Book by AnnaLisa Meyboom with drawings by Lörinc Vass (Routledge, 2018)
Review by Adele Weder
There was a time when ?manual driving? denoted the heady thrill of sliding into fifth gear in a standard-transmission sports car. Not only is that definition growing anachronistic, our common concept of the automobile itself is on the way out?or soon will be. The driverless car is coming soon to a roadway near you, and it will eventually transform the very act of being at the wheel to passive from active. As AnnaLisa Meyboom relays in Driverless Urban Futures: A Speculative Atlas for Autonomous Vehicles, this upcoming transformation will change the nature of driving and the design of cars, to be sure, but also the format of our cities. Meyboom, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia?s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, has issued one of the most comprehensive texts of this impending development, raising questions and issues that few designers, politicians, planners and voters have even begun to think about. Autonomous vehicles offer the possibility for ?flat streets,? which are curbless and allow for flexibility in how they are shared between pedestrians, cyclists and motorized vehicles.
The book is richly variegated with essays and analyses, technical summaries, historic context and even an insightful essay by Lörinc Vass on the act of drawing. (Vass?s line drawings of the future autonomous vehicle (AV) and street reallocations are an esse...