Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia, Turkey is the world’s oldest known human settlement. At 11,500 years old, its founding marked the beginning of our species’ transition from small groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers, to complex societies within ever-growing communities.

摹 öbekli土墩 在安纳托利亚，土耳其是世界上最古老的人类住区。 距今已有11,500年的历史，这标志着我们物种从小群Nomad的采集者过渡到不断发展的社区中复杂的社会的开始。

From there, it’s been a one-way street.

从那里开始，这是一条单向街。

By some accounts, Rome became the first city in history to have over 1 million inhabitants in 133 BC. By 1500, 1 in 25 people lived in towns and cities. Then, the industrial revolution sent this process into overdrive, bringing huge numbers of people to the cities in search of manufacturing jobs. At the turn of the twentieth century, London became the world’s first “mega-city” achieving 5 million inhabitants.

有人说，罗马成为历史上第一个在公元前133年拥有超过100万居民的城市。 到1500年，每25个人中就有1个人居住在城镇中。 然后，工业革命使这一过程变得过速，使大量人涌入城市寻找制造工作。 二十世纪初，伦敦成为世界上第一个拥有500万居民的“大城市”。

As of 2018, 55% of us lived in urban areas, a trend projected to reach two-thirds of the world’s population within the next few decades.

截至2018年， 我们当中55％的人居住在城市地区，这一趋势预计将在未来几十年内达到世界三分之二的人口。

However, technological changes just around the corner may reverse this trend, changing where we live and how human societies are structured.

但是，迫在眉睫的技术变革可能会扭转这一趋势，改变我们的生活环境和人类社会的结构。

逃到乡下？ (Escape to the country?)

While predictions about AI are notoriously difficult, it’s a fairly conservative bet to say that autonomous vehicles will become commonplace in the next 10 to 20 years.

尽管对AI的预测非常困难，但可以肯定地说，在未来10到20年内，自动驾驶汽车将变得司空见惯。

Soon we’ll be able to pass almost complete control of our vehicles to the on-board computer, freeing ourselves up to work or relax.

不久，我们将能够将对车辆的几乎完全控制权传递给车载计算机，从而使自己腾出工作或放松的空间。

Autonomous vehicles will take the sting out of a lengthy commute, as you’re able to remain productive during the long time on the road. By allowing people to work during their journey, commuters will be able to leave for work later, and leave the office earlier, without affecting their output. This encourages people to take advantage of cheaper property prices and greater living space, further out from the big cities.

自动驾驶汽车将避免长时间的通勤，因为您可以在长时间的行驶中保持生产力。 通过允许人们在旅途中工作，通勤者将能够稍后上班，并较早离开办公室，而不会影响他们的产出。 这鼓励人们利用便宜的房地产价格和更大的居住空间，远离大城市。

The high-speed reaction times of self-driving cars may enable them to travel in dedicated lanes at much higher speeds, further expanding the commutable distance. Traffic jams may also be a thing of the past, as autonomous vehicles communicate with one another to efficiently move through a city.

自动驾驶汽车的高速React时间可能使它们能够以更高的速度在专用车道上行驶，从而进一步扩大了通勤距离。 交通拥堵也可能成为过去，因为自动驾驶汽车相互通信以有效地穿越城市。

At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a massive surge in the uptake of remote-working, with companies all over the world allowing workers to log in from home. And Elon Musk’s StarLink will bring high-speed internet connectivity to even the most remote areas.

同时，Covid-19大流行使远程工作的使用激增，世界各地的公司都允许工人在家中登录。 而埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)的StarLink将为最偏远的地区带来高速互联网连接。

These changes could bring about a mass shift in white-collar workers out of the city and into the country.

这些变化可能导致白领工人大规模从城市转移到国外。

区域制造业的繁荣 (A boom in regional manufacturing)

Driver wages make up a large component of the cost of transporting goods by road. While the technology companies which own the algorithms used in self-driving cars will undoubtedly take a hefty chunk of the savings, freight transport is likely to get considerably cheaper.

驾驶员工资占公路运输货物成本的很大一部分。 拥有自动驾驶汽车算法的技术公司无疑会节省大量的钱，而货运可能会便宜很多。

This could lead to factories moving out of dense urban areas to take advantage of cheaper land, locating based on other considerations such as access to energy, water, or government subsidies.

这可能导致工厂搬迁到人口稠密的城市地区，以利用便宜的土地，并根据其他考虑因素(例如获得能源，水或政府补贴)进行选址。

For example, a furniture manufacturer might currently be located in an inner-city industrial estate, enabling easy access to materials and its customer base. With significantly reduced transport costs, however, they might opt to locate in a smaller, rural town. The cheaper land prices give them room to expand, perhaps building their own solar array to bring energy costs down. And bringing jobs to the area could attract regional development subsidies, making them even more profitable.

