Politics of the Parking Space

Book excerpt: My study of the parking space is complex, as I consider the semiotics of the terrain, the embodiment of jurisdiction, and expertise as governance as factors of legitimacy focused on the visibility of who is parking. This notion of belonging is central to the frameworks of community and citizenship in which parking spaces become site of politically constructed architecture. These sites are policed officially by the sexualized authority of parking enforcement and unofficially (and often violently) by other parkers. In this way, law is personified, with the administration of authority inviting closer scrutiny into the nature of constitutive legal theory. At both the level of the United States Supreme Court and in the everyday parking area, the parking space engenders disputes over equal protection guarantees, acts of free speech, and assertions of reserve that reach beyond the stated scope of policy.