The purpose of this work is to develop ways in which an understanding of the perception of the urban area as experienced by users of motorized transportation is relevant for analysing the city. Working in the field of ‘architectural and urban ambiances' which crosses disciplinary boundaries to simultaneously encompass perceptible, social and built space, and situated theoretically and epistemologically within the mobilities paradigm as it is developed at the University of Lancaster, I explore daily transportation issues to propose the following hypothesis: understanding the city through its dwellers in-motion-experience is a way to link the heterogeneous “scales” of corporality to urban space. The words of passengers were collected in Paris' subway and in a train inside the city of Lyon. I also made audiotapes inside different railway public transportation systems (tramway, metro, train) in five cities around the world. Based on these inquiries, repertoires were compiled to describe and understand the shared perception of urban spaces by passengers through their daily experience of movement. From this point, two main results, emerge. Methodologically, issues of understanding passengers' perception of the city lead me to form specific modes of enquiry. Secondly, seen from a theoretical point of view, there arises the possibility of a new, comprehensive way of linking sensitive analysis to thought at the urban scale. The main goal arising of this confrontation consists on linking in situ experience and big-scale urban space, and suggesting a way to understand theoretically the notion of atmosphere at an urban scale.