Autonomous Driving and Urban Land Use

Mobility, transport and land use patterns in urban areas are closely bound up with each other [1]. Urban form plays an important role when households and businesses make mobility decisions, and to a considerable degree dictates transport mode choice. Compact city form with high density and mixed use provide good preconditions for short trips and efficient public transportation, promote walking and cycling, and often render daily car use unnecessary. With sprawling, sparsely populated land uses, on the other hand, walking and cycling are discouraged, while car use is favored. In turn, the availability and use of designated transport modes strongly influences urban form and the necessary infrastructures. The residential suburbanization of the latter half of last century was thus to a great extent encouraged by car availability and the expansion of the transport infrastructure for motorized passenger transport [2]. It is expected that fully automated driving will entail a completely new transport system, whichwill not only bringwith it newpossibilities in trafficmanagement, butwill also generate completely new types of transport provision that will affect the choice and use of available transport means (see Chap. 12). The idea, for example, that time in a vehicle does not have to be spent on driving-related tasks, but instead permits other activities,may instigate a complete reappraisal of the time factor (e.g. [28]). This ability to attend to other activities in an autonomous vehicle may imply that long car commutes will be considered less a burden than today. This could increase the willingness of households to locate further away from the city center where land prices and rents are lower and where suburban preferences like living in a