Laurier2005

Laurier2005
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Laurier2005
Author(s)	Eric Laurier
Title	Searching for a parking space
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Ethnomethodology, Driving, Parking
Publisher
Year	2005
Language
City
Month
Journal	Intellectica
Volume	41-42
Number
Pages	101-115
URL	Link
DOI
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

If you drive a car, it’s a classic problem on the busy city streets, the search for a

parking space. Merely driving in the inner city is a challenging and frustrating affair
because it is full of one way streets, dead ends, the visibility of surrounding streets is
impeded by buildings and as we drive we are pushed ceaselessly forward from
behind by other vehicles. If we pause for thought for more than a second we will be
reprimanded by one or more car horns. How it is that masses of us move, as
pedestrian or vehicular traffic, in an orderly way through space is also a classic
problem for research in psychology, geography and other social sciences. From a
distance it seems that the large movements of thousands of vehicles on the road
must require explanations arising from another level, a macro-level. From close-by,
observing the driver we wonder how she could possibly deal with such a fast
complicated environment in their head. How many decisions would they have to
make every second? For decision-making models of driving and transportation the
point that getting a hold of a space to park our cars is, unavoidably, a search during
which decisions are made, is all too often forgotten. As Thompson and Richardson
(1998: 129) note dryly, ‘previous models of parking choice have not considered it as
a search’(p159)

Notes