ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the parking lot as a public forum in which speech rights are exercised, private rights of ownership challenge First Amendment freedoms, and social need is reevaluated according to the accessibility and accommodation that parking lots engender. Political scientist Margaret Kohn brilliantly asserts that public spaces are becoming extinct through the privatization of their ownership as well as their usage. Jurisdictional claims become the embodiment of constitutionally-protected rights and the increasing ability of privatized space to alter both social and political practices. The embodiment of jurisdiction is therefore the new face of spatial policing in the name of protecting the public. However, that protection may do more harm than good. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) defines handicap through the legal reserve of space by articulating that a public accommodations first priority should be to take measures to provide access to a place of public accommodation include providing accessible parking spaces.
