Jeff Speck is a city planner and architectural designer who, through writing, lectures, and built work, advocates internationally for more walkable cities.

As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he oversaw the Mayors' Institute on City Design and created the Governors' Institute on Community Design, a federal program that helps state governors fight suburban sprawl. Prior to joining the Endowment, Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co., a leading practitioner of the New Urbanism, where he led or managed more than forty of the firm's projects.

Speck is the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream as well as The Smart Growth Manual. His latest book, Walkable City -- which Christian Science Monitor calls "timely and important, a delightful, insightful, irreverent work" -- has been the best-selling city-planning title of this decade.