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Kristof Van Landschoot

@notjustbikes interesting, depressing, but not sure I am convinced of the reasoning.

In this dystopian future you can go fast through cities… but why would you want to do that? You go to a city, its shops, its cafes.

So the AV needs to let its passengers out, needs to slow down and park, get to the other side of the fence… mixed traffic entails.

Once people step out of the AV they need to put on the tracker so AV’s can spot them, impacting both users and non-users?

11 comments
Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱

@ristkof literally the same argument could be made for urban freeways, and yet they were built.

Kristof Van Landschoot

@notjustbikes but they are generally speaking through wasteland, not through possible destinations?

Kristof Van Landschoot

@notjustbikes what I try to imagine is… per your own example shops won’t be feasable in the cities anymore… where will they go? Do you imagine it’ll all be giant Walmarts on freeways then? That’d mean cities would dissolve altogether?

Z̈oé

@ristkof @notjustbikes the destinations were turned into the wasteland

Kristof Van Landschoot

@uint8_t @notjustbikes ok... maybe I lack imagination, but if the destinations, the shops, the restaurants, the bars, the churches, the playgrounds, … have all turned into wasteland, then where do the cars go to? That’s what I can't wrap my head around. In this dystopian future… are they exclusively in remote giant shopping malls? Is that what is being predicted here, that the cities will become shopping malls?

Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱

@ristkof I guess you've never been to an American city? The poorer neighbourhoods were the ones that had the highways driven through it. I envision the same thing happening with AVs.

Some streets will become AV highways, others will not. The AVs will take people from their condo towers and gated communities and drop them off at malls, office buildings, and lifestyle centres.

There will be no way to get between these places without an AV, but the city will still have nice places for the rich.

Kristof Van Landschoot

@notjustbikes It's true I have not much experience with US cities, and that I have a hard time imagining why you would want such a lifestyle, even when you can afford it, financially and/or ecologically.

That being said, I still don't understand how AV's will change the equation. Accelerate the already present tendency? Also in European cities (where I live)? Why have European cities not become like American ones then?

I think of AV's more as reinventing trains in the dumbest possible way.

FifiSch

@ristkof @notjustbikes In Europe we have a lot less space, so while the post-war US invested into building massive urban sprawls, our governments invested into tower block districts that look less appealing on photos, but are way simpler to connect via public transport.

Also our petrol was always way more expensive than in the US, making the car less appealing.

Martin Pallmann

@ristkof @notjustbikes no. They are in the center of the city. At least here in Berlin.

beckobert

@ristkof @notjustbikes
I think the video shows a possible (and possibly the worst possible) future of AVs, but certainly not an inevitable one.
Awareness of what could go wrong is key, so we can avoid making these mistakes before it is too late. And I think the video does a pretty good job of raising awareness, even though I am not convinced that spiked fences separating roads and sidewalks will ever happen.

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