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

“Walkable City” explains why cities should create and grow walkable places, and how it can be done. Walkable downtowns and neighborhoods, the book argues, are the key to healthy, prosperous, affordable and appealing cities, and make other urbanist goals, like transit, mixed uses, bike lanes and density possible.

Jeff Speck is a city planner who specializes in walkable places.

The big ideas for Urban Atlanta:

1. Walkability is the core strength of cities. It makes other good things in cities possible.
2. As the book explains, there are four qualities needed for walkability. Walks must be interesting, safe, useful and comfortable. We have much work to do in Urban Atlanta in meeting these conditions.
3. We have starting points, including downtowns in Atlanta and in suburbs like Decatur, Roswell and Suwanee. But there are older neighborhoods such as Inman Park and the Old Fourth Ward that could also be made more walkable. There are other opportunities. They include major developments like the Gulch in downtown Atlanta and the redevelopment of South Downtown. And in the suburbs are office districts and shopping malls that could become mixed-use areas. All could be made walkable places.
4. To create walkable places, we must put cars in their place. This involves finding ways of sharing streets with pedestrians and cyclists and taking back some of Urban Atlanta’s glut of parking.