Walkable City 10 Years Later: How Car Culture Takes Away Our Freedom
We are often told that America’s car culture is integral to its freedom. But let’s parse that one out a little bit. Three factors— road policing, car dependence, and street design — would together seem to conspire otherwise.
November 18, 2022
‘Walkable City’ 10 Years Later: What If We Took Traffic Violence As Seriously As Terror?
Research suggests that you are 568 times less likely to die in a terror attack than a car crash. So why do cities devote so much less to making their cities walkable than they do to preventing politically-motivated violence?
November 17, 2022
Walkable City 10 Years Later: COVID-Safe Streets Are Walkable Streets
Aside from Zoom — and, of course, mRNA vaccines — the most impactful technology to evolve thanks to COVID was the one at the very heart of Walkable City: street design. Jeff Speck explores how the pandemic re-shaped our streets — and what it will take to make those changes permanent.
November 16, 2022
Walkable City 10 Years Later: Cars Make Us Sicker Than We Thought
The original edition of the landmark book Walkable City detailed some of the most devastating health impacts of an automotive lifestyle. In the years since, though, author Jeff Speck has discovered they were just the tip of the iceberg.
November 15, 2022
How To Fix A Fork (In The Road)
Streets that fork at non-right angles create complicated intersections with dangerous sight lines and signals with too many phases. Here's an innovative fix.
February 1, 2019
For a More Walkable City, Enlist the Fire Chief
Rewrite the fire chief’s mandate to optimize public safety, not response times, says Jeff Speck in his new book, "Walkable City Rules."
November 12, 2018
For a More Walkable City, Replace Signals with All-Way Stops
In Philadelphia, replacing traffic lights with four-way stops reduced serious injuries 68 percent, author Jeff Speck explains in an excerpt from his new book, "Walkable City Rules."
October 30, 2018
Jeff Speck: For a Walkable City, Remove Centerlines on Local Streets
In an excerpt from his new book, Walkable City Rules, Jeff Speck says centerline stripes don't belong on residential streets.
October 15, 2018
Walkable City Rules: Don’t Expand City Streets for Self-Driving Cars
An excerpt from the upcoming book Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places by Jeff Speck.
October 3, 2018
New Urban Love and Loathing in Buffalo: Jeff Speck Responds
As a charter member of the Congress for New Urbanism, I’ve now attended twenty of the organization’s annual conferences. This month’s event may have been my favorite yet, mostly thanks to its location in downtown Buffalo, a place that reminds us so poignantly of both the successes and failures of city planning, as first lovingly practiced and later ruthlessly perpetrated across America.
June 16, 2014