Revisiting Donald Appleyard’s study

In late 1969, Donald Appleyard (a professor of Urban Design at University of California, Berkeley) conducted a study to investigate the effect of traffic volume on the livability of residential streets in San Francisco; the study was reported in his book “Livable Streets”.

Appleyard demonstrated that people living on a street with relatively heavy traffic had only one-third as many social connections as people living on a relatively light-traffic street.

When we talk about ‘Livable Streets’, we are using a phrase originally coined by Donald Appleyard. . His work is summarised in this great video from StreetFilms.