While most cities around the world seek to implement more sustainable and environmentally friendly modes of transportation, encouraging new urban mobility habits in their residents, the use of automobiles still persists, occupying significant parking spaces in urban centers. Finding a way to integrate these uses, provide new spaces for their citizens, and leverage their facilities for ecological, productive, and other purposes is the challenge faced by many professionals in architecture and urban planning.
There are economic, social, and cultural factors that influence the determination of the uses a space will acquire based on the needs of its population and the context in which it is implemented, among other reasons. Understanding the role of parking facilities in the city and the territorial dynamics revolving around them is part of the design process and the decision-making of professionals who will determine how to plan and organize these spaces in order to achieve the well-being and comfort of their users.
Beyond the technical, traffic-related, and functional aspects that must be considered when designing parking facilities, the act of incorporating gathering places, leisure, and recreational spaces for the public, adapting their structures for new uses, or conforming them to the natural conditions of the terrain. To reduce their impact on the environment are some of the strategies that lead to efforts in reusing, readapting, transforming, or revitalizing these spaces that occupy vast portions of land and are far from becoming obsolete.
