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

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this one for two unlikely reasons. First, Jess Speck is a friend of my friend Larry, and Larry recommended it not long ago as a great summary of their shared work in urban planning. Second, I found it on sale at a moment (the start of the summer) when I had time to read things off my usual list.

At first I found it more or less interesting, but the more I read, the more I was taken by the consistent logic of the book. Its overall thesis is straightforward: cities are complexes of different demands. They work best when they balance the competing needs of drivers, pedestrians, consumers, residents, workers, and commuters, and they tend to fail when planners, managers, or architects privilege one set of needs over all others.

Speck goes on to point out that nothing he’s saying is particularly new. Most of it’s been apparent since Jane Jacobs (Scranton’s own) put out her fabled Death and Life of Great American Cities. The challenge has been to make that point clear to enough stakeholders of our cities that we can move forward with thoughtful planning rather than make faddish or foolhardy decisions.

The more I read, the more I suspected that Speck was underselling his own contributions to this (just as I suspect Larry often underplays his own work in the small city where we both live). More than simply explaining how his school of thought operates, he also skewers some who, though they should know better, keep making different choices. He’s rough on several of the state departments of transportation that demand a consistency of regulation that makes the same requirements of urban roads as they do of highways, and he’s brutal on some of the star architects who, proud of their masterful buildings, forget how people have to live their lives around them.

He’s long on remarkable observations that flip what we might think of as “common sense” on its head. He explains that, contrary to most popular thinking, widening city streets usually does not help with congestion; it’s an observed fact that the easier you make it for cars to enter a city, the more will do so. Wider and more lanes typically make things better for only a brief time with their increasing capacity inviting increased demand until you have the same commuter problems as before but worse pollution and more demand for parking.

Or there’s the striking claim that “safer” roadways are often the most dangerous. He explains that, when we give drivers the impression they don’t need to be careful in their driving, they are less likely to pay full attention. One specific detail that really came through was the notion that four-way stop signs are often much safer than complicated traffic light systems at comparably busy intersections. That is, stop signs require drivers to be aware of and negotiate their surroundings while stop lights give the impression all they need to pay attention to is green or red. (In one cutting part, Speck explains as well that many of the companies that conduct the studies to determine whether cities need new traffic lights are the same ones that sell and install such lighting systems. Of course, they advocated for the more expensive systems.)

By the end of this, I found myself reminded of what it was like to read Bill James’s work on baseball back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. A reviewer then famously suggested that reading James gave you “the spectacle of a first-rate mind squandered on baseball.” Reading Speck, I find myself thinking of a ‘first-rate mind ignored’ on questions that affect all of us.

There’s a lot to study here, but there’s also a lot simply to be amused and frustrated by. I feel smarter now that I’ve read this, and that seems one of the best things you can say about anything you happen to read.


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