"The Rome of which people talk about lovingly is only the traffic free medieval quarters and the piazze in Rome's historical centre. The other parts of the metropolis form what is essentially a gigantic carpark in the midst of which one finds the buildings where people live. There is nowhere for children to play so they have to be driven to artificial playgrounds or parks. In the modern era generations have grown up without knowing the pleasures of early childhood socialisation that unfolds naturally in an organic neighbourhood - roaming freely - taking possession of city space without danger of being run over by a fast moving machine.

Not only space but too much else I fear has been sacrificed for the sake of mobility. Is unlimited mobility a right, a luxury or an unwitting curse? The ability to move large distances in a short time has distorted all our historical notions of life patterns and urban feasibility. People work miles away from where they live just because they can. People have moved far away from other family members and relatives and so communal continuity that depended on physical closeness has been ruptured destroying the idea of shared history as a factor of social unity.

In poverty or wealth life will go on in any form that results in the 'real' world which may have become more convenient but substantially all previous measures by what we may call 'quality of life' has been surrendered in the name of progress. The urban sprawl is the result and nowhere can we feel any sense of identity that distinguishes one neighbourhood from the next. A life spent commuting to work from a lonely plot and visiting air-conditioned shopping malls (or 'commercial centres' as they are called in Italy) is the common existential experience of today and culturally it is an abysmal prospect for any young person to aspire to.

As the Dadaists predicted, we now live within the dimensions of an absurd surreal world, which we accept deeming that this is how reality imposes itself. However the intrigues of modernity lies within the psyche of individuals; the progressist id that builds up the sense of self with the images of a car and a refrigerator intact in the mind's dark corner ready with the self justifying sacrosanct motif of necessity.

I may be impractical or even, as some call me, an idealist but if the Hindus are right - in believing that we take illusions for reality (maya) and that a deeper grasp of reality can only be attained in rare moments of penetrating illumination (atma) - then the car may be a case in point.