Emerging Urban Mobility Technologies through the Lens of Everyday Urban Aesthetics: Case of Self-Driving Vehicle

The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on
philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy
of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility
commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important
experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving
vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of
perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV
conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In
conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological
development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in
responsible innovation processes.