Driverless cars: Technology changing the face of our cities

When I first heard of driverless cars, I was quite dismissive of the concept and that it would never take off. After all who would want to risk getting in a car which is driven by a computer and run the risk of digital error. However, the technology seems to be advancing to a point, where it will be safer to use a driverless car than one which is driven by a human driver.

Source

From what I have been reading it looks like it will gain mainstream adoption in the next 10 years or so. We will probably see countries like Germany and Singapore become the first to encourage mass adoption of this technology.

As a planner - I have an interest in what will this mean for our cities and the way we live and work in them.

Firstly, if we have mass adoption of this technology, travelling will become more a pleasurable experience, you will be able to have a sleep, catch up on emails or watch a video. Distance from your home to your place of work will become less of an issue, as the daily commute to work will become more bearable.

Source

Under this scenario, you would expect people to seek out places which offer desirable lifestyle locations. There will be less demand for housing in suburbs which offer expensive, poor quality lifestyles but which are close to employment opportunities.

Driverless cars could in fact be a key to unlocking a better quality of life for the inhabitants of our - often dysfunctional - cities.

These trends are going to have big impacts on the real estate market.

The real estate markets of suburbs which offer attractive lifestyles and a good sense of community are going to be highly sought after. Whilst expensive real-estate, close to the city centre, is likely to struggle as the driverless car makes peoples work commute much more enjoyable.

If there are also large numbers of people using pooled driverless cars. I imagine that there will be enormous fleets of cars some of which would be owned by companies and the service will be very cheap. This will free up a lot of disposable income for many people for lifestyle and leisure activities and these industries will boom in the new economy.

Others will decline, like the traditional taxi service (which has already been disrupted by Uber), car sale yards, petrol stations (as most vehicles will be electric) and other vehicle service related industries will need to look at the way they go to market - or risk becoming irrelevant.

Land that is set aside for parking stations and parking spaces in cities will not be required in the same quantity and some of this space could be freed up for other purposes, such as community parks or different commercial uses.

Source

Driverless cars will also have a wider impact on city infrastructure innovation.

Every second conference invite I see these days is for Smart Cities. Ostensibly the direction of Smart City development will be impacted by the race to develop the first fully autonomous car. After all if our roads and traffic management are not "smart" a fully autonomous car will never achieve it's fully autonomous destiny!

Take Uber's trail of its self driving cars in Pittsburg. The cars were confused by trees not marked on its map, crossing bridges and bad weather - no one want s to hop in a confused car (Just try Sydney Taxi drivers!)

Source

To realise the full benefit of driverless cars, our cities will change dramatically - both as an impact of the car and as enabler to have them in the first place.

I would be interested to know your thoughts on what impacts driverless cars will have on our cities?