Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places Paperback – October 15, 2018

My city, Athens, GA, is in the process of putting in motion a plan to greatly enhance our pedestrian and biking infrastructure. I bought this book hoping it might give me some insights I might be able to offer my mayor and commission. I learned so much more about urban planning than I ever hoped. There's a lot more to making a city walkable than just putting in sidewalks! I first bought the audiobook version. It's read by the author and he does an excellent job. After listening to it all the way through, THREE TIMES, I also bought two copies of the paper version, one for me and one to give to my city commissioner. I refer to it with him regularly. I also went back and read Jeff Speck's older book, Walkable City. They compliment each other well, but as the author himself points out, the earlier book is more of a "Why" to make a city more walkable, and this one is more of a "How To" book. This book is a bit more of a coffee table type book, each "Rule" is only a few pages and most have illustrations, charts, or graphs. Its an easy and interesting read for a complex subject, and it even has a little humor sprinkled in.

I have presented the information in this book to my fellow commissioners as a Transportation Commissioner and as chair for my city's Active Transportation Advisory Commission. The book describes the many benefits of pedestrian and cycling infrastructures as well as actions that citizens and leaders can take to have spaces for cars and simultaneously re-humanize a community.

Cannot recommend this enough. A must read. Transforms my view and understanding or urban design

I wish everybody, particularly our city planners, could read this book. There are so many ways we could be improving our quality of life! My one complaint is that there are a lot of needless political insults against “tea baggers.” Guess what? That’s not going to win them over to your cause. Other than the lack of diplomacy, the lessons themselves were great.

A great book to learn from and we can’t wait for an updated book to cover other ideas.

I highly recommend this book for urban planners as well as anyone who walks, bikes, and rides transit in any city, anywhere in the world. Jeff Speck is a terrific writer and presenter. Makes a compelling case for why walkable cities are better for everyone, even the folks who get stuck driving in them. I recently had a successful GoFundMe campaign to get this informative and entertaining book into the hands of local government officials and town planners, and it was a huge success! Just a thought for those of you out there wishing your town or city was more livable and friendly to get around without a car... :)

I’ve just ordered another six copies of this book. I’ve now ordered fifteen copies total. I LOVE this book and have bought copies to give to Planning Commissioners, bike / pedestrian / transportation advocates, and local lending libraries. Jeff Speck has created a ‘CliffsNotes’ compilation of wisdom that includes concepts from other urban design / transportation books that I’ve read. This book has great potential to change thinking and help us transform our cities to create truly livable places. The book is very approachable and light hearted. I highly recommend this book!

If you've read Walkable City and want to use what you've learned to be an advocate in your city or town, you really need to read this book. Speck does an amazing job of teaching readers to use what they learned from Walkable City, whether that's influencing friends and family or literally speaking up at city meetings and influencing policy makers. If you want to be a part of creating positive walkability changes in your city, I'd argue you need to read this book.