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Mobility in Emerging Megacities
+ Brandon Fuller
The Growth Dialogue recently published The Buzz in Cities: New Economic Thinking. Alain Bertaud contributed a chapter addressing the unprecedented challenge to urban mobility that will confront emerging megacities. Bertaud opens with the following paragraph:
We are ill prepared for planning the transport infrastructure of large megacities because we stick to obsolete models like the ones offered by Curitiba, Copenhagen, or Bogota. These cities, while innovative in their past golden ages, have spatial structures and scales that are very different from those observed in new megacities. Their experiences are not transferable to megacities.
Instead, Bertaud sees the further development of shared fleets of small autonomous electric vehicles playing a key role. When combined with high-speed transit that moves quickly within and across metropolitan areas, shared fleets can provide the on-demand, door-to-door trips that will unify massive metropolitan labor markets. Read Bertaud's contribution here.
Tile image courtesy of Chris Goldberg.