ABSTRACT
In American cities, cars and the urban form simply cannot be conceived in isolation of one another. Since the turn of the last century, the “public” spaces of the street have been accessible virtually only by car, and the hegemonic commodity fantasy consistently positioned through advertising equates the quality and desirability of cars with space taken – and fast. Both materially and representationally, access to public space requires private conveyance. In that sense car culture offers a synecdoche of capitalism more generally, in which commodities are posed as ways to socially and physically enhance the agency of individuated consumers.
