The View from the Road

Originally published in 1964, Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, and John Myer’s The View from the Road, is a seminal text worth knowing about. Way back in my undergraduate days, I discovered the book and then forgot the title. Since then I’ve been haunted by the compelling diagrams and visual language. Luckily, Marcel Smets cites it in The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure, so I’ve had the chance to rediscover this magical book.

It’s worth noting the similarities to Halprin’s notational system (see landscapeandurbanism for more).

The few copies available of The View from the Road are priced between $150 and $1100. Let’s start a campaign to get a 50th Anniversary edition issued by writing Roger Conover, Executive Editor for Art, Architecture, Visual & Cultural Studies at MIT Press.

[from Appleyard’s other seminal book: Livable Streets]

References

Appleyard, D., Lynch, K. & Myer, J.R., 1964. The View from the Road, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press for the Joint Center for Urban Studies of M.I.T. and Harvard University.

The_Writings_of Appleyard_1170

ORILLARD_AS_MAY08

http://www.pps.org/dappleyard/ reprint of Appleyard’s obit and discussion of his career.

http://urbantick.blogspot.com/2009/12/view-from-road.html

http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/01/representing-motion.html

http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~mfram/Pages/407-nostalgia.html

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