Parking
Places -
Budapest, Hungary
The
Niche
Parking Places:
|
|
A
few weeks ago, I thought to have discovered a rentable/
flexible gap in public space: a place where on can put "Instant
sculptures", objects, invite people for a while instead
of going the long way through applications and powerful/
influential supporters. This would be theoretically indeed
possible, everything on small wheels belongs to the category
of hand-vehicle, which exists, but the result of the small
legal investigation, we did with a friend of mine , Sandor
Nagy Bodo, on the legal nature of the lease contract between
citizen and the owner of so called public space was quite
surprising.
The
law for traffic and public space doesn't exist anymore concerning
our aspect. The basic law on traffic is theoretically still
valid, it is from 1957 and incredibly liberal considering
the fact, that this was the time of worst and darkest communist
regime. It says, that you can park your vehicle: carriage,
car, bicycle everywhere, where it is not definitely forbidden
by a sign, and where you don't endanger others. Therefore
one shouldn't park "on/in the middle of the street, but
better on the roadside, and not leave his/ her vehicle on
bridges and in tunnels".
This law still exists, and it is accessible for all the
citizen for free on the internet, but it has lost any relevance.
The so called pubic space is under control of regulations
and several private companies. First regulation was made
93', soon private companies were founded to maintain and
control public space and 93' was also the year, when the
first parking clocks/ machines were mounted in Budapest.
Regulations
are absolutely instable, has no universal validity, they
are absolutely local changing from one street, from one
corner to the next within the city, and usually they are
at least changed/ modified at least two times a year. Regulations
are not accessible to the citizens. With a special permission
one can go the city-court and read them, but it is not allowed
to make copies and prints, the only thing, what is allowed
is to make handwritten notes copying the paragraphs from
the CD-rom based text from their from monitor.
Considering
the power of the private companies on the roadsides there're
very few limitations, like "they mustnŐt put shackles/ locks
on the wheels of fireman's cars and ambulance cars, even
if they haven't payed their bill for parking. The 20 pages
of text for Budapest tries to regulate how the private companies
divide/ share the territory of the city under each other,
of course there're more and less valuable territories, but
even the green part of the city is given away. The regulations
has no universal validity: they are absolutely local: only
valid on that spot, at that time, but there's one thing,
which is global, and that is the compilation of data on
those who have to pay fines/penalties.
The
rule says, that all the controllers on the streets has to
carry a pocket computer and transfer the data in the office
to the global network. So far I got, because I was curious
on the nature of the contract between citizen and owner
of public space, I nearly forgot about the art-works: we
were told very politely by one of the PR man at the city
council, that art is always very welcome to enrich the life
of the city, nothing is impossible, we should do such a
project on Sunday, but we have to ask an other department
for special permission.