ABSTRACT
This chapter describes parking meters, parking lots, parking permits, and parking garages become political places that are localized on the basis of economic status, racial identity, residency status, and aesthetic determinations. The legal geography of parking spaces provides a unique relationship between citizen and community. The chapter addresses some of the issues expanding the discourse of local authority that governs rights, belonging, and aesthetics that arise when public need conflicts with private interest in the scope of parking-related places. The public usage of the Amity Street Lot is antithetical to its originally intended usage and is altered by the Select Board debate. This alteration is a challenge to notions of citizenship and community in which private interests have captured the truly public nature of public space. The chapter explains that local knowledge is a source of legal authority that exposes and confronts the economic motivations for the future of the community.
