AUTONOMOUS CARS AND THE BUMPY ROAD AHEAD!

With many major auto manufactures, tech companies and auto tech startups investing in Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) and governments around the globe issuing permits for test drives, we think it is the right time to investigate in the consequences of this on planning theory and practice, once this challenge is pulled into urban areas.

Autonomous vehicles can be one of the biggest chances for planners to change the ways they (we) think of urban planning and city design since the automobile itself. Urban transport will be revolutionized by mass driverless car sharing in different sizes and capacities, transporting passengers in city centres and suburbs.

City streets will be humanized since CAVs need less road space; and since there will be less cars a lot of the space dedicated to them, such as parking places, parking structures etc. will be freed for pedestrian and bike riders.

Still, as much as they promise a safer, less congested, less polluted, more sustainable and socially inclusive future, the autonomous cars still have a bumpy road ahead.

Established in 1989, Systematica is a transport planning and mobility engineering consultancy company with its main office in Milan (Italy) and subsidiary offices in Beirut (Lebanon) and Mumbai (India). Systematica operates at multiple scales and provides a wide array of integrated consultancy services in the transport domain.

Systematica will host a series of events called “Autonomous cars and the bumpy road ahead!” during the Milan Design Week from the 4th to the 7th of April 2017, opening its doors to the general public from 16.00 to 18.00 daily, encouraging students and professionals to visit and learn more about our research topics and projects. Interested visitors are invited to fill in a questionnaire regarding their thoughts, predictions and fears from this upcoming revolution. The setting thought for this opinion collection exercise will be theatrically intensified through looping projections on the latest technologies and ongoing debates in an inspiring setting! Questionnaire results will be publicly openly published and disseminated at the end of the event through our website – www.systematica.net.

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