WALKABLE CITY: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time - Softcover

Speck, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865477728 ISBN 13: 9780865477728

Publisher: North Point Press, 2013

Synopsis

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 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. Insightful and passionately argued (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings), 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.

About this title

Review:

A delightful, insightful, irreverent work. --The Christian Science Monitor. If Jane Jacobs invented a new urbanism, Walkable City is its perfect complement, a commonsense twenty-first-century user's manual. --Kurt Andersen, host of Studio 360 and author of True Believers. A recipe for vibrant street life. --Los Angeles Times. Refreshing, lively and engaging . . . Walkable City isn't a harangue, it's a fun, readable and persuasive call to arms. --Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Everyone interested in improving the quality of city life should read this book and heed its lessons. --John Strawn, The Sunday Oregonian. Among the perennial flood of books on urban design in all its forms, this one stands out. --John King, San Francisco Chronicle. Walkable City is an energetic, feisty book, one that never contents itself with polite generalities. Sometimes breezy and anecdotal yet always logical and amply researched, this is one of the best books to appear this year. Speck deserves the widest possible readership. --Philip Langdon, Better! Cities & Towns. Walkable City . . . will change the way you see cities." --Kaid Benfield, The Atlantic Cities Jeff Speck, AICP, is one of the few practitioners and writers in the field who can make a 312-page book on a basic planning concept seem too short . . . For getting planning ideas into the thinking and the daily life of U.S. cities, this is the book.--Planning magazine Jeff Speck's brilliant and entertaining book reminds us that, in America, the exception could easily become the rule. Mayors, planners, and citizens need look no further for a powerful and achievable vision of how to make our ordinary cities great again. Joseph P. Riley, mayor of Charleston, S.C. --Various

About the Author:

Jeff Speck, coauthor of the landmark bestseller Suburban Nation, is a city planner who advocates for smart growth and sustainable design. As the former director of design at the National Endowment for the. Arts, he oversaw the Mayors' Institute on City Design, where he worked with dozens of American mayors on their most pressing city planning challenges. He leads a design practice based in Washington, D.C.

About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0865477728
• ISBN 13: 9780865477728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320