How will autonomous vehicles transform metropolitan environments? Will they enable a re-imagining of future suburban development? Professor Berger delves into this and more in the Economist’s Special Report on autonomous vehicles.
“Over the last 100 years our landscape has been drastically altered by the automobile,” says Berger. With AVs, “all the land we’ve given to the automobile can be put back into landscape and ecological function.” By doing away with parking and using one-way, single-lane roads that loop through neighborhoods, the area of paved surface can be reduced by 50%, he calculates. That means more space for plants, more biodiversity and better water retention, reducing risk of flooding in the urban core. Suburbs will have enough space to generate their own solar power or grow their own food.”
Report is available here.
Image credit: Matthew Niederhauser and John Fitzgerald.
