Automated mobility poses major challenges for urban and regional planning. How can it nevertheless become a success story? A research team from the Vienna University of Technology, funded by the Daimler and Benz Foundation, analyzes this in a new book.

Five to ten years ago, things seemed pretty clear: self-driving cars will soon be a normal part of our lives. The last person who would ever get a driver's license had already been born, it was said. But the revolution failed to materialize, so far at least. At the same time, it became clear that automated driving not only offers new opportunities, but also poses dangers that should be urgently discussed - such as a sharp increase in traffic, accelerated urban sprawl with high land consumption, or a decline in the quality of life in cities. The question, then, is in which forms of use automated vehicles will lead to a livable and sustainable future, and how this development can already be controlled today.  

At the Institute of Spatial Planning at the TU Wien, an interdisciplinary team has been working on precisely this issue. For their just-published book, "AVENUE21: Political and Planning Aspects of Automated Mobility," the team invited colleagues from around the world to map out the framework for a sustainable future with automated vehicles.

The contributions cover current issues on political and planning aspects of automated mobility in a multi-layered way and provide a perspective for planning and politics on how to achieve an environmentally, spatially and socially sustainable use of this technology.

The new book "AVENUE21: Political and Planning Aspects of Automated Mobility" has been published by Springer Vieweg Verlag and is freely available as an open access publication, opens an external URL in a new window. 

The team's first publication, opens an external URL in a new window has also been published by Springer Vieweg and is freely available.