A Driverless Town Is What's Up On This Housing Developer's Plans – Babcock Ranch
To fully make a transition into the driverless world, an ecosystem needs to be put into place to facilitate the functioning of these vehicles. Upcoming smart cities will need to connect vehicles and people to the surrounding environment to create a more sustainable and less congested world.
And this is just what, Housing Developer Syd Kitson is trying to implement. Based at Florida, USA – Syd Kitson has already laid the foundation for his own driverless eco-friendly smart city. With a seed of an idea twelve years ago, Kitson purchased a Florida Ranch almost five times the size of the Island of Manhattan.
Building an area now know as the Babcock Ranch, Kitson’s ambitious project includes a solar farm to take care of the town’s daily energy needs as well as rain gardens, an irrigation system that uses recycled water, and includes fifty miles of trails. With the first residents to move in this winter, the town includes restaurants, stores, a school, and 20,000 homes as well as six million square feet of commercial space.
Families are starting to move into what is being called America's first solar-powered town. Babcock Ranch, about half an hour northeast of Fort Myers, Florida, is supposed to produce more energy than it consumes once it's finished: pic.twitter.com/Y0kJFHQ0uf
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 16, 2018
In the near future, the developer intends to invest in a network of self-driving electric shuttles. The shuttles will do a host of things for resident take passengers across to town to complete a daily task or to simply go for a ride.
We’ll be able to turn parking areas into parks and really change the way that people go from point to point.
– Syd Kitson
