Self driving cars can enable both urbanism and sprawl, depending on their deployment— if the existence of self-driving vehicle fleets at a per-mile price compet

Self driving cars can enable both urbanism and sprawl, depending on their deployment— if the existence of self-driving vehicle fleets at a per-mile price competitive with a personal car enables the collapse of personal car ownership in cities, that will open up a lot of possibilities for urban infill. It will make the politics of building mid-rise housing without extensive, expensive underground parking space a lot more politically palatable in American cities. The same is true of replacing parking with pedestrian and bike infrastructure. And that says nothing about the safety benefits that will make cycling and walking a lot more pleasant and accessible in a lot of the US. (There are no technical barriers to building mid-rise urban housing without parking and replacing parking with high-quality pedestrian and bike infrastructure in the US today, but the politics are very difficult as drivers treat free/cheap access to city-owned street space as a right) Plus, urbanites paying the marginal per-mile cost of a robotaxi trip, as opposed to buying a car as a huge sunk cost and then trying to get the maximum use from it, means that people will consider the car-versus-transit-versus-bike economics a lot more often, rather than buying a car and becoming someone who drives everywhere.