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Yes! That's the future I want. Self-driving cars will allow us to expand the built environment that the vast majority of us actually prefer: low-density suburbia. I imagine the future of the U.S. will look a lot more like outer Houston and Phoenix and a lot less like NYC or DC. Sorry, urbanists. People don't want to live in a condo in an urban environment fraught with crime, bad schools, no greenery, bad air, noise, and high taxes. The numbers show people are more and more abandoning this failed model for the suburbs.

The urban cores will diminish even more than they have now, especially when wasteful public spending on 19th century modes like rail systems is cut. I imagine we'll find a new use for those subway tunnels, maybe as utility conduits or something. Or maybe we can turn the old city cores into farms or parks or something (in the event that they're completely abandoned, like it looks Detroit will be soon). No one will want to live in overcrowded dense cities and take crowded, smelly buses/trains with odd-collections of dangerous or annoying strangers when they can A). Live in their own detached house in the suburbs B). Take their own self-driving car where they want to go.

Americans like privacy and convenience, and suburbia and cars offer that — urban living and public transit don't. Cars also suit our individualist tastes (collectivism is more of a European/Asian phenonomenon). Find out more about how the suburbs and the autocentric environment are America's future in Joel Kotkin's great book "The Next 100 Million: America in 2050". Other good writer's on this subject are Randal O'Toole and Wendell Cox.

By 2050 when we have these cars, we'll look back and be glad that wasteful pointless programs like High Speed Rail and whatnot were squelched by forward-thinking individuals.

by Larry on Dec 7, 2011 2:22 pm • link • report