Robin — Great piece and very much in line with my own work on these questions.

Planetary futurist; writer, speaker, serial maker of things. Creator, The Heroic Future; co-creator, Worldchanging; author Carbon Zero. http://AlexSteffen.com

Aug 10, 2016

On-street and almost all off-street parking, including parking garages, will be unnecessary and we’ll get rid of them. Communities and local governments can come up with criteria and priorities for how to repurpose that newly available public space: wider sidewalks, more street trees and plantings, bike lanes, street furniture. Progressive cities will make use of old parking lots, garages, and gas stations to fix what was lacking: affordable housing, green space, grocery stores, schools. Proactive cities will know their priorities neighborhood by neighborhood, as well as their criteria for action, before the transition begins.

Self-Driving Cars Will Improve Our Cities. If They Don’t Ruin Them.

Robin Chase

50369

Robin — Great piece and very much in line with my own work on these questions. One thought: I think this paragraph understates the opportunities here. If we only need 10% of the current fleet (which I think is an entirely reasonable guess, once you add in shifting preferences and walkshed, transit and delivery improvements), then most cities will find they’ve massively overbuilt their road base. Since empty roads are expensive, repurposing public space currently overlaid with car lanes is an opportunity, too. Between unneeded parking and empty roads, I think even in dense cities these opportunities can add up to a surge of new land that’s 30% or more of the city’s area. In less dense cities, it could mean a revolution in land use. Finally, there are huge street design implications if (as I believe) AVs will by nature be slower than human-driven cars: https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/the-future-of-cars-is-slow-96b207f8e394