Walkable City, How Downtowns Can Save America, One Step at a Time, Jeff Speck, 2012

I was pleased to see that the Lexington Herald-Leader today reviewed Speck’s Walkable City because I was hoping more Kentuckians would read it.  Those of us who are familiar with walkable cities like the District of Columbia (where Jeff Speck lives) see the advantages of urban living that includes  a good deal of walking.  One important point that the author makes clear is that to improve walkability, you have to provide pathways that go somewhere, that is, are not just for exercise.  Walking to work, restaurants, entertainment and shopping are the keys to successfully transforming cities from drivable to walkable.  Walking must be useful as well as safe, comfortable, and interesting.  The small center of Berea, KY where we live is rated as highly walkable, but most other areas are “car dependent”.  While progress has made in improving walkways in Berea, the major structural problems that developed in the past 40 or so years remain, and remain difficult to solve.  The interstate cuts off from shopping and restaurants all the new housing, including many low-income areas where people walk from lack of other means of transportation.  We do have one local bus route (and here I give myself some credit for helping to bring it to Berea) but the local bus suffers a bit from the attitude that the author mentions where we so many of us support bus transit for you to ride.  (Effective bus transportation enhances walking by decreasing automobile use and allows for residents to avoid driving to many activities.)   The book does mention some of the counter-intuitive solutions that everyone ought to know, but I am afraid few do.  Making a street wider causes people to drive faster so it decreases safety.  Building more highways brings more congestion, not less, and increases sprawl, so increases drive time.  Providing more and less expensive parking brings more cars and decreases walkability.  On street parking makes neighborhoods safer and increases walkability.  On street parking increases walking safety and decreases automobile travel.  No matter how much a city wants more walking and less cars, it is usually up to the state’s Department of Transportation which receives the massive amounts of revenue from State and Federal fuel taxes.   I might add that every state D.O.T. is filled with highway engineers who want to build more roads, faster highways, and richer road contractors.  The result is more driving, longer distances, more fuel consumption, consequently more fuel tax revenue.  Its a drug, the addiction to fuel, taxes, and the endless self-perpetuating expansion of roads and worship of the automobile. And in recent years, it has become clear that the increased walkability of a neighborhood increases property values.  As Jeff Beck points out, cities are built upon neighborhoods, and to have a real neighborhood is to have a walkable area with a mix of the kinds of element that make up city life.