The SocioEnvironmen tal Implicati ons to Urban Waters in The Driver less City
The Driverless City Lab Draft Copy for Experimental Purpose Only
Copyright
©2022, The Driverless City Lab 3410 S State ST. #115 Chicago, IL, 60616
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Contents
1
Introduction
6
Bios + Photos
9
Foreword Edited Interviews
12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56
Ricky Burdett Karen O. Lutsky David Lampert Kara Salazar Mary Pat McGuire Indraneel Kumar Andrew Watkins Lindsay Bayley Justin Keller Jeremy Glover Catherine O’Connor Jay Womack
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Afterwards
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Appendix
86
Raw Interviews
240
Bibliography
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Introduction
This research project will investigate how to reshape 20th-century transportation infrastructure (such as highways, intersections, roads, and sidewalks) for the 21st-century so that it may accommodate autonomous vehicles while addressing the needs of the entire community. To do so, it will explore trade-offs between three key elements: safety, usability, and aesthetics. It will then propose a suitable balance between these elements by developing a framework for reshaping the existing infrastructure. The resulting framework will serve to inform city planners, architects, and landscape architects how to plan and design cities in which autonomous vehicles safely interact with humans, and it will serve to educate roboticists on how to ensure that the technology they are developing has a positive societal impact. This project will investigate the critical link between the urban landscape and navigation safety of mobile corobots, from self-driving cars to delivery drones, or any mobile co-robot that operates on city streets and sidewalks. It will address fundamental questions of safety and trust in operating ubiquitous robots in dense urban environments by determining what changes to the urban infrastructure can simultaneously ensure safety, usability, and environmental sustainability. It will bring to light opportunities enabled by ubiquitous co-robots, and more to the point it will show how to leverage that technology to make changes in the transportation infrastructure that lead to positive changes for society. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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Notes This research project will investigate how to reshape 20th-century transportation infrastructure. Such as highways, intersections, roads, and sidewalks) for the 21st-century so that it may accommodate autonomous vehicles while addressing the needs.
State Street, Chicago, IL
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Introduction
The Driverless City Project develops social scenarios, technical solutions, infrastructure prototypes, and model urban codes that transform city streets into the twenty-first-century human infrastructure. Research workshops, computer simulations, visionary drawings, physical models, and narrative videos will give shape to this future city. These elements are developed into smart driving control systems, design guidelines for transportation agencies, model municipal codes, and infrastructural.
These elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines for transportation... As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities. As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities. As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities.
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Ricky Burdett Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Program.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
David Lampert Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, conducts research, teaching, and service in environmental and water resources engineering.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Andrew Watkins Architect, Urban Designer and Planner and Principal, SWA at Laguna Beach.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206 10
Bios + Photos
Lindsay Bayley Senior Planner, CMAP. Parking Reform Network.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Karen O. Lutsky Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of MinnesotaTwin Cities.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Justin Keller Manager at Metropolitan Planning Council. Member of the MPC Water Resources team and leads the Drinking Water 1-2-3 initiative, the Calumet Storm-water Collaborative. Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
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Kara Salazar Assistant Program Leader and Extension Specialist for Sustainable Communities, affiliated with IllinoisIndiana Sea Grant, Purdue University Extension, and the Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Mary Pat McGuire Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Indraneel Kumar Principal Regional Planner at the Purdue Center for Regional Development (PCRD).
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206 10
Bios + Photos
Jeremy Glover Transportation Associate at Metropolitan Planning Council.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Catherine O'Connor Research Scientist at Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
Jay Womack Director, Ecological Landscape Design
Notes Edited Interview: page 21 RAW Interview: page 206
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INTER V
R VIEWS
This research project will investigate how to reshape 20thcentury transportation infrastructure. Such as highways, intersections, roads, and sidewalks)
The Driverless City Project develops social scenarios, technical solutions, infrastructure prototypes, and model urban codes that transform city streets into the twenty-first-century human infrastructure. Research workshops, computer simulations, visionary drawings, physical models, and narrative videos will give shape to this future city. These elements are developed into smart driving control systems, design guidelines for transportation agencies, model municipal codes, and infrastructural.
For the 21st-century so that it may accommodate autonomous vehicles while addressing the needs.
These elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines for transportation elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities.
