What's in store for 2023?
Short predictions to start the new year
Happy new year!
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and a chance to unplug and recharge. To kick off 2023, I thought we’d start with some predictions for what this year holds. I’ve outlined some brief ones, but as always am interested in hearing from you, so please leave your thoughts and theories in the comments below, or participate in the in-post poll! New feature alert!
I also contributed to 2023 forecasts published by fellow Substacker
and by Andrew Hawkins at The Verge. You can check those out here:Petition: 💥(Sub)Stacked: Top Writers Review '22 & Predict '23💥
The Verge: We asked 17 smart people to predict the future of transportation in 2023
Short predictions for 2023
Micromobility
🚲 E-bike and e-cargo bike sales will continue to accelerate, boosted by network effects (more people have and are riding e-bikes, making it safer and trendier to get your own e-bike or e-cargo bike) as well as various rebates and tax incentives that have already proved highly popular with people across the U.S. and Europe.
🛴 Shared e-scooter firms will consolidate further as cheap capital remains hard to come by and more people opt to buy their own micromobility device rather than rent from a shared fleet, forcing money-losing companies to merge, exit markets, or go out of business entirely.
🐦 While I very much enjoyed the results of this Twitter poll, now that Bird Global is merging with Bird Canada I have to imagine that the cash of the combined entity will last longer than my Bird puns, which regrettably are not infinite.
Grocery & ‘instant’ delivery
🥕 Online grocery delivery will stabilize after the boom-bust cycle of covid and being buffeted about further by inflation in energy and food prices. Instacart will finally go public at a more modest but more realistic valuation after filing its draft registration statement last spring.
🍩 This is not a prediction but I am begging venture capitalists to stop giving billions of dollars to startups with dumb names promising to revolutionize the grocery industry by delivering convenience store goods in 15 minutes or less. If you live in a place where the economics of a 15-minute delivery service work (and it is questionable whether any such place exists in our known reality), then you also live in a place where you can probably get your own milk and eggs in 15 minutes or less. Also I’m sorry but a company named Fridge No More or Jokr is all but asking not to be taken seriously.
Labor, policy, and regulation
⚖️ A California appeals court is expected to rule soon on the fate of Prop 22, a state ballot initiative passed in 2020 that carved out gig workers from the state’s employment classification test, and which was then declared unconstitutional by a judge in Alameda County Superior Court in 2021. A coalition of gig firms has promised to appeal to the state supreme court if the appeals ruling comes down against them, meaning the status of gig worker classification in California could remain unresolved certainly through this year if not many more.
🚘 The parking minimum dominoes will start to fall, following in the footsteps of Oregon last year and now California. Nixing parking minimums will help to unlock more affordable housing, better public transit, and greener and more livable cities as we shift yet another urban design puzzle piece toward people and away from cars.
Urban adventures
🚧 Cities will build more bike lanes to keep pace with demand from all those people buying bikes and e-bikes (with those aforementioned tax credits).
🛒 Local politicians and regulators will crack down on the ‘dark stores’ behind instant delivery companies, especially ones situated in residential neighborhoods or keeping windows dark on commercial shopping streets.
🚦 More safe and open streets are made permanent, led by a high-profile pedestrianization of Manhattan’s Fifth Ave.
🤸♀️ Tactical and DIY urbanism will get bigger and more influential across the U.S. as people take more ownership over their urban environments.
🤞 Here’s to hoping New York City finally figures out congestion pricing (and how to talk about it with regular people).