ABSTRACT
An ecological approach to the future that includes connected autonomous renewable energy vehicles (CAREVs) is the motivation for this practice research. This project is situated in the context of a future machine-intelligence modality that will replace road vehicles that operate on fossil fuel, which have contributed (for more than a century) to the climate crisis, ongoing human-induced road accidents, contested urban discourse and continuous vehicle-industry scandals.
This research project is created and designed. It is unable to achieve its creative and cognitive contribution any other way. The research project proposes a designed and created future road transport system, as opposed to an uncontrolled and evolved future. Or worse, continuing with the current process of planned obsolescence in which the future is obscured by the industry’s commercial interests alone.
The project investigates the interweaving relationships between research practice in design, architectural multimedia, experimentation, thinking and writing about the relationship between humans in the public realm, semiotics and CAREVs as a positive ecological system and how they interact with each other. The overall ecological framework – based on Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi’s (2014) The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision – provides the methodological foundation for this research.
This research aims to investigate and understand how a social and environmental framework mediates the development of connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) and autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies. It also investigates how society can shape future cities, semiotics and mobility to the evolving and increasing demands for spatial, urban and climate justice. This research asks a meta-question about the effects of future CAREV systems in the public realm, which led to several sub-questions that are answered in this study's conclusion:
How do we live with CAVs in the public realm?
Can society intervene, and can we create an ecological framework in which this technology is sustainable and positively influences the environment?
What opportunities does this technology hold for spatial or social justice, and which communities or cohorts are affected?
Beyond changes in the designs of cities and vehicles, what are some other changes that may result from the introduction of CAVs, AVs or CAREVs?
Does a change in fleet allow for deeper changes in the city fabric, its semiotics and communications, and can a systemic semiotic technoecosystem arise?
How can new technologies change the way we experience cities?
To what extent can a change in the fleet to smaller connected autonomous renewable energy vehicles (CAREV-S) allow for deeper changes in the city fabric, its active transport systems, ecology and semiotics?
These research questions shape this project through a practice lens. The ecological framework based on Capra and Luisi's work has a deep tradition[1] in twentieth-century architectural and urban design thinking, yet it has not been modified as practice research for CAREVs. My practice as an urban designer involves experience in transdisciplinary processes and design. When conceived holistically, this systematic approach and research practice require structures for managing the process of understanding the method of transdisciplinary practice. I call this the ‘symposium method’, which systematically includes multiple voices creating new knowledge as part of the process of producing reflections and feedback about the research.
This spatial justice investigation is part of a module that makes up a larger study that delves into a future of a fully CAREV environment. This spatial investigation of smaller connected autonomous renewable energy vehicles (CAREV-S) includes a variety of vehicles and dominant narrow two-seater vehicles and their influence on the city. This spatial investigation was developed for a local suburban area as a case study in Sydney from which broader research could emerge.
When designing future environments that use AVs, it Is necessary to anticipate humans and their interactions with AVs, which raise questions concerning the ‘rights to the city’. This module of research investigates the spatial and environmental justice potentialities of CAREV-S. It presents investigative tools for redistributing justice, city functionality improvements, vehicle ergonomics and environmental and health benefits.
This research reveals that by setting environmental and spatial goals, CAREV-S can improve the city’s liveability. It also discusses the objectives, limitations and assumptions that make CAREV-S a challenging proposition. The CAREV-S spatial study deepens the AV debate and research process and allows for a clear articulation of the issues and methods for disrupting paradigms.
These research methods are qualitative. They include generating data through the synthesis of imaginative architectural design and multimedia practice with transdisciplinary dialogue through the symposium. The benefits of this research practice are that it enriches and encourages multiple-participant collaborations; increases diversity, contemplation and provocation; and facilitates an evolving transdisciplinary dialogue within the theoretical.
The investigation suggests that CAREV-S could achieve the social and cultural aspirations of a magical, safe, efficient, convenient, reliable, just, and sustainable, with a synthetically intelligent modality if designed systemically.
5 Keywords
Connected renewable energy autonomous vehicles, smaller vehicles ergonomics, spatial and environmental justice.
[1] The architecture and urban design tradition to which I refer has, for example, roots in the research and practice of Ian McHarg's Design with Nature (1968), whose systematic, layered and practical geomorphological research underpins much of the day-to-day work, both practical and theoretical.