Here’s how autonomous vehicles may impact real estate
by Michael Gossie | AZRE
The panel of experts at Valley Partnership’s March breakfast.
Pages of magazines and television screens have been filled with images of automated cars driving the streets Metro Phoenix. These autonomous vehicles use artificial intelligence (AI) to learn the streets and driving patterns to drive to and from their destinations.
It’s easy to imagine how autonomous vehicles will impact the individual — without having to dedicate their focus to driving, they will have more time to read, work, sleep, communicate or play video games while they are traveling to and from the places they need to be. But how will autonomous vehicles impact commercial real estate development? A panel of experts at Valley Partnership’s March breakfast tried to answer that question Friday at Phoenix Country Club. The panel included Timothy Papandreou, strategic partnerships manager for Waymo/Google; Victor Irizarry, associate and senior designer at Gensler; Bryan Maddock, designer at Gensler; Jeff Moloznik, vice president development at RED Development; and Kini Knudson, assistant street transportation director for the City of Phoenix.
“All these changes are happening now and they are all impacted by changes and improvements in technology,” said Irizarry. “The automobile as we know it will be a dinosaur by 2030. We all need to suspend disbelief for a bit to imagine how autonomous vehicles will change our world.”
