The “Romance of the Road” had its run in 20th-century literature and culture, and we must now consider what will follow on its heels as it fades into the gloom of an anthropogenically tarnished future.

Car culture has radically renegotiated the individual’s place within human-constructed spaces, and the end of car culture will demand even further revisions to planning codes and architecture. This panel invites participants to discuss a century of car dependency and how literary and cultural discourses can contribute to management of the after-effects, especially in urban environments that have grown steadily clogged with traffic.

Panelists will present on urbanist developments manifesting themselves in literature and culture from any region or time period and in any genre. Possible topics may include:

• Car culture.
• Road novels.
• The pedestrian, the hiker, the flâneur, and other wanderers.
• The confluence of urban planning and literature.
• Infrastructuralism.
• Bike paths, bike lanes, bike cultures.
• NUMTOT, World Bollard Association, Strong Towns and social media phenomena.
• Transit and literature.
• The politics of car-free urban neighborhoods.
• Suburban sprawl and related cultures.
• Utopian visions of the modern city.
• Many, many other topics under the broad umbrellas of mobility studies and urban planning.

Please submit abstracts through the PAMLA portal (https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/).

Note the extension of the deadline for submissions to 30 June 2023.