4 ways to make a city more walkable

Here’s the book that most of this talk’s ideas can be found in. It begins with a short half called "Why Walkability" which explains the compelling reasons why we should make our cities more walkable. That discussion was covered briefly in my other TED Talk, The walkable city. The second, longer half of the book, "The Ten Steps of Walkability," gets into great depth on the topics covered here.

This book, 12 years in the making, was written with my mentors Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the principal thinkers behind the global New Urbanism movement. Hearing Andres give the talk that became the heart of this book is what inspired me to become a city planner. While the book addresses the inner city at some length, it focuses mostly on the suburbs and how we build new places in America and the world.

Also written with Andres Duany, this book attempts to offer much of the guidance that can be found between the lines of the other books in the more instrumental form of a manual containing about 140 specific illustrated instructions for the creation of well-designed buildings, streets, neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions.

Everone’s favorite book on city planning, in case you haven’t read it.

Many more resources can be found at my website.

The national organization dedicated to good, principled city planning. The American Planning Association is the planning organization that safeguards the professionalism of the field, but it is largely mute when it comes to cities vs. sprawl. In contrast, the CNU, in its own words, "views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge."

SGA is the principal organization that engages politically to advocate for good city planning and stemming the tide of sprawl.