Retrofitting U.S. Suburbia in the Era of Shared Autonomous Vehicles
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Wang, Jun
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Abstract
Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) have already hit our roads. Their continued development is expected to transform the way we move and live in urban areas. But is our built environment ready for them and what might that look like?
The dream of “self-driving cars” can be traced back to the 1920s when radio-controlled Phantom-Autos made their appearance in the States (Stayton, 2016). It was not until 2004, during the first DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge, that the real automation of vehicles began. Although no car reached the finish line, Sandstorm AV traveled the farthest, showcasing the first-ever automation control system in front of the public. Since then, there has been a surge of studies related to autonomous vehicles, accompanied by both enthusiasm and criticism of their expected impact on cities.
Enthusiasts point to AVs' potential to enhance safety, reduce congestion, and generally increase mobility in urban transportation systems. However, critics point to how growth in zero-passenger trips will likely increase traffic congestion, and energy consumption, and potentially widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. This study proposes that to fully realize the benefits of AVs and minimize the negatives it is critical to promote the use of shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) over privately owned autonomous vehicles (PAVs). Furthermore, it demonstrates how urban design strategies can play a vital role in navigating the development of autonomous vehicles toward a future that prioritizes SAVs.
The main research question of this dissertation is: what built environment characteristics and demographics are most likely to foster mass adoption of AVs? How might urban design retrofits contribute to greater adoption of SAVs in car-dependent suburban areas?
The expected contribution of this dissertation is two-fold. First, it provides insights into SAV and PAV demands and their correlation with the built environment and people’s socioeconomic backgrounds, which is essential in building routing modeling and designing mobility services. Second, it offers comprehensive urban design strategies that direct future retrofitting or built-from-scratch suburban developments that actively engage SAVs as the main mobility to support a car-light or car-free lifestyle. It considers housing types, street layouts, neighborhood structure, public space, and a combination of mobilities powered by AVs. It also contains strategies on how to gradually retrofit current car-dependent housing types to the one that works better with SAVs. Another important contribution of this study is a comprehensive quantitative measuring matrix of urban forms. This matrix will be used and presented in chapter three. It is built upon the Transect theory and can quantitively measure and identify any given built environment about its respective position in the Transect model. It helps to understand the built environment in a quantitative manner, providing key insights and evidence for urban design and planning decisions.
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Date
2025-06-24
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Dissertation