Why do most people want to live in walkable cities and towns? What’s the impact on innovation and well-being?
Jeff Speck, city planner, urban designer, TED Talk speaker, and bestselling author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, offers fascinating and fact-filled responses to these questions. Along the way, he tells us the changes needed to make cities the thriving places that most people want.
In this episode you will learn:
- what is a walkable city
- how walkable cities drive innovation by attracting talent
- what makes cities safer than suburbs
- how more traffic signals actually make cities less safe
- why the most popular solutions to congestion actually increase it
- what the cheapest solution is for making a city more walkable
- how great urban design trumps weather every time
Jeff also shares a fascinating insight regarding a possible downside of self-driving cars.
Episode Links
The Walkable City TED Talk by Jeff Speck
Millenials Seek Walkable Cities
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett
Induced demand and traffic
Prospect-refuge Theory and Jay Appleton
Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
Jarrett Walker – Human Transit
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