Parking and the City

Parking has been an important issue for cities for as long as the world turns with cars on it. While car parks are a vital public amenity whose lack or insufficiency could make city life as well as city tourism significantly unpleasant, the aesthetic aptitude of these infrastructures in urban context is sometimes questionable. It has become apparent, however, through an exciting line-up of recent thematic projects, that car parks can not only be matched with their urban neighbourhoods, they can in fact become instrumental in reviving them. Thoughtful intervention in their facades, which are the least semantically loaded element in this particular breed of buildings, could yield surprisingly positive effects on cities' social, environmental and cultural climate.