Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1131

I speculate a lot on this blog about what electric and autonomous vehicles will mean for the future of our cities. The reason it’s speculation is because it’s phenomenally difficult to know with any sort of certainty what the downstream effects of these technologies will be.

I’ve seen some people claim that a car is still a car. That is, all of the same rules will apply even if they’re powered completely by renewals and we manage to make drivers obsolete (5-10 years?). But I fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking. There will be both positive and negative consequences. They are just yet to be seen.

Benedict Evans recently wrote a post where he started to think about where some of these changes might happen. And so I thought it might be valuable to throw a few of these into the discussion mix. Here are some of his ideas:

• About half of car maintenance spending in the US goes to things directly related to the internal combustion engine. Electric takes that away.

• There are about 150,000 gas stations in the US. They go, along with their associated convenience stores, which is where the margins are made. Interestingly enough, more than half of all US tobacco sales happen at gas stations. Where does that go?

• It is estimated that electric vehicles will increase overall electricity demand by 10-20%. But this could disappear with the battery storage and off-peak power.

• Globally, about 1 million people die every year from car accidents. In the US, something like 90% of all accidents are thought to be caused by human error and about 1/3 of fatal accidents involve alcohol. Autonomy has the potential to take most of this away. Personally, I think we’ll look back and think about how dangerous driving used to be and wonder how/why we all did it.

• A complete rethink of parking. This obviously gets talked about a lot. ~14% of LA’s land is thought to be used for parking. My guess is that parking ratios/requirements go way down (we’re already in the 0 to 0.3 per residential unit territory here in Toronto) and parking garages transform into  yards for AVs.

• Autonomous vehicles once again rewrite the retail real estate landscape. Benedict believes  they will create more billionaires in real estate and retail than in tech or manufacturing. I like how he describes big box retailing as an arbitrage of land costs, transportation costs, and people’s willingness to drive and park. This point is likely about AVs + e-commerce. See yesterday’s post about Amazon .

• Finally, his last point is that autonomous vehicles could become a kind of mobile Panopticon . The Panopticon was an institutional building typology conceived of by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. It was based on the idea that inmates could all be monitored by a single watchman, without any of the inmates knowing if they were, in fact, being watched. It was a way of trying to impose strict obedience in prisons, and so on. Since virtually all autonomous vehicles require some sort of computer vision, Benedict argues that they could become the 21st century watchmen. Move over CCTV.

The other big question is about decentralization. New transportation technologies have consistently promoted greater suburbanization – think streetcar suburbs to car suburbs. The fact that you’ll be able to use your time more productively in an autonomous vehicle is continually floated as an argument for this trend to continue. But I haven’t made up my mind about this one.

Do you have any other thoughts on the downstream effects of electric and autonomous vehicles?

The Economist has an article up talking about what a behemoth Amazon has and will continue to become. Here are some interesting stats for you to think about:

• More than half of every dollar spent online in America now goes to Amazon
  

• Amazon’s share price has increased 173% since the beginning of 2015 (12x faster than the S&P 500)
  

• With a market capitalization > $400 billion, it is the 5th most valuable company in the world
  

• 92% of its value is supposedly being derived from profits expected after 2020 – they are playing the long game
  

• Investors believe that revenue will go from $136 billion (2016) to half a trillion over the next decade
  

If I can buy something online, instead of in person, I will do it. And that very often leads me to Amazon. In fact, I bought my new camera lens from them last week. Many others seem to be doing the same.

When I go to a store now it’s because I need something immediately or because I’m looking for a new experience. I want novelty and I want to feel something special when I walk in. That, or I just need groceries.

Today I got a copy of rain gravity heat cold . It’s a book by the Toronto-based architecture firm superkül and it’s meant to celebrate their first 10 years of practice. 

The book itself was put together by Blok Design . Blok has also done a new – yet to be rolled out – identity for superkül . (Definitely worth a click through.)

One thing I wanted to highlight from the foreword of the book (written by Kiel Moe ) is this line:  “Great design does not respond to a static sense of context but rather perhaps transforms its flaws into assets and certainly amplifies the potential of site.”

We often talk about contextual architecture. That is, architecture which responds to and is sensitive to its surroundings. But here’s the idea that responding is, in fact, not enough. The ambition should be “amplification of site through design.” 

I like that a lot.

If you’d like a copy of the book, it can be found on Amazon , at the University of Toronto bookstore , as well as, I’m sure, other places.