Autonomous vehicles, aka self-driving cars, are coming. And the world is going to change because of them.
A lot has been written about the “first order” effects of autonomous vehicles (AVs): How they will reduce traffic fatalities, make rides more comfortable, or put truck drivers out of work. But the bigger story here is the “second order” effects?—?how improvements in mobility will cause us to reexamine fundamental assumptions of how we live.
Let’s start with real estate. Cars (the Henry Ford kind) completely reshaped the built environment of the United States?—?giving us the suburbs, shopping malls and pulling people out of cities. What will self-driving cars do to our cities and suburbs? Surely something equally as dramatic.