Parking Lot
From March 2013
One of my favorite moments of the Parking Lot Movie was when one character cries out that (and I’m paraphrasing): Just because you bought a SUV doesn’t mean it comes with a parking space! Now obviously, the movie being about a Parking Lot, this is a particularly funny suggestion. The entire crux of the business is renting parking spaces to people who need them. Yet, when the movie was made, the SUV craze was in full swing, and some vehicles were just too large for a normal sized vehicle.
The idea stuck with me for a while after the movie. It seemed obvious, but uncommon knowledge that with the purchase of a vehicle you did not purchase any sort of accommodation on the street (with few exceptions which I will get to later).
Here in New Haven, having just come out of a pretty bad snow storm, we understand what it means not to have priority over the parking situation. On my street, one Jeep (the smaller kind) took up two spots, and when he cleared the snow, he cleared only enough for his own vehicle to exit. What he left was a 1.5 car long wall of snow, approximately 3 feet high. It took 3 weeks of melting for anyone to re-enter that parking space.
Aside from this person (a man who keeps a surfboard on his car in Connecticut, if we are to understand what an ass he is), many residents half-assed their spots, while a select few (such as my girlfriend and I) took the time to clear the spots completely. The street lost half of its parking spots.
We had to protect our parking spots, by either not leaving, making the trips short, or using some sort of device to hold the spot. One couple used the infamous chair. For those who do not live in a snowy place, you may not be familiar with the law of the chair: usually, if you place a chair in the parking spot you cleared out, then you are reserving that spot for yourself. But even after a few days, the chair was gone. The law of the land was gone.
The hard work they put into clearing that parking spot was not enough to merit a parking spot, just as buying a car does not mean that you have the privilege of parking it anywhere.
And furthermore, owning a car does not mean having the privilege of road either.
As we march into the future, we more and more recognize that cars aren’t exactly helping the Global Warming situation. Because of this, many forward thinking cities and countries around the world are re-prioritizing their urban planning.
In Urbanized, a documentary on modern urban planning, we find a few examples where car owners are having the roads taken away from them, given to those who are finding more eco-friendly methods of transport.
In Amsterdam, for instance,the roads are being built to protect the biker. They have developed a new style of road where cars travel normally, in the two center lanes, with cars parked on either side, but with biking and pedestrian lanes on the outside of that. The emphasis here is on the protection of the biker and pedestrian from being doored, or a car running off the road.
This seems like a natural evolution of the road, but also a key insight into the planning of these new roads comes when one of the designers suggests that putting the bike lane behind the parked cars wasn’t just common sense, but it was a line of defense. They are using the cars as a fence to protect the safety of their non-motorized citizens! They are sending the message that the concerns of the car are lower than that of the motorists. They are second-rate compared to the more eco-friendly citizen.
This brings us to the next city; Bogota, Columbia. The mayor of this city has built designated roads not only for the biking and walking communities, but he took it one step further and built roads that were solely for public transportation. Essentially, an above ground subway.
He said in a tweet that “the mark of a developed country is not where the poor own a car, but where the rich take public transportation.” He also says (in the movie), “people feel like parking is a right, like it belongs in a United Nations Charter.” There it most certainly does not belong. He even laughs when a car is driving through the mud.
Finally, in today’s (March 3rd, 2013) Ethicist from the NY Times Magazine, Chuck Klosterman looks at the ethics of purchasing a parking spot to rent out. This spot happens to be a handicapped spot, which is designated by law to be provided to those disabled people for whom this spot would alleviate at least some of their trouble. This is one of the few cases in which a car can be purchased with a parking spot in mind.
As per the questioner, in the lack of a person that would benefit from having this spot, the use of this spot would be given away in a lottery. The man is asking whether or not it is ethical to enter into this lottery without needing the extra space. Although, Klosterman ultimately decides that it would be ethical to do so (perhaps not “neighborly), but also follows the growing trend against car rights:
“But the reality is that the people in your building who own cars need a place to park them. Obviously, they took on that responsibility when they decided to purchase a vehicle. Nobody owes them a parking spot.”
The burden is on those that own the car. Not the building owner to create more spots, not the city to protect them, not even to make sure they don’t get dirty in the mud.
This growing tide against the rights of cars and car owners is a good thing. Nobody needs a Ford Super-Stupid truck with 8 wheels for personal use, and when they do go to Lowes or Stop & Shop, they’ll look like an ass if they park anywhere but the back of the lot. The people who need accommodations are the pedestrians who walk on crooked sidewalks and have no good solution to crossing roads when cars don’t care (I say cars, because people in cars become machines, pedestrians don’t get into accidents).
We need more bike lanes so that those who choose to ride a bike have a safe path to get where they’re going. Running into car doors does not seem like a fun idea, and riding alongside maniac car drivers does not either.
And maybe with less cars we’ll need less Parking Lots. And with less parking lots, maybe you can just put a park there. Or anything really.
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