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Comment by chrisweekly | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the broad adoption of autonomous vehicles will do to the urban-center growth curve.

My personal bias tells me that it won't effect much: I think a lot of current city dwellers live in cities not only for jobs, but also because they like the easy access to amenities, culture, and walkability.

There's also the fact that the throughput of autonomous vehicles compares very poorly with the throughput of a decent subway or light rail system (multiple orders of magnitude).

More objectively, I suspect there are a lot of people who are only living in cities today because of job availability. But I question how many of those folks want to transition from a 30 minute walk/public transit ride to a hour+ drive in a (semi?) autonomous vehicle. Even if you can read or work in your autonomous car -- which, in itself, is a dubious proposition for anybody who needs connectivity to their team or the internet due to the price of data plans -- it's still time spent away from home, family, loved ones, etc. I'm not sure how many jobs are truly flexible enough for you to let commute time replace at-desk time: even software jobs don't all allow that.

So for many people, autonomous vehicles would just mean more time spent commuting, away from their families. And for all of that, you end up driving (autonomously!) 20+ minute to do anything on the weekends or after work. It's not a deal I would make, but maybe other people are more OK with it.

Prices will spike in small "urban-feel" bedroom communities that aren't currently on a major bus or commuter rail line and are within a ~30 minute drive of city centers. Also, cities will grow denser in areas that aren't currently on transit lines, at the expense of property values along transit lines in the inner suburbs.

I doubt prices in cities will change much, though. People who want to live in burbs are already living there. And there are lots of people living along transit lines who would rather be living somewhere else, if only they had access to trasnit.

If prices drop anywhere, it will not be in city centers. It will be in the inner suburbs along transit lines.

The common wisdom is that it will lead to more dispersion. (In fact, this will probably be true even before full hands-off door-to-door systems are available.) To the degree that at least some people live in cities, not so much because they want to, but because they work there and don't want the commute, they might move to the suburbs if that commute becomes easier. Of course, if a lot of people think that way, traffic probably becomes more congested.

> To the degree that at least some people live in cities, not so much because they want to, but because they work there and don't want the commute, they might move to the suburbs if that commute becomes easier

IDK if those people exist in high numbers within city centers. Those folks are all clustered along transit lines just outside of city city centers, right?

You may be right at least for cities with decent commuter rail systems. I'm most familiar with Boston and, if someone is working in town and doesn't want to live downtown, there are quite a few nice inner suburbs that aren't that far away along a rail line.

The rise of dual-income households has put a premium on commute time (as it now impacts both parents). I believe this has helped drive the 50% outperformance of city-center real estate cited in the article. Autonomous vehicles would likely slow that trend, not sure it would eliminate or reverse it all together.

I don't think the timing really supports that theory. If you look at the percentage of dual income households, it pretty much peaked in 1990 (and plateaued). [1] Yet, 1990 was really just around the beginning of the current interest in certain--mostly coastal--cities. For example, I think Boston was still losing population in the early 1990s.

[1]

Your link isn't working for me, but if it is the same PEW data I found it only measures households with kids.[1] My initial post did say "parents", but what about the rising share of the population that is Dual-Income, No Kids (DINK)?

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-20...

Yes, that was the link. I have trouble believing it makes a huge difference.

I suppose you could hypothesize that the increased propensity for mostly college-educated millennials to live in certain cities comes about partly because they're marrying later and/or are having fewer kids. But, in that case, I think the common thread is that they're not moving out to the suburbs for the schools and the yard--not that they're two-income households.

I'm certainly willing to believe that the urbanization trend seemingly being strongest among a demographic having fewer and later kids may well not be a coincidence.

This data shows "city center" with the largest increases. So it isn't just that they are focused in the "city", but the actual center of cities where jobs tend to be more plentiful, commute times tend to be lower and real estate values tend to be higher. This implies they aren't simply choosing to avoid the suburbs, but to live in the most expensive part of town.

That said, I am having a hard time verifying what they are using to delineate the different distance tiers.

If you get granular enough, the focus of jobs (e.g. the financial center of a number of cities) isn't really where most people choose to live. Neither Wall Street nor Midtown are the preferred residence addresses in Manhattan for the most part. Same thing with Boston and Cambridge for the corresponding areas.

==Neither Wall Street nor Midtown are the preferred residence addresses in Manhattan for the most part. Same thing with Boston and Cambridge for the corresponding areas.==

Do actual home values back up this assumption? Seems to me those are all very expensive places to live, which implies they are highly desirable.

If you ever wonder what autonomous cars will feel like, just imagine an uber ride where you don't talk to the driver.

It might also be a bit cheaper.

We might find out in 20-50 years. But I wouldn't count on that promise anytime soon.

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