Ostrom in Boston

No, she’s not actually there, but a great illustration of her work takes place every winter in the city. On-street parking seems like it would be the mother of all tragedies of the commons. This is especially true after it snows. You spend all morning shoveling out your car (especially after the plows have come by and made a 20 foot high snow bank blocking you in) only to have some jerk who didn’t even lift a finger come along and take it as soon as you leave. And indeed this happens in some parts of the city but usually only in the commercial districts where people don’t park long enough to get snowed in anyways. How do people prevent the tragedy of the commons from happening? Are there violent altercations in the streets? Did the government privatize all the available street parking? Or maybe they instituted a whole slew of regulations on the matter?

The answer is: none of the above. Winter parking in the city is one of the best examples of what Hayek would call a spontaneous order or Ostrom would call a polycentric system. Public space is privately regulated by something as simple as putting an object in the parking spot after you’ve moved your car. The Boston Globe has a bunch of examples here. #15 is probably the most creative one I’ve seen so far. You might think that someone would just come along and move the object, but that actually doesn’t happen often. This way of saving a parking spot has gained enough legitimacy in most neighborhoods that people just don’t do it. And depending on what neighborhood you’re in, you might just find your mirror missing or your tire slashed if you still decide to steal the spot. There are all sorts of local rules regulating the practice too. For example, you can’t save your spot if there was only a few inches of snow on the ground and shoveling out your car once doesn’t entitle you to that spot all winter. The rules are usually very local and organic.

Boston also serves as an example of what happens when government tries to interfere with spontaneous or polycentric orders from the top-down. Last year, Mayor Menino ordered the city’s sanitation workers to remove all objects as trash. You can bet this didn’t go over well with the locals. There were so many adverse consequences after a particularly big storm that he basically de jure legalized de facto arrangements that has already been in place forever. I think he has since learned his lesson and Boston has more or less seen a period of salutatory neglect.

• Josh McCabe