Thread by @wrathofgnon

“While battle was never declared, many American cities seem to have been made and remade with a mandate to defeat pedestrians.”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck

“The best day for being a city planner in America was July 9, 2004. That’s when Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson published their book Urban Sprawl and Public Health.”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck

“American smog now comes principally from tailpipes, and its worst in our most auto-dependent cities, like Los Angeles and Houston. Phoenix put Atlanta to shame in 2007, with three full months of days in which it was deemed unhealthy for the general public to leave their homes.”

“A Belgian paper published in The Lancet found that traffic exposure accounts for more heart attacks worldwide than any other activity, even including physical exertion”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck

“A doubling of block size corresponded with a tripling of fatalities. Big-block, multilane systems result in streets that are both harder to cross and easier to speed on”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck
#CarsHaveNoPlaceInCities

“The ecologist E. P. Odum argued that it was not grassland or forest that provided the ideal early habitat for humans, but rather the boundary between the two, the “forest edge,” where both distant views and physical enclosure were present.”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck

“From an ecological perspective, then, most U.S. cities offer too much grassland and too little forest.”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck

“Talking to audiences across the United States, I am always surprised to hear that—no matter where I am—their city’s weather makes it somehow less capable of supporting pedestrian life than the rest of planet Earth.”
— Jeff Speck, Walkable City

“Because they have such a powerful impact on walkability, street trees have been associated with significant improvements in both property values and retail viability...it could be considered financially irresponsible for a community to not invest heavily in trees.” — Jeff Speck

“We already know that trees are good for us. This is something most of us understand intuitively, but it doesn’t hurt to have studies.”
— Jeff Speck

(Pictured is the Royal Fredriks Hospital in Copenagen, opened March 31st 1757, which was famously green)

“Measurements of ambient temperatures taken on exposed versus canopied streets around the United States document temperature differentials ranging from five to fifteen degrees (Fahrenheit) between the two,6 which can make a big difference when temperatures hit the triple digits.”

“Communities that add 25 percent additional tree cover will reduce their stormwater by 10 percent. In many American cities, this 10 percent would be enough to eliminate most ‘combined sewage overflows’.”
— Walkable City, Jeff Speck

“In Wheeling, W. Virginia, where median income is eighteen thousand, residents are anticipating a sewer repair bill that could top fifteen thousand, per household. How much better things would be if, in the 1990s, each household had planted a $150 tree!”—Walkable City, Jeff Speck