The First Endorsements Are in for the New "Confessions" Book
We’re only about five weeks away from the release of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, the new book from Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn.
We asked a few people whose work we love to read the book in advance and give us their thoughts. Well, we heard back and are too excited (and humbled) not to share.
We believe the book will help change the national conversation on how to fix our broken, ineffective, and expensive transportation systems. Will you help get the word out? If so, feel free to share one or more of these images on social media (simply click on them to get the full-sized versions) and point people to the book website at confessions.engineer. (For the next five weeks, people who preorder the book are eligible for all kinds of great bonuses.) Thank you for growing the Strong Towns movement!
Beth Osborne
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"This should be required reading—and the default approach to transportation—for anyone who cares about building safe streets and strong communities, whether transportation engineers, urban planners, policymakers or advocates."
— Beth Osborne, Director of Transportation for America
Go deeper: Check out this podcast interview Chuck Marohn did with Beth Osborne earlier this year, about how America’s roads are “dangerous by design.”
Jeff Speck
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"I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time. It’s been more than a decade since its title essay rocked me to my core; reading it was my Meg Ryan When Harry Met Sally moment. Over the intervening years, Chuck’s message has become all the more necessary, and the world may finally be ready for it.
“I am not an engineer, so I can share with impunity the truth that Chuck is being prosecuted for exposing: American road engineering is not only destroying the fabric of American society and the health of its citizens; it is nothing less than institutionalized mass murder."
— Jeff Speck, city planner and author of Walkable City and Walkable City Rules
Go deeper: Check out this conversation Chuck Marohn had with Jeff Speck about how to build slower, safer streets…and why this goal is so important if we want to live in prosperous, successful cities.
Jarrett Walker
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"Streets are the foundation of every community. They define how the community looks and functions, and what people can do there. So why aren't American communities allowed to design their streets to reflect their own values? Marohn shows how the manuals, standards, and professional practices of traffic engineering reflect judgments about who matters and who doesn't—judgments that deserve to be visible so that we can all debate them."
— Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit
Go deeper: Listen to this 2017 podcast interview with Jarrett Walker about his book Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives.