Standardize Southie’s Space Savers
It’s winter in South Boston, which means it’s time to revisit the local tradition of saving shoveled parking spaces. The New York Times covers it in today’s edition:
When Mayor Thomas M. Menino tried to limit the practice in 2004, saying it had gotten out of hand, and threatened to dispatch crews to remove what he called “this rummage sale” of space savers 48 hours after a snow emergency ended, the neighborhood known as Southie revolted. James M. Kelly, then the neighborhood’s representative on the City Council, warned Mr. Menino that residents had “more cones and barrels” than the city had “trucks to haul them away.”
Here in Andrew Square, I haven’t seen too many space savers. Things aren’t as claustrophobic here as they are in the rest of Southie, but I grew up on a narrow, one-way street in Dorchester and am intimately familiar with the practice. We mostly used trash barrels. Efforts to curtail space saving are, by and large, misguided. It’s simply a manifestation of John Locke’s labor theory of property. A person is entitled to exclusive ownership of what has been created by their labor. The fruits of one’s labor are not to be appropriated by others, and the creation of a parking space by shoveling snow shall be enjoyed only by those who have shoveled it, though only for the length of time it would have taken the snow in that spot to melt on its own. After that it once again becomes held in common.
Rather than fight what is so obviously part of natural law, the City of Boston should embrace space saving in South Boston and seek to standardize it. Rather than forcing people to improvise with trash barrels, parking cones, laundry baskets, and busts of Elvis Presley, create a standard space saver, something classy looking, highly visible, and associated with a street address. This would eliminate the shabby look of streets strewn with detritus. It might also help to reduce the conflicts and vandalism that arise when individuals are compelled to enforce the silent rules behind space saving; the appearance of authority that the new, City-blessed space savers would carry would probably dissuade people from trying to move them to squat in a spot they didn’t shovel more so than a bottle of laundry detergent.
5 Comments Add your own
1. Stealth | December 29th, 2010 at 9:01 am
You’re misreading Locke. He was explicitly talking about unowned property. Your labor in digging out your parking space does not suddenly give you possession of public property, any more than my shoveling my neighbors’ sidewalk gives me the right to charge them tolls for its use. Your reward for digging out your car is the use of your car.
You’re right, however, that Boston either needs to enforce current law and disallow this practice, or regulate it. The only way to enforce this faux system of property rights is private violence, which we should not tolerate. I think such a public policy would be an unwise way to allocate scarce resources, but it would at least be legitimate.
2. Jenn | December 29th, 2010 at 9:40 am
I agree completely with Stealth. You shovel out your car = you get to use your car. That’s your reward, exactly.
Space saving makes me absolutely insane and while I no longer own a car when I did, it made me just as insane. I have seen it in Brighton, Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and East Boston, which is everyplace I’ve lived here except for Somerville and Fenway, and I object to it completely.
However, I also agree the city shouldn’t talk smack – either enforce it or control it somehow. I vote for enforcing it.
3. mpb | December 29th, 2010 at 9:47 am
Part of the problem is that after a snowstorm, the supply of parking spaces drops dramatically. The reason people save spaces is that once they dig their car out and drive away, the chances of there being another spot for them to park in when they return are dangerously low.
Sidewalks, when shoveled out, can be used by multiple people and their use by one person does not preclude others from using them. Parking spaces are a different story. On an average day, I agree with you, but in a snow emergency the situation requires a degree of flexibility and, frankly, courtesy on the part of drivers to not deny a spot to people who have worked hard to shovel it out.
4. Laura | December 29th, 2010 at 10:14 am
SOUTHIE!!! Save your space with a broken kitchen chair or gtfo ;)
5. dashford | December 29th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
The problem is there are too many cars and too few spaces. If someone digs out their car and drives off to work, leaving a space saver, a contractor or visitor can’t use that spot in the interim. The whole system collapses if people reserve their spots 24/7 but don’t actually have a car there.
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