Reconciling Mobility Infrastructure with Landscape Systems

The Role of Anticipatory Urban Design in Sustainable Integration of Shared Autonomous Vehicles /.

As the concept of sustainable mobility expands to entwine with landscape sustainability (LS), new opportunities to reconcile mobility infrastructure with landscape systems emerge through integrating shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs). Focusing on greenfield development, a predominant development typology in contemporary American urbanization, this article explores these opportunities through the lens of anticipatory urban design by addressing three key questions: 1) What LS benefits can be anticipated by integrating SAVs into greenfield developments? 2) How can anticipatory urban design maximize these anticipated LS benefits through proactively transforming greenfield development patterns? 3) What policy instruments within the existing regulatory framework can local policymakers and developers leverage to facilitate these transformations? To address these questions, three built environment (BE) features with potential for enhancing LS performance through SAV integration are first identified: streets, parking, and residential blocks. Next, an anticipatory urban design framework is proposed, combining scenario-based and performance-driven approaches. Real-world applications of this framework show that across the three BE features, the impervious surface ratio can be reduced by 33 to 42 percentage points, while landscape contiguity can be significantly increased. Finally, a set of policy recommendations is provided to guide future greenfield developments toward improved LS performance with SAVs. While much research on SAVs assumes a static BE, this study emphasizes how anticipatory urban design can proactively transform the BE to enhance LS outcomes in the context of SAV integration.

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