The automobile lets urbanites traverse the city while sealed in private space

Evidence

The automobile has a particularly interesting and significant characteristic: it allows its passengers to move through the public sectors of the city encased in a cocoon of private space. It makes it possible for one to encounter the city at the same time one is avoiding it. And it makes possible a linking of widely dispersed urban spaces to such a degree that, for all practical purposes, they are spatially contiguous. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 801

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the chapter’s concern with how urbanites avoid interpersonal trust in public — the car is the physical technology of Simmel’s blasé defense and the precondition for the privatized routing that follows in 803.