‘Liveable Streets’ is a seminal 1981 work by the urban designer and theorist Donald Appleyard that compared the experiences of people living on three similar streets in San Francisco. The main variable between the streets was different levels of car traffic: one with 2,000 vehicles per day, one with 8,700 vehicles per day and a third with 15,750 vehicles per day. Appleyard’s key finding was that residents of the high traffic streets were less likely to know their neighbours and more likely to feel lonely and isolated from their community. The evidence of the negative physical, mental and social effects caused by living near busy roads has only grown in the subsequent years. By Mark Watts, C40 Executive Director
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