Hanley Car Parks

“There is a significant amount of anecdotal evidence, opinion and speculation over the relationship between car parking provision and town centre prosperity”
- The British Parking Association

Ticket machines sprout from every orifice of the town like weeds in a neglected garden once fit for purpose. Relentless appropriation of public land now privatised and profited from people that live elsewhere. The occasional splash of yellow amongst the greyness of everything else. I marvel at the calamity it all. The complete commodification of time and space. £2.50 for 12 hours of what?

I park at Tesco. It is free for 3 hours, 2 more than you would normally need. I get out and roam the other 12 car parks. A Circular route, like time itself. Across the ring road stands a recently erected £15 million car park. A megastructure, dropped in like an alien aircraft, which only helps to emphasise the neglect of starved local business at the cost of the taxpayer. I wander the town, where each car park presents itself as a new experience, now firmly planted in the fabric of the local vernacular. A man circles the same route, checking each machine for change. The anatomy of the park provides an insight into the town’s genealogy; the rings of a school playground, the gate of an ironworks, a nightclub, the old bus station. The past is here, and time, imaginary and real, transcends through a realism that evokes solitude and isolation.

These car parks are spaces between other spaces. A terminus for the thing or event, whatever that may be. They are also places to dwell in an increasingly placeless England, to photograph what is here but to ponder what is no longer. Appropriate leisure in the age of nothingness. Each has their rhythm, existing as a terminus amongst the car-obsessed society where you can leave a review when you leave.

I make my way back to the car, past dying men in doorways against murals on empty shop shutters that celebrate a past to deflect the reality of the present. I get back to the car within the allocated free time, leaving town with photographs and thoughts.