Efficient Automobile Parking Structures

Inside view of a 20-story Car Tower at a Volkswagen’s facility in Dresden, Germany.

Panama City in Central America, is a city that grew in a very special way. Because it was flanked by the Pacific Ocean on one side, and the then Panama Canal Zone on the other side, there was no option to grow but in only one direction: East-West.

Due to this particular geographical restrictions, Panama City is like a long and thin shoe string. After the collapse of the General Noiega’s military regime on December 1989, Panama City started to grow in gigantic steps. Even as we speak, huge buildings are being erected all over the city, specially in the surroundings of the Balboa Avenue in front of the Panama Bay.

Progress also takes its toll—there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Due to the characteristics of the city, there is no way you can travel inside the city without spending hours trying to find a parking space. The best you can do, is obstruct another car already parked, or step over sidewalks impeding the transit of pedestrians. Another problem, is the extremely dense traffic and the obsolete mass transit system. But that’s another story for another time.

I’ve seen compact multi-story parking structures in other cities which are excellent solutions to the parking problem in Panama. We don’t have those buildings in Panama City, but I wouldn’t be surprised if savvy investors are already looking at the blueprints of such buildings, since it’s a viable and profitable project.

When the price of real estate is very high such as the case of Panama City, you need to park as many cars as possible in a minimum space. After the cars are safely parked inside the building, you need a system to retrieve them as fast as possible without the potential of being damaged by a facility employee. This requires high tech and ingenious ideas.

Volkswagen came up with such an idea to solve the car parking problem which can easily be adapted to Panama’s nightmare. They built several storage facilities to deposit their newly-manufactured cars before they are transported to consumer markets. The name of their facility is The Transparent Factory situated in the city of Dresden, the 800-year-old German baroque city known for its arts and craftsmanship.

The photograph above depicts how the facility looks and operates. I wish a big shot in Panama would read this post and decides to build the first Car Tower in Panama. Wishful thinking?