Walkable City
Ratings15
Average rating4.1
Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that's easy to drive to but often not worth arriving at. Making walkability happen is relatively easy and cheap; seeing exactly what needs to be done is the trick. In this essential new book, Speck reveals the invisible workings of the city, how simple decisions have cascading effects, and how we can all make the right choices for our communities. Bursting with sharp observations and real-world examples, giving key insight into what urban planners actually do and how places can and do change, Walkable City lays out a practical, necessary, and eminently achievable vision of how to make our normal American cities great again.
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Interesting Yet Myopic. This is one of those books that has a lot of interesting points and is presented well, with a decent amount of humor even... and yet is also *incredibly* myopic at best, and could readily even be classified as elitist and condescending, possibly even racist. As someone who was actively running for small town rural City Council around the time this book was originally being written a decade ago, there are a lot of good points here - but there are also even more points that I could have quite easily shot down with barely any effort at all. Such is the level of the holes in Speck's "reasoning", such as it is. Read this book. But study the *entirety* of the implications of Speck's suggestions. Recomended.
Originally posted at bookanon.com.
Fascinating, gave me a broader understanding of urban planning and walkability than just the things I see and feel as a cyclist and a pedestrian. I don't know why Toronto got so much love compared to Montreal for so many things tho (granted I've never lived in Toronto but I understand the transit system is a little broken)
A manifesto on walkability. Speck is informative, clear, funny, and sassy. He writes from the perspective of the “generalist” that he endorses, who considers all aspects of urban planning and their effects on walkability, from streets to parking to trees to architecture. Ultimately, the book lists ten ways to create walkable cities and explains the positive impact this simple design choice has on the health, safety, environment, economy, and overall quality of life of a city.
