With the emergence of autonomous motor vehicles and the surge in e-commerce, city planners are starting to ask important questions about how these technologies will impact the future of urban design.

, a University of Oregon initiative exploring these effects, has been awarded $1 million over the next five years. The grant from the Presidential Fund for Excellence will allow Urbanism Next to establish a new center, expanding on the work to examine the changes that could come with the growth of autonomous vehicles, e-commerce and the sharing economy.

Urbanism Next started about two years ago as a project under the Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) at UO. The creation of the center will build upon the research and partnerships already established through the initiative.

Urbanism Next lead and SCI co-director Nico Larco said the group started to realize there was research being done on the impacts on transportation, but not on the secondary effects such as street design and city planning.

“When we started looking into this and realizing the impacts these technologies are going to have, this become more of a ‘we need to get everyone thinking about this.’” he said.

With the increase in funding, the program will be able vastly increase its capacity. The center’s primary focus will be on interdisciplinary research and helping to inform public agencies, private firms and collaboration with local and national partners.

“We’re thrilled to have the support from the university,” Larco said. “There’s a strong interest in making real-world change, and it shows a strong commitment to this area of need.”

Earlier this month, more than 500 people from across the country attended the first Urbanism Next Conference. It was created through a partnership between SCI, the Oregon chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects – Portland, the Oregon chapter of the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute Northwest.

It’s the first time those four organizations have come together to talk about these topics, Urbanism Next program manager Becky Steckler said.

“We thought there was a pent-up demand for this type of thing, and we were absolutely right,” she said. “Even a year ago, this all felt like science fiction and now we’ve quickly made the transition. These are going to affect our communities.”

The new technologies are changing transportation systems and city layouts, Larco said. The work at the center will largely focus on how those changes will affect land use, street design, parking, housing and densification.

With the introduction of autonomous vehicles (AVs), one estimate says the need for parking could be reduced to 10 to 15 percent of current needs, Larco said. With so much land being made available at the same time, there could be a drop in property values with the sudden increase in supply.

On the other hand, curbside management will become an important topic, as vehicles will pick people up and drop them off throughout the day.

Larco has been leading a Portland-based emerging technology group made up of partners such as Metro, the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, TriMet, the Oregon Department of Transportation and the governor’s office.

The city of Portland has already been looking into the potential effects of autonomous vehicles. Last year the city launched a (SAVI) – a long-range policy on outcomes the city wants to see, including regulations for AVs.

That initiative will soon be incorporated into the city’s transportation plan, said Art Pearce, manager of Portland Bureau of Transportation policy, planning and projects. He oversees a group that guides transportation ideas through the long-range planning and policy, project development and construction stages – including discussions surrounding AVs.

“What do these new ideas and new technologies mean for creating a great city of the future?” Pearce said. “We’ve been working with (Larco) on developing a better understanding on where our focus should be.”

With the new regulatory policy, officials want to be explicit about the city they’re trying to build. With AVs, Pearce said there tends to be two visions of possible outcomes. In one, it will mean more vehicle miles traveled overall, causing more traffic and congestion and more people sitting in vehicles longer. The second possibility could be a future in which streets are used more efficiently with people in vehicles going to similar destinations and a reduction in parking needs.

“We’re looking at new technologies with open eyes with how they might impact our future city and the people in our city,” Pearce said.

The rise in Uber and Lyft usage could provide insight into how AVs will be used in the future, he added. To help with planning, the city will be funding a study of whether car-sharing networks cause an increase or a decrease of traffic and congestion.

“These emerging technologies are really going to direct the way we’re operating right now, so we’re going to have to (identify) these impacts and how … we respond,” Larco said.

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Participants from academia, architecture, planning, real estate and government are invited to gather in Portland for the inaugural Urbanism Next Conference at the Oregon Convention Center next month.

Urbanism Next is a University of Oregon research initiative focused on understanding how new technologies such as autonomous vehicles, e-commerce and the sharing economy affect land use, street design, land valuation and pressures on sprawl.

The conference, slated for March 5-7, will be an opportunity for stakeholders to engage in a conversation about how cities can best prepare for the changes these emerging technologies create.

