Automated vehicles and the city of tomorrow: A backcasting approach

• Published in: Cities Vol. 94; pp. 153 - 160
• Main Authors: González-González, Esther, Nogués, Soledad, Stead, Dominic
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Automated vehicles; Backcasting; Cities; Clustering; Decision makers; Development policy; Leisure; Parking; Policy goals; Traffic; Traffic congestion; Transportation; Travel; Uncertainty; Urban development; Urban planning; Urban policy; Urbanisation patterns; Vehicles; Policy goals; Backcasting; Automated vehicles; Urban planning; Urbanisation patterns
• ISSN: 0264-2751; 1873-6084
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2019.05.034

The introduction of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) into cities may fundamentally transform the design and use of cities. On one hand, AVs offer the potential to reduce the urban space requirements for roads and parking, creating more space for high-quality, liveable areas. On the other hand, greater motorisation and the availability to perform leisure or work activities while travelling in AVs could increase the number of trips and travel distances, encouraging urban traffic congestion and sprawl. These diverse, and sometimes conflicting, estimates and opinions give rise to considerable uncertainty among urban policy decision-makers, sometimes leading to planning inaction. This paper aims to shed light on the opportunities that AVs offer in delivering attractive, healthy and sustainable urbanisation patterns. This paper employs a backcasting approach to investigate whether and how the potential impacts of AV implementation can support or threaten a range of urban development policy goals. This approach enables conflicts between policy goals to be identified. The findings point to the need for mixed-use development policy, the clustering of urban facilities and services, the restriction of motorized access in cities and the adoption of shared high-quality multimodal transport. •AVs offer the potential to create more space for high-quality, liveable urban areas.•Mixed land-use policy and restriction of vehicle access are critical policy goals.•Shared & high-quality multimodal mobility as the backbone of the driverless city.