The culture of parking on the sidewalks

Abstract

It has long been known that automobility marginalizes other types of mobility inside cities. This is extremely visible in Bucharest, a city with a high density of people and cars. This research aims to understand car–pedestrian dynamics on residential sidewalks. While most research on the hegemony of the car has focused on the congested public spaces in commercial districts, I explore sidewalks in residential ones. The ethnographic data indicate that the parking practices in a central neighborhood of Bucharest blur the distinction between sidewalk and street, requiring new ways of conceptualizing the infrastructures of automobility and walking. The sidewalk is a space invaded by cars, and sectioned off and almost captured by the residents of adjacent properties, all under the auspices of a generalized hostile privatism. This is aggravated by the lack of any involvement from the local authorities, which support car culture. Sidewalk parking in Bucharest has thus become the local emblem of a privatist culture of appropriating public space.