Nonplaces are transport infrastructures that strip culture from location-bound practices

Evidence

The car, thus, is a key element of what French anthropologist Marc Augé memorably described as “nonplaces,” physical locations that do away with the idea of “culture” as grounded in practices bound by specific locations in space and time. Nonplaces are characterized by “installations needed for the accelerated circulation of passengers and goods (high-speed roads and railways, interchanges, airports),” as well as “the means of transport themselves.” The car, it would seem, is indicative of how most urban space has been remade as a physical infrastructure that moves a person from one location to another, a conduit rather than a “place.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 186

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Auge’s ‘nonplace’ concept, a useful term for the Corpocene framework independent of the car.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s four-infrastructure framework — the car as one of the four — and to urban theory readings of transport as conduit rather than place.