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Moving towards Sustainable Cities: Urban Planning and Policies for the Autonomous Mobility Age

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 12378

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Soledad Nogués

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Geurban Research Group, University of Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain
Interests: spatial planning; urban planning; impacts of transport infrastructures on land use patterns; future mobility and land use planning and policy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Rubén Cordera

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Geurban and SUM+Lab Research Groups, University of Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain
Interests: transport and land use interaction; transport and land use interaction models; spatial econometric models; spatial planning; public transport
Dr. Esther González-González

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Geurban Research Group, University of Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain
Interests: spatial planning; urban planning; impacts of transport infrastructures on land use patterns; future mobility and land use planning and policy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today, we have a historic opportunity to prepare the advent of autonomous vehicles (AV) in cities avoiding past errors linked to transportation practices. Planners and policy-makers must be ready to respond to new challenges by adapting their planning and policy strategies to achieve each city/region’s goals while supporting these rapid and complex transitions in urban contexts.

Planning should consider the great potential of driverless technologies to change the urban structure of our cities. Road traffic and parking spaces could be highly reduced, as well as retail space requirements, due to the use of AV as delivery vehicles or travelling shops and restaurants, releasing a large amount of land for redevelopment, especially in inner cities.

The relationship between autonomous mobility and the various types of urban morphology is also worth considering. Orthogonal (e.g., superblocks), radial, or curvilinear tree-like patterns influence how people move and what travel modes are used, encouraging either the choice of vehicles or non-motorized modes. Similarly, the way in which the organization and proximity of neighbourhoods to local goods and services is planned has a bearing in mobility systems, as demonstrated in new planning strategies such as the 15-minute city. All these challenges will require transforming land-use planning implementation tools and redesigning public spaces.

There is also a growing concern in urban planning and design disciplines regarding how urban growth and the distribution of land uses can influence people's mobility demand and modal choices to achieve a more sustainable urban future. Compact cities offer good conditions for alternative modes of transport, whereas sprawled urban environments are more car-dependent. Transportation also significantly shapes land use patterns. Due to its potential to increase mobility, the impact of AVs on vehicle miles travelled (VMT) may alter daily mobility patterns and the location of households and activity places, further encouraging sprawl. Thus, growth management policies to control urban expansion, coordinated and regulated by land use planning, should be considered.

At the regional level, an increase in VMT could also lead to substantial changes in the structure and spatial distribution of urban settlements. Spatial planning strategies have the potential to reduce vehicle travel by supporting new policies aimed at enhancing sustainable settlement systems, such as strengthening medium-sized cities and polycentric systems based on concentrated decentralisation.

Therefore, there is a need for more detailed studies of the consequences of these spatial dynamics considering how new mobility technologies can serve city and regional future visions and goals instead of the reverse. This Special Issue aims to contribute to the theoretical and empirical knowledge to better understand and address future urban planning challenges associated with the rise of AV. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Potential impacts of AV on land use and location choices
  • Interaction of the transport system with built environments and land use
  • Influence of urban form and distribution of land uses on mobility
  • Urban planning concepts, methods, and tools for sustainable urban futures
  • Land use and other transport, economic and social policies to prepare cities and regions for the advent of AV
  • Role to be played by planners, policy-makers, and stakeholders to address the transition to autonomous mobility
  • Proactive, adaptive, and collaborative planning
  • Urban redevelopment and regeneration opportunities
  • Zoning alternatives and other land-use and development regulations
  • Rethinking and redesign of urban streets and public spaces
  • Parking demand, design requirements, and relevant policies
  • AV interactions with other uses and modes of transport in urban streets
  • Effects of AV emerging technologies in urban (and regional) spatial structures
  • Density, mixed land use, and anti-sprawl policies
  • Spatial planning strategies to enhance balanced and sustainable settlement systems
  • Future of master planning and urban design practices in a driverless world
  • Case studies in urban planning and policies for autonomous mobility

Dr. Soledad Nogués
Dr. Rubén Cordera
Dr. Esther González-González
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Autonomous vehicles
  • Sustainable cities
  • Spatial planning
  • Urban planning and policies
  • Urban design
  • Public space and street design
  • Urban form and structure
  • Land use
  • Regional spatial structure

