If property theory and the ‘right to the city’ had a baby, it would be Amelia Thorpe’s Owning the Street: The Everyday Life of Property. In this riveting book, Amelia Thorpe deftly examines the complexities of property law and ‘pop-up’ urban spaces – in this case, PARK(ing), an international movement where locals take over metered parking spots for a prescribed time (the length of the meter) to create parkettes. While PARK(ing) Day itself is now waning, the movement is lauded for having given rise to parklets in San Francisco and other cities, and in helping to prompt movement away from car-dominated streets to walkable, bikeable spaces (Chapter 7). The subject matter is surprisingly simple for what becomes a detailed analysis of property theory’s sharp edges when it tries to make sense of urban spaces …
€ (Cambridge UP)
Alexandra Flynn, Owning the Street: The Everyday Life of Property by Amelia Thorpe, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, volume 36, issue 1, February 2023, pp 299-303. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2023.
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