Redesigning urban elements and structures considering autonomous vehicles: Preparing design strategies for wide implementation in cities

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) and their potential impact on the transformation of the built environment of cities have become a topic of interest across disciplines. Despite policy and design implications, realistic projections of future urban landscape changes were primarily obtained based on street-scale design in earlier studies, leaving questions about the successful integration of repurposed urban elements. This study aimed to formulate design strategies in an incremental fashion applicable to large areas of cities to enhance the connectivity between AVs and existing transportation modes. A conceptual model was built referring to blocks of different forms and functions in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, to extend our designs from the street level to the district level. Urban ele-ments-streets, public spaces and transit systems-were redesigned and merged into the patchwork concept, which links different street and zone types as an efficient system. The above urban design concept proposes the separation of AVs and regular vehicles and adopts unique linkage structures to effectively connect zones assigned to AV usage. The strategies and designs developed in this study contribute to the limited studies on city-scale future AV projections and provide spatial implications as a guideline to address preparations considering AVs in the urban space.