Walkable City

How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

By: Jeff Speck

Narrated by: Jeff Speck

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.

©2012 Jeff Speck (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Bring Your City to Life

This book is about so much more than walking. It is about bringing life back to your city, back to your downtown. It is about bringing a sense of community back to your community and thus improving the quality of life for all involved. The book also deals with what can be done to help increase the use of Bicycling and other forms of transportation making people less dependent on the car.
Jeff isn’t anti-car. But he is pro-walking. And he rightly sees that taking a critical look at traffic laws, and the construction of traffic routes can ultimately make life better for the automobilist as well as the walker and revive a downtown area, and even an entire city, burbs included.
It’s something so obvious it goes almost unnoticed. But if people don’t feel safe walking, they won’t walk. And when neighborhoods are designed with the car in mind, no one walks. So you can feasibly spend ten years and never meet another soul in your neighborhood. We just drive from home to work to a box store, to home. Not only is it bad for our health, it’s bad for business, it’s bad for community.
Anyone who is involved in city planning, anyone who is involved in community ought to read or listen to this book. If you are a compulsive walker like I am, take a listen on your next walk.

Read by the Author

Took me a few minutes to get used to the author's voice, as opposed to one of those generic-spounding professional audiobook readers, but once I did it was clear that he put way more of his heart into it than anyone else could have. A fantastic book for anyone interested in cities, transportation, and urbanites.

Tremendously important work

Speck articulates very strong arguments for walkable cities, with well researched statistics and colorful anecdotes. If city officials read this book it will mean a revolution toward better communities, better health, and a better environment.

Great Focus on Urban Walkability

Many books on Urban Planning are used to teach me something new, or to affirm many of my preconceptions. In Walkable City, however, the author had numerous points that challenged these preconceptions, and led me to reconsider positions I had taken for granted. An excellent examination in depth of walkability.

The author, while good in humor and engaging, could stand to practice his vocal delivery, as there were a number of instances where I had difficulty understanding him. His voice is deep, and at times mumbles the ending of sentences.

Overall, great work I recommend to any urban enthusiast.

Cities Make More Sense Now

I've never understood why it's so difficult to drive into Boston and Washington DC. Now that I understand that's they're purposely set up to make that difficult, I'm more inclined to take public transportation and more equipped to beat that system. Win/Win

Great for beginners

If you already know about planning at all this may not be ground breaking stuff but it was solidly enjoyable

excellent, informative, and digestible

loved that this book was digestible and relatable because Speck didn't exclusively talk about one city or really big cities only. he breaks down the information and examples by block, neighborhood, and city. it helped me see my own city in a new light and understand the issues facing city planners, mayors, and citizens more thoroughly.

Who knew that this book would be so interesting and informative?

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It gave me perspective as to why I enjoy some cities more than others. I travel a lot and now I can see why I love places like Europe and stay away from areas that don't cater to pedestrians. I definitely recommend this book.

A First Rate Mind, Telling Us Things We'll Ignore

I read this one for two unlikely reasons. First, Jess Speck is a friend of my friend Larry, and Larry recommended it not long ago as a great summary of their shared work in urban planning. Second, I found it on sale at a moment (the start of the summer) when I had time to read things off my usual list.

At first I found it more or less interesting, but the more I read, the more I was taken by the consistent logic of the book. Its overall thesis is straightforward: cities are complexes of different demands. They work best when they balance the competing needs of drivers, pedestrians, consumers, residents, workers, and commuters, and they tend to fail when planners, managers, or architects privilege one set of needs over all others.

Speck goes on to point out that nothing he’s saying is particularly new. Most of it’s been apparent since Jane Jacobs (Scranton’s own) put out her fabled Death and Life of Great American Cities. The challenge has been to make that point clear to enough stakeholders of our cities that we can move forward with thoughtful planning rather than make faddish or foolhardy decisions.

The more I read, the more I suspected that Speck was underselling his own contributions to this (just as I suspect Larry often underplays his own work in the small city where we both live). More than simply explaining how his school of thought operates, he also skewers some who, though they should know better, keep making different choices. He’s rough on several of the state departments of transportation that demand a consistency of regulation that makes the same requirements of urban roads as they do of highways, and he’s brutal on some of the star architects who, proud of their masterful buildings, forget how people have to live their lives around them.

He’s long on remarkable observations that flip what we might think of as “common sense” on its head. He explains that, contrary to most popular thinking, widening city streets usually does not help with congestion; it’s an observed fact that the easier you make it for cars to enter a city, the more will do so. Wider and more lanes typically make things better for only a brief time with their increasing capacity inviting increased demand until you have the same commuter problems as before but worse pollution and more demand for parking.

Or there’s the striking claim that “safer” roadways are often the most dangerous. He explains that, when we give drivers the impression they don’t need to be careful in their driving, they are less likely to pay full attention. One specific detail that really came through was the notion that four-way stop signs are often much safer than complicated traffic light systems at comparably busy intersections. That is, stop signs require drivers to be aware of and negotiate their surroundings while stop lights give the impression all they need to pay attention to is green or red. (In one cutting part, Speck explains as well that many of the companies that conduct the studies to determine whether cities need new traffic lights are the same ones that sell and install such lighting systems. Of course, they advocated for the more expensive systems.)

By the end of this, I found myself reminded of what it was like to read Bill James’s work on baseball back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. A reviewer then famously suggested that reading James gave you “the spectacle of a first-rate mind squandered on baseball.” Reading Speck, I find myself thinking of a ‘first-rate mind ignored’ on questions that affect all of us.

There’s a lot to study here, but there’s also a lot simply to be amused and frustrated by. I feel smarter now that I’ve read this, and that seems one of the best things you can say about anything you happen to read.

Fantastic book (and recording)

This was an eye-opening book, and it’s changed the way I look at my city.

I also thought the performance and delivery were quite excellent. As some other reviewers have said, the recording itself isn’t perfect - however, Jeff Speck’s actual delivery, cadence, and the occasional subtle humor in his voice were a joy to listen to. Much better than perfect recordings by dry narrators for my money. Anthony Bourdain’s self-narrated Kitchen Confidential is a similar case: the recording quality and editing are often terrible, but his narration style is wonderful.