Walkable City Essay

Intro

City planner, urban designer, and author Jeff Speck has devoted his career and third book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, to what he believes is the essential element that makes cities thrive, walkability. A concept that he regards as one of the best solutions to what is awry in most American cities, that if implemented, could solve an abundance of problems within society. He makes it clear that this isn’t a book on why cities work or how they work, but rather a book on what works best in cities. Written in a formulaic straight to the point style, the book is full to the brim of intriguing examples, research, and jaw-dropping statistics to support walkability yet presented in a fun, humorous, and energetic way to make it readable even for the planning novice.

Thesis

Speck simply has one goal in Walkable City, to demonstrate that walkability is the key nutrient to make cities blossom and that this theory could vastly improve the autocentric cities of America. When it comes to walkability, the first step is making walking the favored mode of

From non-critics the book has an average rating of 4.7/5 stars based on 173 reviews on Amazon and an average rating of 4.3/5 stars based on 2,538 votes on Goodreads. The book is covered in kind words from critics from all over the nation, including an entire page dedicated to praise for the publication. Kurt Andersen, host of Studio 360 and author of True Believers says “If Jane Jacobs invented a new urbanism, Walkable City is its perfect complement, a commonsense twenty-first-century user’s manual.” (Found on back of book) The Los Angeles Times calls it “a recipe for vibrant street life” (Horan 2012) and The Christian Science Monitor announces it as “a delightful, insightful, irreverent work. ” (Ulin