Reappropriation through occupation: Interrogating on-street parking in Chinese cities

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.