Conclusion

The theoretical connections drawn together in this literature review of CAV technology, platooning, road freight trains and other road users with rights to the road/land use, and commodification in a broad sense, and environmentalism is a synthesis of research and interdisciplinary epistemology. Purcell (2002: 107) recommends further research into the ‘explicit debate on what the right to the city should entail and on what it might contribute to greater urban democracy’. It is a central idea in discussing the impacts of CAV technology on the public realm, including environmental and experiential impacts. Human rights, in relation to the use of the public realm, the sharing of space and the functionality of space, is discussed as the use of the space is contested by various users and the political class tasked to manage the complexity.

I note that most theorists in this field, such as Lefebvre (1996) and Purcell (2002), rarely discuss the effects of road transportation, and vehicle design generally, on the design, development, planning, spatial use or democratisation of the public realm. Yet, within my practice in road-based architecture, the contested space of the road, the public realm verses the private realm, is a central issue. The usage rights of open space, footpaths, active transport corridors, traffic islands, road lanes and various types of arterial, highway, motorway and designated lane systems along with Intelligent Traffic Management Systems are a daily, contemporary, continual urban praxis focused on balancing the complex needs of the community.

In this discussion, it is worth noting that extraordinarily complex issues arise in relation to road-based traffic, in that a high proportion of citizens who are dependent on vehicular transport to and from the city are the same citizens who depend on freight for the delivery of goods and food. They own private vehicles sharing roads, use footpaths in the city and use the same roads as commercial operators of freight within the city. These are the same citizens who are employed by the companies who manufacture vehicles, manufacture goods and deliver goods, and they are variously pedestrians, disabled persons, the disenfranchised, the economically active and they are also vehicle drivers. These are the same citizens who exercise their rights to movement. We face, in this subject, a deep-seated, complicit and complex democratic rights process.

Returning to the specific research area of CAVs, a number of questions arise in relation to the platooning of trains of freight vehicles on public roads. These have been detailed as research questions in a symposium methodology. The research questions have not been addressed, to my knowledge, in current literature, and this lack of scholarly qualitative research suggests a gap in the knowledge base that has practical social implications.

It is perhaps the rights to the city as a theoretical and ecological construct that will stimulate debate on the future of CAV platooning and swarming, the commodification of the public realm through use patterns such as freight movement. A deeper understanding of the benefits and impacts of technology on the public realm will provide a strong contribution to this field of inquiry. The questions that arise are: do we have ecological rights, rights to health, right to public health, and are these rights to the city? Are the limits of spatial rights associated with ecological rights such as clean water, unpolluted air and virus-free environments? For me, these issues are all interrelated. The environmentally sustainable transport system is also a healthy system, transparent, democratic, publicly beneficial, ethical, efficient, understandable, highly communicative, intelligent and aesthetic.