Within walking distance
Subtitle: creating livable communities for all
By: Philip Langdon
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9781610917711
Subjects: City planning; Planning; Pedestrian areas; Community development
Description: "In Within Walking Distance, journalist and urban critic Philip Langdon looks at why and how Americans are shifting toward a more human-scale way of building and living. He shows how people are creating, improving, and caring for walkable communities. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Starting conditions differ radically, as do the attitudes and interests of residents. To draw the most important lessons, Langdon spent time in six communities that differ in size, history, wealth, diversity, and education, yet share crucial traits: compactness, a mix of uses and activities, and human scale. [...] In these communities, Langdon examines safe, comfortable streets; sociable sidewalks; how buildings connect to the public realm; bicycling; public transportation; and incorporation of nature and parks into city or town life. In all these varied settings, he pays special attention to a vital ingredient: local commitment." --
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-254) and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter 1; title: Big city, intimate settings: Center City Philadelphia -- -- Chapter 2; title: Creating gathering places: the East Rock neighborhood, New Haven, Connecticut -- -- Chapter 3; title: Keeping the town center vital: Brattleboro, Vermont -- -- Chapter 4; title: The walkable immigrant neighborhood: Chicago's "Little Village" -- -- Chapter 5; title: Redeveloping with pedestrians in mind: the Pearl District, Portland, Oregon -- -- Chapter 6; title: Patient placemaking: the Cotton District, Starkville, Mississippi -- -- Conclusion:; title: Toward human-scale communities ---- Notes-- Index.