- Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
Other Sellers on Amazon
Follow the Author
OK
WALKABLE CITY: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time Paperback – November 12, 2013
|
Jeff Speck
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author?
Learn about Author Central
|
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$0.00
|
Free with your Audible trial | |
Enhance your purchase
-
Print length320 pages
-
LanguageEnglish
-
PublisherNorth Point Press
-
Publication dateNovember 12, 2013
-
Dimensions5.63 x 0.84 x 8.27 inches
-
ISBN-100865477728
-
ISBN-13978-0865477728
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
-
Apple
-
Android
-
Windows Phone
-
Android
|
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
The Death and Life of Great American CitiesPaperbackIn Stock.
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban DesignPaperbackIn Stock.
Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better PlacesPaperbackIn Stock.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American ProsperityHardcoverIn Stock.
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United StatesPaperbackIn Stock.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American DreamPaperbackIn Stock.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban DesignPaperbackIn Stock.
The Death and Life of Great American CitiesPaperbackIn Stock.
Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better PlacesPaperbackIn Stock.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American ProsperityHardcoverIn Stock.
Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United StatesPaperbackIn Stock.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American DreamPaperbackIn Stock.
Special offers and product promotions
Editorial Reviews
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.
“Cities are the future of the human race, and Jeff Speck knows how to make them work. In Walkable City, he persuasively explains how to create rational urban spaces and improve quality of life by containing the number one vector of global environmental catastrophe: the automobile.” ―David Owen, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Green Metropolis
“Companionable and disarmingly candid, Jeff Speck perches on your shoulder and gets you to see your community with fresh eyes. He gradually builds a compelling case for walkability as the essential distillation of a vast trove of knowledge about urbanism and placemaking. The case he makes has you both nodding at the intuitive and seemingly obvious wisdom presented, and shaking your head at why those basic principles of fixing our cities have eluded us for so long.” ―Harriet Tregoning, founder of the National Smart Growth Network
“Jeff Speck understands a key fact about great cities, which is that their streets matter more than their buildings. And he understands a key fact about great streets, which is that the people who walk along them matter more than the cars that drive through them. Walkable City is an eloquent ode to the livable city and to the values behind it.” ―Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic and author of Why Architecture Matters
“With Walkable City, Jeff Speck demonstrates why he is among the most relevant and engaging writers on urban design today.” ―Ron Bogle, president and CEO of the American Architectural Foundation
“When I speak around the country, people ask me what is the first thing they should do to start their community on the path of smart growth. I will now say: Read Jeff Speck's Walkable City.” ―Parris Glendening, governor of Maryland (1995–2003) and president of Smart Growth America's Leadership Institute
“Truly a book that is so very needed, Walkable City moves theory into action. We now know we need to build walkable urban places for all sorts of economic, social, and environmental reasons. Jeff Speck shows how to do it in the same clear style we came to love in the classic Suburban Nation.” ―Christopher B. Leinberger, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The Option of Urbanism
About the Author
Don't have a Kindle? Compra tu Kindle aquí, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- Publisher : North Point Press; Reprint edition (November 12, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0865477728
- ISBN-13 : 978-0865477728
- Item Weight : 9.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.63 x 0.84 x 8.27 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #55,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
A relatively short but insightful book written by an experienced architect, The Walkable City lays out an evidence based case for having a walkable and bikeable downtown area that is illustrated throughout with explanations of case studies and anecdotal examples. Everything is fully explained (both a basic 'this is what _____ means' as well as 'these are the implications of ____'), which - having no knowledge of civil engineering or city planning - I very much appreciated. But, what I think really makes the book (especially as a learning tool for a general audience) is the inclusion of Speck's dry and admittedly sarcastic humor. I found it hilarious and a good counterbalance to heavier topics (such as dry jokes about traffic engineers during a section on pedestrian deaths due to traffic behavior as a result road construction). Overall, I am very pleased to have stumbled across The Walkable City and it is a book that I would be happy to reccomend.
1. THe author doesn't just focus on sidwalks and walkways but he also focuses on how other physical elements, like buses, railways, and even trees can compliment or enhance walkways. So while the book is called walkable city it also gives invaluable insight into other elements.
