I generally agree. In short-mid term it is much better to build cities around “walking” and public transportation. It is just much more economic, effective and generally pleasant way.

There probably still should exist some “taxi” service for “quick” transport if needed.

However I believe this works great for big cities. Things becomes much worse in smaller cities as well as areas outside of city where cars are just much more comfortable.

I’m living in Poland, Warsaw. Most parts of city are build with this idea in mind and it is great. You basically have all basic services in a walking distance or like 20 min in a bus. Transportation is awesome, you can get everywhere in public transport in decent time. Many people with cars still use public transport esp. in center where is difficult to find parking. The only downside is that in popular hours there are too many people in public transport.

However if you get into sub urban environment - car is must have, even just to get to the city. It will be difficult and expensive to organize public transport there in a way it is done in a city. However there are trains that can get you to the center of the city in like 20-30 minutes so it is still pretty decent.

Now on autonomous driving. It is still a pinnacle of tech advancements for near future because of many reasons such as:

• it is hard
• it will be much more effective
• it will be just comfortable
• it could be implemented in public transport as well
• probably safer (in terms of scale, there are still cyber security issues).

From my perspective self-driving car could go on par with urban development in a way it is done here in Europe.

I believe for us in EU it is always strange to see those two things (cars and urban environment) collide in US.