The Mobility Revolution on the horizon

Professor Subhrajit Guhathakurta explores the consciousness shift needed to drive a mobility revolution.

The Mobility Revolution symposium that we produced last week with the Georgia Tech School of Architecture was fantastic – at least for nerds like us who can’t get enough talk about autonomous vehicles, universal transit passes, micromobility and ride-sharing apps.

Six presenters, with deep knowledge in their own fields, came at a very broad topic from very different directions. We’ll fill you in more next week, once our friends at Tech put the video up on the Redesigning Cities webpage. Some news may even have been made, but we need to confirm the details.

Director Debra Lam of the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation describes how to catalyze inclusive tech opportunities using public-private partnerships.

Meanwhile, here’s a broad takeaway: A new approach to mobility is scrambling the world of transportation. Tech-based innovations and new operating models are already blurring the lines between transit and personal transportation. It’s disorienting and chaotic. But the potential benefits – among them, better transit service at lower costs – are extraordinary. And far from making transit obsolete, the upheaval could make transit more relevant to more people.

Thanks to Architecture Professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of Georgia Tech’s Urban Design Master’s Program, for partnering with us. The six featured speakers were: Kevin Green of the Midtown Alliance, Mike Alexander and Eric Meyer of the Atlanta Regional Commission, Tejas Santanam of Beep Inc., and Subhrajit Guhathakurta and Debra Lam of Georgia Tech. We’ll have more about what each said next week in the BAT Blog.

A dramatic urban backdrop frames the panelists as they shared ideas, solutions and new technology.