ABSTRACT
In order to try to understand the impact of AVs on urban form, it may be beneficial to look at past transportation technologies and their impact on the city, especially the influence of cars. The introduction of cars was a disruptive technology of its time, even more revolutionary than the introduction of AVs to our streets. As such, there is potentially much to learn from this last revolution in the streets. However, transportation technology is not the only factor in the shaping of streets; the social construction of the street is an equally powerful influence in how we view what a street is and should be.1,2 Today we view the street as a thoroughfare for cars and we tend to project this thinking onto the past, but this view was not prevalent prior to the 1920s.3 Before this period, the street was for people to walk in and children to play in. It was the social reconstruction of the street that produced the image we currently have of it and its resultant urban form, a fact that becomes increasingly obvious when looking back closely at this time period.4 It is therefore also
worthwhile examining the history of social attitudes to the street and how changes in attitude have corresponded with changes in transportation technology. Through examination of both the technology and the social attitudes towards that technology, we will get a better idea of how the social construction of the street and our hierarchical street network came about-and what we can anticipate with the next technological transportation revolution.
