Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck

The connections between invitations and behavior came to a head for cities in the 20th century.… In every case, attempts to relieve traffic pressure by building more roads and parking garages have generated more traffic and more congestion. The volume of car traffic almost everywhere is more or less arbitrary, depending on the available transportation infrastructure.30 This assessment, to my mind, properly conveys the noninevitable nature of the auto-dominated city, and how communities, by making concerted choices about their infrastructure, can fully dictate the quality of their landscapes and lives. In his work in Copenhagen, Gehl has presided over a gradual removal of cars from the heart of the city. From 1962 to 2005, a central zone dedicated to pedestrians and bicycles has grown sevenfold in size, from about four acres to over twenty-five acres.31 In concert with this effort, the city has been eliminating 2 percent of its downtown parking spaces every year, for the past thirty years.32