I found this a good collection of walkability, transportation, and street design principles. it's a good modern follow-up to Jane Jacobs and other urban livability theorists, since it converts philosophy into practical guidance.
I found the middle of the book the most informative. Section 1 is a general case for walkability, which you can skip if you are convinced that car culture is bad. Section 2 is a list of Speck's 10 principles for implementing walkability, each supported by statistics, city case studies, and frameworks for thinking about the issue.
a few highlights:
transit expansion must go hand-in-hand with walkability and parking regulation
everything on neighborhood structure, and how that impacts where to apply improvements (e.g. streetcars as pedestrian accelerators)
the myth of traffic assessments: induced demand, risk homeostasis
my main disagreement is with #10: Urban Triage: “By trying to be universally excellent, most cities end up universally mediocre." in this part, Speck argues that cities investing in walkability (e.g. trees, transit, wide sidewalks) should prioritize downtown anchors (e.g. a popular museum, a restaurant street) and linkages between anchors, while neglecting dilapidated areas outside the downtown core. but after waxing poetic about the myriad health/safety benefits of walkability, it seems unfair to exclude non-central, often poorer neighborhoods. Speck preempts this argument by suggesting that "downtown is for everyone," but this seems unlikely, given the high cost of living. therefore, his argument only makes sense if you believe that a city's total economic growth trickles down across the board, which I don't. otherwise, from the lens of economic equity, a city with 10 equally "mediocre" neighborhoods might actually be preferable to one with 2 "excellent" ones and 8 decaying.
however, don't let that scare you too much - this was a short section, and makes clear that Speck is a consultant and not a public servant. so I definitely recommend reading this as one planner's take on the walkability crisis, but don't expect to get an unbiased literature review.
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