The Rural Renaissance
What if not the city but the countryside will be humanity’s future?
For those combustion-loving ostriches and amateur racing drivers who are still in denial about the arrival of the self-driving car: its time to look up and face the headlights. The self-driving car, also known as the autonomous (electric) vehicle, is coming. Last week, in a rare bipartisan effort, the US Senate promised to clear some judicial obstacles for the new vehicle [TheHill]. Conservative industry expectations are that the first fully autonomous models will hit the shelves around 2025 and that it will take about ten years to establish itself as the new normal [AutoNews]. After which it will probably be deemed insanely risky, not to mention uninsurable, to put the pedal to the metal yourself.
The arrival of the self-driving car will have implications for almost every aspect of our society. Just think about the transition from horse and carriage to the combustion engine and how that changed where we lived, how we worked and how we related to time and space. Highways suddenly fissured the landscape, suburban living became the new norm, we could suddenly consume exotic perishables that are grown far away and holidays became stressful family adventures. The arrival of the self-driving car will almost certainly herald the same kind of watershed change.
Today, suburban living already has a nostalgic ring to it. Relived only as a Generation X fever dream of childhood. The revitalization of the urban fabric is now in full swing. The popular adagio with policymakers and leading thinkers is that the future of humanity is the future of the cities. Since 2014 — they love to point out — for the first time in history, more then half of humanity lives in cities. And they don’t expect this trend to stop anytime soon. But what if they’re wrong? What if the Urban Future is the same kind of pipedream the Suburban Future was fifty years ago?
What if the arrival of the self-driving car will halt the flow of people migrating to cities and will lead instead lead to a rural renaissance? Today’s cityscape is already getting more and more Romantic. The old Romantic dream to infuse decentralized, local, slow and authentic lifestyles into the urban makeup is coming to a head (again) and, for what it’s worth, signal a tenacious longing for a more porous lifestyle — a lifestyle that is both urban in convenience and worldview but pastoral in pace and locality. So what if the self-driving car can deliver this porous lifestyle? Not in the city, which is becoming increasingly crowded and expensive, but in the countryside?
There are, in this context, four interesting aspects about the self-driving car:
The first interesting aspect is that the self-driving car will be used as a subscription service. It will not be owned by individuals. Like ordering an Uber, you will hail a self-driving car on your Smartphone, or via another connected device, and it will pick you up wherever you are and drop you off wherever you want to go. It’s a door-to-door experience and probably a very cheap one. Because car rides will be service based, the total costs of a self-driving car subscription will be about a tenth of the costs of making the same miles with your owned car today. At least, that is what investors and other industry watchers predict [Medium]. The self-driving car has the potential to make transportation insanely inexpensive.
The second interesting aspect is that the self-driving car will not so much be an in-between space but a new kind of dwelling. A movable space that people will use to sleep, work, eat, play, drink, sex or entertain. The self-driving car will probably evolve into all kinds of weird shapes and functionalities. Don’t be surprised when you see driverless bars, hotels, restaurants, arcades, movie theaters, offices, meeting spaces, laboratories, workshops and emergency rooms picking people up or dropping them off. Sometimes at the same place from where they left. Because they just wanted to use the amenities.
The third interesting aspect is that self-driving cars will be fast. When all the cars on the road are self-driving they will be able to coordinate with each other and drive in formation, not unlike train wagons. They call this platooning and it will allow self-driving cars to drive at much higher speeds and densities. This will increase the range of car travel. You can, for instance, live in Brussels and easily do a daily commute to Amsterdam where you work. Your commute time can be spent sleeping, reading, playing video games or catching up with relatives in New York via some sort of immersive Skype experience.
The last, and final, interesting aspect of the self-driving car will be its delivering capacities. Besides delivering anyone at anytime, self-driving cars will also be able to deliver anything at anytime for very little money. You can order a jacket during the night and within no time a small self-driving shop, perhaps including fitting room (if you don’t have a 3D scan of your body available), will stop in front of your house. When cars are self-driving it makes no sense to go to a centralized shop when the shop can, just as easily, come to you.
So, considering these aspects of the self-driving cars, and taking into account the Romantic surge in the city and its steep rise in housing prices, why would people not buy a cheap neglected farm somewhere in the countryside? Plant an orchard, keep some bees, wake-up with the rooster, drink wine around the campfire and have your groceries and shopping brought to you whenever you have time. Your children will be brought to a good school by a self-driving classroom that tells your kids, mixed reality style, all about the flora and fauna of their new hometown. You will commute to the city to work, occasionally eat and become drunk with the stubborn friends who still live there, and sleep in a self-driving capsule hotel on your way back home. Perhaps bringing your friends with you for some much-needed countryside escapism.
Why would you, with cheap universal transport from door to door, want to live in the expensive and crowded city? My guess is that you will not. Especially when you are raising kids. You will move to the countryside but you will bring city life with you. Making the countryside more urban. The self-driving car will probably blur the lines between city and countryside. Making it all part of a stretched porous Romantic landscape.
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Kind regards,
Christiaan Fruneaux, Monnik
