If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I’m a big supporter of public transit. And that’s because, as far as I can tell, it’s the most efficient way of moving lots of people around a big city.

But more and more I’ve been thinking about how technology might change, or even disrupt, this school of thought. Which is why when I wrote this post a few days ago, I was careful to say that private cars aren’t the mobility answer. Because in reality, cars likely aren’t going to go away. We’re just going to use them differently.

Here are the two things I’m thinking about most:

1. Driverless cars

I’ve written about driverless cars before in terms of how they might be used as a form of public transit. But I think it’s worth revisiting them for a moment. There are lots of driverless car critics out there and they usually fixate on the fact that a car is still a car, whether or not you happen to be driving it. It still takes up the same amount of space in our cities. Or does it?

The key thing to keep in mind is that when we’re not longer driving the vehicle, it opens up lots of different possibilities in terms of how they might be used and also how they might be designed. I was watching this fireside chat with the founders of Google the other night and, for them, driverless cars offer the possibility of solving two big problems: traffic and parking.

We know that parking takes up a lot space in our cities. But that’s really symptomatic of the fact that the utilization rate for most people’s cars is incredibly low. Most of the time a car is sitting parked and idle. But with driverless cars, they’ll be able to drop you off at your destination and then continue on to pick up their next ride–thereby minimizing the need for all that parking.

This would bring the utilization rate way up for each car, which would also minimize the number of absolute cars that we’d need to have in our cities to move everybody around. Of course, this would mean that we’d be sharing cars. People wouldn’t own cars; they would be an on-demand service.

2. Networked vehicles

This brings us to my second point: driverless cars will be networked cars. Again, I’ve written about this before, but I specifically wanted to raise it again because of a new service that Lyft just launched in San Francisco called Lyft Line.

The way it works is simple. You input where you’re going and Lyft will match you up with others who are going to more or less the same destination. The routes get shared and this brings down the costs to everyday use. It runs on the same principles as the on-demand minibuses I wrote about in Helsinki.

But if you combine this with driverless cars, you’re starting to get at something incredibly interesting. Now all of sudden you’re getting the door-to-door convenience of private cars with many of the efficiencies of public transit.

So in my mind, it’s very possible that platforms like Uber, Hailo, and Lyft could became major infrastructure backbones in a world of driverless cars. And if you think about it in this context, then I don’t think the valuations for these companies should seem all that surprising. These are potentially huge innovations.

In the end, I don’t know how this will all shake out. I don’t think anybody does. I believe that strong public infrastructure (such as subways, light rail, and so on) will still be needed in big cities, but I’m starting to think that mobile apps and driverless cars will also form a big part of how we get around. Probably more so than most people think today.

Image: Flickr

Recently Priceonomics posted a piece on San Francisco’s “rent explosion.” In it, was the infographic above showing the median rental rate for a 1 bedroom apartment in the city. The most obvious takeaway is that San Francisco is real expensive. In the core of the city, you’re easily looking at $3,000 per month.

That is with one exception: the Tenderloin (the green area just northwest of SOMA in downtown). The first time I ever visited San Francisco, I actually stayed on the outskirts of this area, which is a neighborhood well known for seediness, homelessness, crime, drug trade, strip clubs, and so on. And it was actually named after a similar neighborhood in New York that was also a center of vice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But when I saw this diagram, I immediately asked myself: How could it be that the Tenderloin was holding out so well against the forces of gentrification? How is this island of seediness being preserved in the center of downtown? Particularly in a city like San Francisco where there’s a perpetual housing supply shortage and lots of wealth. The Tenderloin has some of the lowest rents in the city.

Earlier this week Fast Company ran a piece talking about “the next big thing in urban planning” – backyard cottages. As the name suggests, backyard cottages are basically accessory dwellings built in the backyards of existing single family homes. And the idea is that they’ll provide new affordable housing options in competitive and supply constrained markets such as the Bay Area in California.

While somewhat different than laneway housing–which you probably know I support here in Toronto–they do share many similarities. We’re talking about the intensification of our residential neighborhoods at the scale of the single family home. And the potential benefits go beyond just affordability. It would also make our communities more sustainable, more walkable, and more conducive to transit.

But there are challenges. I don’t know about the Bay Area, but many municipalities don’t allow a “house behind a house” and many communities don’t want to see their neighborhood itensify. However, we are seeing companies, like New Avenue, emerge to help homeowners navigate the process of building a backyard cottage. This company in particular claims to have worked with over 90 homeowners. 