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Ricky Burdett
The Driverless City Project develops social scenarios, technical solutions, infrastructure prototypes, and model urban codes that transform city streets into the twenty-first-century human infrastructure. Research workshops, computer simulations, visionary drawings, physical models, and narrative videos will give shape to this future city. These elements are developed into smart driving control systems, design guidelines for transportation agencies, model municipal codes, and infrastructural. As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities. As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities. As cities around the world leverage the opportunities and manage the impacts of driverless cars, this crucially important project investigates a transformative advance in transportation and communication technologies—the kind that has always changed cities and demanded new forms of physical infrastructure. In the next decades, we can improve urban social life by increasing the ecological performance, safety, and efficiency of streets while also recovering underused land and revitalizing our cities. 1.
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Interviews
This research project will investigate how to reshape 20th-century transportation infrastructure. Such as highways, intersections, roads, and sidewalks) For the 21st-century so that it may accommodate autonomous vehicles while addressing the needs. This research project will investigate how to reshape 20th-century transportation infrastructure. Such as highways, intersections, roads, and sidewalks) For the 21st-century so that it may accommodate autonomous vehicles while addressing the needs.
These elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines for transportation elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines . These elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines for transportation elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines . These elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines for transportation elements are developed into smart driving systems, design guidelines .
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Ricky Burdett Driverless City - Research Interview (2021-11-08)
Alexis
All right. Um, yeah, I would like to say thank you so much from super dead for joining us in this session. If it has been an honor to have you here, uh, we are so excited to, to have this conversation with you. Uh, and yeah, once again. Thank you, Ron. Thank you professor for, uh, this opportunity. And as we mentioned a, in our current grant, we are asking ourselves, what are the implications of a driverless cars, especially in women worms. And I would like to start with some few questions for our archive. And my first question will be like, how would you describe your research agenda? And if it is okay to say that you are a Norman research.
Ricky Burdett Yeah, no, hold on. The reason I'm posing is that I think you can hear me well now. Right? We can hear you very well. Yeah. So fundamentally I'm, uh, I guess as Ron knows, I'm interested in the relationship between physical, urban form and social. That's at the heart of, I guess, what I've been involved in for a number of years, which, uh, clearly spills over into, um, environmental issues. But I think it's sort of, I guess, it's that triangle that I'm interested in, in other words, how does the shape of the city by which I mean. Uh, the width of the streets, the Heights, the buildings, but also how sprawled or how densities, how does that affect the way human beings connect or not connect and how does it affect the environmental footprint of cities? So in that sense, I I'm, I guess I'm an urbanist slightly outside the box of what urban ism [00:02:00] normally means because very often urbanism, um, Uh, or town planning, if you want to call it, that tends to be very technical and very quite siloed. You know, you, you only talk about certain systems while I'm very interested in this sort of interdisciplinary, uh, uh, contaminate. So I think your questions, a part of which anyway, I, I think, uh, I'm, I'm certainly intrigued by and interested in. And the other thing I would add is that much of my professional life, um, in parallel to, or alongside.
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Raw Interview: Ricky Burdett
Ricky Burdett
My university, I've been very involved with policymakers. So mayors and government agencies, or, uh, special projects such as the London Olympics, uh, to actually try and put my money where my mouth is, and, uh, not, not stay at an abstract level of what might be an ideal policy to create a sustainable city. But what should you do? When you come to a decision for the mayor, say on the south side of Chicago on the side of London to sort of deal these things. So that's, that's just a general framing to your question.
Alexis
Great. Thanks. Um, yeah, and with that, uh, I kept one patient that I wanted to ask, like, Eh, but it's dedicated to what is the resources crisis that cities are currently facing and that we'll face in the future. And then of course they help. Can we start tackling these issues, eh, in diverse levels, political and design levels. I don't know. You can give us an insight about.
Ricky Burdett
So when it comes to resources, I mean, that's your question one again, I guess it's quite easy to respond in the context of what I was saying. There's an issue of human resources and then there's an issue of [00:04:00] let's call it, um, physical resources in terms of, um, uh, infrastructure. Um, I, and, and of course the two are connected and I would always stress that, um, You're asking me this question from the United States where most urban form, um, you know, one has to generalize a little bit, but I think one would not be wrong in saying that, um, the. Spread out sitting, the sprawling city is still the norm. And certainly some of your fastest growing cities, the Phoenix Arizona's or whatever are maintaining, um, that, uh, that dimension. Um, and, um, I think the impact of that on both human capacity, let's call it rather than just resources. And physical infrastructure are really fundamental. So at the most simple level, the fact that a [00:05:00] sprawling city and that's a political decision, it's not God-given right. Someone has to make a decision to, to allow developers to keep on building over agricultural land. And the opposite is the case say in Hong Kong, right? Where. Central government says, no fuck you. You can't build outside that. You've got to pay me lots of money and you have the most efficient system in the world like in Singapore, but not, you know, New York is not dissimilar. Anyway, the negative impacts of the spread out distributed city dispersity shall I say, is very close to, I think behind one of your questions about water systems is about, but it's the total waste.
