Who said car parks were only for cars?

Since 1964, underground car parks have been the home of our vehicles. In France, these spaces represent thousands of square meters in the heart of cities, offering valuable opportunities for residents. From storage areas to logistics spaces and data centers, car parks are reinventing themselves to become true urban service hubs, serving the city and its residents.

Symbolizing the development of societies, the city is, like the people who live in it, a living, evolving organism on the move.

Driven by the ecological transition and increased attention to public health and quality of life, the vision of an ideal city has changed. Air quality, green spaces and heritage enhancement are now part of the hallmarks of a modern, pleasant city. The challenge is to reconcile these new expectations with the need to develop new services for an ever-growing urban population. How do you create new spaces without expanding, how do you create without building? One solution, widely tried and tested by our European neighbors and beyond, seems to be the underground urban space.

Underground space is an integral part of the history of Paris. From the creation of a modern sewer system in 1833 to the first car parks, a world is developing beneath our feet, in response to the needs of its inhabitants. Today, in many cities around the world, the underground city is an inherent part of urban planning. In Montreal¹, 33 kilometers of underground pedestrian network already exist in the heart of the city, offering residents shops and cultural spaces. In Helsinki, the “Underground Master Plan² ” integrates commercial, sports and cultural spaces right through to energy infrastructures.

Underground space plays a central role in the transformation of cities.
Take urban delivery, for example. Driven by new modes of consumption, urban delivery has become a major challenge. This widely popular activity – who hasn’t ordered online recently? – has a major impact on traffic, public space, air quality and noise pollution. In its current form, it is reaching its limits.

By integrating unloading zones and logistics activities into underground spaces, ideally located in the heart of cities, we are paving the way for gentle delivery methods, adapted to city center streets and more respectful of local residents. The result: smoother traffic flows, reduced pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and smoother deliveries.

In Paris, “Le Pressoir de Bercy” embodies this ambitious transformation. In the 12th arrondissement, INDIGO is converting a car park into an urban logistics space, taking advantage of a strategic location to encourage carbon-free last-mile logistics. This project is the first stage of an ambitious 20,000 m² pilot project in the heart of the capital, scheduled to be fully operational by 2026. This complex project will involve in-depth restructuring of the existing infrastructures concerned, combining engineering and innovation to meet the constraints of logistics operators and offer high-quality functional spaces.

In France, underground car parks account for hundreds of thousands of square meters of local infrastructure. These spaces can host urban logistics hubs, refrigerated storage areas, urban farms, energy production facilities, and even be transformed into refuge areas in times of crisis. They simply need to be reinvented to suit new uses, thus contributing to a constantly evolving city of proximity.

The city of tomorrow will be sustainable and resilient, if it makes judicious use of its resources both above and below ground. It will shape the car park of the future, which will become a hybrid and the pillar of its transformations.

Xavier Heulin, Executive Vice President, Urban Change, INDIGO

¹ Guide to Montréal’s underground network | Tourisme Montréal (mtl.org)
² esite_2009-8_en.pdf (hel.fi)