Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

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Jeff Speck

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2013, 2012, English

Nonfiction, Urban Design

8.6 x 5.7 x 1 inches, hardcover 320 pages

ISBN: 9780374285814

Suggested Retail Price: $27.00

From the Publisher. 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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Alissa Walker

On Alissa Walker’s Notable Books of 2012 list

As the former design director for the National Endowment for the Arts, and co-author of the bible-like Suburban Nation, Jeff Speck has spent a lifetime helping American cities work better. Yet for all the innovation he witnessed, the greatest change always came from a return to one of our simplest actions: walking. Using real-world case studies (and an accessible, blissfully non-academic voice), Speck argues that a “walkable city”—a dense, urban environment designed with pedestrians in mind—is not only a nicer, healthier place to live and work, but can serve as an economic driver for the U.S. As new pedestrian plazas and car-free festivals proliferate across the country, the timing could not be better for Speck’s highly entertaining and inspiring vision for getting our country back on its feet.

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