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Ricky Burdett
Effectively of service infrastructure. So the mere fact that if you need to build out 10, 20, 30, 40 miles in order to service a two story or one story house with four cars and four car parking spaces, you know, [00:06:00] the, the, literally the. The, the, the length of cables on the water, uh, the under on the ground, the amount of water, sewage waste, et cetera. The S the, the distribution of that network to service a domestic unit is, you know, by far the most inefficient you could ever imagine. How long that I guess indirectly affects the issue of water quality and, you know, the, the, the, one of the best examples or worst examples, point of view is Mexico city. Um, can you still hear me? Hear me hear you. So when it comes to resources, I mean, that's your question one again, I guess it's quite easy to respond in the context of what I was saying. There's an issue of human resources and then there's an issue of [00:04:00] let's call it, um, physical resources in terms of, um, uh, infrastructure. Um, I, and, and of course the two are connected and I would always stress that, um, You're asking me this question from the United States where most urban form, um, you know, one has to generalize a little bit, but I think one would not be wrong in saying that, um, the. Spread out sitting, the sprawling city is still the norm. And certainly some of your fastest growing cities, the Phoenix Arizona's or whatever are maintaining, um, that, uh, that dimension. Um, and, um, I think the impact of that on both human capacity, let's call it rather than just resources. And physical infrastructure are really fundamental. So at the most simple level, the fact that a [00:05:00] sprawling city and that's a political decision, it's not God-given right. Someone has to make a decision to, to allow developers to keep on building over agricultural land. And the opposite is the case say in Hong Kong, right? Where. Central government says, no fuck you. You can't build outside that. You've got to pay me lots of money and you have the most efficient system in the world like in Singapore, but not, you know, New York is not dissimilar. Anyway, the negative impacts of the spread out distributed city dispersity shall I say, is very close to, I think behind one of your questions about water systems is about, but it's the total waste. Effectively of service infrastructure. So the mere fact that if you need to build out 10, 20, 30, 40 miles in order to service a two story or one story house with four cars and four car parking spaces, you know, the, the, literally the. The, the, the length of cables on the water, uh, the under on the ground, the amount of water, sewage waste, et cetera. The S the, the distribution of that network to service a domestic unit is, you know, by far the most inefficient you could ever imagine.
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Raw Interview: Ricky Burdett
Ricky Burdett
How long that I guess indirectly affects the issue of water quality and, you know, the, the, the, one of the best examples or worst examples, point of view is Mexico city. Um, can you still hear me? Hear me hear you.
You're still okay.
Yeah. Uh, is Mexico city, which is 22 million. Um, and dispersed over a plateau where the war and Ron, and you know, all about it, but, uh, the, the, the negative impact of its horizontal sprawl on its water procurement, uh, is absolutely critical if it were a dense, um, concentrated form of development. [ Not only would you get efficient transport, but you'd also get efficient, autistic. So, I mean, I think that becomes important. So I guess one of the key things I would raise in response to that question is that density or the compact urban form must be at the heart of any of these discussions. Um, because, and this leads me to the human resource, or as I say, human capacity question, which is. And I'm going to be burnout. You can't make a nice space in between buildings. If all you have is, um, between 200 meters or 300 meters of tarmac and no, no edge. Right. So Ron and I share. Happy memories of Italian cities, uh, which I was lucky [00:08:00] enough to be brought up in Rhonda studied carefully, but the Mediterranean, the medieval sort of dense, compact city is all about creating a shape for society to play out their role. And it has an implication of containment and therefore I'm linking, uh, as I say, the human. Environment that is created by proximity. Um, and the, the environmental wastage, I guess I would add to that in a slightly unsophisticated way. Is that the more you have compact space carved out space, the more you have the potential to landscape. And, uh, sculpted with water. You know, the fact that the G 20 summit, the other day, with all these criminals who are running our nations, where did they stand? They stood in front of the fentany l enrolled. You know what I mean? That, that, that was, it really struck me so that, that they should choose. Um, that sort of metaphor of this sculptural fountain, which defines the essence of sitting as a, as a model. So I think there there's possibly a connection there. Alexis
Ricky Burdett
Great. Thanks. And what do you think about Uber? Like Ben urban course, like for example, London, um,
Alexis, there's something not a hundred percent going.
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