Jottings from the Granite Studio

After ranting yesterday on the parking situation in Beijing, I came across an article in this week’s Economist on how the new property law will affect the competition for parking spots in the city.

In March this year, despite vocal opposition by party conservatives, the leadership ensured passage of a new property law in parliament. This was widely hailed as a further salve for landlords. Although much of it merely consolidated existing legislation, it contained important new provisions concerning the rights of property owners in new housing estates, including principles governing the ownership of parking spaces.

But there is…of course…a catch:

The new law makes clear that parking spaces occupying what the law considers to be land owned collectively by the home-owners, such as roads within estates, are also collectively owned. It obliges developers to give priority to the parking needs of estate residents. It is vaguer on the subject of how home-owners and developers are supposed to cooperate. Some developers, fearing that home-owners will gain a greater say over prices, have rushed to sell off as many spaces as that they can before the law takes effect on October 1st. Disputes continue to simmer.

On a related note, the small hutong right outside my window is always full because there are not near enough spots for all the cars in the area, plus every night we get jammed with overflow parking from the gui jie (Ghost Street) restaurants. It turns my office into “box seats” for the nightly arguments and altercations over spaces and scrapes (the local drivers aren’t the best at parking in tight places). The fact that the police station is directly across the street from my apartment doesn’t seem to matter very much. Good times.