Walkability, downtown expert Jeff Speck is Connect 351 keynote speaker

“Walkability Wizard” Jeff Speck, a renowned planner and author who focuses on making downtowns of all sizes more economically robust and enjoyable, will share his insights as the keynote speaker during Connect 351 on Jan. 22 in Boston.

Speck’s TED Talks have been viewed more than 6 million times, and his books include “Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time,” which argues that walkability is the single key factor for making American communities thrive.

A partner with the Brookline-based design and consulting firm Speck Dempsey, Speck works with municipalities to design places where people stop to spend time instead of just driving by. The Belmont native emphasizes the importance of walkability over drivability to create healthier, more sustainable and more economically resilient communities.

For more than three decades, Speck has worked with communities in nearly every state, but he told the MMA recently that he particularly loves working in his home state, with its diverse mix of cities, suburbs and small towns. And while people often associate the concept of walkability with dense urban centers, Speck said that his principles apply to all municipalities, even if the techniques vary by community type.

“Whether your community is rural, urban, or somewhere in between, local leaders have an opportunity to make their municipality more economically vibrant and livable by enhancing walkability,” Speck said. “At Connect 351, I’ll be talking about the steps that cities and towns can take to be more walkable, and how walkability is a key to achieving so many of the other goals we have for the places we call home.”

For Speck, walkability transcends just walking — it represents a framework that weaves together numerous elements of a healthy, thriving community, including the availability of diverse housing options, robust economic development, the proximity of services to housing, traffic safety, environmental sustainability, equity, a strong social fabric, and improved health outcomes.

Speck began his career at a Miami-based architecture firm now called DPZ CoDesign, where he spent a decade and co-authored the book “Suburban Nation,” about the effects of development sprawl, with the firm’s founders, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.

From 2003 to 2007, Speck was director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., where he oversaw the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, as well as the Mayors’ Institute on City Design.

In 2007, he founded Speck & Associates, now called Speck Dempsey. He published “Walkable City” in 2012, and “Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places,” in 2018, both of which are well-regarded by planners in the field and have been translated into numerous languages.

At Speck Dempsey, where his partner is Chris Dempsey, former state assistant transportation secretary, Speck has worked on projects for Massachusetts communities including Lowell, Concord and East Longmeadow. In Watertown, Speck created a plan for making the five-spoked Watertown Square more pedestrian friendly, and he has presented “The Walkable City,” a two-day program at Harvard University featuring planner and Watertown City Manager George Proakis.

Speck has considerable experience working with rural communities, where residents also “desire and deserve walkable, livable places where they can gather to shop, worship, recreate, and relax,” he told the MMA.

While at the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, Speck worked with rural leaders from across the country to develop best practices in rural planning and design. In rural areas, where people depend heavily on cars to travel among far-flung places, he takes a different approach to helping communities improve livability for residents, focusing particularly on road safety improvements and incremental changes designed to fit within the fiscal constraints often faced by rural communities.

Speck’s firm has worked with Lancaster, the oldest town in Worcester County, and with Freeport, Maine, Cold Spring, New York, and White Salmon, Washington. In Zapata County, Texas, where 14,000 residents occupy an area larger than Berkshire County, Speck led a multi-day workshop focusing on community building, gateways, streetscapes, zoning, and design guidelines.

“Every town, no matter how small, deserves a walkable heart — one that is built for people, not cars,” Speck said. “[This] approach to town planning, placemaking, and street design can help every community in the Commonwealth build a stronger identity and a safer, more vibrant future.”