[jdw64]

Seeing this reminds me of a project I delivered in the past. A tram installation was being planned in my city, and a researcher conducting a feasibility study asked me to build a crawler that would submit data for their research materials. As part of the process, they explained the study to me, and I got the sense that a tram and a delivery robot are essentially the same thing in this context.

When I was organizing the results, the personal conclusion I reached was that this kind of design is ultimately about redistributing existing public space. And in that process, the first people to be pushed to the margins are, by and large, the transportation disadvantaged. This delivery robot is consuming the same public resource, public space, and the same dynamic plays out: the weakest end up being pushed out first. I think it's a similar issue.