European cities. Take a look at Amsterdam for example. We can walk or cycle everywhere. Narrow roads etc.
@adamgold5176
October 25, 2026 at 8:11 pm
Amsterdam is amazing! I got to visit once. Walking around was super easy and I loved the bike tour. I couldn’t believe they had traffic lights for bikes!
@bleh22222
October 25, 2026 at 3:08 pm
comparing the quiet suburb to city life sounds like a causation fallacy
@dez7726
October 25, 2026 at 3:38 pm
I’m out at those lay lines. they don’t slow anyone down. People will drive through them and bike lanes. So what is the population density of a Disney neighborhood?
@plebeianwisdom4296
October 25, 2026 at 4:41 pm
Proponents of car-centered development should recognize how costly this planning direction has become for taxpayers, as many cities risk bankruptcy while trying to sustain road networks, particularly when populations move or decrease. Furthermore, on top of wasting our shared tax dollars, the infrastructure is unattractive, requires frequent maintenance, and is vastly more dangerous when compared to alternatives. Urban residents in the United States, however, must consider the problem of public safety and the need for zero-tolerance policing, as the ambient violence we tolerate differs starkly from Asian and European societies with more traditional urban planning. If American cities grew reliably safer, suburban residents might not feel compelled to stay outside city limits. We also require mass transit that is dependable and extensive beyond a few urban centers and regional routes, by building ahead of ridership demand. The economics of these efforts cannot and should not depend on private capital at the outset, but the indirect economic benefits of linking communities and enabling new developments save in the long term without the costly, inefficient maintenance of decaying auto infrastructure.
@arkology_city
October 25, 2026 at 7:19 pm
The future is 3D modular arcologies, with the roof as beautiful and as green as you want to make it.
@nao_kaka
October 25, 2026 at 8:09 pm
Turns out good city design is basically just gentle psychology 🙂
@StoriesWithEvelynHart
October 25, 2026 at 9:22 pm
The part that stayed with me was Walt sitting alone on a park bench, watching all the other grown-ups watch their children play, and thinking there ought to be a place where parents and children could have fun together. I don’t think I’d ever heard that story quite that way before, and it made the whole idea of designing streets for people, not just cars, feel so much more personal. If we can build towns where families actually want to linger together, that’s a kind of magic worth working for.