Grace Kaplowitz

Using experience from working on the Knight AV Initiative, Urbanism Next created this white paper to provide a foundation for public sector agencies to approach autonomous vehicle deployment and policy with a focus on equity. This report outlines ways that public agencies can identify community needs and shape deployment to ensure that AVs will be accessible for all. 

From June to October 2019, researchers at Urbanism Next identified 249 new mobility and AV delivery pilot projects, completed and in-progress, in the United States and Canada. Relevant information about all 249 pilot projects, including sponsoring organizations, key dates, and geographic area, are recorded in this file. This data set provided the foundation of the report Perfecting Policy with Pilots. Ultimately, Urbanism Next used information from 220 of the pilots in the report. The new mobility modes included in this data set include shared micromobility devices such as e-scooters and bikes, transportation network company partnerships, microtransit, autonomous passenger vehicle pilots, autonomous delivery pilots, and non-autonomous goods delivery pilots. The information collected by Urbanism Next researchers is limited to publicly available information collected from online resources, such as reports, government websites, public and private press releases, and news articles as well as a limited number of follow-up phone calls requesting information.

Before the pandemic, Urbanism Next developed a framework organizing the disruptions to cities caused by emerging transportation technologies on land use, urban design, building design, transportation, and real estate. COVID-19 has disrupted the trajectory of these emerging technologies and will, in turn, change some our original assumptions. This paper revisits the original Urbanism Next framework, taking into account the cascading impacts of the pandemic. This report is one of two reports completed by Urbanism Next on the impacts of Covid-19.

How is the COVID-19 pandemic changing urban living? In this paper, we explore the landscape of COVID-19 disruptions to date on land use and real estate, urban design, building design, transportation, e-commerce and retail, and goods delivery. We also highlight the longer-term questions and potential ongoing impacts COVID-19 might have on the built environment.

The purpose of this study is to go beyond cataloging pilot projects to determine the lessons learned, emerging trends and considerations, and examples of promising practices from pilot projects in the United States and Canada. Researchers assessed 220 pilot projects and 11 case studies. Based on that assessment, they recommend 10 actions for pilot projects generally. The study resulted in 31 lessons learned organized by pilot goals, evaluation, implementation, outcomes, and policy and infrastructure implications.