Play Town

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‘life, towns, architecture, as transformed by autonomous driving...’

The development of self-driving vehicles has progressed rapidly, together with advances in artificial intelligence. “Level 5” systems, which can perform all driving tasks under all conditions and require no responses to system requests, will likely be realized in the not too distant future. How will the appearance of entirely autonomous vehicles change our life, towns, and architecture?

Imagining the city with autonomous car, ‘commutating’ had become ‘communicating’. In the context of otaku culture, Japan government decided to introduce the ‘play’ element into car riding to catalyse social interactions alleviating the population decline.

‘Play-to-Gain’ Car Sharing System

When autonomous car can perform driving without any manual intervene, it is imagined that car sharing economy will be one of the major trend.

In the heart of Tokyo, where most people intersecting everyday, the government decided to turn it into Play Town. Considering the traffic efficiency based on practicality, meanwhile, enhancing people interactions, Play-to-Gain car sharing system allows different people with similar routes joining and sharing the commuting time together. Once they agreed to combine and play together, they would gain the credits for the next ride. In the end, commuting is no longer a residue time, but a chance for people to meet and play, and to boost social communication.

Introducing ‘play’ element into the combination system of shared car economy, passengers can meet different new people sharing similar traveling routes. Car riding is no longer a residue time but an exploratory journey which brings us back to our childhood when we all loved to play with one another.