Top Highlights

• Jane Jacobs, who wrote in 1960, won over the planners by 1980. But
• The main thing that makes Rome—and the other winners: Venice, Boston, San Francisco, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Prague, Paris, and New York—so walkable is what we planners call “fabric,” the everyday collection of streets, blocks, and buildings that tie the monuments together.
• The General Theory of Walkability explains how, to be favored, a walk has to satisfy four main conditions: it must be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting.
• Each of these qualities is essential and none alone is sufficient. Useful means that most aspects of daily life are located close at hand and organized in a way that walking serves them well. Safe means that the street has been designed to give pedestrians a fighting chance against being hit by automobiles; they must not only be safe but feel safe,...
• For them, that increased walkability means all the difference between an essentially housebound existence and what we all hope will be several decades of continued independence.