Jeff Speck

This is a really good book that tied into the other city planning books I've read this year.

There are 10 steps in creating walkable cities. They are all explained in the book really well, and the expanded edition I read further explained and updated a lot of them.

1. Put cars in their place.

2. Mix the uses

3. Get the parking right.

4. Let transit work.

5. Protect the pedestrian.

6. Welcome bikes.

7. Shape the spaces.

8. Plant trees.

9. Make friendly and unique faces.

10. Pick your winners.… (més)

This is a hard one, because I enjoyed it, I agree with everything he said, but having just read his Walkable City, I found this book too similar to get too excited about. It's differentiation is apparently this would be a list of rules for implementing the findings in Walkable City, but I'm not a moron, so if I've learned that "large lanes are bad," it's not so hard to think up the rule "make smaller lanes," say.

If one hasn't read the earlier book, this is 5 star, brilliant, read it now stuff. If you've read the earlier book, this is 3 star, decent, but not worth going out of your way for it stuff. So I'm averaging to 4.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).… (més)

Really like this one--I'm on an urban-planning kick, and to a certain extent some books are running into others--but Speck's background (he's worked with Duany and Plater-Zyberk) and his focus on real, specific suggestions for improving cities, kept this book humming along.

I've learned so many things that I'd never even considered before, an example would be his suggestion that metered street parking be priced high enough that it's only ever around 85% full--because if too cheap, too many people will opt to drive, not find anywhere to park, and drive around and around, circling, until finally they luck into a spot (one study showed that after 6:00pm, in their particular city the vast majority of traffic downtown consisted of hopeful parkers circling, which is self-evidentally a horrid unenvironmental practice).

This sort of sensible, data-driven, obvious-when-pointed-out information permeates the pages. Greatly recommended.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).… (més)