The Concept of Automobile Dependency

By: Brenda Williams

Professors Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy have come up with an interesting concept that they call “Automobile dependency” to explain the situation in the major cities of the world, mostly of the major cities in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. The idea is that the predominant use of automobiles in these cities severely restricts the freedom of people to move around in their own city. There is a culture of automobiles that has been developed leading to the extreme of an addiction to them. The number of automobiles is exponentially increases due to the increasing demand for them. It is almost as if people in these cities have become dependent on automobiles as a basic necessity of life. People with the financial resources are indulging in the luxury of acquiring more and more cars, resulting in diminishing returns that they derive out of each vehicle.