Why Shoveling Your Car out of the Snow Doesn’t Create Parking Rights (But Feels Like It Should)

After heavy snowfalls in American cities, people dig out their parked cars, and some try to “hold” the cleared space with lawn chairs, trash cans, traffic cones, etc. The logic is familiar: I did the work, so I should get the benefit.

Last week, my neighborhood listserv lit up with complaints from people who had shoveled out their cars, left an object to reserve the space, and returned later to find another vehicle parked there. Then they described the inconvenience of circling the neighborhood, or adjacent ones, looking for another spot. One resident emphasized that this had happened multiple times and argued that, because they worked as a nurse in a hospital, convenient access to their vehicle was essential to their job.

Understandably, not everyone can work remotely, and reliable transportation matters. But these practical concerns don’t answer the underlying question at stake in these disputes: Does the act of shoveling snow create a legitimate claim to a public parking space?

The intuition behind “snow dibs” closely resembles a popular interpretation of John Locke’s labor theory of property. The basic idea (stripped of its qualifications) is that mixing one’s labor with something generates ownership. Clear a field, build a house, improve unused land, and the property somehow becomes yours. This intuition is powerful, and it feels fair. But the logic breaks down when applied to public space.

Labor alone does not create ownership, even in private property systems. Labor can justify ownership only within a legal framework that already recognizes title, boundaries, and exclusion. Clearing snow from a public street does none of those things. The street was not yours before you shoveled, even if you have a yearly parking pass, and your effort does not magically convert it into private property afterward.

These snow shovelers are applying private property logic to a public good. They treat public parking as a common resource that can be claimed through use or maintenance. They feel fairness demands compensation for effort. This is a moral claim, not a legal one. And they’re asserting a vernacular norm that conflicts with municipal law.

This is why the belief feels so compelling.  Typically, effort and improvement are connected to ownership. Build a deck on your house, plant a garden in your yard, and those improvements become yours because the legal system allows it. But public space works differently. Use is temporary and non-exclusive. Just like a picnic table in a public park, no individual can legitimately claim ongoing control over a specific street parking spot.

Snow shoveling produces a hybrid situation. It is an effort combined with temporary use. It feels like ownership even though it is not. The result is a clash between two systems:

Municipal law says street parking is public and first-come, first-served. Vernacular norm says shoveling creates a temporary claim that others ought to respect.

Cities (which are typically too busy cleaning the snow from busy streets) often exacerbate this conflict through inconsistent enforcement. When rules against reserving public parking aren’t enforced, informal norms take over. Boston’s well-known (and unofficial) “dibs” culture is tolerated. Meanwhile, other cities explicitly ban chair-saving. In many neighborhoods, enforcement is inconsistent or nonexistent, leaving residents to negotiate (or fight – guns drawn or fired) these norms themselves.

This recurring dispute reveals a larger question: can labor generate claims to public space, and if so, who decides their scope and duration? Similar conflicts play out with street vendors claiming sidewalk space, graffiti writers and street artists putting their work on urban surfaces, or communities creating unsanctioned memorials, each asserting informal claims the city may not recognize.

The answer, legally speaking, is no. Shoveling snow does not create parking rights. But the moral intuition behind the claim is strong enough that people enforce it anyway through chairs, notes, social pressure, and occasionally real conflict.

Shoveling out a car after a major snowfall is hard work, and it feels unfair when that effort yields no lasting benefit. But fairness and legality are not the same thing. Public goods do not function like private property. Labor does not generate exclusive rights to shared space, even when it feels as though it should.

Until cities consistently enforce their own rules or neighborhoods settle on a shared norm, these disputes will recur every winter. For now, snowstorms turn street parking into a kind of urban Wild West, where moral intuition, informal norms, and public law will repeatedly collide.

Photo Credit

Photographer: Woody Wonderworks

Title: “Reserved Parking Space…Unfair?” (2016)