In 2012, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moved its regional headquarters in downtown Kansas City to a new building in suburban Lenexa. The new building has water-efficient toilets, energy-efficient hand dryers, underfloor heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems, and, to top it all off, a constructed wetland to sustainably manage 100% of its storm-water. All of these features have become hallmarks of a twenty-first century eco-friendly building.
But it’s also a move with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment.
Jeff Speck, author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step At A Time, borrows fellow author David Owen’s term, “LEED brain,” to diagnose the EPA’s problem. LEED refers to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, in which the sustainability of buildings are evaluated against a set of standards during both construction and maintenance. The different categories range from the sourcing of materials to the renewability of the energy used to power the building.
In the case of the EPA’s new building, the carbon saved with the impressive energy-saving measures will never balance out the tons of carbon emitted by the hundreds of employees now commuting daily to its new suburban location. Many of them used to take public transit to the old headquarters in the heart of Kansas City’s downtown. For many, the move added twenty miles or more to their daily commutes.
Speck, a planning professional for over twenty years, believes that Western society’s preoccupation with easy, flashy technological fixes causes less palatable but equally effective solutions to be overlooked. That is exactly why Walkable City is a must-read, and a breath of fresh air, not only for environmentalists, but also for public health professionals, government officials, and concerned citizens.
Speck prefaces his book with the disclaimer that “this is not the next great book on American cities,” even though Walkable City was named the best design/planning book of 2013. This is perhaps because he already co-authored that one: Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream is widely regarded as the seminal work of the twenty-first century planning movement. But where Suburban Nation was about the problem, Walkable City is about the solutions.
Flickr/Rev Stan
In Speck’s view, walkability offers more than just benefits for our environment. By reducing air pollution, asthma rates can be drastically lowered, and an active lifestyle can help curb obesity. The number of injurious and fatal car crashes would decrease while increasing productivity, attracting top talent, and stimulating the local economy. In documenting these side effects, Speck invites an audience much wider than his fellow planners to read his book, appealing to those interested in, as he puts it, “health, wealth, and sustainability.”
Speck isn’t all talk and no walk. With data and real-life experience to support his assertions, Walkable City challenges decades of conventional planning wisdom, advocating for narrower roads and lane widths and the eventual elimination of off-street parking (and higher on-street parking prices). These measures, Speck argues, will reduce congestion drastically, and save millions of gallons of fuel. He believes they will also increase the safety and comfort of pedestrians, as well as business revenue.
These policy recommendations add up to his “General Theory of Walkability,” which maintains that American downtowns need to be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. The stark contrast drawn between different cities — even sometimes between different neighborhoods — certainly makes it clear that these qualities do indeed have a strong effect on whether the average citizen chooses to go for a stroll or for a drive.
Discussing zoning code reform and other rather dry topics can make for a less than captivating read. Speck, however, has no problem capturing and holding the interest of the reader. Incorporating witty asides such as a quote from George Costanza of Seinfeld and brash statements like “traffic studies are bullshit” into a compelling and serious narrative is not an easy task, but one that Speck has mastered beautifully in Walkable City.
Likewise, with the content of this book, Speck has done the near-impossible: get to the bottom of what is wrong with with our cities and lay out a clear, concise, and most importantly, implementable vision for their future, backed up by decades of research.
In 2012, had Speck consulted the EPA on its new headquarters, it’s a sure bet that he would have pushed very hard to keep them in Kansas City, especially given that the EPA’s presence there was a dam holding back the flood of businesses and families leaving for the suburbs. For Kansas City, and other American cities struggling to turn the tide, Speck has the answer: walkability.