Donald Appleyard (1928-1982) was a planning scholar whose work focused on the city and neighborhood environment, particularly on the ways that sensitive planning and design can make life more pleasant for urban residents. Appleyard was a native of Britain, and was school there in architecture and surveying.  He taught first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and then at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a professor of urban design [1].

Trained in city planning at MIT, Appleyard brought the term “livable streets” to prominence when his 1981 book by that name made the case that streets can be dynamic, social spaces when not clogged with cars. Livable Streets was based on Appleyard’s study, conducted in the late 1960s, of three San Francisco streets that experienced different levels of traffic; he found that people who lived on the least-trafficked street had more social connections with their neighbors and, consequently, a greater sense of community.

Appleyard’s other books, including Planning a Pluralistic City (1967) and Improving the Residential Street Environment (1981) similarly explored the ways that city planners could enhance cities — and the happiness of their residents — by deliberately constructing neighborhoods that brought people together, on streets free from excessive traffic.

Appleyard's Contributions to Urban Streets

Appleyard's research dealt mostly with the effects of traffic on the lives of urban residents, the physical characteristics of cities as places to live, and how to manage traffic to be less intrusive in residential areas.  He developed new survey techniques to correlate residents' perceptions and values to the design process and to resulting physical environments. He was a leader in developing the pioneering environmental simulation laboratory which allows comparing different physical environments using models and video images.  In his laboratory, viewers could experience being in an environment only through images, to report their perceptions.  Examples include testing perceptions of future high-rise buildings in San Francisco, examining how different transportation technologies would be perceived by residents, and evaluating the impact of a controversial new interstate.

Professor Appleyard's work was known worldwide, and his lectures in other countries and at UC Berkeley ushered in a new generation of planners sensitive to the physical environment as people experience it. His many publications include over a hundred articles and reports, as well as many books.  The latter includes The View From the Road (1963), Planning a Pluralistic City (1967), The Conservation of European Cities (1979), Improving the Residential Street Environment (1981), and Livable Streets (1981). His book Livable Streets, was considered his most influential, as it appealed to academics, city planners, and citizen activists equally. 

Ironic, Untimely Death

In 1982, at the age of 54, and at the pinnacle of his remarkable career, Appleyard was killed by a speeding car in Athens.  He was in Greece to consult on a neighborhood planning project.  One of his four children, Bruce Appleyard, was a neighborhood planning activist in Portland, Oregon [3], and is now a professional planning consultant.

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ALSO ON THE LIVABLE STREETS NETWORK

• Streetsblog: Traffic's Human Toll
  

• Streetfilms: After School with Livable Streets Education
• Streetfilms: Jaime Lerner on Making Curitba's First Pedestrian Street
  

REFERENCES

Each source is referred to by the same number every time it is cited. Please keep citation style consistent.

[1]  In Memoriam:  Donald Appleyard, City and Regional Planning; Landscape Architecture: Berkeley, Calisphere, UC Berkeley Libraries, 1987.

[2]  Placemaker Profiles: Donald Appleyard,The Project for Public Spaces.

[3]  Bruce Appleyard: Portland, OR, Active Living Network. 

[4]

PICTURE REFERENCES

Pictures are cited in the order they appear above. Please keep citation style consistent.

[1] San Francisco street. Photo by iuk via Flickr.

[2]

FURTHER READING

• Appleyard, Donald. Planning a Pluralistic City, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967.

• Appleyard, Donald. Livable Streets, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981.

   

  KEYWORDS 

  Appleyard, livable streets, neighborhood, San Francisco, traffic calming, speed, traffic, environment, perception