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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper.

Our summary today works with the article titled How the car transformed society in the 20^th century from 2020 by James Arbib and Tony Seba, in Rethinking Humanity – Five foundational sector disruption, the lifecycle of civilizations and the coming age of freedom, from the RethinkXTeam. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I though it would interesting be to see how the car has changed and been changing cities, as it is said to be one of the biggest problems for current urban environments. This article explores how and to what extent the car and the auto industry have changed our society since their infancy, and what were the moving forces.

Arbib and Seba started how the technological advancements in the second half of the 19^th century, and their beming cheaper and cheaper contributed to the spread of the automobile. The technologies confluxed at this time to create a perfect environment for the car to be born and became ubiquitous. These technological advancements include steel production, the combustion engine, proper fuel, rubber and tires, assembly lines and gasoline. Interestingly, early on, the gasonline car competed with electic and steam-powered alternatives, and only after an adjustment period turned the gasoline the most widespread solution, at which point the car became truly disruptive.

As the car got cheaper, the demand exploded for it. As Seba and Arbib highlighted, the adoption of this new technology followed an S curve, and the main adoption, from 11% to 81% happened just in 10 years. This increasing adoption was driven by the relentless improvement in the car’s capabilities and its rapidly failing price. Interestingly, even the financial sector helped to adopt the car faster with its possibility for buying one on credit. As the demand grew, the market responded in predictable ways: entrepreneurs, suppliers and even governments hurried to capitalise on this opportunity, and these new opportunities exploded: roads were built, gas stations were opened.

However, at the beginning of the internal combustion engine cars they were not seen as the clear winners of the transport industry. As it was mentioned before, they were competing against electric and steam engine-powered cars and the infrastructure to support gasoline cars was not yet built, the policy side had not existed yet and the manufacturing opportunities were still in their infancy. Not to mention that people did not know how to drive. People also were sceptical of this new technology seeing it as expensive, unreliable and dangerous compared to horses and carriages. But as the cars were ever more present, this scepticism turned into desire to own one. This change in public perception was a powerful accelerator for change to happen. As it happens today with emerging new technologies and solutions, the road blocks and barriers for the car turned out to be only small variants, small bumps along the road.

The impact of the car was visible right across the economy. It was a fundamentally different transportation system opening up extraordinary possibilities, almost immeasurables in economic terms. The authors highlighted that the US economy was built around the automobile, its connecting industries and impact it had on the wider society. During the 1930s, one in every seven American employee was somehow linked to the auto industry. Even the retail industry changed with cars in the shopping malls. As the car industry required more and more steel, the steel industry also opened up for newer possibilities with the many applicability of corrision-free stainless steel. Additionally, the wages also increased due to the automotive industry.

Of course, it was not just positive for everyone. There was also distruction of value beside the extraordinary economic growth and the experts failed to see the effect of the car in the whole sceme of things. One reference in the article from the Carriage monthly stated the question in 1904: Humankind has travelled for centuries in conveyances pulled by beasts, why would any reasonable person assume the future holds anything different? The carrage industry was wiped out by 1920, as it happened later to stables, pasture lands and the animals were freed up from pulling transportation vehicles.

However, there were other unexpected consequences. The car’s introduction led to huge changes in the built environment since houses, towns and cities were redesigned for adopting and hosting the car in the built environment. It changed where we lived and worked, where we built schools, hospitals and shops and factories. People moved out of towns to the suburbs and used cars to commute to work. The hospitality industry also accustomed with drive-in diners, and movie theaters among others.

The car also played a significant role in culture – for example helping drive the first sexual revolution as young people found new ways of escaping parental control. People of all ages experienced bigger freedom and opportunity for independence. The driving test even became a coming-of-age ritual. People were more mobile to go on holidays to new places all around the country. The car even helped fighting World War II with the assembly lines employed in service of the Allies nations. This new innovation and the productivity brought with it helped for the States to cement their leadership over other countries in at least economic terms.

The car became from a nice-to-have to a necessity. People were only real humans with cars, and to participate fully in life economically and socially cars were needed. As the economy, culture, built environment, and governance coevolved with the auto industry, it became more locked-in. After the first years of explosive adoption, however, the past hundred years have seen a long period of only small improvements to this products, and its value chain, business model and market structure have remained largely unchanged.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. The introduction of one new disruptive technology will have effects all around the place, not just in the industry in which it primarily happens.
2. The car influenced almost every part of the human life, society, culture, built environment, and of course economy and transportation.
3. Regardless of the early explosive adoptions, the car and the industry behind it have remained largely unchanged in the last century.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Why can one new technology change every facet of human life? How do people let to change their lives? Which is connected to my second question:
2. At what point did people become conscious of this change? Have we became conscious about this?
3. Only disruptive technologies can achieve such an overarching effect?

What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up questions? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the website where the transcripts and show notes are available! I hope this was an interesting research for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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