Monday, February 22, 2016

Beyond the Hype: the future of transport looks remarkably familiar

A couple of months ago, Ted Novikov wrote an article about how autonomous vehicles will revolutionize real state markets and our urban experience more generally. Good food for thought. When I read his article, though, I have the impression those ideas sound a bit like non-sense extremely unlikely to happen in next 20 to 30 years. The main reasons for this are presented in a very clear way by Tim Schwanen in this article here. Tim's article is so concise that it really doesn't make much sense to reproduce his arguments here so I'd recommend reading his original text.

I have to say I've enjoyed reading Novikov's piece and I appreciate this kind of futuristic exercise. I reckon that this kind of thinking has a crucial role for us to re-imagine the future. Tim's article makes a strong case to why this hype around autonomous vehicles should be taken with a grain of salt.

ps. I thank Anthony Ling form calling my attention to this article, which has also been translated into Portuguese by Caos Planejado, a great Brazilian blog focused on urban planning, economics and innovation.