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

by Jeff Speck

TENTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

WINNER OF THE GREEN PRIZE FOR SUSTAINABLE LITERATURE

Updated with 100+ pages of new material and a foreword by Janette Sadik-Khan

The bestselling urban planning book of the past decade, translated into seven languages, Walkable City has changed the conversation on community design across America and beyond. It is reissued here with an extensive update, including eight new chapters covering housing equity, COVID, Uber, autonomous vehicles, urban forests, and more.

Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability.

Making downtown into a walkable, viable community is the essential fix for the typical American city; it is eminently achievable and its benefits are manifold. Walkable City―bursting with sharp observations and key insights into how urban change happens―lays out a practical, necessary, and inspiring vision for how to make American cities the best they can be.

Paperback | 464 pages | Picador Paper; Anniversary edition | 2022

Jeff Speck, coauthor of the landmark bestseller Suburban Nation, is a city planner who advocates for smart growth and sustainable design. As the former director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, he oversaw the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, where he worked with dozens of American mayors on their most pressing city planning challenges. He leads a design practice based in Washington, D.C.