Laboratization of the Cities: How Cities Became Laboratories for Making Autonomous Vehicles

• In Event: Autonomous Vehicles - I: Practices and Policies of Autonomous Driving

Abstract

Recently, autonomous vehicles have been tested on real roads in many cities throughout the United States. Although several serious accidents have occurred, state governments and companies have not put the brakes on efforts to test the technology. As a result, cities are being utilized as laboratories for autonomous vehicles. I view this phenomenon as laboratorization of cities. Why did cities become laboratories, and what is accelerating and legitimizing this process?
In this paper, I argue that technical and socio-economic conditions accelerated and legitimized this shift. As autonomous vehicles use machine learning techniques, real-world environments are required to develop the technology, so cities are compelled to open their roads to the testing of vehicles. In addition, the laboratization of cities was accelerated by socio-economic conditions. As autonomous vehicles became the source of techno-economic competition between states and cities, governors see this emerging technology as an opportunity for regional economic development. This competitive pressure has induced more and more city governors to join the race of bringing autonomous vehicle to their cities.
As support for my argument, I utilize text mining techniques to collect data from diverse sources such as newspapers, magazines, press releases, and archival data. Then, I conduct content analysis.
This paper contributes to STS studies in several ways. Firstly, such repurposing of cities demonstrates a shift in how laboratories operate. It shows that the real world can become a laboratory setting, compared to the traditional model where experiments are conducted in controlled and artificial laboratory settings. Secondly, technopolitics theory fits the story of techno-economic competition between states. Lastly, it provides an important case in democratic governance in technology studies, in that ordinary people are excluded from the decision making process, though they are the users of the technology and the possible victims of accidents.

Author

• Sang Teck Oh, University of Michigan