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 2129 KiB  
Article
Autonomous Mobility: A Potential Opportunity to Reclaim Public Spaces for People
by Maryam Fayyaz, Esther González-González and Soledad Nogués
Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1568; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14031568 - 28 Jan 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4854
Abstract
The advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has the potential to drastically change society and the way we understand, plan and design cities and regions, just as automobiles did a century ago. In the current context of climate change, sustainable urban environments based on [...] Read more.
The advent of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has the potential to drastically change society and the way we understand, plan and design cities and regions, just as automobiles did a century ago. In the current context of climate change, sustainable urban environments based on active mobility (walking and cycling), urban proximity and green spaces, are increasingly in demand, leading to the emergence of new interventions and urban models. Although these trends may be affected by the arrival of AVs, most decision-makers and planners still do not address these issues in their current planning. This is because of the confusion associated with the diversity of impacts of AVs, but also by the lack of design recommendations and planning tools. To shed light on these aspects, this paper reviews the relationship between mobility and urban public space, the impacts of AVs on urban space and design proposals and strategies aimed at configuring driverless cities, with special focus on street design. The results of the review show that the implementation of AVs can be a great opportunity to liberate urban space and reclaim it for people, in line with new urban models such as the superblocks (Barcelona), the 15-minute city (Paris), or tactical urbanism interventions against COVID-19. However, it may also entail risks such as a reduction in active mobility or public transport use. The magnitude and direction of these impacts will depend on crucial decisions that need to be taken now, such as encouraging shared used over ownership, and establishing citizen-centred urban planning and design objectives and strategies to make AV deployment the most beneficial for all. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moving towards Sustainable Cities: Urban Planning and Policies for the Autonomous Mobility Age)
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32 pages, 8057 KiB  
Article
Compatibility of Automated Vehicles in Street Spaces: Considerations for a Sustainable Implementation
by Aggelos Soteropoulos, Martin Berger and Mathias Mitteregger
Sustainability 2021, 13(5), 2732; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13052732 - 03 Mar 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3371
Abstract
Automated Vehicles (AVs) will bring a fundamental change in the mobility sector in the coming years. Whereas many studies emphasize opportunities with AVs, studies on the impacts of AVs on travel behavior particularly show an overall increase in traffic volume. This increase could [...] Read more.
Automated Vehicles (AVs) will bring a fundamental change in the mobility sector in the coming years. Whereas many studies emphasize opportunities with AVs, studies on the impacts of AVs on travel behavior particularly show an overall increase in traffic volume. This increase could impair the needs of other uses and users within street spaces and decrease the permeability of the street space for pedestrians and cyclists. However, only a few studies, so far, have looked at the changes of traffic volume due to AVs at the street level, and to what extent these impair the needs of other uses and users within different street spaces was not in the focus at all. This paper investigates the compatibility of AVs in street spaces, building on different modeling results of scenarios with AVs based on the Multi-Agent Traffic Simulation (MATSim) framework. Using the so-called compensatory approach and the whole street network of Vienna, Austria, as a case study, we examine how compatible AVs and their related changes in traffic volume are with the needs of other uses and users, i.e., pedestrians and cyclists, within different street spaces, by specifically considering the various characteristics of the latter. Results show that the effects of AVs on the compatibility of street spaces would be unevenly distributed across the city. For Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs), a deterioration in compatibility is observable, especially in inner-city dense areas, because of an increase in traffic volume and an already high amount of competing uses. In contrast, especially (on main roads) in the outskirts, improvements in compatibility are possible. This particularly applies to SAVs with a stop-based service. However, private AVs interlinked with an overall capacity increase would lead to a deterioration in compatibility, especially in parts of the higher-level street network that already have incompatible traffic volumes, further increasing the separating or barrier effect of such streets. The results can provide insights for policymakers and stakeholders about where and how to facilitate AVs, to reach an implementation that is compatible with the different uses and needs of users within street spaces: While SAVs should be implemented particularly in the outskirts, as a complement for public transport, an implementation of AVs in the lower-level street network in inner parts of the city should not be facilitated, or it should at least be linked to measures that make street spaces more compatible with the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, e.g., implementation of walking and cycling infrastructure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moving towards Sustainable Cities: Urban Planning and Policies for the Autonomous Mobility Age)
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21 pages, 4154 KiB  
Article
Toward Policies to Manage the Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles on the City: A Visioning Exercise
by Luca Staricco, Valentina Rappazzo, Jacopo Scudellari and Elisabetta Vitale Brovarone
Sustainability 2019, 11(19), 5222; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11195222 - 24 Sep 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 2754
Abstract
There is great uncertainty about the transition from human to autonomous driving vehicles (AVs), as well as about the extent and direction of their potential impacts on the urban built environment. Planners are aware of the importance of leading this transition but are [...] Read more.
There is great uncertainty about the transition from human to autonomous driving vehicles (AVs), as well as about the extent and direction of their potential impacts on the urban built environment. Planners are aware of the importance of leading this transition but are hesitant about how to proceed, and public administrations generally show a passive attitude. One of the reasons is the difficulty of defining long-term visions and identifying transition paths to achieve the desired future. The literature on AVs is growing rapidly but most of the visions proposed so far do not consider in detail how circulation and parking of AVs will (or could) be differently regulated in cities. In this study, three visions for the Italian city of Turin are proposed. The aim of these visions is to highlight how different forms of regulation of AV circulation and parking can impact on the sustainability and livability of the city. A focus group and a set of interviews with experts and stakeholders were used to validate the three visions and assess their advisability and sustainability. This visioning exercise is the first step in the development of a backcasting process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moving towards Sustainable Cities: Urban Planning and Policies for the Autonomous Mobility Age)
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