How to Make Cities More Walkable & Safer, Tech & Ancient Texts
Jeff Speck, city planner, urban designer, and former director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, joins us to discuss his new book, Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places. Intended as a tool to provide language and arguments to use at city planning and zoning meetings, this book argues that walkability and non-exploitative urban development necessarily go hand in hand and that a city that is good for pedestrians is better for everybody.
(23:19) Making the streets safer has been a priority for NYC’s “Vision Zero” public safety campaign. In keeping with our conversation about walkable cities and pedestrian safety, we turn now to WNYC reporter Yasmeen Khan. She contributes to WNYC’s “Ask A Reporter” series about civic engagement in the city.
(30:46) New Yorker staff writer, Sam Knight, joins us to discuss his recent article in the magazine's technology issue, “Hidden Traces.” The article looks at the new scientific methods that are allowing scientists to plunge into the world’s great libraries and archives, and study the proteins and molecules on the surface of the documents within them.
