Obituaries don’t normally feature on Culturepublic, but this one is kind of relevant because Donald Appleyard was a well-known and influential urbanist. Besides, the irony just screams to be published. Here goes:
Donald Appleyard (1928–1982) was a Professor of Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley. In his book Livable Streets, he showed that streets have many social and recreational functions which are severely impaired by fast car traffic. For example, residents of streets with light traffic had, on average, three more friends and twice as many acquaintances as the people on streets with heavy traffic. His work provides a quantitative rationale for traffic calming and living streets.
Appleyard was killed by a speeding automobile.