The University of Oregon is partnering with the American Institute of Architects, the American Planning Association, the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Urban Land Institute to present the conference. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; Robin Chase of Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities and Jeff Tumlin of transportation consulting firm Nelson\Nygaard will be among the speakers.

On the second day of the conference there will be 17 workshops, each focusing on a unique aspect of the challenges and opportunities presented by emerging technologies. Check out the schedule of presentations, workshops and other conference events at , and register at .

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Work by a team of international city planners, led by ZGF Architects, was recognized by the Urban Land Institute last week. The team’s “Smart City” project for Kashiwanoha, Japan, won a ULI Global Award for Excellence.

The new eco-district is located on 675 acres in Kashiwanoha, 18 miles north of Tokyo. The city is home to 400,000 people. The development strategy that the team came up with will create the largest LEED Neighborhood Development platinum-rated smart city in the world.

The project will be a mixed-use employment district organized around open space and transit options. Energy use will be reduced through a system that centralizes energy generation and storage. The idea is to have people live and work in the same realm in order to lower emissions and produce a more sustainable living area.

The area incorporates technology like apps that tell people in a high energy use area how to reduce demand. The system also monitors and broadcasts building performance. Also, buildings are connected through a district energy and power distribution system to share heat loads and reduce peak electricity use.

The Portland Development Commission (now Prosper Portland) helped connect the district with many of the companies involved in its design. A group from Kashiwanoha toured the Pearl District in 2014 to gain ideas on how to create a more sustainable district.

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Growing cities don’t have to become seas of gleaming skyscrapers, according to Ed McMahon, the Urban Land Institute‘s senior resident fellow for sustainable development. He delivered that message last week at the White Stag Block in Portland as one of the speakers for an event that focused on housing density and affordability.

“Portland can grow without losing the things you love,” he said.

McMahon has consulted for cities across the nation. Height shouldn’t be the most important factor in new building projects, he said.

“Three things you need to think about when it comes to development are where you put it, how you arrange it and what does it look like,” he said.

Urban planners across the country have sought to avoid contributing to suburban sprawl. To increase density, the propensity has been to build taller, often at the expense of existing historic buildings.

“Increasing housing supplies does not ensure affordability if developers build oversized and overpriced luxury homes,” said Laurence Qamar, owner of Qamar Architecture + Town Planning and another speaker at the event.

New towers often come with higher prices and lower density, McMahon said. A study by the Preservation Green Lab in Seattle, he added, found that such buildings fall short in comparison to many smaller, refurbished buildings for housing people per unit. That same comparison held true for office buildings as well.

“Smaller, older buildings had more jobs per square foot,” he said. “They also had more locally owned businesses, more non-chain stores and more women- and minority-owned businesses. These are places that are worth preserving because they do outperform, on a square-foot basis, some of these larger, newer buildings.”

Nevertheless, across the country more affordable units are being torn down than built new. A National Housing Trust study, McMahon said, found that for every affordable housing unit built, two are lost due to abandonment, deterioration or conversion to more expensive housing.

“Preserving rather than building new has proven to be the most financially sustainable method of reversing the trend of one step forward and two steps back,” he said.

McMahon added that in his professional experience, well-designed duplexes and fourplexes often were welcomed into neighborhoods. He compared the compact multifamily layout of the Battery neighborhood in Charleston, S.C., to the circular sprawl of Sun City, Arizona, a census-designated place near Phoenix.

“The Battery in Charleston is double the density of Sun City, but who would even know that (by looking),” he said.

While Sun City relies on cul-de-sacs of houses, Charleston has duplexes and fourplexes that mimic single-family homes through strategic placement or elimination of garages.

“Good design makes you forget about the whole concept of density,” McMahon said. “You just like being in that place.”

Portland’s small, 200-foot blocks often make good design difficult. Qamar advocated limiting building heights to mitigate those challenges.

“Our tiny blocks increasingly yield massive buildings that rise straight up from sidewalks with little of subtlety and form,” he said.

Marshall Runkel, chief of staff for Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, encouraged event attendees to stay involved as proposals such as the 2035 Comprehensive Plan and the Residential Infill Project come before the City Council.

“Over the course of the next year, there should be dramatic regulatory changes that will have influences on all of the subjects discussed tonight,” he said.

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