{"id":282843523,"date":"2013-12-18T15:38:43","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T15:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=282843523"},"modified":"2013-12-18T15:38:43","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T15:38:43","slug":"jeff-speck-america-has-so-many-problems-walkability-solves-most-of-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=282843523","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Speck: America Has So Many Problems. Walkability Solves Most of Them."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city.html\">Link to video.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the ineffable way of all TED talkers, urban planner Jeff Speck, author of \u201cThe Walkable City,\u201d has made a concise, urgent, and oddly charming argument for walkability. In just under 17 minutes, Speck has articulated the economic, epidemiological, and environmental arguments to end automobile dependency and start using our feet again. It\u2019s worth a watch (and a re-tweet). A few highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The worst idea America has ever had is suburban sprawl, and it\u2019s being emulated \u2014 like many American values, both good and bad \u2014 around the world.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019ve doubled the number of roads in America since the 1970s \u2014 and the proportion of our household income we spend on transportation.<\/li>\n<li>Portland went against the grain of suburban sprawl and highway expansion and has been a magnet for college-educated young people who want to live in a city that prizes biking and walking. Portland\u2019s VMT peaked in 1996, with each person driving 11 minutes less per day now.<\/li>\n<li>One out of three Americans is obese, a second third is overweight. \u201cWe have the first generation of children in America that are predicted to live shorter lives than their parents,\u201d Speck said. \u201cI believe that this American health care crisis that we\u2019ve all heard about is an urban design crisis and that the design of our cities lies at the cure.\u201d Studies show that obesity correlates more strongly to inactivity than to diet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span id=\"more-145462\"><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Urban VMT is a good predictor of asthma problems in your city.<\/li>\n<li>We take car crashes for granted as a necessary evil. But walkable cities have far lower crash fatality rates. It\u2019s not whether you\u2019re in the city or not, it\u2019s whether your city was designed around cars or people.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe environmental movement in America has historically been an anti-city movement,\u201d Speck said. \u201c\u2018Move into the country, commune with nature, build suburbs.\u2019\u201d Carbon maps of CO2 emissions per square mile makes cities look like polluting cesspools, but if you look at a map of emissions per household, the heat map flips.<\/li>\n<li>Sustainable home accessories and gadgets, which Speck admits he has a weakness for, aren\u2019t nearly as important as living near transit in a walkable neighborhood. \u201cChanging all your lightbulbs to energy savers saves as much energy in a year as moving to a walkable neighborhood does in a week.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The lifestyle choice \u2014 walkability \u2014 that no one wants to tell Americans to make is actually one that will make them happier. Walkability correlates to higher quality of life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dc.streetsblog.org\/2013\/10\/15\/jeff-speck-america-has-so-many-problems-walkability-solves-most-of-them\/\">https:\/\/dc.streetsblog.org\/2013\/10\/15\/jeff-speck-america-has-so-many-problems-walkability-solves-most-of-them\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog Link to video. In the ineffable way of all TED talkers, urban planner Jeff Speck, author of \u201cThe Walkable City,\u201d has made a concise, urgent, and oddly charming argument for walkability. In just under 17 minutes, Speck has articulated the economic, epidemiological, and environmental arguments to end automobile dependency and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=282843523\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Jeff Speck: America Has So Many Problems. Walkability Solves Most of Them.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282843523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282843523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282843523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282843523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282843523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282843523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282843523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}