An absolutely business-as-usual Indian habit is to leave cars, trucks and buses parked on streets or on footpaths on a near daily basis.
It takes away space that is meant for walking or cycling safely.
It’s entirely the fault of a citizenry that has no conscience or sense of boundaries for private and public spaces. They don’t give a hoot about inconveniencing broader society for their personal convienience.
The apologists for this practice argue that it’s our privileged position in having spaces for parking our vehicles that allow folks like me to mouth off. Sure, that’s true.
But doesn’t that make it OK to eat into public spaces to park private vehicles. After all, roads are meant for use by all. Case in point, the picture chronicles the most ill-kept and pathetically maintained apartments in our neighbourhood. And it’s not for a lack of space or resources. People have chosen to live this way. They have several thousand square feet of poorly maintained backyards. Instead they park vehicles out in the open. And broader society suffers for this.
We are destined to remain third world or worse if we have no boundaries for how we behave or use public spaces.
Either it has to mandated you need to own a parking space to buy or operate a vehicle. Or the government creates spaces to park at a nominal fee. Either ways, street parking is a practice that will forever make our cities mediocre and unliveable.
