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“If you have a car that can drive away, you can have less parking, and we can focus the main areas on humans and their needs,” he says, adding that aesthetic changes such as the elimination of parking signs would likely occur, as well.

Chunka Mui, author of the New Killer Apps: How Large Companies Can Out-Innovate Start-Ups, concurs with Mr. Rothoff’s prediction about the easing of parking spaces in urban centres, but cautions that the removal of parking structures could cause a glut of commercial real estate to flood the market and lower property values.

“Some estimates show that in city centres, almost one-third of traffic is driven by people driving around looking for parking spots,” he says. “You have this possibility of reducing congestion tremendously, which implies savings of time, savings of gas, but it also implies a bunch of secondary effects you might not think of.”

Mr. Mui also predicts the concept of car ownership itself will shift from one in which individuals purchase or lease their own vehicles to one in which they share the cost of ownership or forego ownership altogether in exchange for on-call driverless car services.

“What happens if, instead of being parked [at my work], it goes off and drives someone else while I’m not using it for 10 hours?” he asks. “Or, what if I don’t even drive the car, but just get a driverless taxi to come get me every morning and take me to work, and come back and get me when I need one? You start shifting from single use to shared use. Then the possibilities get really crazy.”