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The parking garage is a civic building type: needed by all, used by all. It is not a transient phenomenon but a permanent feature of everyday American life — and, as such, has the potential to contribute to the quality of that life. After all, "communities live in time as well as space" (Herbert Muschamp, "Fitting into History's True Fabric," New York Times, May 6, 2001).

The past century offers a wealth of solutions and alternatives — for transportation, for housing, and for parking. To give communities what they need, designers must study the best of the past and provide inspiration for the future. Properly conceived and designed, and visually and spatially connected to the deeper meaning of life, the parking facility can serve as a community link: offering a range of services to meet daily needs and featuring a range of amenities, from child care to stroller rentals, package delivery, books-to-go, films-to-go, and pedestrian paths.

Environmentally friendly construction can help support the community's sustainability goals. The focus should not be on short-term financial gains but on the long-term advantages offered by technology and by various movement systems. Planners, architects, designers, and developers need community support and understanding in order to create complex and sensitive solutions.

In the coming years, the parking structure will not go away: it will evolve, and it will continue to drive design. The question is how best to guide this evolution — to ensure that the parking structure realizes its potential as a link between different forms of movement, and to ensure that it relates to its surroundings in ways that are aesthetically, functionally, and socially supportive.

Past Lessons for the Present and Future

Designers integrated early garages into the urban fabric by complementing the surrounding architecture and respecting the pedestrian and the streetfront. The inclusion of storefronts or other active pedestrian uses along the sidewalk edge of a garage has always been a good strategy.

By the second decade of the 20th century, the automobile had begun to redefine the way people lived: eventually, older, pedestrian-centered design strategies gave way to newer, auto-centered approaches. However, there is increasing interest, among New Urbanists and others, in reviving some of the characteristics of traditional town planning — in particular, by providing people with multiple choices of how and where to live.

Changes wrought by the automobile compelled municipalities to create parking and planning commissions. Eventually, citizens — concerned about the behemoths that garages had become — demanded that municipalities address the design and placement of parking.

To combat urban sprawl, architecture, designers and developers are creating new, pedestrian-friendly places that evoke pre-World War II development patterns. These environments are often focused on transit, but also accommodate the automobile.

• Properly designed, alleys can become active, pedestrian-friendly spaces where cars can enter and exit garages freely, without impeding street traffic. Moving entrances and exits to alleys also makes it easier to visually integrate the street-facing portions of the garage.
• Integrating loading areas for delivery trucks into the parking facility can help keep street traffic flowing more smoothly.
• Linking parking and transit can be a win-win arrangement. The point, however, is not merely to add parking spaces, but to sensitively integrate parking as a civic building type that supports the entire master plan. Transit-oriented development has the potential to reduce dependence on automobiles and to increase housing affordability.
• Shared parking arrangements enable communities to take round-the-clock advantage of parking spaces — and to avoid brilliantly lit, empty eyesores that detract from the nighttime streetscape.
• The parking facility is a natural generator of pedestrian activity — but only if it is fully integrated into the overall plan, rather than being hidden within a block or a building.
• Public-private partnerships can be successful in parking facility design: for example, the municipality can select the location and participate in the design process, and institutions and private enterprise can contribute funding.
• Citizen engagement is particularly important in public-private development projects: community residents should be informed of all the options that are available in the design of parking facilities.
• Integrating other uses into the parking facility — from daycare centers to dry-cleaners to coffee shops — is not only a convenience for users, but can also cut down on additional auto trips, saving gas and helping to protect the environment. Lining the sidewalk edge of the garage with ground-floor shops is an "old" idea that is appearing again today.

Emerging Visions

A sustainable future depends on environmental approaches to every aspect of design, from the scale and placement of buildings, to transportation linkages, to the selection of construction materials.

Changes in the automobile — lower emissions, better mileage, greater safety, and new energy sources, to name a few — will transform the parking facility into one element in an integrated and sustainable transit system.

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Shannon Sanders McDonald is a practicing architect licensed in Georgia and Illinois, as well as an author and frequent speaker on architecture, parking, transportation, and related issues. She is a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, and later worked with Carol Ross Barney in designing the award-winning Little Village Academy, in Chicago. She has also worked on many other public and transportation-related projects, and has taught architecture at many levels across the United States.

This article is excerpted from The Parking Garage by Shannon Sanders McDonald, copyright © 2007, with permission of the publisher, the Urban Land Institute.

SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE In its design of the five-story structure replacing a parking lot at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Watry Design sought to minimize disturbance of mature redwood trees. Photo: Matthew Millman/ Courtesy Watry Design, Inc. Extra Large Image Albert Kahn designed the 1922 Fort Shelby Garage in Detroit, Michigan. By the mid-1920s, continuously ramped floors would become a mainstay of parking garage design. Photo: Courtesy Albert Kahn Associates, Inc. Extra Large Image Garages for electric vehicles — such as the Hedges Garage pictured here (date and location unknown) — were the first parking garages in the United States. Integration of parking and charging services is seeing wider use again, as electric and hybrid vehicles are being produced in ever-greater numbers. Photo: Courtesy Detroit Public Library, National Automotive History Collection Extra Large Image Leven Betts designed Filter Garden, a 2003 competition entry for a parking structure in Chicago, Illinois. The glazed structure would have incorporated extensive planted surfaces with an automated car storage facility. Image: Leven Betts Extra Large Image Sketches by Calthorpe Associates of a 1993 proposal for redevelopment of a large parking lot. The design would have allowed increased density by shifting surface parking space to a more space-efficient parking structure. Image: Calthorpe Associates Extra Large Image In its third-place design by for the 1995 Parkhouse Carstadt competition in Amsterdam, NL Architects sought to rethink the standalone parking structure. The mixed-use proposal would have integrated retail, office, housing, dining, and parking within a single urban structure. Image: NL Architects Extra Large Image The glazed Newton Road Parking Ramp in Iowa City, Iowa, was designed by HLKB Architecture. Photo: Cameron Campbell/ Courtesy HLKB Architecture Extra Large Image The Parking Garage by Shannon Sanders McDonald. Image: Urban Land Institute Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.