Sketching the map of the 'Walkable City'.

• Author: Peirce, Neal
• Position: Book review

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

Jeff Speck

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2012, 320 pages, $27

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Jeff Speck's recent book, Walkable City, starts with a chilling quote as he laments the fate of the many American cities plagued by "fattened roads, emaciated sidewalks, deleted trees, fry-pit drive-thrus, and 10-acre parking lots"

Speck has seen a lot of urban disasters in his career advising cities on their development choices. But the thrust of his book is anything but downbeat. Rich rewards, he argues, await cities that move to tame traffic and put pedestrians first, create attractive streetscapes, mix uses, foster smart transit and create unique, quality places. In other words, truly walkable places.

Today only a handful of American cities are making all those moves correctly --Speck mentions New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, with Denver and Minneapolis close runners-up.

But the formula of those top cities is precisely what today's "Millennials" --born after 1981--vastly favor: urban communities with active street life, entertainment and stimulation. As demographer William Frey puts it, "A new image of urban America is in the making. What used to be white flight to the suburbs turning into 'bright flight' to the cities."

It needn't be just the Millennials. "Empty nesters" (the vast, post- World War II generation) include millions of people who are tired of maintaining their suburban homes and ready, in many cases, to opt for walkable, livable communities.

So opportunities for cities are exciting. However, Speck argues, this means reining in specialists who don't see the whole city's needs. He singles out school departments that push for larger facilities instead of cheaper-to-maintain neighborhood schools. Ditto public works departments that insist neighborhoods be designed principally around trash and snow removal.

He reserves special criticism for transportation departments that keep pushing wide roadways to let traffic move more rapidly--roadways so big and dangerous they trigger vast numbers of serious accidents (adding to America's world-leading total of 3.2 million traffic fatalities).

The nation's sprawling development patterns mean autos get used not just for long commutes but for rounds of small daily errands. Vast wealth flows out of communities to pay for gasoline. Sedentary, auto-dependent lifestyles exacerbate obesity levels that throw a dark shadow...