Abstract
In the wake of an auto-era, parking has become a pressing problem for Chinese cities. In order to accommodate an ever-expanding fleet of automobiles, on-street parking is widely practiced as an ad hoc solution. Yet, illegal parking defying traffic regulations is rampant. Many cars are parked on roadside strips that are reserved for pedestrians, cyclists and other road users by urban planning. In this paper, we draw a cautious and selective reference to Solomon Benjamin’s ‘Occupancy Urbanism’ to view the intrusion of cars into roadside strips as an act of occupation. In so doing, we argue that some car drivers in contemporary Chinese cities have turned the de jure order of road space into the de facto situation. Contingent and illegal parking like that renders road space severely disrupted, unpredictable, and above all a dangerous place for all road users. The on-street parking problem is calling for a revision of policies on car ownership and urban administration. Urban planning should also take actual situations like illegal on-street parking into account.
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Notes
- 1.
Reports on parking problems in Chinese mass media are numerous and beyond citation. A considerable share of them is social news about accidents or crimes related to parking conflicts.
- 2.
In several cities of China, public pleas directed at the government have been made by lawyers and social activists to publicize the details of parking fees collected by government-controlled companies. Thus far, none of them have been answered.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this chapter was read at the workshop on “Social Justice and the City,” Dec. 4–6 2013, Hong Kong Baptist University. We thank Prof. Wing-Shing Tang and Prof. Solomon Benjamin for their comments. We would also like to thank Mr. Gu Gu, Anhui Urban & Rural Planning Design Institute, for his assistance in preparing Figs. 3.3 and 3.4 in this chapter. This research was partly supported by the NSFC (grant no. 41501153) and the SJTU—KU Leuven exploratory bilateral co-operation programme.
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Ding, Y., Wang, S. (2016). Reappropriation Through Occupation: Interrogating On-Street Parking in Chinese Cities. In: Wang, D., He, S. (eds) Mobility, Sociability and Well-being of Urban Living. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48184-4_3
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