but he is also one of the most entry-level urbanism YTers
Is he? He’s certainly very common entry-point into urbanism, but I don’t think that’s the same as being entry-level. I actually think he’s the best of the big urbanists.
Oh the Urbanity often seems to excuse some poor urbanism, and even when they aren’t doing that I find them far too neoliberal for my tastes.
CityNerd is brilliant, and he has a bunch of excellent videos. I particularly like the ones where he shows his gravity model for high speed rail. But he also does a hell of a lot of listicles which I can’t say are the greatest of high-quality content.
RMTransit does some good videos on fundamental topics, but his scope is very narrow—almost exclusively public transport, rather than other urbanist topics like cycling, walkability, different kinds of density & zoning, etc. I find them to be frequently very dry and not really focused as much on urbanism as it is on technical considerations. Interesting, but often more for the same reason I watch Wendover, rather than the same reason I watch NJB.
City Beautiful is probably my second-favourite of the urbanists. He covers a great diversity of topics in great quality. There’s just something that for me at least means I less often feel the calling to rewatch his videos to double-check a point then I do with Jason Slaughter’s videos.