Cultural Bias and Framing Wicked Problems: A Comparative Analysis of Structuring the Car Mobility Program by Three Institutes for Paliamentarian Technology Assessment

The 19th century fin de siècle mood was the desire to resist the oppressive ordering of everyday life through electrification and other forms of technological progress. At the beginning of this century, people saw the motorcar as an attractive ‘adventure machine’ (Mom, 1997). One could use it for trips of unimagined distance; and the avant-garde owners appreciated the frequent necessity of making dirty hands for repair and maintenance. Gradually, the necessity for single-handed maintenance diminished; but the motorcar’s exterior grew ever more ‘adventurous’, its interior proved amenable to adventurous amorous affairs indeed, and, generally, the motorcar evolved as the icon of freedom, autonomy, and privacy. The motorcar claimed and was given space. Thus, physical infrastructure and spatial planning largely evolved the way they did to empower car owners.