How will widespread autonomous driving and robotic automation physically reshape future cities and daily human life?

Urban civilization will regain enormous amounts of wasted time and cognitive energy. Today, commuters in congested cities spend hours daily tensely gripping steering wheels, acting as slaves to their vehicles rather than masters of their time. Coordinated autonomous vehicles will eliminate traffic bottlenecks, reduce accidents, and turn vehicles into moving living rooms, diminishing the artificial real estate price disparities between city centers and suburbs. Automation frees humanity from dangerous and tedious manual labor, creating more time for philosophy, arts, scientific research, and genuine human interaction.