Driverless City: The Urban Possibilities of Autonomous Vehicles and Navigation Safety

Abstract

The advent of autonomous and ubiquitous co-robot technologies offers citizens, leaders, and stakeholders the opportunity to recalibrate current automobile transportation infrastructure and, therefore, the morphology of dense urban cores. To do so, we must balance the requirements for navigation safety, functionality, and experiential conditions. This research investigates these trade-offs to understand the impact of driverless vehicles in urban design. The result will be a framework of forecast scenarios that will advise urban designers, policymakers, stakeholders, and the autonomous vehicle industry on critical factors to consider when deploying these technologies and how to achieve valuable social, environmental, and experiential outcomes within the existing road infrastructure. This research will address how cities can leverage upcoming mobility technologies to retrofit late nineteenth-century automobile transportation infrastructure into human infrastructure for the twenty-first century. Furthermore, how can urban public spaces (roads, sidewalks) be built to promote social equity and environmental performance as the number of autonomous vehicles increases? This research examines the possible implications of autonomous vehicles and navigation safety on State Street (Chicago), a significant commercial artery of the city and with a historical morphology intimately related to mobility and infrastructure innovations.