Transportation
Is Traffic Making Us Lonely?
Long before the invention of social media, a man named Donald Appleyard was investigating how automotive traffic isolates us from one another.
This month’s Atlantic cover story, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?,” has contributed to an ongoing national debate over whether Americans are more socially isolated than ever before, and whether our dependence on electronic communications is keeping us from forming meaningful social ties.
But a generation ago — long before the invention of social media — a man named Donald Appleyard was investigating how automotive traffic isolates us from one another and diminishes our human connections.