If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I’m a big supporter of public transit. And that’s because, as far as I can tell, it’s the most efficient way of moving lots of people around a big city.

But more and more I’ve been thinking about how technology might change, or even disrupt, this school of thought. Which is why when I wrote this post a few days ago, I was careful to say that private cars aren’t the mobility answer. Because in reality, cars likely aren’t going to go away. We’re just going to use them differently.

Here are the two things I’m thinking about most:

1. Driverless cars

I’ve written about driverless cars before in terms of how they might be used as a form of public transit. But I think it’s worth revisiting them for a moment. There are lots of driverless car critics out there and they usually fixate on the fact that a car is still a car, whether or not you happen to be driving it. It still takes up the same amount of space in our cities. Or does it?

The key thing to keep in mind is that when we’re not longer driving the vehicle, it opens up lots of different possibilities in terms of how they might be used and also how they might be designed. I was watching this fireside chat with the founders of Google the other night and, for them, driverless cars offer the possibility of solving two big problems: traffic and parking.

We know that parking takes up a lot space in our cities. But that’s really symptomatic of the fact that the utilization rate for most people’s cars is incredibly low. Most of the time a car is sitting parked and idle. But with driverless cars, they’ll be able to drop you off at your destination and then continue on to pick up their next ride–thereby minimizing the need for all that parking.

This would bring the utilization rate way up for each car, which would also minimize the number of absolute cars that we’d need to have in our cities to move everybody around. Of course, this would mean that we’d be sharing cars. People wouldn’t own cars; they would be an on-demand service.

2. Networked vehicles

This brings us to my second point: driverless cars will be networked cars. Again, I’ve written about this before, but I specifically wanted to raise it again because of a new service that Lyft just launched in San Francisco called Lyft Line.

The way it works is simple. You input where you’re going and Lyft will match you up with others who are going to more or less the same destination. The routes get shared and this brings down the costs to everyday use. It runs on the same principles as the on-demand minibuses I wrote about in Helsinki.

But if you combine this with driverless cars, you’re starting to get at something incredibly interesting. Now all of sudden you’re getting the door-to-door convenience of private cars with many of the efficiencies of public transit.

So in my mind, it’s very possible that platforms like Uber, Hailo, and Lyft could became major infrastructure backbones in a world of driverless cars. And if you think about it in this context, then I don’t think the valuations for these companies should seem all that surprising. These are potentially huge innovations.

In the end, I don’t know how this will all shake out. I don’t think anybody does. I believe that strong public infrastructure (such as subways, light rail, and so on) will still be needed in big cities, but I’m starting to think that mobile apps and driverless cars will also form a big part of how we get around. Probably more so than most people think today.

Image: Flickr

Recently Priceonomics posted a piece on San Francisco’s “rent explosion.” In it, was the infographic above showing the median rental rate for a 1 bedroom apartment in the city. The most obvious takeaway is that San Francisco is real expensive. In the core of the city, you’re easily looking at $3,000 per month.

That is with one exception: the Tenderloin (the green area just northwest of SOMA in downtown). The first time I ever visited San Francisco, I actually stayed on the outskirts of this area, which is a neighborhood well known for seediness, homelessness, crime, drug trade, strip clubs, and so on. And it was actually named after a similar neighborhood in New York that was also a center of vice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But when I saw this diagram, I immediately asked myself: How could it be that the Tenderloin was holding out so well against the forces of gentrification? How is this island of seediness being preserved in the center of downtown? Particularly in a city like San Francisco where there’s a perpetual housing supply shortage and lots of wealth. The Tenderloin has some of the lowest rents in the city.

Earlier this week Fast Company ran a piece talking about “the next big thing in urban planning” – backyard cottages. As the name suggests, backyard cottages are basically accessory dwellings built in the backyards of existing single family homes. And the idea is that they’ll provide new affordable housing options in competitive and supply constrained markets such as the Bay Area in California.

While somewhat different than laneway housing–which you probably know I support here in Toronto–they do share many similarities. We’re talking about the intensification of our residential neighborhoods at the scale of the single family home. And the potential benefits go beyond just affordability. It would also make our communities more sustainable, more walkable, and more conducive to transit.

But there are challenges. I don’t know about the Bay Area, but many municipalities don’t allow a “house behind a house” and many communities don’t want to see their neighborhood itensify. However, we are seeing companies, like New Avenue, emerge to help homeowners navigate the process of building a backyard cottage. This company in particular claims to have worked with over 90 homeowners.