The Parking Garage

Parking garages have become the modernized form of occupying space for your vehicle. They are an evolutionized design of today’s urbanization and populous migration. Most of the time we see them in a strip mall or business. According to http://www.polarinertia.com/nov04/parking01.htm they have become the space in between the city and the suburb.  The link also has a diagram of how the inside of a ramp parking garage looks.

“As a building type the rigid form and ingenious integration with the functions of the car, have made it one of the most modern and innovative building types in the city.”–Polar Interia

With the convenience of a parking garage it can offer so much more than surface parking. First, parking garages are built up not out, so the space that it provides while saving at the same time is a great advancement. Second, with the speed of population growth and economy in today’s society, a parking garage assists in the evolution of all these things.

The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form is the title of Shannon Sanders McDonald’s new book. In it she explores some of the earliest known parking garages that date back to the nineteenth century in New York, as well as parking garages of the future. She also analyzes the engineering system used to construct a parking garage.

There are different kinds of parking garages that one can build. Some of these might include a mechanized system or a ramp system. Most of the ones built today are ramp garages, but there are a few that still use a mechanized system, which is a system of elevators and turntables that move the car to its place. McDonald’s book talks about both and how each present their own advantages and disadvantages.

The parking garage can definitely offer a few good things to the community and drivers all over the world, especially college campuses.  And as all students know parking on college campuses can be somewhat of a difficult task, on top of the fees.  So the invention of the parking garage can be considered an invention of the century and centuries to come.