How to park a car? Immobility and the temporal organization of parking practices

ABSTRACT

The article explores the temporal organisation of social practices by using the example of car parking in cities. Parking is a dynamic practice dependent on materiality and oriented towards immobility. Drawing on the research on urban neighbourhoods in Poland, the article investigates coordination and synchronisation of people’s practices in temporally and spatially regulated situations. In so doing, it shows the emergence of normativity in car parking practices, which rely on ‘public familiarity’ and efficient use of urban spaces. The argumentation pulls together discussions about temporality, materiality, ordering and scalability of social practices. The article contributes to the understanding of cars in society by arguing for more attention to their immobility and consequences of parking for everyday life in cities. By looking at how cars are made stationary, both in action and with the assistance of temporal and material arrangements, the article engages the notion of infrastructuring to exemplify the practical normativity of temporal and spatial changes. The reinterpretation of infrastructuring helps to highlight its informal, situational and provisional aspects of infrastructure and practices that create and maintain it.

KEYWORDS:

• Parking
• social practices
• temporality
• normativity
• immobility
• infrastructure
• infrastructuring
• automobility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Project title: ‘Differences and boundaries in the processes of creating neighbourhood communities in large cities. A socio-spatial study’ (2015–2018). Funded by the National Science Centre (ID: 2014/15/B/HS6/01949). PI: Marta Smagacz-Poziemska. Research team members: Andrzej Bukowski, Karol Kurnicki and Marcjanna Nóżka. Cooperation: Krzysztof Bierwiaczonek and Natalia Martini.

2. I would like to thank one of the reviewers for highlighting this argument.

3. For the purposes of anonymity, they are marked in the article by their initials: K, T and L.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the National Science Centre of Poland under the project ‘Differences and boundaries in the processes of creating neighbourhood communities in large cities. A socio-spatial study’ (ID: 2014/15/B/HS6/01949). The article was written during the WIRL-COFUND fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, funded by the European Research Council Horizon 2020 programme.