In just a few years, driverless cars have gone from a far-off, futuristic vision to a near certainty.
A row of Google self-driving Lexus cars at a Google event outside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File
Yesterday I posted some information about how the advent of driverless cars might effect the price of rural real estate. While I was researching that I came across this really interesting article from Curbed. It's about how autonomous cars could completely re-design our cities. This is amazing stuff!
According to the experts referenced in the story everything from the size of our roads to the need for garages to be included with homes could change. Think about it. Imagine huge commercial fleets of autonomous cars available at any time. You set up a contract for you and 3 neighbors to be picked up at a certain time and driven automatically to work. You no longer need to store an auto on your property, and your drive time can become work time. When you begin to think about it, the repercussions go on forever.
This means huge shifts in our daily commute, but it also has the potential to dramatically reshape our cities. Cars—their size, reach, and environmental impact—have been a huge factor in urban planning and development over the last century. A world where driverless cars are prevalent, and shared vehicle ownership is the norm, offers a chance to rethink and reconsider the design of our urban environment. Curbed spoke with five transportation and urban design experts and asked them to speculate on how this potential future of transportation, arriving soon under its own guidance, may reshape the cities we live in.
This story asked five experts to speculate on the kinds of changes we could see in our cities and our lifestyle with the advent of autonomous vehicles. Read the Complete Story Here.: Click for more
