Perception of Place and the Driving Experience

The proliferation of roads and the ubiquity of the car as a means of transport alter the cultural perception of place. More specifically contemporary car travel creates ‘non-places’, a term coined by anthroplogist Mark Auge to describe transient spaces for traffic, communication and consumption, from inside a car on the highway to the transit zones of an airport.

The experience of ‘non-place’ is multi-faceted since both the transit space itself; the space formed by and for the purpose of transport, and also the relation that individuals have with these spaces, can equally be said to define the condition.

The car driver relies on visual perception for the vast majority of tasks, and the field of vision is controlled by the framing of the windscreen. The in-car experience of place is passive and remote, and the experience of driving is marked by a lack of sensorial input, aside from that perceived by the eye. Physically the driver is inactive, and has less opportunity or motive to stop or explore or choose a route than a pedestrian or cyclist. Consequently the car interior is isolated from the external environment, and as such the driver can become passive and disengaged from the external landscape. This dislocation is further accentuated by the speed at which the vehicle travels; a factor that reconfigures concepts of location and creates a manifest transition between the experience of driving and that of stopping at a location.

The spaces created in the immediate vicinity of roads and highways cease to function as places in their own right, and their distinct identity is effectively erased. Instead these sites are transformed into zones of isolation and ambiguity; experienced only whilst ‘passing through’.