ABSTRACT
This chapter explores social aspects for daily mobilities, through a joint discussion of human needs and tendencies for personal mobility and personal autonomy. Daily individual corporeal mobility can be performed through three major families of media: public; traditional bodily-performed mobilities; and through personal mobilities. Personal mobility may be considered a spatial expression, if not the spatial expression, of personal autonomy, permitting free and self-governed daily movements in physical and virtual spaces. The term personal autonomy has been given completely different meanings in both philosophy and the social sciences, pertaining to the personal/ontological status, desires and actions of individuals. Personal autonomy is not merely a facilitator for personal mobility, but it may also constitute, among other things, the very sociospatial freedom necessary for the establishment and maintenance of self-propelled mobilities as a form of corporeal and virtual expressions. The extensive innovation of mobility technologies and their wide adoption call for clear distinction between freedom and autonomy and their implications for mobility.
