Driverless Hotel Rooms: The End of Airbnb and Human Landlords

[Eric L.]

https://medium.com/@nathanwaters/driverless-hotel-rooms-the-end-of-uber-airbnb-and-human-landlords-e39f92cf16e1

Interesting article about the second order effects of the biggest business opportunity since the Internet, driverless cars.

Now that Waymo is driving around Phoenix with no one in the driver seat and they have $20B to deploy their robo taxi and logistics service, driverless cars that transport people around a city are here. The second largest expense of Americans, transportation, will go from 17% to less than 5% of average income.

This will make the #1 expense, housing, at 33% seem much more expensive. We know that parking lots will be freed up in cities for building and that cities will expand to the exurbs as anything within 100 miles of the city will be within the daily commute.

In the 1910's, my city was 30 blocks long, just past the end of the street car lines. It might have been possible to predict that the automobile would expand the city to 200 blocks, but few would have predicted second order affects like the shopping mall, everyone leaving the of the inner city only to return 60 years later, Walmart, and Amazon. 

It's interesting to think about the other second order affects of how housing changes and gets less expensive.