Automated vehicles and the city of tomorrow: A backcasting approach

Esther González-González*, Soledad Nogués, Dominic Stead

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

45 Citations (Scopus)
63 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)153-160
Number of pages8
JournalCities
Volume94
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care

Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • Automated vehicles
  • Backcasting
  • Policy goals
  • Urban planning
  • Urbanisation patterns

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