Moshe Safdie

With the new densities seen in cities across the world, the private automobile is not sustainable. For walkable places of rich interaction, we must start with urban transportation. There has never been a major change in city structures without a corresponding revolution in transit, from the advancement of the urban rail system in the 1850s to the private automobile in the 1920s. We are just beginning to think about how we can replace the automobile and revolutionize how we use it. Moshe Safdie’s book, “The City After the Automobile,” led to a research fellowship in the office: Mobility on-Demand and the Redesigned City. He discusses this research, showing that if we were to plan our cities with the idea of using the automobile as a utility on demand, similar to the proliferation of city bikes on demand, we can open the possibility of new interfaces – reducing cars by 70% and parking areas over 50%. He explains why this has great potential, with rapidly developing new technologies and innovations, for our ability to reclaim and reimagine the public realm.