Self-driven MRDH

Abstract

This project aims to build a spatial method to assess the impact of automated vehicles (AV) on liveability in the urban environment. The method is based on the tools of scenario construction, transect analysis and urban section, and is tested in the Rotterdam The Hague Metropolitan Region (MRDH). The goal of the method is to enable the urbanist to participate as a forerunner in the interdisciplinary discussion on the development of this novel technology.

Despite the potentially important positive and negative effects of automated vehicles on mobility and human life in general, their spatial represent a research gap which must be addressed by urbanism. In order to do so, the profession must have a specific aim and method. The identified aim is urban liveability, which is defined in the project as a combination of three criteria, performance and impact of mobility, natural and built environment, and society and economy, both in regional and local scales. In building a method to work with AV, the project resorts to two specific instruments of urbanism: foresight (scenario) and through-sight (transect and section). The method was designed in the following way: first, two main driving forces of spatial change were extracted from the available literature on AV, density and separation of flows. Secondly, the territory of the MRDH was analysed through the prism of these drivers using the transect method. The transect was applied to the most intense metropolitan axis between the two urban cores Rotterdam and The Hague. On this axis, data regarding urban subzones, network accessibility and liveability data were superimposed to understand the connections between urban fabric, mobility and liveability on which the scenarios would be built. Further, three critical points in different settings were chosen for case studies: an urban centre, a residential area and an urban edge with motorway links.
The main step of the method is scenario construction. Using the driving forces of density and separation of flows, and based on hypotheses available in literature regarding AV and the evolution of the region, four extreme scenarios were described: Clockwork Utopia, characterised by concentrated urbanity and AV separated from other flows; Shared Patchwork, characterised by concentrated urbanity and AV leading to merger of flows; Efficient Garden Region, characterised by dispersed urbanisation and separated flows; and Infinite Randstad, characterised by dispersed urbanisation and merged traffic flows. The scenarios were inspired by various theoretical models, visionary and realised projects. In the second stage of scenario construction, Clockwork Utopia (S1) and Infinite Randstad (S4) were further developed. For both scenarios, regional models of networks and urban fields were designed, and the three case study locations were analysed using the urban section. For each of the case studies a package of briefs, for urbanism, architecture and society, were proposed based on the liveability analysis, and the specific context of the scenario. The solutions in the section have a research-by-design character, used to test the reciprocal resistances of the urban space and the AV technology which need to be overcome.

Finally, the scenarios were evaluated using the liveability criteria and future directions of research, design and policy were proposed. Overall, S1 could be described as an extreme evolution of current trends, where AV has a propelling role, while S4 is a radical change, with AV as trigger, creating new urban occupation patterns and lifestyles. Further attention needs to be accorded to the research of AV safely sharing the urban ground with pedestrians and cyclist, impacts on urban sprawl, connected energy systems and territorial coverage, to design spaces for socio-economic encounter and new architectural programs incorporating AV, as well as to policies regarding traffic management, active mobility and tackling economic disruptions.

This thesis aimed not necessarily to give answers to all of these questions, but to open windows for the urbanist to imagine the future of the relationship between city and AV technology starting from liveability. A future not for a driverless, but a self-driven city.