The Road Ahead: Reimagining Mobility, a new exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, is a meticulously curated survey of the state of the street and where it might be headed. “We’re trying to bring together many of the different conversations and topics being addressed by disparate industries and designers, so that citizens can wrap their heads around what’s happening and have a say in it,” says Cara McCarty, curatorial director at Cooper Hewitt and co-organizer of The Road Ahead. “We are at an inflection point, not unlike the turn of the 20th century, when there was a rapid shift from horse-and-buggy to the automobile.”
That radical position guides the show, presenting new and conceptual technology—including delivery drones and wireless electric charging pads mounted on vehicles and within roadways—alongside more comprehensive proposals for urban mobility and safer, more efficient 21st-century municipal plans. And if there’s an overarching narrative among the 40 projects on display (some of which exist and are being tested across the country, and others of which are speculative), it’s that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will fundamentally reboot our cities.
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