Jeff Speck
Why States Require Insurance Cos. to Sell Policies to the Most Dangerous Drivers
When drivers are too dangerous to buy traditional insurance, states often require insurance companies to sell it to them anyway at steep cost. Is that a good thing for road safety?
February 15, 2023
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
What the Last Decade Has Done for the Walkability Movement
In 2012, Jeff Speck’s Walkable City sparked a conversation about why pedestrianized places matter and became one of the best-selling books about the built environment in recent memory. Ten years later, though, so much about the world has changed — even as human-centered communities have become more important than ever.
November 15, 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, 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
Here It Is: The Ultimate Absurdity in American Transportation
We really have to give Jeff Speck credit. In his new book, Walkable City, he amasses a wealth of evidence that skillfully reveals just how absurd American attitudes toward transportation and cities have become. We interviewed Speck about his book last month, and we can't help returning to it to highlight this little factoid. If it isn't the ultimate sign of everything that's wrong with American transportation policy, well, we'd like to see what is.
January 4, 2013
Author Jeff Speck on Walkability and the One Mistake That Can Wreck a City
What makes a city great? According to Jeff Speck, the secret sauce is, quite simply, walking. If your city is a good place to walk -- that is, walking is safe, comfortable, interesting, and useful -- everything else will fall into place.
December 19, 2012