PIP

When politicians and other decision-makers get things wrong they will often come up with ingenious ways to take advantage of the situation to deflect criticism and even gain support from certain members of their constituencies.

In order to achieve this use is made of dog whistle tactics which consist of a selective communication to specific sub groups within a constituency such as residents of a road facing particular problems to say that they will receive "special treatment" while other sub groups are not aware this is happening.

Attempts to solve the parking problem

Rather than attack the main cause of parking chaos, that is, bad planning and changing the way this is undertaken, the City has come up with various cosmetic solutions to residential parking. Most of these are not solutuions but are socially-divisive and selfishly motivated by NIMBY principles¹ which are basically antisocial.

For example one has been to encourage dropped curbs on pavements so that people can concrete over their gardens and use the pavement as a driveway to access a garden parking lot. This system removes gardens and greenery, is unsightly ("concrete jungle") and is inconvenient to pedestrians. Basically this breaks up the general housing scape and perspective by breaking up wall and pavement lines; it is also unsightly. This does not solve the problem of excessive cars on the operational road space because when such people are at work others cannot park on the road space in front of the dropped curb.

Residential parking permits are another NIMBY-based approach appealing to motivations arising from a natural territorial instinct and selfishness in being able to bag an area of public land (parking space on public road) and prevent others from using it. These are socially-divisive because the divide up constituencies into little areas vying with one another for special treatment by the Council. It encourages people to exhibit a possession and antisocial character and to punctuate dialogues with such terms as "the law is on my side" or you cant park "your car" in "my space" interaction. Historically, politicians who curry favour through such a means have never been particularly concerned at the socially-divisive nature of their promised to help install such schemes. Indeed parking permit schemes are a cheap way for local councillors to gain popularity from selected segments of the constituency. This dog whistle politics is based on selective communications to different groups in the constituency promising the "special treatment" implying that other constituencts are not enjoying the grace of their preferential treatment. This base way of trying to buy over constituents is unacceptable because it generates general enmity caused by the selective creation, by politiciains, of have and have-nots.

Many social housing schemes which happen to have resident parking permit schemes, have an active black market in permits and because such schemes under-estimate the realnumber of cars and trucks in any given area, then those with permits will dump their extra vehicles on the open road creating problems for the residents living beside those sections of the road by displacing their parking spaces. The Coniston Avenue Petition case study gives examples of people living in the Western Coponor Road sites which have on-site parking combined with parking permits are parking their extra vehicles in Coniston Avenue, Keswick and Kendal Avenues. Quite often those with permits are also parking works vehicles in these Avenues including taxis and other vehicles used for work.

The rights of those with no cars

Many people do not have cars but have relatives and friends who weant to visit them. The tendency for residential parking schemes to favour only those with cars marginalises such families. This is the case of many elderly people. In addition to the need for places to park for relatives and friends there is the issues of vehciles belonging to tradesmen and others who need to visit houses to provide services, deliveries and such like. So the NIMBY-based tendencies favouring those in a locality with cars in fact affect others with equal rights who do not have cars.

Portsmouth's new-found safety consciousness

The traffic crisis in Portsmouth was evident in the 1980s but the relentless acceptance of higher density housing with inadequate or no provisions being made for residential parking means that more and more roads have cars parked down both sides. This represents a very dangerous circumstance especially for small children who are unable to see down the road in order to cross without actually entering the road. In Portmsouth the old Highway Code for safe pedestrian crossing of a road, has become obsolete, destroyed by irresponsible planning. In many roads in Portsmouth a child cannot stand on a pavement and look right, left and right again before crossing.

Again, Portsmouth's soltution was not to tackle the cause and change their planning behaviour, it was to reduce the speed limit, largely on East-West traversals in the North and North East of the Island. Rather than make this a temporary measure to persist until such a time that the parking chaos is solved, the City began to sell this concept not as a case study in failed planning but as a loftier, socially-conscious City concerned about road safety.

Solutions that solve nothing

All of the solutions attempting to "rationalise" parking problems without providing more physical space for parking are not solutions since they tend to intensify the problems for those streets where no particular "solution" has been provided. Thus one street with dropped curbs bumps excess cars into other streets. Any street with parking permits bumps excess cars into other streets. In fact from the logical and mathematical perspective, as such "solutions" spread through the City then the problem intensifies in a socially-divisive way. These solutions solve nothing especially in a location like Portsea island.

¹ NIMBY- Not In My Back Yard principles are a self-centred approach to environmental and social issues where individuals are encouraged to think only about their ppersonal advantage in any situation and not concern themselves with others and even less so about the potential harmful consequences for others resulting from their motivation to defend their interests. A typical example is corraling some road space through dropped curbs or parking permits causing others not to have access to road space when it is not in use. In the analysis of the Territorial Imperative man is seen to be able to balance enmity, a state of hostility, created by NIMBY with amity, a state of friendliness, by seeking to achieving a community level solution benefiting all. Quite often effective solutions require investment and innovation.