Amsterdam 2049

Abstract

Out of all the countries in the world, the Netherlands has the most ‘autonomous vehicle’-ready road network (KPMG, 2019). It is the result of years of investing in state-of-the-art technologies and putting in place the needed policies, and it seems to pay off: our country is likely to be amongst the early adapters as soon as these vehicles enter the market. Claiming this desired role of a frontrunner comes with many large challenges and responsibility, however. Being one of the first to be able to put autonomous vehicles on the roads, means that we should be one of the first also to have the right policies in place - there is no luxury of waiting and learning from good examples, or mistakes, made elsewhere. But what are these ‘right’ policies then? And what other kind of – perhaps unexpected - moments of choice might appear? What happens after we have made the decision to allow private autonomous vehicles full access to our inner-cities. Or what are the consequences of leaving a large role for the market to experiment freely, whilst staying passive as a public sector? There is a need for forecasting studies that help to expose these kind of potential choices - projects that try to speculate about the future from diverse perspectives. Amsterdam 2049 is such a project that aims to generate insights into these required actions, through constructing and providing future scenarios that give an idea of the potential implications of autonomous vehicles on the city of the future. By doing so, it establishes a sense of urgency amongst policy-makers and planners, as well as providing them with recommendations, from policies to spatial interventions, on how to act. Structural behind these future scenarios is the development of a unique storytelling-scenario method, which will in its own way combine several useful theories and urbanism insights to produce informative, imaginative and compelling stories about Amsterdam and autonomous vehicles. The stories thus end up as a unique combination of urbanism - with maps, sections and impressions -, ‘complex system theory’ – giving insight into ‘system transitions’ that provides a structure and timeline – and the visual language of the graphic novel – with personal perspectives, dialogues and imaginative visualizations – which altogether lead to accessible, forecasts that can inspire and inform those involved in decision-making.