6: Congruence and Conflict between Car Transportation and Psychological Restoration

Car transportation can diminish the quality of urban life by constraining opportunities for psychological restoration in everyday settings. Yet many urban residents also count on their cars as aids to restoration, as with travel from the city to outlying natural areas or restorative interludes between work and family demands. In this chapter, I discuss instances of congruence and conflict between car transportation and psychological restoration for people in cities. More specifically, I refer to the ways in which car transportation enhances or diminishes the restorative quality of environments that people can access in and around cities during time available for restoration.