The city and the car

The social sciences have generally ignored the motor car and its awesome co nsequences for social life, especially in their analysis of the urban. Urba n studies in particular has failed to consider the overwhelming impact of t he automobile in transforming the time-space 'scapes' of the modern urban/s uburban dweller. Focusing on forms of mobility into, across and through the city, we consider how the car reconfigures urban life, involving distinct ways of dwelling, travelling and socializing in, and through, an automobili zed time-space. We trace urban sociology's paradoxical resistance to cultur es of mobility, and argue that civil society should be reconceptualized as a 'civil society of automobility'. We then explore how automobility makes i nstantaneous time and the negotiation of extensive space central to how soc ial life is configured. As people dwell in and socially-interact through th eir cars, they become hyphenated car-drivers: at home in movement, transcen ding distance to complete a series of activities within fragmented moments of time. Urban social Life has always entailed various mobilities but the c ar transforms these in a distinct combination of flexibility and coercion. Automobility is a complex amalgam of interlocking machines, social practice s and ways of dwelling which have reshaped citizenship and the public spher e via the mobilization of modern civil societies. In the conclusion we trac e a vision of an evolved automobility for the cities of tomorrow in which p ublic space might again be made 'public'.