There is data to suggest that on-demand (OD) mobility services -- such as Uber -- are increasing vehicle kilometers traveled (i.e. causing greater traffic congestion) by inducing people away from public transit and other forms of urban mobility. This is potentially even more of an issue right now with most urban transit agencies looking at massive budget shortfalls.

But there's potentially another way to look at this problem. A recent study led by Dániel Kondor of the MIT Senseable City Lab has looked at not only vehicle kilometers traveled but also something that the team calls the "minimum parking problem." What is the minimum amount of parking that you need assuming a world with more on-demand mobility, and eventually autonomous vehicles?

To try and answer this problem the researchers looked at the small city-state of Singapore. With a population of about 5.6 million people and somewhere around 1 million vehicles, Singapore actually has one of the lowest number of private vehicles per capita in the developed world. Even still, it has some 1.37 million parking spaces taking up valuable room.

What the team found was that on-demand mobility could reduce parking infrastructure needs in Singapore by as much as 86%. This is the absolute minimum number, which would take the current estimate of 1.37 million spots down to about 189,000 -- a significant reduction.

However, the tradeoff is that it could increase vehicle kilometers traveled by about 24%. Without ample parking, their model assumes that these on-demand vehicles would need to "deadhead" between trips. That is, drive around aimlessly while they wait for their next passenger. Demand isn't usually neat and tidy.

However, it's worth noting that the above percentage increase assumes that if people were instead driving themselves around that they always found a parking spot as soon as they arrived at their destination. This, as we all know, is not often the case, and so this increase is probably a worst case scenario.

Nevertheless, the team did also find that a 57% reduction in parking could be achieved with only a modest 1.3% increase in vehicle kilometers traveled. This, to me, is meaningful because it says that you could, in theory, cut parking supply in at least half and not much would happen in the way of traffic congestion.

It would, however, free up a bunch of space for things like bicycle lanes, green space, and other valuable urban amenities. Now, if on-demand vehicles are pulling people away from transit, then maybe we're no better off. But if the alternative is people driving and parking everywhere they go, then it would seem that there are much better uses for that space.

Photo by Jordi Moncasi on Unsplash

The last thing you probably need at this point is another webinar. But this one could actually be interesting. On May 29th, 2020 at 9:00 AM eastern, the Senseable City Lab at MIT is hosting one called, Tracking epidemics in cities: urban environments and the insights they provide into disease. The Senseable City Lab has previously looked at how sewage could be mined for real-time information about an urban population, revealing things like eating habits, genetic tendencies, drug consumption, and -- yes -- contagious diseases. In this webinar, SCL plans to pickup on this last point, as well as discuss how mobile phone patterns can help to inform epidemiological studies. If you'd like to register, click here.

Image: SCL

The MIT Senseable City Lab recently asked: How does urban morphology affect the solar potential of cities? If you assume that transparent photovoltaic cells are on the way and that building facades are soon going to become a place where we generate solar energy, then this is actually a pretty interesting question. Are some built environments naturally better suited than others?

To answer this question, they looked at the "urban surfaces" of ten cities, including New York, Singapore, Toronto (pictured above), Hong Kong, Paris, as well as others. These surfaces included roofs, facades, and ground planes.

What they, not surprisingly, discovered is that you need a lot of exposed facades to get the numbers up. And so the cities that come out on top in terms of annual solar irradiation are cities like New York and Singapore. They have a lot of tall buildings, but they also fluctuate in height, giving greater exposure to the facades.

All of this is potentially relevant because -- if building facades become a big deal for solar -- it could start to inform how we plan our cities. In fact, I would go so far as to bet that, over the long-term, solar energy will have a greater impact on urban morphologies than this current pandemic.

Image: MIT Senseable City Lab