WALKABLE CITY

JEFF SPECK
 Jeff Speck

• Jeff Speck is an American city planner, writer, and

lecturer who is the principal at the urban design
and consultancy firm, Speck & Associates. He has
authored or co-authored several books on urban
planning, including his 2012 book, Walkable City:
How Downtown Saves America, One Step at a
Time.
• Book clearly states that .The General Theory of
Walkability explains how, to be favored, a walk has
to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful,
safe, comfortable, and interesting. Each of these
qualities is essential and none alone is sufficient.

• Four types that make a city walkable useful walk ,

safe walk , comfortable walk and interesting walk.

• Useful walk : Most needed things of daily life are

located nearby and organized in a way that
walking serves them well.
• Safe walk : Streets are designed so pedestrians are
protected from being hit by automobiles.
• Comfortable walk : Buildings and landscapes
shape urban streets into well-defined, cozy
outdoor living rooms, rather than wide-open
spaces.
• Interesting walk : Sidewalks are lined by unique
buildings with friendly faces. Signs of humanity
abound.

• ―Since midcentury, whether intentionally or by

accident, most American cities have effectively
become no-walking zones. In the absence of any
larger vision or mandate, city engineers—
worshipping the twin gods of Smooth Traffic and
Ample Parking—have turned our downtowns into
places that are easy to get to but not worth
arriving at.‖
• The solution is to make the city more "walkable"
but many efforts to design cities as a place to walk
have failed as well, often due to their half-hearted
nature or lack of understanding of what makes a
city walkable .
• To do this, Speck created a ten step list with each
chapter describing the steps involved in creating
truly walkable city.

The Ten Steps of Walkability

1. Put cars in their place(Useful walk ):

• They ignore induced demand: when increasing
the supply of roadways lowers the time cost of
driving,
• causing more people to drive, thus canceling
any reductions in congestion.
• We need to welcome cars in proper number
and at the proper speed. Congestion pricing is
an aggressive fee for drivers entering the
congested city on weekdays – revenue goes
toward a progressive transportation agenda.
2. Mix the uses (Useful walk ):
• place proper balance of activities within walking
distance of each other.
• market-rate housing, while also promoting those
things that residents want and need: parks and
playgrounds,
• supermarkets and farmer’s markets, cafe’s and
restaurants and eventually good schools.
[Link] the parking right (Useful walk ):
• ―Pensacola Parking Syndrome:‖ replacing
beautiful old buildings with ugly parking lots in such
number that nobody wants to go downtown
anymore.
• Most cities lack a comprehensive parking policy
that decouples and deals with off-street and on-
street parking together.
• Find the right price for curbside parking so that 85%
of spaces are occupied – reduces congestion of
people driving around looking for a spot.
4. Let transit work (Useful walk ):
• Local Density: what matters is how many people
live near the transit line.
• Neighborhood structure should have a center
and an edge. It should be compact, diverse and
walkable. The collection of neighborhoods should
be interspersed with districts like universities and
airports, and corridors like rivers and railways.
• Bus systems should focus on conditions where
certain conditions can be met to offer a superior
experience to driving:
• Urbanity: locate all significant stops right in the
heart of the action
• Clarity: keep the route simple – a line or loop with
as few diversions as possible
• Frequency: provide frequent service or none;
people hate to look at schedules
• Pleasure: create a mobile form of public space –
big windows, wifi, inward facing seats

5. Protect pedestrians (Safe Walk ):

control the many factors that determine a car’s
speed and a pedestrian’s likelihood of getting hit
• Smaller blocks are safer and more walkable.
Conversely, big-block, multi-lane systems are both
harder to cross and easier to speed on.
• Safe streets are lined by both parked cars and
trees which form a barrier between the pedestrian
and the roadway, and also slow traffic.

6. Welcome bikes (Safe Walk ) :

bikes thrive in walkable cities; bikeability make
driving less necessary.
• There needs to be urbanism with streets designed
to welcome bikes: shared routes, separated bike
paths, sharrows
7. Shape the spaces (Comfortable Walk ):
• Public spaces are only as good as their edges,
and too much gray or green (parking or parks)
can cause a would-be walker to stay home.
• We feel comfortable walking in cities with well-
defined edges and spatial definition.
• We need skinny towers atop lower, side-walk
hugging bases – if we get the design right, people
will walk in almost any climate.

8. Plant trees (Comfortable Walk ) :

• Street trees offer shade, reduce ambient
temperatures, absorb rainwater and tailpipe
emissions, provide UV protection and limit the
effects of wind.
• They also slow cars and improve the sense of
enclosure.

9. Make friendly and unique faces(Interesting Walk ):

pedestrians need to be entertained.
• Create active, open, lively edges
• Need a form-based code for buildings: how they
meet the ground, the street and the sky. How they
handle the transition from public to private realm;
how they hide their parking; small scale details
that engage people when they walk by.
10. Pick your winners (Interesting Walk ) :
spending the least money make the most difference
• A Streets: best posted to benefit
• B Streets: tougher, but needed to tie the best
streets together into a proper network
• C Streets: automotive; maintain them, but don’t
worry about walkability

CONCLUSION
The book gives a lot of information about how the
parking and how the sorroundings will affect the
behavior of the mindset of person for a walk . It deals
with numerous issues that faced by urban designers .
The book is very useful for planners and urban-design
students.
 BOOK RELATION TO THE SITE

Useful walk
• The site is mainly accessible by the shanthipuram
road which has a width of 4.5 m with 90 CM wide
pedestrian pathway .
• Presence of internal road in the site makes easy
access of vehicles to the residence .
• Most path are pedestrian some are built as such
some other paths are just closed drainage which is
used as pedestrian .
• 3 & 4 wheeler accessible paths are less when
compared with 2 Wheeler.
• Thammanam-Pulleppady road development is
going. The widening of the road, is to reduce
trafficsnarls in the city.
• Due to in proper parking the junction become
more conjusted.

Safe walk
• The site is accessible by pedestrian walkways in
the side. Making it easier for the inhabitants of the
site to commit.
• Drains from the Western and southern parts of the
site are connected to the North western area
further used as pedestrian and 2 Wheeler
pathway.
• . Most of the people use 2 Wheeler and walk to
travel for work purpose and bus for the education
purpose and shopping is done by nearby walking
places

• Let transit work .

• The location of the colony is what gives it it's life

easy proximity to all the major road and other
transport network through major road networks.
• The proximity allows the users to easily access
different part of ernakulam city through the
different road network making this context and site
huge potential for further growth. .
• The site well connected to the surrounding via the
pipeline road in the West and the Palarivattom -
Thammanam road the east. The Shanthipuram
road acts as a connection between both these
roads. Both these roads directly connecting to the
major roads.
Comfortable walk /interesting walk .
• Site as a whole is not highly vegetated .
• Trees can be seen at the central courtyard and
site Boundary.
• Each house is decorated with shrubs and
ornamental plants
• Utilizing walls of each houses by setting up vertical
gardens .
• There are two courtyards with playing equipment(
but now both are in ruined situation) .
• Rainwater does not penetrate at some areas
because the pathways are tarred .
• Pathways act as spaces for intersection and used
as play area .
• Vegetated area have cooler climate than the
outer spaces