AUDI - smart street and plasti city - BIG

We imagine that inner cities that are currently banning cars through taxation or tolls to relieve congestion will simply become driverless rather than car-less. Driverless cars will combine individual mobility outside city limits with collective mobility within; as selfdriven cars move in coordinated concert with their fellow commuters, they occupy a quarter of the space human-driven cars require. As the new generation of cars will additionally be noiseless and pollutionless it will mean the end of the apartheid that currently separates cars from pedestrians and bicyclists for comfort, health or safety reasons. The result is an elastic urban space that can expand and contract to accommodate peak traffic hours or allow a park or plaza to invade the car lanes to fit the demands and desires of its citizens. Picture a future city in 25 years where the vertical facades appear unchanged, but the city pavement is transformed into a reprogrammable surface, replacing the fixed elements of driveway, sidewalk or square; a digital street surface completely re-animating a familiar city.

THE DRIVERLESS CAR AND TRAFFIC THAT’S COLLECTIVELY COORDINATED BY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COULD ACTUALLY HELP CREATE A MORE INTERACTIVE AND MESSY NEW FORM OF URBAN LIFE."