Big cities around the world are doing just that. One could say they have no other choice. By 2050, there will be more than six billion people living in megacities, twice as many as now. By then, urban traffic will have tripled, with delivery traffic in particular increasing as a result of online commerce. Building more roads can hardly be the solution. On the contrary, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in urban planning — away from cities built for cars to cities with traffic systems that flexibly incorporate and combine all means of transportation. Cities are guided here by a trinity of principles: to avoid, to shift, and to improve traffic flows.

Avoiding traffic flows is a long-term goal of urban planners. By mixing residential and industrial areas, for example, they can cut out the need for many journeys. For anyone traveling in a city, shifting traffic flows means it doesn’t always have to be done by car. And on a very practical level, improving traffic flows means that if there are going to be car journeys, then these have to be as emissions-free and accident-free as possible. At first sight, the automotive industry’s efforts to electrify and automate driving suggest it is focusing on the third of these aims. But in fact it could do much more. It could connect cars digitally with other means of transport. Only then would we approach our ideal of stress-free mobility. After all, while a relaxed journey from A to B may not be urban planners’ top priority, it is certainly at the top of every city-dweller’s list.