“Car dependence” emerges as an academic concept supported by decades of multidisciplinary research, which aims to understand the factors that drive car-based choices. The variety of approaches and indicators used to interpret this phenomenon underscores its multidimensionality and highlights the necessity for a comprehensive framework to define and operationalise it. This paper contributes to this goal by conducting a systematic literature review that examines the indicators, associations, and meanings used by research in defining and quantifying car dependence. Results show that car dependence has been mainly studied considering transport demand, despite criticisms pointing out to the need of including accessibility and subjective perceptions as well. As a consequence, the paper proposes a holistic approach to the term car dependence by proposing six dimensions covering the full spectrum of the concept as presented in the academic literature. The findings also suggest to move towards harmonising measures of the concept, which would facilitate the development of policies and the assessment of their effectiveness.

The paper focuses on mobility practices and the emergence of new geographies of movements in Lombardy peri-urban areas, in order to investigate whether and if so how new processes of urban regionalization (Soja 2011, Brenner 2013, Young and Keil 2010) can be recognized through a plurality of forms and conditions of mobility behaviours. Enhancing, on the one hand, the contribution of Italian and French research on peri-urbanism and its different forms, and on the other hand following in a line of studies on “mobility turns”, this paper proposes a comparative analysis of some peri-urban areas characterized by specific processes of urban sprawl, differentiated by age, morpho-functional features and settlements within the Milan Urban Region. The hypothesis to investigate is whether and if so how the specificity and diversity of the processes of urban sprawl belonging t o different "generations" of peri-urbanism in Milan Urban Region affect the forms of mobility and lifestyles, showing different living habits and specific issue