例如，一家家具制造商当前可能位于市中心工业区，从而可以轻松地访问物料及其客户群。 但是，由于运输成本大大降低，他们可能会选择住在一个较小的乡村小镇中。 较低廉的土地价格为其提供了扩展的空间，也许可以建造自己的太阳能电池板以降低能源成本。 将工作带到该地区可能会吸引区域发展补贴，从而使其利润更高。

轮毂和轮辐的终结 (An end to hub and spoke)

While transport costs will fall across the board, the cost saving is proportionally higher for small vehicles. The driver of an 18 wheel truck might be hauling a few million dollars’ worth of freight in their trailer. But they don’t get paid much more than the local grocery van driver, carrying a few thousand. Therefore, smaller vehicles will become more competitive on a price per item basis.

虽然运输成本将全线下降，但小型车辆的成本节省成比例地更高。 一辆18轮卡车的驾驶员可能在他们的拖车中拖了价值数百万美元的货物。 但是他们得到的薪水比当地杂货车司机多得多，只有几千人。 因此，较小的车辆在每件价格的基础上将变得更具竞争力。

This softening of the economy of scale opens up new possibilities for businesses shipping physical products and commodities.

规模经济的这种软化为运输实物产品和商品的企业开辟了新的可能性。

Previously it made financial sense to put as much material on an individual truck as possible, then drive that truck to a single destination where that material would be processed. Smaller trucks or multiple destinations increase the cost per item, meaning it’s cheaper to deliver your goods to fewer customers.

以前，从财务上讲，将尽可能多的物料放在单个卡车上，然后将卡车开到要处理该物料的单个目的地。 较小的卡车或多个目的地会增加每件商品的成本，这意味着将商品交付给更少的客户会更便宜。

This gives birth to a hub and spoke topology, where goods are processed en-mass in regional population centers. Factories are primarily located in cities (the hubs), because it’s easier and cheaper to access materials, parts, and customers (via the spokes e.g. interstate highways).

这催生了一个轮毂和轮辐拓扑，其中货物在区域人口中心进行批量处理。 工厂主要位于城市(枢纽)，因为(通过辐条，例如州际公路)更容易，更便宜地访问物料，零件和客户。

However, with self-driving vehicles, the equation changes. Without such a large penalty for delivering smaller quantities, suppliers can diversify their customer base and cut out the middle-men. For example, a strawberry farmer might previously have sent most of their produce to a single supermarket distribution center. Self-driving vehicles could deliver their produce in smaller batches, to hundreds of customers around the area for a similar price per tray. This presents an opportunity for a diverse range of smaller regional manufacturers to popup, creating products using those strawberries which are competitive on price with larger companies.

但是，对于自动驾驶汽车，方程式会发生变化。 供应商无需为交付小批量产品而受到如此大的惩罚，就可以使其客户群多样化并削减中间商。 例如，一个草莓农场主以前可能已经将大部分产品送到一个超级市场的​​配送中心。 自动驾驶汽车可以以较小的批次将产品交付给该地区的数百个客户，每个托盘的价格相近。 这为各种规模较小的地区制造商提供了一个弹出窗口的机会，可以使用价格与大型公司具有竞争力的草莓来生产产品。

削减中间商 (Cutting out the middlemen)

In fact, cheaper small deliveries may encourage producers and manufacturers to sell and deliver directly to consumers, without going through a retailer.

实际上，便宜的小批量交货可能会鼓励生产商和制造商直接销售并交付给消费者，而无需通过零售商。

Online platforms that connect customers with sellers will become the new store-front. Your weekly shopping list might contain 100 different products from 100 different manufacturers. Rather than all of these products coming through a supermarket’s distribution network, they could arrive independently, as and when you need it. Food could be ordered by smartphone app or automatically by your smart-fridge when you run out of stock.

将客户与卖家联系起来的在线平台将成为新的店面。 您的每周购物清单可能包含来自100个不同制造商的100种不同产品。 并非所有这些产品都通过超市的分销网络提供，而是它们可以在需要时独立到达。 食物可用时，可以通过智能手机应用程序订购，也可以通过智能冰箱自动订购。

It could even be delivered to you whilst on the move. If you’re walking down the street and fancy an apple, just order it on your phone and the self-driving fruit truck will pull up alongside a few minutes later.

