Jeff Speck, author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, describes a good walk as one that is “useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.” As I ponder how these four elements in what Jeff calls his “General Theory of Walkability” apply to my town, I recognize how despotic for people not in an automobile we have made this formerly walkable place. That the change has come at such a great cost to our financial health and prosperity only makes it more disturbing.
