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Edited by: Zarah’s recommended readings on Spacer Zarah has also shared her expertise in other platforms by: Learn more about Spacer’s content policiesAt Spacer Technologies, we hold ourselves to high standards when it comes to the content we produce and share. Our commitment is to provide accurate, reliable, and valuable information to our audience across all our platforms, including our website, blog, social media channels, and other communication channels.Transparency is a core value at Spacer Technologies. We believe in being upfront and honest with our audience, which is why we disclose any sponsored content or partnerships clearly. Our goal is to maintain trust and integrity with our users by being transparent about the nature of our content.Our content is carefully crafted to be relevant and valuable to our audience. We strive to deliver information that educates, inspires, or entertains our users, ensuring that it meets their interests and needs.Respect and inclusivity are fundamental to the content we produce. We do not tolerate content that promotes discrimination, hate speech, or offensive material based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic.Have any questions, or concerns, or have found an inaccuracy with our content? We welcome feedback from our users as it helps us to continuously improve our content and services. Your feedback is valuable in ensuring we maintain high content quality standards and constantly improve our content.If you have any questions or concerns regarding our content policy, please don't hesitate to contact us at zarah@spacer.com
Reading time : 4 mins
The Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data promise to revolutionize city living through the creation of connected “Smart Cities.” And while some of those promised improvements are pretty wide-reaching, it’s pretty amazing to look into how many of the changes are designed at getting traffic off the streets and eliminating the gridlock that chokes so much of our urban infrastructure currently.
City parking today largely relies on street spaces – both metered and free – and privately owned lots and garages to house the huge volume of commuter vehicles. This system, while profitable for the city and the garage owners, does next to nothing to reduce traffic congestion, and even less to optimize the usage of available space. In fact, a significant amount of city traffic comes from drivers circling blocks looking for free (or at least more affordable) parking options. And that’s exactly why revamping parking is high on the priority list of any Smart City’s plans.
At a high level, a Smart Parking solution for a Smart City will work by leveraging the many parking spaces already available within the city. It’s a simple formula that looks something like this: every morning, all your suburban commuters drive into the city for work. At the same time, all your city residents who work in the suburbs hop in their cars and leave their parking spaces behind – and many of those spaces sit in private lots where they remain empty until that same driver returns later that night. Smart Parking gives building owners a way to offer up those spaces to commuters, creating an additional revenue stream while helping to find convenient parking solutions for the city’s many drivers.
Now the obvious problem here is “what happens if the commuter is still in the private parking spot when the city resident returns?” And the answer is simple: that won’t happen, because the Smart Parking system will associate each space with a specific commuter leasee, and it will track their arrival and departure times. If the commuter is still in the space as it’s getting close to time for the resident owner to return, the parking software makes it easy to contact the day commuter and have them vacate the space.
And that’s just one low-hanging fruit in the Smart Parking catalog. There’s a whole separate industry of approaches related to the total reinvention of the parking garage. Well, reinvention isn’t the right word, as many of these space-saving ultra-efficient parking garages already exist in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world where urban real estate space is at a premium. These designs use all sorts of innovative ideas to pack more cars into fewer cubic feet than you ever thought was possible
As automobile traffic decreases, pedestrian traffic can increase. The more foot traffic a city has, in general, the better for shops, restaurants, and other businesses. Fewer circling cars also means less air pollution, and there’s reason to believe that the overall reduction of traffic in cities throughout the world could make a meaningful impact on global CO2 emissions.
And that’s just one low-hanging fruit in the Smart Parking catalog. There’s a whole separate industry of approaches related to the total reinvention of the parking garage. Well, reinvention isn’t the right word, as many of these space-saving ultra-efficient parking garages already exist in Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world where urban real estate space is at a premium. These designs use all sorts of innovative ideas to pack more cars into fewer cubic feet than you ever thought was possible
As automobile traffic decreases, pedestrian traffic can increase. The more foot traffic a city has, in general, the better for shops, restaurants, and other businesses. Fewer circling cars also means less air pollution, and there’s reason to believe that the overall reduction of traffic in cities throughout the world could make a meaningful impact on global CO2 emissions.
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