From wheels to systems: Characterizing automobility as technosphere
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2026
Automobility’s global role in providing mobility services but with adverse impacts on climate change and land use makes it a critical topic at a planetary scale. So far the role of cars has been mostly addressed from a techno-economic perspective, with complementary but fragmented insights from other social sciences. We provide evidence that understanding automobility as a sub-system of the technosphere compromising human-made artifacts and structures with impacts at planetary scale enables investigations from a systems perspective. Our empirically grounded characterization of causal loops provides insights on intervention points guiding co-evolutionary trajectories between automobility, societies, and local and planetary dynamics along different temporal and spatial scales. We systematically draw on existing modeling approaches for outlining how to model automobility as technosphere in a reduced form. We conclude that policies, measures and cultural shifts should be systematically evaluated according to their impact on car-dependent systems. Our approach offers novel insights for reorienting automobility toward pathways consistent with low planetary impact and high well-being.
automobility
technosphere
coupled land use transport systems
Författare
F. Creutzig
University of Sussex
Peter Wells
Cardiff University
Felix Wagner
Technische Universität Berlin
Aimée Aguilar Jaber
Hot or Cool Institute
Mark Andor
RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Marlin Arnz
Technische Universität Berlin
Sebastian Bamberg
Hochschule Bielefeld
Galit Cohen-Blankshtain
Köpenhamns universitet
Andrea Broaddus
San Jose State University
Elisabeth Dütschke
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Stefan Gössling
Linnéuniversitetet
Debbie Hopkins
University of Oxford
Aneeque Javaid
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
A. Katharina Keil
Université de Lausanne
Giulio Mattioli
Technische Universität Dortmund
Adam Millard-Ball
University of California
Eric J. Miller
University of Toronto
Kostas Mouratidis
Köpenhamns universitet
Florian Nachtigall
Technische Universität Berlin
Georgia Pozoukidou
Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis
Anjali Ramakrishnan
Göteborgs universitet
Henrike Rau
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
Jürgen Renn
Max-Planck-Institut für Geoanthropologie
Gesine Steudle
Max-Planck-Institut für Geoanthropologie
Vincent Viguié
Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Developpement
Malte Vogl
Max-Planck-Institut für Geoanthropologie
Dominik Wiedenhofer
Universität für Bodenkultur
Charlie Wilson
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
University of Oxford
Sarah Wolf
Technische Universität Berlin
Sonia Yeh
Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Fysisk resursteori
Caroline Zimm
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
Anthropocene Review
2053-0196 (ISSN) 2053-020X (eISSN)
Vol. In PressÄmneskategorier (SSIF 2025)
Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap
DOI
10.1177/20530196261472905