Design Eats the World: City slicker? – Dailyuw

By now, we know that autonomous vehicles are around the corner. Most of us probably dream of how easy it would be to get around, sitting in the backseat and sipping on gin and juice. However, what I think is less appreciated is that the cities we live in will themselves have to be redesigned to accommodate the coming revolution. And it will not be simple.

Cars were the great connector of the 20th century. They allowed more and more people to travel farther and farther. One consequence of this was urban sprawl, with relatively far-flung suburbs growing because of the indispensability of cars. But the downsides of urban sprawl include increased emissions, longer travel times, and car dependence.

Though they are culturally important, human-driven cars are also hugely inefficient. Most cars on the road are single occupant, and are parked for 95 percent of their working life. This space inefficiency is worsened by the huge parking spaces cars take up. The United States has 253 million vehicles but almost 1 billion parking spots, roughly taking up an area equivalent to Connecticut.

Differently designed models of self-driving car ownership can help alleviate these problems.

By design, autonomous vehicles have certain inherent advantages over human-driven vehicles. They are becoming much safer and less prone to human error. They can run quickly bumper-to-bumper while communicating with one another, ensuring that its safe. The result is that roads can be made narrower as the cars make fewer errors, freeing up space for liveable and walkable streets and plazas.

Since they are self-driven, these vehicles can also be used while the operator is at work. This means your Tesla could drop you off and then go off to make money for you through ridesharing and carpooling while you work. The freed up parking spaces could be repurposed for other uses.

However, pending the arrival of fully autonomous vehicles, regular vehicles will still exist and require parking spaces. The transition wont be smooth and there likely wont ever be 100 percent autonomous adoption. I imagine in many rural areas, petrol and diesel vehicles will still be useful.

As a result, parking garages today are being built with the expectation of some kind of future mixed-use conversions. For instance, in Los Angeles, the developer AvalonBay Communities Inc. has started building convertible parking garages with space for these future vehicles.

But this massive change in urban design wont come about easily. Poorly handled, it could actually lead to an increase in urban sprawl.

When you make an economic input cheaper, the net effect isnt to use less, said Anthony Townsend, author of Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, to Wired. Its to use a lot more of it. So without restrictions or disincentives, well have more cars.

Regardless, the best we can do now is to design cities around the coming threat to the status quo. Investment into autonomous vehicles is increasing every year yet most cities are unprepared for self-driving cars. This isnt just an intra-industry problem. Its also a policy problem, an ethical problem, and a national problem. Its time to act.

Reach columnist Arunabh Satpathy at opinion@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @sarunabh

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Design Eats the World: City slicker? - Dailyuw