ABSTRACT
Organisms maximise under constraint (Dunbar, 2001): were the automobile an organism, we would deem it as having been remarkably successful in carving out an environmental niche and in adapting the behaviour of its host to its requirements. In little over a century cars have colonised the planet. Future historians may well characterise the twentieth century as the century of the car, during which time around one billion cars were manufactured (Urry, 1999) of which over half a billion (500 million: Shove, 1998) are currently occupying the carriageways, kerbsides, car parks, driveways and grass verges of the world. And they have the potential for even further growth. As Adams (1999) points out, global population growth is currently increasing even faster than car ownership and, he asks, ‘What would be the result should China and the rest of the Third World sustain their growth rates in motorization and succeed in their aspirations to catch up with the developed world?’ (Adams, 1999, p. 109; Adams, 2000). Where there are few cars today there is aspiration for many cars tomorrow. And in the motorised world, where there are many cars today, no country has yet achieved a lasting and large-scale downturn in the total volume of traffic (Goodwin, 2001).