它甚至可以在移动中交付给您。 如果您走在街上，喜欢上一个苹果，只需在手机上订购它，几分钟后无人驾驶的水果卡车就会停下来。

This makes people less reliant on the particular shops and stores which are nearby. The convenience and choice that cities offer will be achievable in remote, rural areas, further increasing their attractiveness.

这使人们减少了对附近特定商店和商店的依赖。 城市将在偏远的农村地区提供便利和选择，从而进一步提高其吸引力。

终止私家车所有权 (End of private car ownership)

A typical car is in use only 5% of the time. For the other 95%, they’re sat there, quietly rusting and falling in value, often taking up space on public roads. Despite the huge cost of buying, maintaining, insuring, registering, refueling and parking a vehicle, many of us opt for the convenience of ownership, and car-share schemes haven’t taken much of a bit out of the market.

典型的汽车只有5％的时间在使用中。 至于另外95％的人，他们坐在那儿，静静地生锈并贬值，经常占用公共道路上的空间。 尽管购买，维护，保险，登记，加油和泊车的成本很高，但我们中的许多人还是选择了所有权的便利，而购车计划并没有从市场中脱颖而出。

That 5% is highly concentrated around 8–9 am and 5–6 pm on weekdays, meaning at peak times, the number of cars on the roads is much higher. But even so, we still own many more cars than we actually need.

5％在工作日上午8–9和下午5–6左右高度集中，这意味着在高峰时段，道路上的汽车数量要多得多。 但是即使如此，我们仍然拥有比实际需要更多的汽车。

Fleets of self-driving taxis, however, may be too cheap and convenient to resist. The costs associated with owning a car will be shared amongst thousands of other users, and those who ride less frequently will make more of a saving.

但是，自动驾驶出租车的车队可能太便宜且难以抵抗。 与拥有汽车相关的成本将在成千上万的其他用户中分担，而那些骑车频率较低的人将节省更多。

One issue to raise here though is that of accessibility. If you have a disability that requires specialist equipment to help you enter the vehicle, it may be difficult to source a suitable car. This may create an additional burden on those with disabilities, either forcing them to own a private vehicle or face much longer wait times. With something so essential as mobility, it’s important that questions around accessibility are addressed.

不过，这里要提出的一个问题是可访问性。 如果您的残障需要专门的设备来帮助您进入车辆，则可能很难找到合适的汽车。 这可能给残疾人带来额外的负担，迫使他们拥有私家车或面临更长的等待时间。 对于诸如移动性这样必不可少的事物，解决有关可访问性的问题很重要。

For families with young children, this is also an issue. Although if self-driving cars prove to reduce accident rates dramatically, it’s possible that current regulations around child-seats and seat-belts may be dropped.

对于有小孩的家庭，这也是一个问题。 尽管如果自动驾驶汽车被证明可以显着降低事故发生率，则有可能会取消有关儿童座椅和安全带的现行法规。

没有更多的交通...也许？ (No more traffic… maybe?)

Self-driving cars have many technical advantages over human drivers:

自动驾驶汽车比人类驾驶员具有许多技术优势：

• A self-driving car is able to accelerate perfectly smoothly and maintain a consistent distance from the car in front.无人驾驶汽车能够完美平稳地加速并与前方汽车保持一致的距离。
• Their lightning-quick reactions allow them to drive much closer together without compromising safety.它们的闪电般Swift的React使它们可以在不影响安全性的情况下更加靠近。
• The ability to use additional data sources such as live traffic data allows them to find an efficient route through a city.使用其他数据源(例如实时交通数据)的能力使他们能够找到穿过城市的有效路线。
• …and it’s possible that they could one day communicate with each other to coordinate their paths through intersections, avoiding collisions without having to stop at the lights.……而且有可能他们有一天可以相互交流，以协调他们在十字路口的路线，避免撞车而不必停在路灯旁。

These things will help pack more cars into the same space and move them through our cities more efficiently. Space used for car parking would also be freed up, creating additional driving lanes or space for bicycles or bus-lanes.

这些东西将有助于将更多的汽车打包到同一空间中，并使它们更有效地通过我们的城市。 用于停车场的空间也将被释放，从而为自行车或公交专用道创造额外的行驶车道或空间。

On the other hand, with a reduced cost of transporting people and goods, we can expect many more journeys to take place. Those people who previously did not own a car, or who preferred to take the train over sitting in a traffic jam, might now travel by road instead. Deliveries will become smaller and more frequent and the use-cases for vehicles will expand. All this means the number of cars on the road at any one time will likely increase.

