Wait for robotic cars, and the subsequent explosion of time-shared rent-a-cars (imagine if ZipCars could be really truly computer-scheduled), robotic public transport and mixed transport (freely intermixing various transport types), even cheaper robotic delivery services, and the still-improving telepresence software and cheaper hardware. We're still at the beginning of that moreso than the end. Driving to the city half-an-hour away is annoying when it carves half-an-hour out of your day, but if you just click to order a car, get in and continue doing whatever it is you were doing before, and just arrive half-an-hour later it'll feel much less like it was An Event to go to the city. Or going from the city to something half-an-hour away.
Agreed, and we're also just at the beginning of teleconferencing. Once teleconferencing can approximate more of the nuances of being in a room or building with a group or people (Google Huddle's automatic focusing on the speaker in a group chat is a nice example), it will become increasingly possible to run an organization of remotely connected workers.
Robotic cars will make it even easier to live in cities. Cabs will actually go robotic and be the preferred use of cars because they will actually get much cheaper than owning one.
In fact cabs are already cheaper than owning a car where parking space is very expensive, but robotic cabs will reach a whole new level of cheapness.
Cars and engines are going to get a lot smaller when you don't need to accommodate a driver or the need to speed. Think rickshaw size with a top speed of 35 mph.
Mopeds get 120 mpg. That's like 4 cents a mile. Door to door for a dollar a trip will be a reality and make mass transit AND the traditional automobile industry increasingly irrelevant.
Some interesting points, but I think robotic cars will/would be a bigger enabler for exurbs than for actual city dwelling. Get yourself some acreage at the edge of some teeming metropolis, have 60-90 minutes of uninterrupted time each way in your little cocoon to do as you please, have face time in the office once you get there.
Use the commute time to telecommute and shorten (or extend!) your in-office work day, or spend it pursuing solitary leisure activities and work a normal-length day at the office.
All this talk about robotic cars carrying people long distances reminds me of Robert Heinlein's short story "The Roads Must Roll". Huge, underground moving sidewalks running at 100 mph replace highways and railways as the dominant transportation method in the United States.
You still have to power the thing. Declining oil production and the limitations of battery power are going to be a severe limiting factor that will influence the way we roll out self-driving automobiles.
Fleets of self-driving vehicles nearly eliminate the problems with battery power; they can easily schedule when they need to return to the station to swap out their battery packs for fresh ones.
I still think technology is winning the resource depletion race, even if we ignore the fact that it's really starting to look like oil production isn't actually near the end of its road yet. And if we don't ignore that, the likelihood that gas (or more broadly "energy") will just be "too expensive" for people to want to jaunt about anytime in the next 20 years seems to be decreasing rather than increasing. A great deal of our current apparent shortages of various things are 100% self-imposed.
Presumably a robot could also connect to overhead or embedded wires, reducing the size of batteries to that needed for areas without that infrastructure.
Buses in SF run totally with overhead wires. You see the drivers having to reconnect to them when they pop out.
It's still half an hour, whether or not you're able to do something else during that period of time. I think the cost of oil and, in time, energy in general will work to increase rather than decrease population density in the long run.
Environmental concerns aside for a moment, a half-hour or more in a self-driving car is actually more productive/convenient than many city-dweller's commutes - most people could essentially begin their workday in the bubble of a car with a 4G connection and VPN.
Private space is important. So is freedom from interruption. And of course, the fact that trains don't always run on time, and never go from exactly where you are to exactly where you want to be.
