In China, stacked parking lots shunned by motorists

When you live in an "old" Beijing housing development—that is, one built before the 2000s, a time when developers didn't include underground parking in their projects—parking spaces are in desperately short supply. Every evening, every driveway and nook and cranny is taken over. The next morning, drivers hope their car isn't too close to the others and they can get back behind the wheel.

In 2024, China had 353 million cars, according to data from the Ministry of Public Security. That year, 26.9 million new cars were registered, a 9.5% increase from 2023. Today, 96 Chinese cities have more than one million vehicles, according to the Chinese weekly Nanfang Zhoumo . Many of these cities lack parking spaces. In 2022, a report from the Transportation Research Institute at Tsinghua University pointed out that there was already a shortage of 80 million.

In the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games, when it was necessary to clear the way across the capital, the two- and three-level car parks have been considered one of the solutions. They are mechanical, economical, and space-saving. In recent years, the state and local authorities have increased subsidies to boost this new activity. In Shenzhen, in the south of the country, property managers can receive 20,000 yuan (2,390 euros) per stacked parking space created, and 8,000 yuan (956 euros) in Shenyang, in the northeast. By December 2024, according to official sources, these mechanical parking spaces represented 9.85 million spaces.

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