另一方面，随着人员和货物运输成本的降低，我们可以预期会有更多的旅程。 那些以前没有车的人，或者宁愿坐火车而不是坐在交通拥堵中的人，现在可以改乘公路旅行。 交付量将变得越来越小，越来越频繁，并且车辆的用例将会扩展。 所有这些意味着在任何时候公路上的汽车数量可能会增加。

How these two forces balance out is yet to be seen. It would be a great shame for this technology to simply kick the congestion can down the road, giving us the same gridlock a few years later. I suspect government regulation will play a key role. For example, key bottlenecks could raise a “micro-toll” to encourage cars to take other routes at busy times of day.

这两种力量如何平衡尚待观察。 对于这项技术，简单地解决拥堵问题将是极大的遗憾，几年后又给我们带来了同样的僵局。 我怀疑政府监管将发挥关键作用。 例如，关键瓶颈可能会提高“微型通行费”，以鼓励汽车在一天中的繁忙时间选择其他路线。

It would also be a missed opportunity to take back some of our city space from the domain of the automobile. So much of our urban landscape is dedicated to traffic infrastructure, with pedestrians and cyclists pushed to one side. The technological revolution ahead is a huge opportunity to reallocate public space, create more parks and greenery while letting the algorithms worry about the best route from A to B.

从汽车领域夺回我们的一些城市空间也是一个错失的机会。 我们的大部分城市景观都专用于交通基础设施，行人和骑自行车的人被推向一侧。 未来的技术革命是重新分配公共空间，创建更多公园和绿化的巨大机会，同时让算法担心从A到B的最佳路线。

大规模失业 (Job losses on a massive scale)

Driving is a big source of employment around the world. In the US alone, 3.5 million people work as truck drivers. Whilst not all professional driving jobs would be at risk — you still might need people to load and unload deliveries — there will certainly be a big impact on levels of employment. Taxi drivers will bear a huge cost, especially after getting into debt to purchase a license.

驾驶是全球就业的重要来源。 仅在美国，就有350万人从事卡车司机工作。 尽管并非所有的专业驾驶工作都将面临风险-您仍然可能需要人来装卸货物-但无疑会对就业水平产生重大影响。 出租车司机将承受巨大的成本，尤其是在负债购买许可证之后。

Despite the potential surge in regional jobs, there will be losers there too. Cafes and service stations on long-distance trucking routes will lose their regular supply of customers — with autonomous trucks simply cruising past without the need to take breaks.

尽管区域性工作可能会激增，但那里也会有失败者。 长途运输路线上的咖啡厅和服务站将失去其常规的客户供应，而自动驾驶卡车只需经过而无需休息即可。

The impact on governments’ balance sheets will be significant. Billions of dollars of taxable income will be lost. Those who lose their jobs might end up claiming welfare payments and will need to retrain to move into other industries. And the beneficiaries will be Silicon Valley technology companies, who have a notorious track record of paying very little tax on their profits. Given that self-driving cars will be operating and making money using tax-payer funded road infrastructure, tax reform will be necessary to make sure they pay their fair share.

对政府资产负债表的影响将是巨大的。 数十亿美元的应税收入将丢失。 那些失业的人可能最终要求领取福利金，并且需要接受再培训才能进入其他行业。 受益者将是硅谷的技术公司，这些公司臭名昭著的是，他们对利润几乎不用交税。 鉴于自动驾驶汽车将通过纳税人资助的道路基础设施运营并从中获利，因此有必要进行税收改革，以确保他们支付应有的份额。

At the same time, there will be new opportunities for people, but these will likely be fewer in number. And reducing the cost of transportation encourages increased economic activity across the board.

同时，将为人们带来新的机会，但是这些机会的数量可能会更少。 降低运输成本可以促进全面的经济活动。

有力量就好吗？ (A force for good?)

As you can see, the impacts of autonomous vehicles will be complex and far-reaching. For millennia we’ve organized our societies around the transport of people and goods, and the locations and makeup of where we live reflect that. What lies ahead is a step-change in how we move around, on a par with the invention of the steam engine, the car, or the airplane.

如您所见，自动驾驶汽车的影响将是复杂而深远的。 几千年来，我们围绕人员和货物的运输组织了我们的社会，我们所居住的地点和构成反映了这一点。 与蒸汽机，汽车或飞机的发明相提并论，摆在我们面前的是一种逐步改变的方式。

But it’s up to us to decide how to manage the transition, to reduce the pain for those negatively impacted, and get the best of this fantastic new technology.

但是，由我们决定如何管理过渡，减轻负面影响者的痛苦，并充分利用这项出色的新技术。