Autonomous Symmetry
Preparing Cities for Self-Driving Vehicles
Autonomous mobility will reshape urban real estate within most current development hold periods.
Here's the quantitative case.
An eight-year independent research project on how driverless infrastructure changes economics, building massing, central business district geography, and the long-term value of urban land — written for the developers, investors, and capital allocators making the decisions now.
The Situation
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Autonomous mobility will reduce traffic stoppages by an order of magnitude, freeing millions of people by 2040 to commute in less than a half hour to a central business district--but not with existing roads and freeways.
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Functional CBD area expands from approximately 2 square miles today to 9 square miles under near-term autonomous infrastructure (40 mph), and could grow to 80+ square miles under fully matured systems (120 mph).
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Land near the most likely sites for new autonomous highways — particularly in the near-term (40 mph) 9 square mile autonomous central business district — is currently priced as ordinary urban land and will not remain so once corridor commitments become more transparent to the public and especially once autonomous highways begin to be contructed.
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The hype bubble around autonomous vehicles ended years ago, but the real mass adoption is growing. This market does not require Level 3 or Level 4 saturation--only a swell of early adopters for Level 2 to produce sufficient early demand in central business districts to pay to use autonomous highways that will unleash economic effects across an entire metropolis.
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Existing property values do not reflect how autonomous traffic patterns will work and how their access to better employment and amenities will change.
Thesis
Goldman Sachs projects Level 2+ autonomous vehicles will reach 10 percent of the US fleet by 2030 and 65 percent by 2040. Real estate decisions made today are often underwritten on 20- to 40-year horizons. A building delivered in 2028 will spend most of its useful life in a location meant for a different transportation regime than the one it will serve.
The Convertibility Thesis
Cities, states and self-taxing improvement districts could hire Autonomous Symmetry to help inform and build those recommendations. But time is a precious commodity. Autonomous Symmetry can consult real estate companies on how to: 1. not build in the wrong locations, 2. strike property agreements that will help ease autonomous freeways and their accompanying structures into the future, and 3. make the market for land more efficient (and best serve their clients' needs) by purchasing undervalued properties near where autonomous highways are most likely to be built, or else most likely to impact commuting distance from downtown, and other property values which will change in counterintuitive ways.
The 21-Story Massing Model
A plethora of new 21-story office-and-parking towers could be the most physically noticeable consequence of three numbers that are individually well-established:
150 square feet - average active office space per employee,
234 square feet - average parking space per employee
4-to-6 floors - the psychological cap on above-ground parking that drives commuter tolerance.
Run together, these numbers reflect preferences that could advantage towers with roughly 8 floors of office (4 at the bottom plus mechanical and lobby, 4 at the top), but also 13 floors of parking in the middle
CBD Expansion Creates New Corridors
Midtown Manhattan has long been the densest central business district in the world, covering approximately 2.25 square miles to move nearly a million commuters each work day into 400 million square feet of office space. Building grade-separated infrastructure for commuters with autonomous capabilities already standard in Level 2 autonomous vehicles — these autonomous highways could move millions of commuting vehicles during rush hour each day into central business districts that could expand up to 9 square miles, four times the footprint of Midtown Manhattan today. Eventually, fully matured systems (120 mph, sub-second reaction times) could deliver tens of millions of autonomous vehicles into central business districts that could expand towards 80 square miles.
First, the city planning implication is the cities which will thrive in the new era will be the ones who plan now in order to make the right investments, zoning changes, and priorities of how to use their limited space. Work could be done now to smooth permitting and construction and provide clarity to real estate developers, especially commercial developers. For Atlanta, either the current commercial core of Midtown/North Downtown Atlanta, Sandy Springs, and Buckhead are the strongest candidates to be the anchor of this new central business district; the expanded CBD could be one or the other’s orchard.
Second, the investment implication is that value migrates outward along specific corridors that today read as fringe office, light industrial, or low-density commercial properties yet have high likelihood of being part of the central business district. Identifying those corridors before the competition is the assemblage opportunity covered in the next section.
Land Assemblage and Corridor Risk
Autonomous corridors will require specific geometric features that ordinary urban land does not currently price: merge and exit lanes that could need to be located every quarter mile, ramp footprints with barriers to unwarranted entry, and autonomous highway grids that don't fit cleanly into existing street grids.
Most of the land lying in these future central business districts is currently priced as ordinary land. Once corridor commitments become public — through DOT planning processes, private right-of-way assemblages, or visible early-stage construction — that pricing will change. The window for assemblage on a pre-commitment basis is approximately the next 5 years in the most ready markets (Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston) and 10 years in markets where political and infrastructure conditions lag.
Cities and developers that don't design, communicate, and clarify their autonomous highway grid plans now will need more eminent domain funded by higher property taxes in the future.
About the Author
Autonomous Symmetry is an independent research project by Joseph Hornbuckle, an Atlanta-based analyst with a background in economics, growth strategy in residential construction software, and product management. The project has been continuously developed since 2018, combining quantitative modeling with field-specific literature in urban planning and infrastructure economics. Joseph is currently exploring opportunities in real estate research, development strategy, and capital-allocation analysis.