The Walkable City
Thursday, June 25, 2015, 9:00am to Friday, June 26, 2015, 5:00pm
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Executive Education
CEUs: 11 AICP/CM
Tuition: $1,150.00

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What makes a place walkable? What do design professionals, engineers, developers, and public officials need to know if they are to make, streets, landscapes, and communities that bustle with street life? Join Jeff Speck, AICP, CNU-A, LEED-AP, Honorary ASLA, author of Walkable City, for a comprehensive two-day course on the most effective arguments, techniques, and tools for reshaping places in support of walking, biking, and transit.

The course will be divided into the following segments:

Why Walkability?
While most clients and communities support the concept of walkability as a matter of course, this commitment can waver in the face of countervailing pressures from entrenched interests. Learn the most powerful economic, epidemiological, and environmental arguments for making a sustained investment in walking, biking, and transit.

The Ten Steps of Walkability
The central segment of the course will focus in great depth on the following ten strategies for making better places:

• Put Cars in Their Place: Equitable planning around the automobile.
• Mix the Uses: Strategies for getting more housing downtown.
• Get Parking Right: The wisdom of Donald Shoup.
• Let Transit Work: Creating transit riders by choice.
• Protect the Pedestrian: All the details that embody the Safe Walk.
• Welcome Bikes: Current best practices in cycle networks.
• Shape the Spaces: The role of figural space.
• Plant Trees: Monetizing the manifold benefits of street trees.
• Make Friendly and Unique Faces: Active facades and the role of architects.
• Pick Your Winners: Urban Triage as a technique for expanding success.

How to Do a Walkability Plan
The instructors have completed seven Walkability Plans for American municipalities in the past five years. Learn how to complete such plans for your client communities.

Design Charrette
The City of Somerville has been working on the redevelopment of three neighborhoods surrounding new rail stations in the MBTA’s planned Green Line expansion. One of these neighborhoods has had its design delayed due to utility issues, but, by July, it will be time to make new proposals. City of Somerville planning staff, led by George Proakis, will join the class for a half-day mini-charrette brainstorming the site.

Dinner Exploration
Off the clock and weather permitting, the class will transit/walk to dinner along some of Boston’s most memorable and instructive throughfares.

Instructor
Jeff Speck, Speck & Associates LLC

Guest speaker
George Proakis, City of Somerville

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