Paper short abstract:

Only 4 of 68 US cities address self-driving cars in their urban transportation plans. Many cities lack capacity to assimilate knowledge of emerging technologies. We interrogate if responsible innovation can address knowledge asymmetries to inform shared future imaginaries.

Paper long abstract:

Self-driving cars are an emerging technology anticipated to have disruptive, unintended consequences. The Victoria Transportation Policy Institutes estimates self-driving cars will comprise 30—50% of total vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. by 2040. President Obama promised an additional $4B USD in federal expenditures to continue supporting this research effort in 2016. Yet, only 4 out of 68 largest cities in the US explicitly considered the implications of this technology in their transportation plans. This suggests that even the largest US cities lack the capacity to seek and assimilate knowledge about emerging technologies into routine urban planning.

Responsible innovation (RI) is a framework built for diverse stakeholders to collectively govern technological innovation processes. RI scholars have primarily attended to scientists, engineers, research funders, and diverse publics using methods that include socio-technical integration research (STIR), scenario workshops, and citizen forums. However, scholarship on RI has yet to robustly engage with important stakeholders involved in urban planning efforts whose efforts reach far beyond funding allocations and laboratory decisions. The specific case of autonomous vehicles draws upon the expertise of urban planners who create plans for the future and engineering researchers who create artifacts for the future and confronts that with the knowledge and future imaginaries of engineers, automobile manufacturers, neighborhood groups and other epistemic communities. This paper aims to critically interrogate RI theories and methods i) among new stakeholder groups, and ii) for governance practices that extend beyond funding and laboratory decisions.