• The enduring relevance of Walkable City

    The 10th Anniversary Edition of Speck’s popular city planning treatise highlights the still-raging war over walkability and streets designed for cars.
    A decade ago, my publication’s review of Jeff Speck’s Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time got nearly everything right. Writer Philip Langdon captured the significance of the book, and detailed Speck’s points that have endured to this day (as a 10 th Anniversary Edition...Read more
  • Your guide to a unifying urban theory

    Urbanists have been using the Transect to compete with the protocols of sprawl for years, and no book has been written on it—until now.
    Transect Urbanism: Readings in Human Ecology, describes itself as “The definitive reference on the Rural-to-Urban Transect.” Edited by Andres Duany and Brian Falk, the book fills a gap in the planning literature. The Rural-to-Urban Transect—which I will refer to as Transect with a capital T—is one...Read more
  • A comprehensive guide to buildings in walkable neighborhoods

    Here’s what you need to know about a wide range of building types that make up mixed-use cities and towns, how they work, and why they matter.
    When I prepare to review a book, I highlight key passages. But I couldn’t bring myself to mark up the pages of Increments of Neighborhood: A Compendium of Built Types for Walkable and Vibrant Communities . My highlighter hovered over the first few pages, until—nah—I just put it away. There is...Read more