2. Jeff Speck does a great job of blending, analogies, stories, statistic, studies, and facts into one book. Often times you see authors struggle to find that balance, or they have a book that is composed of 70% analogies and 30% facts, or like 90% opinion with like 10% facts. Or a boring textbook like book where it's 95% facts and 5% other stuff. But Jeff Speck does a good job of balancing all these elements out leading to a dynamic and fun book.
3. The book is written to where even if you're not a city planner you can understand it. I came into the book having virtually no understand of planning whatsoever in regards to sidewalks and roads. However, I was still able to understand 90% of the content (there was one chapter where I was lost) and learn a lot from it.
Cons:
1. It would be that one chapter I mentioned above...it was near the end of the book and short though so it's no biggie...but still it was a hard read.
Walkability, as I read the book, requires some level of mass transit to in essence “create” pedestrians in the urban core. Not that no one can drive, but the more people who don’t, the more people who are on the urban streets. “Walkability explains how, to be favored, a walk has to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable and interesting.” These terms are themselves quite subjective, but the author defines useful to mean that “***most aspects of life are located close at hand and organized in a way that walking serves them well”. Safe means “***that the street has been designed to give pedestrians a fighting chance against being hit by automobiles” . Comfortable means that “***buildings and landscapes shape urban streets into ‘outdoor living rooms’”, and interesting means “***that sidewalks are lined by unique buildings with friendly faces and that signs of humanity abound.” An example he gives of a city that lacks almost all technical aspects of walkability–good sidewalks, safe traffic, etc- but is wonderfully walkable because of being so interesting, is Rome. Anyone who has been there can appreciate the example. His basic premise is that walkablilty attracts creative people to our cities, enhancing both the culture and the economy, including the increased property values in walkable cities, as well as healthy citizens who walk or ride bikes more often. (As an aside, the author speaks a lot of Portland, Oregon-50 miles north of me-, and its commitment to walkability.)
Despite the ascribed benefits of walkability, the author posits that over the last 60 years, our country has made the automobile the master of the urban environment–and the environment in general. To create, or perhaps restore walkability, the car has to relegated to its position of servant rather than master. This can be done in many ways, including getting the parking issues right, and to the benefit of pedestrians. He also notes, as mentioned above, that walkable cities must have transit. Indeed, he points out that one need only trace the relative investment in highways versus transit in American and Canadian cities to see why the latter, who invested less in highways, have more walkable, and to the author, more vibrant cities.
The author goes into detail abut a great many subjects, but I will only explore one–traffic engineers. He does have a distinct bias against traffic engineers, saying most are trained to solve traffic problems, and thus the first step, at least for them, in solving every urban problem is to conduct a traffic study–usually aimed at how to better move traffic. He feels such studies are flawed for three reasons. First the computer models are flawed because, like all computer models they are only as good as the input; second, traffic studies are typically performed by firms that do traffic engineering; and third, traffic studies almost never consider what the author calls “induced demand”. The last consideration is very interesting, for the author, supported by studies, postulates that induced demand reflects the fact that increasing the supply of roadways lowers the “time cost” of driving, causing more people to drive, obliterating any reductions in congestion. In essence, investments in road capacity expansion do not ease congestion, but just add more cars to the highway. This is at first a bit counterintuitive, but, with a second thought, has a logical ring. If induced demand is a viable theory, then it has a doubly negative effect. It not only fails to reduce congestion, it adds more cars into the mix, reducing the possibility for walkability. So is congestion good? Contrary as it sounds, the answer might be “yes”. Indeed, the author notes that 7 of the 10 cities ranked worst for traffic also had “***excellent public transportation and a vast collection of walkable neighborhoods”. (The 3 that did not were Dallas, Houston and Atlanta.) Also, if induced demand is correct, why bother with spending fortunes to expand highways if you will end up with congestion anyway. I fund the whole “induced demand” scenario quite thought provoking.
This is not a “beach book”, or any type of “relaxing read”. It’s full of facts, theories and a bit of technical jargon. It is also quite informative and enlightening if one is interested specifically in urban planning, or more generally in reducing automobiles, increasing pleasant walkable urban environments, and making our cities more enjoyable for their residents.
Top reviews from other countries
I find myself noticing stuff arount the city that I hadn't notice before
Loved it!



