COMMENT:
We live in a suburb that is half an hour's walk into the heart of the city and about a 15-minute bus ride. It's a commuters' dream. Drive in from the burbs first thing in the morning, park up all day and either walk or bus to your inner-city workplace.
We also lived next door to a college for budding hippies until the college was sold six months ago. The courses in aromatherapy and massage and the like were very popular so we had lots of lovely chilled people coming and going from the street.
And since we first moved here, our little shopping village has transformed, with people from all over Auckland coming for the bars and the hairdressers and the organic food store and the natural fibre babywear. Which means that there has always been and continues to be pressure on parking in the street. We're okay. We have two off-street parks. So we've never had to park a million miles away and trudge back to the house, cursing all the visitors from West Auckland and Glenfield.
But we have plenty of people parking on the verge outside our house – and it sets my teeth on edge when I see a car parked up on the grass. Not because I'm possessive about the grass strip outside our place or because I think people are taking liberties but because we have the most beautiful old trees in our street and I'm worried that every time a car parks on the roots of the tree, it reduces the life of it exponentially.