I'd be surprised if cities became less desirable. I could see cars turning into something like an on-demand, private bus (or just an automated taxi that you own).

Something that is needed here and probably many places is competition in Public Transport. I imagine a time where it will be cheaper to have your electric car drive you into work than to catch a train, then drives itself home and charges until you're ready to be picked up again. Or just driverless taxis on the cheap.

Public transport here costs at least $20 a week just for students relatively close to the city. You can expect $50+ for adults, it's not uncommon for people here to live 1+ hours away and commute from the coast, costing $15+ per trip.

maybe the opposite is true. i can get around the city very fast without having to worry about parking.

I think this is more likely. Living in cities is desirable because you have a vibrant and 'close' community, it is undesirable because its hard to drive and if you do own a car its under utilized.

One of the interesting effects on this might be 'non-bus' cars. Which is to say public transit as a fleet of say 'four person' self driving cars where you walk to a bus top and touch your transit car and one shows up and picks you up. You tell it where you want to go and it takes you there.

It of course destroys the taxi business quite completely. But combines all manner of public transit into a single service which gets economies of scale. Dynamic electric cars would be fine (where they have an electric 'boom' like trains in Europe do).

No way it's public. I can imagine apartment buildings having a car or two for use like a gym or laundry.

Or, perhaps a subscription service, superzipcar or something like that.

Why "no way"? I don't have any problem with your suggested models either, but see no reason why public car services couldn't coexist.

short version, politics & tragedy of the commons.

Anything is possible, I just can't imagine a (US) municipality that's able to implement an entirely new public service. IIRC, community wi-fi keeps getting sued by companies that want to make money. First, none can afford it. Second the US, IMHO, is really hostile toward any sort of government service.

Even if those were non-issues, you still have to solve the problem of vandalism. People behave like grownups when other people are watching (pretty much). The bus or subway are good examples. Alone, in a car, i think it's much tougher to keep people well behaved. there have been various community bicycle programs that suffer from people beating the hell out of the bikes, or just stealing them.

These are perhaps mutable problems in small towns, or outside of the US.

Seattle has a light rail system they only booted up a few years ago. They had to build a completely new set of rails everywhere to do it. I'll admit I don't know the details of its history, since I wasn't paying attention, but it's utterly possible.

If you belive this (http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2009/07/20/seattles-light...) it took seattle almost 20 years to make that happen. Also, i think that city, in particular, was flush with cash.

20 years is on the long side, but I find it a reasonable amount of time to make it happen. And the point was more that it happened, and that it wasn't exactly an isolated case.

The proliferation of self-driving cars will absolutely affect where people live, eventually.

I imagine that to start with, we'll see certain areas - such as the Vegas strip, perhaps - that support Valet™, a feature first appearing in luxury vehicles that does exactly what we'd already expect from human valet drivers.

But to drill down even further, I'm not exactly sure where the very first Valet™ supported parking lot would be. Manhattan would be a great use-case, but my own guess is that we'll first see this appear at places like large mall parking lots where city regulations won't be as much of a problem.

And yes, self-driving cars will provide a huge boom to services like Zipcar, and indirectly to marketplaces like AirBnB that convert ownership into access.

At first I thought that taxi companies would use the vehicles, but now I think it is more realistic that zip car would be first (or someone like them) since not everyone will be fast to adopt and may be uncomfortable riding.in one. Then over time the economics will force cab companies to switch at which point it will be a mature market.

Bschool professors will talk about how cab companies made the wrong strategic choice even though it will really be the only option and one essentially predetermined.

Personally, I can't wait!

It doesn't need to drive around for a while. There could be parking lots for driverless cars that somehow connect with the owners credit card and pay for parking.

But why did people leave cities to begin with? Street crime was an important factor.

It's a complex question, but I think the main reason was just for child-rearing space. Crime wasn't an issue when the first suburbs exploded in the 50s.

With fewer people having children I think that's less of an issue.

Regardless of whether or not it drives itself (although it's an improvement), I still find the idea of owning a car very unappealing, and it still doesn't give the suburbs a soul.

You wouldn't buy a car, you'd just order a ride when you needed it, and the car would come pick you up. Think Zipcar